The world of ISSD and the real world - salary expectations

Hi ho, Hi ho.

First timer to the this blog, so bear with me. I graduated out of the ISSD17 group, gods knows where most of them are right now.

When I spoke to the ISSD18 after I'd completed my course, the one thing that was mentioned was salary expectations. What, they asked, can we expect to be paid when we graduate....

Since I'd just been hired by an advertising company, I could give them what "my" pay was. I've found out since then what some consulting web firms offer as a "consulting fee" and man, what a difference.

It might be an idea to explain to the potential web masters what to expect when you finish your course and go look for the "job".

Most web firms, on hearsay, will charge app. $100 to $150 an hour for their work. That's their top guys working on the website you ask for, I'm assuming. So let's take the $100 an hour as base. You as a new employee to a firm will not get that, unless you start your own firm (good luck with that). You will potentially get 1/3 of that. So we're talking $30 an hour, $54,000 a year, for the top guy with years of experience.

Ooookay, but you as the newbie, not what you're gonna get.

Figure as the newbie, you're gonna get about 1/2 that. So your salary should be about $15-16 an hour or roughly $35,000 a year.

I think that this info needs to be pushed to the students in some form so that it will manage their expectations when they graduate and finally get a job as a web developer. We got a little bit of it when someone in our class, I think it was Nicole, asked about it, but we didn't get the breakdown. Push the breakdown.

Okay, that's it. Hope my rant was too, ohhh not extreme, let's say conservative.

Cheers

Author: Jacques Bosc