u/SoManyCrafts wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I mean I just saw you comment on another person’s post who said they were considering a Bootcamp that they should go to formation instead. So again, that’s proving the point in the opposite direction. Most startups I’ve spoken to are paying significantly higher salaries than 80
u/michaelnovati replied · · edited ★ FEATURED
1. Yes for that specific person, without knowing their skill level, they should look into Formation. If their skills are at our bar, it would be a better choice than a bootcamp. For reference, the comment thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/viw3bd/switching\_from\_civil\_engineering\_to\_swe/idhm08u/?context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/viw3bd/switching_from_civil_engineering_to_swe/idhm08u/?context=3)
2. 80K is the increase in total compensation over people's previous job engineering, not the compensation itself (and we exclude people who don't have a previous job from the calculation as it would be very unfair). I've been trying to crunch more recent numbers and my rough calculations for median base salary is $138K for salaries submitted (not job start dates but when people submitted a form with the info) Sept 30th 2021 to May 29th, 2022 (75th percentile was $150K base and 25th percentile was $120K base). NOTE THESE ARE NOT AUDITED and quick calculations.
3. More importantly though, the numbers in 2 are really meaningless because It's hard to value stock and sign on bonuses (and these are BASE salary only) that these numbers are misleading on their own. It's very common for someone to have two offers: say 150K base 200K of stock and 170K base and 100K of stock. If both are stable public companies, 150K offer is better but might lower base salary stats hiding the fact that the person got a better offer. I was an E7 at FB where stock is VERY important: [https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Facebook&track=Software%20Engineer](https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Facebook&track=Software%20Engineer)
4. These numbers don't capture relative outcomes: like someone going from $60K to $100K is a great outcome. Someone going from $100K to $300K is a great outcome. They look different on paper but it's all relative to the person.
5. We are not a bootcamp. I've spent far too much time trying to explain this over and over and over again. I spent like 30 minutes doing that side by side to show the differences. I want to know what I'm missing here so I can correct it.
EDIT: I've been editing to try to fully clarify how I did the calculation and I originally had months instead of exact days, and wanted to clarify form submission dates, as it wasn't clear if the dates were offer signed date, info submitted to us dates, job start date, etc... I chose a somewhat random recent window of time manually collecting data scrolling through ordered form responses.