Job hunting and salary negotiations for postgraduate developers?

Roveros

Hello Boards,

I am a masters research student at the Institute of Technology Blanchardstown. It is my intention to hand in my thesis late May or early June after which I am really anxious to get into the jobs market as a developer. I am mainly experienced with Java and Android development also experiencee with Spring and Hibernate among other things.

I would like to start contacting employers soon and get some interviews lined up but I'm unsure how much of a salary to ask for. I don't want to price myself out of a job by I also want to make sure that I don't end up settling for a figure that I could have commanded with only my bachelors degree. Payscale gives me an average figure of €34,962 for graduate software developer positions in Dublin. Glassdoor, depending on the company of course, ranges from 24K to 51K but seems to average around that 35-ish mark as well. I was thinking of asking for something in the range of 35k - 40k for having my masters degree, having done a 3 month internship developing a Spring and Hibernate website and for having around 8 months of part-time IT support experience.

Is this reasonable? I have a former classmate who did his masters though a company scheme and is now working for them for only 32k but I believe this is because they provided the education and job to him. My poor wife has been supporting my for the last 6 years waiting for me to get a job and our first child is nearly 2 now, I want to make the best start I can on my career. Any advice is appreciated.

Thank you,
Roveros

deconduo

I would recommend applying to graduate programs ASAP if you haven't already. The deadline for 2019 graduate hires just ended in my company, and a lot of other companies will be wrapping up now as well.

Pelvis

What's the difference between a graduate role and a junior role?

Also where's the best place to find graduate roles?

deconduo

Pelvis wrote: »

What's the difference between a graduate role and a junior role?

Also where's the best place to find graduate roles?

Graduate roles are for people just finished college with no real experience. Junior roles usually look for 1-2 years.

It can be possible to get a junior role as a grad if you have what they want and interview well.

Corb_lund

Would prob remove your personal details as well...

14ned

Roveros wrote: »

I would like to start contacting employers soon and get some interviews lined up but I'm unsure how much of a salary to ask for. I don't want to price myself out of a job by I also want to make sure that I don't end up settling for a figure that I could have commanded with only my bachelors degree.

You lack a portfolio demonstrating your skill. You lack any evidence that you can add value to a company (coursework does not count).

A large tick in your favour is your maturity, older students having returned to change career is always a great sign of commitment and passion. That'll make you stand out in a good way.

But you also seem to think that a Masters commands much benefit over a Bachelors. It does not. Everybody has a Masters nowadays. A Doctorate, on the other hand, does come with benefit.

The salary ranges you listed from Payscale include graduates with PhDs in machine learning and other hot skills. I'd ignore anything over 40k for the skillset you've mentioned.

You probably have a reasonable chance, thanks to your maturity, of getting into an entry level role at one of the big multinationals. I'd aim for that. You will be in a price taking position given how little proven value you can add to an employer. Whatever they offer, you'll need to take. The only way you'll be able to negotiate for higher is if you have competing concurrent offers. Generally for entry level roles, the negotiation window will be tiny, maybe 5%, no more than 10% and that's assuming you aced the interviews.

So for me I'd not worry about salary ranges. I'd exclusively be focusing on getting your foot on the ladder. Worry about salary ranges a year or two after.

Niall

Buford T Justice

You may have a masters, or getting one at least but you have very little industry experience, all of which you'd need to learn in your first job. Translation: at a graduate level a masters with no experience isn't much different than a graduate at level 7, so its not really of any benefit that I could see.

In your position I'd be looking for a graduate role in order to get a few years experience and take it from there.

Roveros

Thank you for the replies.

I have removed identifying information as suggested.

I will be applying to graduate positions today, I didn't realize the recruitment started and ended so early with respect to the date I'd be available to work.

