Assuming a grad income of $80k is an insane starting assumption. MAYBE you’re making that in software (good luck getting your foot in the door).

Any other industry? Biology? Social sciences? Academia? Manufacturing?

I struggle to think of anything other than finance that has a shot of STARTING at $80k. Hell I didn’t hit $80k in software industry until ~3 years in and I thought I was (I indeed WAS) very lucky.

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alephnerd an hour ago | parent [-]

Your numbers seem to be a couple years out of date, or maybe you're (no offense) living in a backwater like Florida where salaries are severely depressed due to the tourism effect.

The base salaries for Entry level SWE roles are in the $80k-100k range nationally [0].

Additionally, most finance roles start in that ranges, though high finance has starting salaries comparable to Big Tech new grad.

Even Biotech new grad salaries tend to be in the $60k-80k range.

Same with manufacturing engineering roles [1]

[0] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/levels/entry-leve...

[1] - https://www.salary.com/research/salary/alternate/entry-manuf...

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givemeethekeys 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

> like Florida

If Florida is "backwater", then so is most of the rest of the country outside of a handful of overpriced cities where earning 80k is required to be able to afford a room in an apartment - not the whole apartment, and certainly not buying one.

	▲	alephnerd 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I mean yea, they absolutely are economically speaking - especially when looking at where new grad college educated jobs are located [0]. Heck, most states have fallen into a technical recession [1]. Florida is weird simply because of how much tourism and retirement adjacent industries skew it's economy (eg. Elderly care, primary care, etc) - in fact, healthcare services (as in elderly care, hospice care, and homecare) is the only non-skilled industry that is seeing a significant expansion in the US. I personally along with HN, other VCs, and PE funds have been actively following the MSO space for a couple years now because of this boom. And I say this as someone who kinda likes Florida (Dr Philips reminds me and moreso the missus of bougie gated communities back in ASEAN). [0] - https://www.axios.com/local/denver/2025/02/28/white-collar-w... [1] - https://www.ft.com/content/e9be3e3f-2efe-42f7-b2d2-8ab3efea2...