Most schools have post-graduation survey. Quick google shows mit's 2020 class had 70 bachelor students responding to the survey for jobs in the tech industry, with base salary of:

$97,750, $118,000 $129,000 for 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile respectively

IIRC this number is typically just the base salary so you can roughly double it to include bonus and stock.

Click Employment tab then Page 9 in https://capd.mit.edu/resources/student-outcomes-and-salaries

FWIW, my bonus is definitely NOT half of my compensation

I think it's hyperbole.

Not that I doubt there are jobs which pay this, but from what I've seen of the market, if money is all you're concerned with you should not be turning your nose up at a 200k TC offer.

I think you should feel fine about 150k and miffed about 100k if it's a gig at a bay area company other than an early-stage startup.

200k is very high for new grads.

Google pays new grads like 180 and they’re pretty much the top of the industry in terms of pay scale. Throwing hyperbole in just undercuts the point they were trying to make.

It's a hyperbole and its not the best advice for a noob to compare to. It's easy for people to remember special cases and then assume it is the norm.

Last I checked the median salary for a fresh Stanford CS Master's grad was $105k, but that was a few years ago.

I think the 200k figure is inflated by FAANG companies, basically.

I think you may be comparing salary to total comp here, though I'll admit I haven't looked for the source for your $105k figure.

Senior devs in my country make around 35k in international companies. Even FAANG is maybe 50k.

What country?! You should demand more?

Probably any country that's not the US. Very few companies in the world have FAANG-level cashflows or Silicon Valley-level funding to be able to pay developers high salaries.

You can't demand more when plenty of others will do it for far cheaper.

Yes, a new grad "feeling lowballed by 200k" was hyperbole because I waste too much time on Blind. But FAANG new grad TC is pushing that number, which is a stark contrast to my new grad numbers ~2010. But it was probably confusing for me to phrase it that way.

I had $200k+ TC new grad offers from FAANGs in 2013, and one of them wasn't even for a role in the Bay Area. It's not a stark contrast at all. The market has been consistently willing to pay strongly for new talent.

Cost of living is also wildly different since 2010 though too.

Widly? I don't think there's ever been a decade of lower inflation. It's certainly not 4x as expensive as then

Wildly is about right. The last decade has been the highest real world inflation I've experience in my life and I'm not particularly young anymore so been around for a while.

looks like the cost of housing in Palo Alto has more than doubled: https://julianalee.com/palo-alto/palo-alto-statistics.htm

Edit: This is to say, the cost of housing has grown faster than the compensation available to new grads.

Have you bought a gallon of milk or any beef lately?