SPUG: Greeetings, & wanting a little advice...

[Jonathan Souza]

Western CS graduates averaged 46K starting last year.  The school does
surveys of its graduating class, I do not think any kind of options or
other benefits is including in that sum.

I am also interested in what is a decent average of the going rate for a
developer in general (not just Perl), because you quickly become
language independent once you have the theories down.


Jason Lamport wrote:
> 
> Hello SPUGsters,
> 
> I've been lurking on this list for a while now, and I thought it time
> to introduce myself:
> 
> My name's Jason, I've been programming computers since I was 8 (and
> yes, I started with BASIC, but I turned into a damn good programmer
> anyway, despite what Dijkstra says... ;)  I've been programming with
> Perl for about 3 years now: mostly CGI and CGI/database applications.
> I don't think I have any particularly unusual talents when it comes
> to programming, except that I'm probably the northwest's foremost
> authority on Reinventing the Wheel :)
> 
> When I'm not writing code, I'm usually occupied with dancing (I mean
> professionally: with a dance company), writing plays, backpacking in
> the wilderness, creating Art, and other Bad Habits.
> 
> Anyone who's curious can find out a *little* more about me at
> http://www.strangelight.com/ (though some of it's out of date).
> 
> Now, I have a (possibly strange, perhaps even tactless) question to
> ask of you all:
> 
> What is the going rate for Perl programmers (and/or HTML designers/
> JavaScript programmers) these days?  You see, up until now, all of my
> jobs and assignments have been for non-profits and other legitimately
> low-paying clients/employers, so I have absolutely no clue what's
> standard in the corporate, for-profit world.  I mean, I know I'm
> being underpaid right now, but I have no idea just *how* underpaid.
> I've recently begun interviewing for various positions in the
> corporate world, and I've come to suspect that I'm botching the
> interviews by making my salary requirements way too low, making the
> interviewers assume that I must really not know what I'm doing.
> (Which is true: I *don't* know what I'm doing, when it comes to
> salary negotiations -- but they're not hiring me to negotiate
> salaries, they're hiring me to write code, which is something I *do*
> know how to do...)
> 
> I've looked at some of those on-line salary surveys, but they're
> always organized by job titles, not job-descriptions, and the job
> titles are so hopelessly vague that I have no idea which job titles
> really fits what I do.
> 
> And there are so many other factors: like the fact that I *don't*
> have a CS degree -- my qualifications are almost all from work
> experience, not schooling -- which I assume lowers my earning
> potential a few notches.  I also assume that it makes a big
> difference exactly what sort of project I'm working on: I'd expect to
> get paid more per hour for setting up a complex, database-driven
> e-commerce site than for setting up a simple form-to-email script.
> 
> Anyway, any advice on setting fees for clients and/or salary
> requirements for prospective employers would be greatly appreciated.
> (If you don't think this discussion belongs on the SPUG list, just
> email me privy.)
> 
> Thanks!  And happy coding.
> 
> -jason
> 
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-- 
Jonathan Souza
Software Engineer: Product Development
The Cobalt Group: jsouza at cobaltgroup.com
tel: 206.269.6363 ext 8289   Direct: 206.219.8289
     800.909.8244            Fax: 206.219.8399
Home: courtassassin at home.com Phone: 206.762.1905

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