>> *Starting* salary?
> 
> Yes!  I just did a search on monster for "graduate software" and nearly 
> every result had a salary range somewhere between 20 and 30K as a 
> *starting* salary.  The same is true of "graduate engineer".  Heck, two 
> of my best friends from University (both did computer science) got a job 
> with this company writing software for internet routers and their 
> starting salary was 30K.  My starting salary was closer to 20K than 30K, 
> but that was 7 years ago, I know now they are offering new graduates 
> closer to 30K.

Writing software for Internet routers sounds like pretty specialist 
stuff. (It's basically writing security-critical software for an 
embedded platform.) I'd be surprised if somebody with no qualifications 
other than a degree could actually get a job like that. Especially if it 
was just an average degree, not a spectacular one.

> According to prospects.ac.uk the average graduate starting salary ranges 
> from 20 to 25k depending on who you ask.  I would imagine that having a 
> computer science degree would put you above the average.

Hmm. This is completely at variance with my experience, so something's 
wrong somewhere. Not sure where exactly...

>>> I'd say 30k was easily achievable and you wouldn't be expected to be 
>>> in charge of anyone.
>>
>> Really? I find that quite surprising.
> 
> How come? Even if you started on 20K, a 50% pay increase over 7 years is 
> not surprising.

Er... OK, I may have got my maths wrong here, but if we assume that you 
get pay increases as large as 0.5% every single year, that still works 
out to only about 3.55% over 7 years. Which is nowhere even close to 50%.

>> Hell, my sister is an accountant and she doesn't earn nearly that much.
> 
> If she is working for a reputable accountancy firm, has done the 
> qualifications and has more than 7 years experience (IIRC she is older 
> than you?) then that seems pretty poor pay to me.

She's younger. She hasn't been in accounting for 7 years, and doesn't 
have her qualification *yet*. (She gets her final exam results this 
month IIRC.)

>> Hmm, thinking about it... I vaguely "know" our CEO. He must surely be 
>> on a bit more than 50K.
> 
> Probably a big "bit" more.

Yes, that was a typically British understatement. I realise that might 
not come across in NNTP. ;-)

>> I guess most managers just don't make a habit of telling everybody how 
>> much more money they earn than you do...
> 
> You can easily estimate it though, by looking at similar jobs at other 
> companies, how your internal pay structure works etc.  For example I 
> know that my manager must be earning more than a "lead engineer", which 
> must be earning more than I do.  I know roughly what % increase you get 
> for promotion, so my manager must be on about 60-70K.  I can also then 
> guess that the director of my department is on about 80-90K, and the MD 
> probably 110-130K.  This ties in well with job adverts I've seen for 
> similar positions in other companies, and from talking with other people.

Damn, you really have your finger on the pulse, don't you? :-)

I guess as you say, the problem is that I only know people with quite 
low incomes. It seems incongruous to me that somebody without a PhD in 
astrophysics [or simply an enterprising genius] could actually earn 
decent money.

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