As for a portfolio I can show my code for the website I developed for my 3 month internship with spring and hibernate. Its an MVC design with models, controllers, services, enterprise beans, etc. I believe I still have the report I had to write for it that explained why I chose the languages/frameworks/designs that I did. I can also show the Android application I developed as a research tool for my masters. The test and control group versions are up on Google Play and are currently in use by the research participants. Its not much but I can show what my work looks like when I'm working on my own initiative.

I would say having done the masters I am in a much better place when it comes to competence and confidence in picking up new skills and applying them to completing business goals, but I take the point that an employer may look at a level 8 graduate and a level 9 graduate and not consider there to be much of a difference.

Thank you all again for your input. I'll put the feelers out and see if I can get any graduate position interviews and hopefully I can come back and bug you all for interview advice

Roveros

ec18

Development is interesting in that having a private portfolio on github or something like that is nearly more highly regarded than degrees/masters. Generally graduate programs in the bigger companies close around February. However if you look at some of the smaller companies that you would be interested in working with may take them year round. When I started in 2012 grad salary at a consultancy was 28K + bonus but that's probably gone up a good bit by now given the change in the market

Roveros

Thanks ec18, the code I have from the 2 android apps and the spring website are already on GitHub. The commit comments are terrible since I was working alone and I was mostly using GitHub in case something happened to my workspaces but hey I'll just have to work with what I've got. I've just created a glassdoor account to see what positions I can find. Is it normal to send off a C.V for a job i'm not available to work for for several months? Or is that just something you do with graduate advertisements? I'm still a little uncertain about that.

Buford T Justice

Roveros wrote: »

Thanks ec18, the code I have from the 2 android apps and the spring website are already on GitHub. The commit comments are terrible since I was working alone and I was mostly using GitHub in case something happened to my workspaces but hey I'll just have to work with what I've got. I've just created a glassdoor account to see what positions I can find. Is it normal to send off a C.V for a job i'm not available to work for for several months? Or is that just something you do with graduate advertisements? I'm still a little uncertain about that.

It can depend. Some companies can have a slow recruitment process, but unless its a graduate programme with a known start date, then maybe not just yet.

Be wary of publicising your source code for the projects you've done. If they were in conjunction with a company, like in your case then there may be an issue surrounding the IP of the code..... Just something to consider.

14ned

Roveros wrote: »

I will be applying to graduate positions today, I didn't realize the recruitment started and ended so early with respect to the date I'd be available to work.

Google Summer of Code recruitment starts from about December onwards too.

As for a portfolio I can show my code for the website I developed for my 3 month internship with spring and hibernate. Its an MVC design with models, controllers, services, enterprise beans, etc. I believe I still have the report I had to write for it that explained why I chose the languages/frameworks/designs that I did. I can also show the Android application I developed as a research tool for my masters. The test and control group versions are up on Google Play and are currently in use by the research participants. Its not much but I can show what my work looks like when I'm working on my own initiative.

Firstly please do not publish either of those without first gaining written copyright release from their owners. BTW, you don't own the coursework you write at most unis, the uni does.

Secondly as I mentioned earlier coursework doesn't count. Nobody rates coursework, it involves a lot of hand holding and force feeding the students and doesn't demonstrate any initiative on behalf of the student.

You've got to realise that at least 10% of your classmates already have portfolio passion projects online. They've been churning them out, outside of class and nothing to do with the course, in their spare time because they are keen. That's what you're competing against.

Imagine this from the perspective of an employer. They have five hundred CVs in front of them from fresh graduates. How would you filter them? Choose those with first class honours. Next choose those with portfolios. How would you rank them? How big and old are their portfolios?

You've got to remember a human doesn't read words in applications until you're already into the top thirty.

By the time I had graduated from my Software Engineering degree, I had tens of thousands of lines of source code published in open source across a dozen pet projects and I had worked as a programmer during the summer holidays each year for various tech SMEs. For my undergraduate degree final project, I wrote an operating system which booted an Atmel ARM CPU and bootstrapped a minimum user space shell which you could type into via the serial port. And I was nothing special at the time, the guy who won the class prize for best project that year made my efforts look tame.

