Michael Arrington, founder and co-editor of tech blog TechCrunch, reports that Stanford has become prime hunting grounds for programming talent, with Google and Facebook as the principal headhunters.
Not only that, but according to Arrington’s unnamed sources, the high-profile companies are shelling out top-dollar for fresh, shiny computer science grads—he says that Facebook could be offering as much as $92,000 to new recruits with graduation months away.
Responses to the post about tech-company recruiting are a mixed-bag. One Stanford student reports getting two job offers at $95,000 and $98,000. Another says computer science graduate students are being offeruddy $80,000 to $100,000 salaries. Some aren’t seeing any offers at all.
It’s possible that some of these reports of exorbitant salaries sans experience aren’t true, given the anonymous nature of blog responses. But if they are, one respondent wonders, will the bottom eventually fall out?
“This is hilarious. I recollect when Nortel was making standing offers to entire CS classes with no interview necessary. This was back in 2000—if you were graduating you had a job paying $60k.
Given the progressive size of funding rounds as of late, hiring and salary trends, and imploding non-tech economy, it is not hard to see what is coming. This is beginning to look like the year 2000 again.”
So what’s really going on here? Are other companies courting computer-science graduates this aggressively? Is it reasonable for a new graduate to expect salaries this high? Are we in a tech-bubble, destined to burst? —Hurley Goodall