Is it a good idea? Calling all Engineeers and Software guys!

Update:

I received and offer yesterday from one of my other interviews I previously mentioned!!! When I received the offer package email my jaw almost dropped. They offered me 55k a year, 3 weeks vaca, 5 sick days, full benefits, 1.5x annual salary in life insurance, and assistance up to 5k per semester for my masters. I just signed the offer and sent it out!! I will be working with Sharepoint, CRM, C#, ASP.net, with little bit of SQL and Javascript. I start January 18th.

I want to thank everyone on here for all the advice and support!! I can't wait and tonight I get to use my new angle grinder on the keg my cousin got me for xmas (it was legal he knows the owner of a distributor that had some dented kegs). What a great way to start the new year

Congrats!!!! I'm glad it all worked out for you, that is a great salary, especially just starting out! Now go out there and prove you're worth it!!

I think you need to make a beer to celebrate this occasion..... Call it The Offer

CONGRATS!

I was planning on making my first lager this weekend. And now it has a name

Awesome to hear! Congrats!

Nice! Glad to hear it all worked out in your favor! Cheers to that my friend!

WooHoo! That is a very nice offer, so Congrats!

I haven't read the whole thread, but I don't know about working full time and getting a masters degree. I have a masters in Comp. Sci, and I worked part time at a software company during that. I have no clue how I was able to make it happen. At the end of the quarter I would be up everynight until 2 or 3 am, then wake up at 7am and start all over again. The weekend? What was that? End of the quarter I would just work non-stop for about 4-5 weeks. I would not be working at the software company at that time, they were flexible and understanding. I can't imaging holding a full time job and getting a masters degree. I was also a GTF during that time. Good luck with it all!

My advice, evaluate a first job based on the experience you will get and not money. The first job out of school is the hardest to get. Not many companies want to take the chance on someone fresh out of school. Once you get a year or two of experience under your belt, then take your experience and go somewhere else and make lots of money. It will be a whole lot easier to get a job once you have experience. I'm assuming $41k is a whole lot than you are making now, so you should be fine living on it. I was a technical recruiter for a few years, so I have a little experience with this.

The position I took was mostly for experience at first, when they told me the salary I was amazed! It is a new position in the company I will be the only developer working on these applications, with some very popular technology I will be working on. I was making 39k as an intern so 41k did seem low, but I still considered the job because it would have been just as good of experience as the first offer.

RegionalChaos said:

I haven't read the whole thread, but I don't know about working full time and getting a masters degree. I have a masters in Comp. Sci, and I worked part time at a software company during that. I have no clue how I was able to make it happen. At the end of the quarter I would be up everynight until 2 or 3 am, then wake up at 7am and start all over again. The weekend? What was that? End of the quarter I would just work non-stop for about 4-5 weeks. I would not be working at the software company at that time, they were flexible and understanding. I can't imaging holding a full time job and getting a masters degree. I was also a GTF during that time. Good luck with it all!

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The trick is to find a day job that isn't too demanding

I have a full time position and I'm half way through a Master's (and averaging an upper distinction). In addition to serving on the advisory board of a startup and an outside consulting contract. If I couldn't moonlight at work and pursue the bulk of my studies there this would not be possible.

To answer the poster's original question: you'll be hard pressed to see anything north of low 100's once you've acquired substantial experience as a software engineer so you might want to consider a management track at post-graduate level. It will give you options when you get to a mid-career position (or earlier) that a bachelor's won't.

My first IT job out of college wasn't until a year and a half after my graduation, and it was for 40K (well, actually, I got an offer for around 25K and worked there for about a week before getting offered the 40K job). That's pretty much how an IT career works: you start somewhat low, then move from job to job, negotiating a higher salary for your experience each time.