I would say having done the masters I am in a much better place when it comes to competence and confidence in picking up new skills and applying them to completing business goals, but I take the point that an employer may look at a level 8 graduate and a level 9 graduate and not consider there to be much of a difference.

I would not say that in any interview unless you have proof. By proof I mean that you have an actual case of applying them to a real business where you demonstrate real increase in earnings with a real number amount gained.

Anything you did which was simulated as part of the course is interesting, but please do not make the mistake of hubris. None of it was real. From the perspective of an employer, all fresh graduates are awful. They're just trying to pick out the ones which recognise how much they have to learn, and will work hard to learn, and have some potential to be not a total waste of effort.

Niall

Pelvis

14ned wrote: »

By the time I had graduated from my Software Engineering degree, I had tens of thousands of lines of source code published in open source across a dozen pet projects and I had worked as a programmer during the summer holidays each year for various tech SMEs. For my undergraduate degree final project, I wrote an operating system which booted an Atmel ARM CPU and bootstrapped a minimum user space shell which you could type into via the serial port. And I was nothing special at the time, the guy who won the class prize for best project that year made my efforts look tame.

Surely you are the exception, and not the rule?

Before my final year project I had written pretty much zilch, nothing more than a few hundred lines of code at a time probably. My project is almost done and probably racks up about 5k lines. But I worked full time throughout my degree, during semesters I didn't have any time for pet projects outside assignments and my job. I probably could have done more during the summers, granted, but I still had my own job to do.

I sent out my first grad application last night. I realise I will be up against students who are like you, but I don't really worry about them as competitors, because I know I can't compete! I comfort myself by assuming most applicants will be similar to myself.

14ned

Pelvis wrote: »

Surely you are the exception, and not the rule?

I really wasn't. If anything, everybody kept telling me how poorly I was doing and did relative to my potential (the reason was lack of hours invested compared to others, I was very active in student politics, spent lots of time fundraising and organising marches and attending meetings. Plus a very hefty social life involving a lot of travel). I graduated with a bare scraping pass degree, incidentally.

That university experience of mine is not an apples to apples comparison to yours though. Back in my day, the UK government still paid students to go to university. They gave them £3,500 cash, and board and fees. So almost nobody worked during term time, which gave everybody maximum time to do what they wanted to do. Also there were very few home students, because board was paid for, so everybody moved far from home. There were students there who had been on the same undergrad for over a decade, because you got paid more to be an undergrad than being on the dole at the time. So very different to now, or to Ireland ever in fact.

Also, attendance was not compulsory, nor expected. I in fact never attended a single class in my full three years. I turned up for tutorials, which were marked, and group projects, and exams. Not having to attend lectures frees up many more hours per week to do other stuff which interested them, which everybody did.

Now as much as all that is different to nowadays, there will be students you're competing against who didn't have to work a job, and have been busy churning out portfolio work their whole three years e.g. fixing bugs in well known large open source projects. Rich children of rich parents always have a big advantage. Point is, know this, and know it is a weakness wrt you vs your competitors.

Niall

smacl

Pelvis wrote: »

Surely you are the exception, and not the rule?

Possibly a function of age. I started programming heavily in 1980, finished school in 1984, got my first full time programming job in 1985, and studied at night in 1989 at which time I had a serious amount of code written and was fluent in a number of high level languages and assemblers. At that point there were a lot of keen hobbyist programmers generating a lot of code. Most of the other students studying computer science had very little programming proficiency after qualifying. I think this has improved hugely in recent years, but those who program for fun will always be more fluent.

I sent out my first grad application last night. I realise I will be up against students who are like you, but I don't really worry about them as competitors, because I know I can't compete!

