Computer Science salary has been crazy recently. I witnessed somebody who just graduated from college. He started with a 6 digit salary at a company. I almost felt pretty stupid. I thought, “What have I been doing for the last 20 years?!?”. The saddest part of all this is that I do have a Computer Science degree from a good university. But it was from 20 years ago. What went wrong? I decided to look into more details.
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Computer Science salary background
Perhaps nothing went wrong. One thing is for sure, though. Things have changed. We use cell phones daily. Even elementary school students have one. I didn’t have a cell phone in college. I did have an email address, but I had to go to a computer lab at college to check it. Things were inconvenient, then. Our technology hasn’t come around for use by college students.
20 years later, if you have a Computer Science degree from a good school, you are pretty much set for life potentially. If you work as a software developer, you could easily work from home to get jobs done, perhaps more efficiently than your commute to work. Today, we have the technology to fully support working from home. Majority of houses have high-speed Internet, and Virtual Private Network (VPN). As a result, you can securely connect to the work network. Furthermore, you could work anywhere. Maybe you travel around, but you work during the day and tour around in the evenings. This surely sounds like a dream job, doesn’t it?!? If you can also get a 6 digit salary job, then I don’t know what else I could expect more.
As a Computer Science major on my own, I am genuinely interested in the current state of employment. How are college graduates these days getting paid? Is the Computer Science Salary that high for many? I am going to find out.
If you are a current Computer Science candidate, I can assure you that your future will be bright.
Average Computer Science salary is how much?
I am curious about the average Computer Science salary. See, I might be able to get a better than average. I could get worse than average. For me to easily calculate all other related numbers, I might as well consider the average salary. After all, I am just looking for some rough estimates.
After working for nearly the past 20 years, I have noticed a few things about average pay. It does change based on a few criteria.
First, the location. The place you are in has a huge effect on your salary. If you are middle of nowhere, then Computer Science jobs may not even exist. Pay may be lower. If you go to the west or east coast, Computer Science jobs have high numbers.
PayScale
So I googled it. The PayScale site shows up with some numbers.

How do the numbers look?
Well, they are good, probably much higher than most other majors. But they are well-known schools, aren’t they?
I am not sure if it’s a good idea to compare this number as the “average Computer Science salary”, but you get the idea.
I can tell you these numbers are nearly twice as much as my first job salary 20 years ago. Now that I think about it, the college tuition appears to be increasing like crazy. As a result, the initial earning potential might make sense. It will be interesting to see the ratio of tuition to salary from 20 years ago and now.
Personal opinions
So I googled even more. I read at least 10 different sites’ numbers. No matter where I looked, numbers looked good. In some cases, the numbers looked great!
One another you can look at is this: Indeed’s Computer Science salary
So I am pretty convinced this is how things are now with Computer Science graduates. They are high in demand. They get paid a lot.
I hear one of the best ways to get even more pay is to keep moving around jobs every once in a while after a few years. You would then get a lot of different experiences. Perhaps you will have learned more programming languages. As a result, you are more marketable.
Summary
There you have it. Computer Science salary is high, and that’s how it is. If you are seriously considering a Computer Science degree, I would just say you go for it. Don’t give up. Ask a lot of questions and try different ways of doing thins. Computer programming is hard. There are millions of different ways to do the same thing. If one way doesn’t work, try another until it works. You will then get more experience. Next time you will find the solution much quicker.
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