$40,000 initial starting salary * 1.10^3 = $53,240. Therefore, she was at her company for the first 3 years after college until asking for this raise after her third year. She characterizes this period as "many years" - this seems disingenuous to me. She took a $40,000 offer right after college, this is close to the median starting undergrad salary - therefore she was not underpaid for the first year. This limits the period of underpayment to about 2 years. Which is definitionally the shortest period of time it can be while still being described as "years of underpayment".
And still, it is very common for recent grads to endure 2 or 3 years right out of college at their starting plus a meager raise until they get that second job which requires education + experience. While I agree that employees should negotiate, this particular woman's plight is totally and massively overblown.
I was paid eighty grand my first year out of college and ninety-five my second. And I wasn't (yet) any good, even. She was real underpaid, and your post strikes me as tremendously weird in its attempts to discount reality.
And "this woman"--she has a name, you read her blog, don't be a jerk.
I'm sorry if you found my post to be tremendously weird, and congratulations for making so much more than the average undergraduate upon graduation. Was my math wrong?
I actually employ a large number of undergraduates (in non-developer roles) and it is really typical to pay them somewhere around $50k for the first 2 or 3 years (depending on geography + what year it is), the good ones are kept on and get substantial raises to low 6 figures. This is pretty typical across many companies. Her experience is pretty typical for recent graduates, not a special burden to bear.
Exactly. It doesn't matter what the average college grad makes, what matters is what eke average developer college grad makes. And "this woman" was getting screwed, so the attempts to disregard that are real hollow.
And still, it is very common for recent grads to endure 2 or 3 years right out of college at their starting plus a meager raise until they get that second job which requires education + experience. While I agree that employees should negotiate, this particular woman's plight is totally and massively overblown.