Very best of luck with it! In my opinion you can always compete, it is just a matter of wanting it more and working harder and smarter than those around you. Couple this with getting on well with your peers, having decent communication skills, and prioritising the customer's requirements and you're onto a winner. Only things that will trip you up are an inflated sense of entitlement and a lack of patience. Boundless enthusiasm is also a boon if you can muster it.

Roveros

Thanks Buford T Justice and 14ned , I'll make sure I'm not showing any code I don't have a right to be.

Thanks 14ned for the heads up on the Google summer camp. As for my coursework not counting due to hand holding I should be clear that I am doing a masters degree by research, I had a single mandatory research skills module to take and apart from that I was left to work on my project. I designed the project and proposed it to the college who accepted it and advertised it to the public. I then interviewed for the research position, was successful, and was awarded a research grant. This is all my own work. I designed the test/control group experiment to test the hypothesis and designed and implemented the software research tool it is based around. I have no slides or lecture notes or handouts. My supervisor meets with me weekly for updates on my progress, provides proof reading for my submissions to conferences and for annual reviews. This is were I found alot of value in doing the masters because I had never worked under my own initiative to this level before and now I can approach employers and be confident in my ability. My internship was quite similar, no handouts. I was given ITB's policy on plagiarism asked to build a website to move the institute staff from a pen and paper approach to an online one. I did my own research, chose the framework, libraries and dependencies, taught myself how to use them and build a website with MySQL persistence, authentication, encryption etc. If I had been asked if I could do any of this after my bachelors degree I would have been uncertain but that is no longer the case. I appreciate the point you make about getting my CV into the pile that actually gets read by a person. Thankfully I manged first class honors so I will make a point of getting more code into my portfolio while I look for work.

Really appreciating all the feedback and sorry if that last paragraph seemed defensive, I would happily read through a list of difficult truths over a list of comforting lies, so thank you all

14ned

Roveros wrote: »

Thanks 14ned for the heads up on the Google summer camp.

If all else fails, and you make it into GSoC (be aware it's very competitive), I've seen companies actively bid against one another to hire successful GSoC students after the summer. You'd almost certainly need to relocate however which might not suit you given your family, though they might pay for it.

As for my coursework not counting due to hand holding I should be clear that I am doing a masters degree by research, I had a single mandatory research skills module to take and apart from that I was left to work on my project. I designed the project and proposed it to the college who accepted it and advertised it to the public.

What was the research topic? If it's in a hot topic, it could be a major asset you might want to highlight.

Niall

deconduo

For a first graduate position I wouldn't expect there to be much room (if any) to negotiate on salary unless you are exceptional. A masters will make little difference.

However after that you can usually advance pretty quickly if you have the skills.

Tar.Aldarion

Don't worry, most students these aren't like the oldies on here I never coded outside assignments (and barely for assignments) and it didn't matter. Friends of mine have recently done 3 month boot camps with no previous technical background and are developers now.

You can at least get a few thousand more at least for a masters, it was mentioned multiple times when I was interviewing as a graduate, and it was harder to get jobs then than now. I know specifically of it happening also, with a different price set for masters students if you push it a little, especially if they ask you what salary you expect and you bring it up that on average grads appear to get this but I think I should get a bit more due to X. It really depends on the place, I'm sure to some you guys are all the same, it's what their budget allows for and what reasons you give, how well you come across and so on.

smacl

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

Don't worry, most students these aren't like the oldies on here I never coded outside assignments (and barely for assignments) and it didn't matter. Friends of mine have recently done 3 month boot camps with no previous technical background and are developers now.

Ah here, I resemble that remark! To be fair, a three month intensive coding camp would most likely leave you with similar programming fluency to many CS degree courses in any given language, though there'd likely be some pretty big gaps when it came to the surrounding software engineering. Not sure why you'd go for a development job if you didn't actually enjoy programming.

14ned

smacl wrote: »

Not sure why you'd go for a development job if you didn't actually enjoy programming.

Oh that's easy, it's because there are jobs!

