New grads at Facebook who received a return offer as an intern get a bit over 200k/yr total comp. to start.
> Any way you look at doing software development as a career you come to see that it stinks.
I don't see how being able to make several hundred thousand dollars a year with a few years of experience while working at a major company in a safe and clean environment is a bad choice.
What are the alternatives though? Lawyers work much longer hours and only the ones who went to top schools and get into top firms make more. Doctors make more but have 6+ more years of education and training. Finance is competitive and also has long hours. Programmers have it pretty good.
I'm not sure that's true. I've lost track of the number of software engineers I know who are in at least the low 200's Total Comp (in Texas).
Common? Probably not. Rarified? Not as much as you think. There's two just on my current team.
1) Inflation. My starting salary out of college many years ago was $35K. Today's starting salaries are double that. Double in less than 20 years. A $50K salary in the early 1980s is equivalent to $120K today, not controlling for geographic location--HCOL areas are actually far worse than that. Let that sink in as you plan for retirement. My take is that you are never going to save enough for retirement because inflation is insidious and never sleeps.
2) The mythology of the higher salary range. How do developers get past that second mode? They start their own company! Only a few rarified corporate people and independent consultants can pull down pay in the 200s. Again, I'm not thinking about SV where the pay is so skewed due to the HCOL. So everyone else works a number of years and ends up in the 120s-150s and they think they are doing great, but they really aren't (me included) due to #1.
Any way you look at doing software development as a career you come to see that it stinks. I'm not going to recommend it to my kids. I think it's important to know how computers work and how code works and not to be afraid of tinkering with those things or coming to believe that you have no control over it, but as a business, it's nasty and getting nastier.