Students with excellent coding skills seek generous earnings in exchange for their skills. A new report byDevpost found that student coders expect to have starting salaries of at least $70,000.
Devpost polled 1,700 students in the United States at hack events on college campuses. According to the report, only 8.19 percent of students who have coding skills expect less than $30,000 for their starting salaries. Those who expect their starting salaries to be between $30,000 and $50,000 make up 10.34 percent of students while 25.86 percent are hopeful they will earn at least $50,000 to $70,000.
An optimistic 31.9 percent expect a whopping $70,000 to $100,000 starting salaries, while 15.95 percent hope for $100,000 to $150,000 earnings. Only 7.76 percent of the students polled expect their starting salaries to go over $150,000.
Reality Check
Are the students' salary expectations feasible? According to a report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, computer and information sciences graduates have an average starting salary of $65,849. That's already a nice paycheck, and it's even higher than the average starting salary ($50,651) of a newly graduate bachelor's degree holder.
Annual Increase
The survey's respondents also think their salaries will rise by $20,000 to $30,000 in five years. Quartz, however, pointed out that annual raises for employees-especially those who graduated recently-shouldn't be expected nowadays.
Ken Abosch, who works for compensation research company Aon Hewitt, said base salary increases are flat and it wouldn't change drastically in the next few years, CNBC reported. The Great Recession from 2007 to 2009 is the one to blame for this. Serving as replacement for annual raises is the variable compensation, also called as bonus.
Variable compensation has pros and cons. Bonus allows companies to reward hard working and high-performing employers, but the downside is instability and unpredictability. It's difficult for workers to commit to long-term financial plans when their salaries aren't fixed.
Coders May Have A Point
Devpost CEO Brandon Kessler said students' expectations regarding their starting salaries have a point. Wages for software developers are increasing because of the small number of would-be employees vying for a position. Companies that cater to software developing aren't that plenty in numbers too, according to Quartz. These factors are why coders are in high demand.
The modern war and the digital age have prompted the U.S. military to consider hiring hackers to identify and track perpetrators, the Huffington Post wrote. The U.S. Department of Defense admitted that the number of its skilled cyberspace personnel is at a low point. People with coding talents are capable of rebuilding satellites and software and bypassing complex systems.
r of its skilled cyberspace personnel is at a low point. People with coding talents are capable of rebuilding satellites and software and bypassing complex systems.