Back in the 90s when I first graduated a majority of those in my class had zero interest in computers or programming. They were there solely and exclusively because of the then tech bubble. Same almost certainly applies in the current tech bubble, which is now very, very close to popping, after which all those without degrees will be the first to be laid off, mark my words.

Niall

Tar.Aldarion

smacl wrote: »

Ah here, I resemble that remark! To be fair, a three month intensive coding camp would most likely leave you with similar programming fluency to many CS degree courses in any given language, though there'd likely be some pretty big gaps when it came to the surrounding software engineering. Not sure why you'd go for a development job if you didn't actually enjoy programming.

Yes there are a lot of gaps, I learned a lot throughout my degree and masters that they did not, but it seems that work experience trumps all as while I may be more rounded and have more knowledge of certain things, on the job training has seen them flourish really well.
It wasn't about not liking programming, I love programming, however I also enjoyed a lot of other things at that age (and this age ).

14ned wrote: »

Oh that's easy, it's because there are jobs!

Back in the 90s when I first graduated a majority of those in my class had zero interest in computers or programming. They were there solely and exclusively because of the then tech bubble. Same almost certainly applies in the current tech bubble, which is now very, very close to popping, after which all those without degrees will be the first to be laid off, mark my words.

Niall

I'd say those people were weeded out for the most part, only a handful of people that started in first year of my course made it through to the end, huge dropout rate, with others transferring in along the way as they figured out what they liked better. YMMV as this was a electronic and computer engineering course and not pure comp sci.
They too had applied because of the jobs but also because the points were low, which they did not seem to realise - does not make a course easy.

I find these boot camp people can be a lot better than you think, it takes a lot of willpower and effort to change career at their ages so they really go all out, and they are already used to the working environment, making them much better than your general grad in meaningful ways. I can see the lower end of the classes being like that though, if they are just getting into it because of there being jobs. In my experience the people who have done it that I know are very well suited to it.

bullpost

Concentrate on getting the job with the best potential for your career, rather than the best salary. If you are good you will quickly make up ground on the income side.

Additionally, don't neglect the soft skills - Ability to fit in well and communicate well (a massive plus in development) will be worth their weight in gold.

smacl

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

It wasn't about not liking programming, I love programming, however I also enjoyed a lot of other things at that age (and this age )

Thing is, if you love programming but you're not currently employed as a programmer, you'll be programming as a hobby. I love programming, but as a full time code monkey I get all I need so do the other things I enjoy well away from computers when I'm not working. Programming purely to pay the rent and support a life style is fine and dandy, but the key trick for me has always been loving the work too. My experience (as an old fart ) is that if you love what you do, you'll end up really good at it, and if you're really good at what you do you'll make good money at it. You kick start this cycle by chasing the job you'll enjoy, possibly sucking up the shít pay to start with, rather than chasing the well paid job that has you using 70% of your waking hours to fund the 10% of fun time. Best to start this you before you have kids, mortgages and the various other financial constraints middle age will bring.

