Giving a career talk in my old university, how prominently should I tell students my salary?

Question

I have offered to do a talk at my old university’s 'employabilty fair' ten years after graduation, where am I now. With some advice on traps to avoid, how to make the transition from university to work life etc., with some anecdotes along the way type thing. Within the realms of software engineering.

The person who asked me to do the talk knows my current salary and thinks I should put this number on the first slide to grab their attention in a 'this is what you could aim for' type way. But I feel it's a bit crass. I don't mind sharing my salary with the students if they ask, but I think it's a bit odd to stick it on the first slide.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this that could help me make this decision?

Update

I discussed this with some recent grads in my company, and they agreed that I should not put the salary in the talk. The talk ended up going over very well; no one asked about my salary and I didn't see anyone suddenly become more engaged after I pointed to the salaries in the Glassdoor table. Perhaps a couple students might have listened more intently if I had framed it as "I earn X and this is how you can do to" but I'm glad I didn't; the focus of my talk was for the students that love software engineering.

Answer 1

I agree with you. I feel the request to put your salary on a slide (on the first slide, no less!) is rather unexpected, and quite frankly does not speak highly about the professionalism of your contact. I would decline this, for multiple reasons:

• Your salary is nobody's business. Not sure what more there is to say about this.
• Students are, for the largest part, intelligent adults. Many would take this exactly for what it's meant to be - rather crude marketing and hype generation. This would detract from the message you actually want to transport, and would undermine your following talk.
• Focusing so much on how much you make is arguably not the best way to motivate young people for a specific career path anyway. If you talk about why you love your job (if you do) will encourage more people than a six-digits salary number. More importantly, it will probably encourage the people who will actually be happy doing your job, not the ones who would end up wealthy and miserable.

You can of course provide a salary range as proposed by other answers, but I would not emphasize this point much (and base it on third-party data, such as Glassdoor, not just your own experience).

Answer 2

I would think you can share the salary "Range", but I, like you, would not put it on the first slide.

ie after 3 years experience you could expect xxx to yyy as a zzzzzz.

This answers a second question that the OP had in the original post, now edited:

Sometimes students like to hear about a "real" problem and "how" it was solved - that process is usually interesting and can give them a "focus" of why they have to study xxxx.

Answer 3

As a statistician, I consider that an unrepresentative sample of one is unlikely to convey any useful information at all. You would mislead your audience if you presented them with such stuff.

Those of us with experience of the world know that amazingly high salaries are sometimes available to amazingly under-qualified people. So there is no point in presenting that stuff either.

What I wish someone had told me when I was aged about 20 is what kind of life goes with particular professions. So, in your case: what is it like to be a software engineer? Can you spend your whole career doing that? or, do you need to be on the lookout for something better/ less stressful / more stressful but better paid etc? Where do you hope to be in 10 years time? What is the career path? Is there a career path? If I do moderately well as a software engineer, what sort of place will I be living in?

Your actual salary is irrelevant.

Answer 4

Some universities (such as the one where I work) publish their pay scales. There's a level of abstraction between scale points and job titles but with a quick check of the salary bands in job adverts you could use the staff they're familiar with as a point of reference: "After a couple of years in industry I'm earning about as much as a lecturer". The audience can consider that useful information in itself, or they can go to the pay scales to see what range that works out to. In practice numbers on a salary don't necessarily mean all that much to undergrads anyway with taxes etc. to take into account, so a point of reference may be better anyway.

I use this approach myself as a postdoc with an industry job in the past.

Answer 5

As far as I can see, none of the other answers mentions the UK aspect.

In the UK, you just don't go around asking people what their salary is. In this social context, if they're literally asking you to tell this class what you earn, that request is unreasonable. However, it would seem useful to include a typical salary for a position similar to yours. (Even if you don't think it's useful, the students don't have your experience and have a bunch of debt to pay off, so will most likely care a lot about this.)

That's a win-win: it avoids you having to reveal information that is considered very private in the UK, and it's actually more representative for the students. There are all kinds of reasons that your individual salary could be unusually high or low.

Answer 6

At most I would publish a range from glassdoor or some other online career place. I personally wouldn't put it on the first slide either.

Depending on where you live, you might end up selling the salary short or giving them a nearly impossible target. In most regions of the US (not sure if this applies in the UK), salaries are adjusted for cost of living. I make only half as much as one of the kids I went to school with: I live in a moderate cost of living area (rural New Hampshire), and he lives in New York City. When I moved to my current locale, I got a 20% "raise" that ended up being only a minor raise in my take home because my bills and whatnot are higher.

If you are trying to sell the profession, I might compare it with another field, something like "software engineers make xx% more than mechanical engineers" with a reference.

Answer 7

I see that the talk already occurred, so this answer may be of less value. Still I feel it is worthwhile to share;

As a former student I think sharing some kind of salary information would've been extremely appreciated. In University many people spoke of the "astronomical" amounts you could make and likewise the "terrible underpaying" that occurred in the industry.

The thing that almost never happened was hearing from a real working person about their real salary and explaining how they got there.

I think this could ground some students' expectations and raise others. And the ability to do this and offer a high quality analysis of how it happened, what career trajectory was needed, how you got that trajectory, how you aligned with your passions, what life principles you had that led to the outcome, etc. would make for a very interesting and more importantly useful talk that the general student population is starving for.

Answer 8

I would not recommend you share your salary.

Instead, why do not try the approach of sharing the milestones you have achieved since graduation? Do not hide the struggles so you can empathize with your audience but also highlight why you do not regret studying at your University.

I am pretty sure you did not learn everything at the school, but some elements were key for you to be the person you are today.

Answer 9

Your salary is nobody's business and I don't see any reason to discuss it. I don't know what your field is, but in any case you should be able to generate interest to the profession using technical accomplishments and advancements. If not, don't go there to talk; apparently you have nothing to say ...