I graduated in 2002. My peers had been boasting about how we wouldn't even entertain offers below $75k when we graduated in 2000. There was the general .com bust, but I was also literally working on my resume the morning of 9/11 which essentially froze up the market entirely.
Most offers which were "locked up" were rescinded. I was fairly fortunate that the small software consulting firm I had interned at landed a new contract and made me an offer- for $37k. I swallowed my pride, the market was absolutely flooded with java devs with a few years experience that I was competing against. It seemed far better to be working and building a resume even if for a non living wage.
I received only one hit on my resume my entire first year working, despite sending it out to multiple places each week.
After about a year, things picked up a bit and I landed a job with a group that was impressed by my distributed systems undergraduate research work and curiosity and was building what would become known as a high frequency trading system. My salary was still lower than my 2000 self thought acceptable, but at 55k I could at least afford to move out of my parents house.
Things took off from there a bit, but it was a rough start. And it's a post 2010 thing that engineers can retire in their 30s. My expectation was that this would lead to a comfortable middle class lifestyle but the eye popping salaries of today were beyond the expectations of any of us. Tbh, when one of my coworkers left to go to Facebook in 2007, I looked at it with disdain- a website? How disappointing... I imagine his net worth is deep in the 8 figures- he is still there.
Most offers which were "locked up" were rescinded. I was fairly fortunate that the small software consulting firm I had interned at landed a new contract and made me an offer- for $37k. I swallowed my pride, the market was absolutely flooded with java devs with a few years experience that I was competing against. It seemed far better to be working and building a resume even if for a non living wage.
I received only one hit on my resume my entire first year working, despite sending it out to multiple places each week.
After about a year, things picked up a bit and I landed a job with a group that was impressed by my distributed systems undergraduate research work and curiosity and was building what would become known as a high frequency trading system. My salary was still lower than my 2000 self thought acceptable, but at 55k I could at least afford to move out of my parents house.
Things took off from there a bit, but it was a rough start. And it's a post 2010 thing that engineers can retire in their 30s. My expectation was that this would lead to a comfortable middle class lifestyle but the eye popping salaries of today were beyond the expectations of any of us. Tbh, when one of my coworkers left to go to Facebook in 2007, I looked at it with disdain- a website? How disappointing... I imagine his net worth is deep in the 8 figures- he is still there.