Tom1991

For my own case I finished with a 2:1 Bsc from ITTallaght about two years ago.Had very little experience outside of mandatory course requirements and so struggled with proving passion part of interviews a bit.I worked nights as a barman and really worked myself to the wire trying to to keep up with all of life’s bumps.Unfortuneatly that didn’t sell with a lot of the coder ninjas I interviewed with for proof I wanted this as my career.
So I reworked my cv and did token gesture projects Built a small portfolio site using a framework I hadn’t used before(play! With java).I like .net so began doing tutorials for that and publishing the answers to those on my github.I made a token feature work on an open source project for play that took me about two weeks in my spare time but was really two days work if I did it in one go.
With this interviews turned around very quickly.
I then took an Entry Level Job as a .net engineer for a team in the insurance industry that recently expanded.My wage offer was quite low as I know lads that got jobs in places like guidewire and version one and paddy power who started on 35k.
I started on 28k 5 months ago but with bonuses and other elements to the package , and a career path that’s clearly defined and will reward me in 18months from now and longer if I were to stick with it.The team is now Agile and looking towards turning giant monolithic products into micro services.Its also has flexible work arrangements so that I can start early and avoid rush hour and be home in the evening and have an hour or so to myself to learn skills I need.These perks to me are worth it and Will make me highly employable going forward.
I used to make 44k a year as senior bartender and could of made more if I managed places.
But as a single man after tax I came out with 564 a week had no pension or health care benefits and worked unsocial hours on no set schedule.My patience for people as a whole was slipping and my back starting to act up.i take roughly 490 home a week now and that will go up shortly after 6 months and within 18 months I’ll be on roughly 35k all things going well.Its hard making rent at the minute and trying to save something but it’s making slow progress.
In 5 months of coding for a living every day I’ve gotten so much more better and fell in love with it again after battling through my final year in college took the shine off it for me.
The seniors and technical leads on the team are also very normal and want me to help and have input at every opportunity so I can learn quickly and effectively.Im happy as things are at the minute and have a great quality of life that I haven’t had for nearly ten years and that’s when I was back at home in me ma’s

Roveros

Thank you everyone for all the feedback. 14ned, the research is on the gamification of time-management software to increase motivation and productivity and to help reduce procrastination in users. The test and control group software is up on google play and my work in progress short paper has been published as part of the ECGBL 2018 conference proceedings.

I've made an application to Microsoft in leopardstown. I submitted code samples approved by my supervisor at the institute. LinkedIn sent me an email telling me about a free C.V evaluation service so I had it done and of course now they are looking to get me to buy one of their packages. Thing is I might do it. Get all the formatting and keywords sorted to help prevent my C.V from being filtered out by any screening software the bigger companies might use. For a few extra quid they'll help me put together a cover letter for a specific position.

So I'll probably get that done on payday and apply to IBM. Then I'll re-purpose the cover letter for the next application. Congratulations Tom on your success, it looks like you really put the effort in to get it. I do have plans to create non-institute related projects for my GitHub. Its just finding the time. I've done some project design for a Texas hold'em pot odds calculation teaching tool in android but I stalled at some of the logic for determining the number of "outs" users have. I had a project I was developing as part of an entrepreneurial program I participated in which would require a website if i was to move forward to phase 2, I was planning on doing that with Angular so I could add that keyword to my C.V. I have a few other ideas as well but I'm wrapping up the masters and don't have much free time at the moment.

Thanks again everyone

itech

14ned wrote: »

Oh that's easy, it's because there are jobs!

Back in the 90s when I first graduated a majority of those in my class had zero interest in computers or programming. They were there solely and exclusively because of the then tech bubble. Same almost certainly applies in the current tech bubble, which is now very, very close to popping, after which all those without degrees will be the first to be laid off, mark my words.

Niall

Would you say there is currently a tech bubble niall?

I mean like with the rapid advancement of all technologies surely there will always be a high number of jobs now going forward in the tech industry or do your foresee a complete collapse?

14ned

itech wrote: »

Would you say there is currently a tech bubble niall?

Unquestionably. In fact, it's not even in dispute in the more senior folk in the industry.

I mean like with the rapid advancement of all technologies surely there will always be a high number of jobs now going forward in the tech industry or do your foresee a complete collapse?

As with all things economic, bubbles inflate and contract over time according to the economic cycle. The trend for the tech industry is very positive, so it'll continue to increase its share of the global economy in the long term. In the short term, there is absolutely no doubt we're at the end of the current economic cycle in tech. A large, multi-year contraction is coming very soon now. Might be next year, or year after, but it is inevitable.

I'm trying to leave contracting myself in 2019. Not forever, just until the bubble has finished popping. You really, really do not want to be in contracting during a bubble deflation. I speak from experience (twice!).

Niall