salaries for advanced computer science

Last month I mentioned that CNN published results of a survey

regarding the salary of robotics engineers. Today, I was browsing

Indeed.com and I noticed that they offer a feature that lets one query

their large database of job postings to get an idea of the average

salary for professionals. I thought I check out how the salaries for

computer science PhDs compare depending on their field of expertise,

i.e., machine learning versus computer vision versus robotics and so

on. The image below (click it for a higher resolution version) shows

the results,

Computer Science salaries

As you can see from the graph shown above, computer vision and machine

learning graduates get paid the highest average salary. I am a bit

surprised that robotics engineers are paid much less on average

although I could guess that the reason for this has to do with the

fact that most of the jobs involve industrial robotics which probably

means a job that has to do with recalibrating robot arms in assembly

lines; probably a job that can be easily done by someone with an

undergraduate engineering degree and not requiring an advanced

graduate degree. In the results, I have also included the more general

"computer science" term to get an idea of the average pay for people

with only an undergraduate degree.

I can't say that the results shown above are the most accurate but it

is clear that going to graduate school can increase one's salary

substantially. Talking to friends who are responsible for hiring new

graduates and from my own personal experience looking for work the

last couple of years, I have to admit that the average salaries

computed by Indeed Salary Search are rather accurate. It is

unfortunate that the standard deviation is not also given but only the

average. In general, I would say that exceptional people are probably

paid much better than the average so if you decide to go to graduate

school then it is up to you to make the effort necessary to make it

worth something.

PS: Indeed explains how they compute the average salary as follows,

Indeed Salary Search is based on an index of salary information

extracted from over 50 million job postings from thousands of

unique sources over the last 12 months. Many job descriptions don't

contain salary information, but there are enough that do to produce

statistically significant median salaries for millions of keyword,

job title and location combinations - in fact, most job searches

you are likely to think of. As new jobs are added each day, the

Indeed Salary Search index is automatically updated with fresh

salary data, so the salary results are as up-to-date as they could