Regardless of your education, your career will almost certainly start with a low-paying job that's not really what you want to do. You'll do that for a year or two, and move to a job that's a little closer to what you want. Until after 10-15 years, you'll be doing work that actually interests you.

Almost every career starts with a period of what American blues musicians call, "paying your dues."

Nah

@Alice

It's no sadder than the fact that to get to the top of a flight of stairs you have to use the bottom stairs first.

@Alice

Sure, and I've managed to skip some too.

The point is that lots of people decide to study CS, expecting there to be a line of douchebags waiting outside the door at graduation with unsolicited high-paying job offers, and get upset when there isn't.

@Alice

Yeah, I'm not arguing that higher education isn't a worthy pursuit. It absolutely is! I'm arguing that having completed it doesn't entitle you to a means to pay for it.

@undef

I tried, but they weren't all on devrant when I said.

Or you do what you want to do from the start but get payed shit nonetheless.
That's if you are a student and work in research. After graduation you can stay but the pay will still be shit compared to the industry. But the work is very interesting.

@undef fair point

Suddenly I feel very lucky

@undef Even before I finished what's called "gymnasium" in Sweden I got hired as junior full stack developer at a rapidly growing company. I've got quite a decent pay, and great working conditions. I've got access to pretty much any resources I need, and I get to do what I do the way I feel like it. I've got the main responsibility for the rebuilding of our platform on which the company rests. Also, I just turned 19 and didn't even study anything that had with programming to do.

Oh, and right, it's surprisingly fun at work. Even though we're only two devs, and I'm the only one working 100%.

I mean what do you define as low paying? Took me 3 months to find this job straight out of my degree, I'm making 23.xx an hour with full time.

@plttn

It depends entirely on the cost of living where you are. When I was making about that much, in Kansas City, MO, I wasn't really able to save a lot of money with the bills and expenses I had. In a smaller city or town though, that's a decent living.

That said, it's also temporary. It's reasonable that you'll be able to double that in the same city within 8 or 9 years.

@knurek123

I don't think so, but people start at the bottom. A starting architect is still an architect, but he/she spends the first couple years confirming measurements for McDonald's bathrooms. A starting lawyer spends his/her time sifting through mountains of discovery paperwork for the sexy senior lawyers to present to clients and courtrooms.

A starting software developer, once hired, will most likely be assigned pretty mind-numbing work as well. It doesn't make it a bad job. It's just what you do when you're the ranking FNG.

This is only natural! What did you expect?...I doubt anyone would give you/us a very important and high risk task to complete as fresh graduates....learn the ropes then climb the ladder....