Thinking about taking a job doing aerospace programming for FPGA.

>>8661313
>less than 300k starting
might as well just collect welfare at this point

>>8661313
you can't just look at salary m8. you have to look at the area, the cost of living, the working hours, etc.

its the whole package and not just the number on your paycheck.

i turned down a 125k maintenance gig in oakland because, well... its in oakland.

any salary over 80k suffers from serious diminishing returns in terms of happiness per dollar.

>>8661327
Probably a lot of hours/overtime doing challenging & interesting work. I'm trying to weigh it against a startup that pays $100k. But in a higher cost of living area.

I'm a little concerned about the risk with the startup. Also the startup's plans are very ambitious, so it would also be a ton of hours doing interesting work.

>CS

rotflmao

I make 100k basically doing nothing all day on a computer. Its pretty sweet actually.

>>8661313
>Aerospace
So you're either going to be in a big city, or in the middle of the fuckin' sticks.
I don't believe FPGA programmers have to deal with boom devices so it's more likely you'll be in a corporate office somewhere.

As the other guy mentioned you want to look at cost of living. I accepted an entry level software engineering position at 100k/y in NYC. The same position would have yielded probably around 70-80k in Austin.

It's entirely likely that you actually require the 110k just to make ends meet. For example, in San Francisco (highest cost of living in the country).

Furthermore, you want to make sure that you fit in with the corporate culture, and that you like the people that you'll be fitting in with. This is very important because you need to place your mental health above all else. There's no use taking a $110k/year job if you want to die 5 years later because everyone around you is a fucking cunt, and the environment is suffocating.

>>8661344
The way I see it, startups are unstable but pay more. There's no reason to take a lower pay for a higher risk.

Contact the recruiter for the aerospace company. Ask them if they allow transfers in-between departments in order to get to know different fields, because you might find that you think another field is much more interesting than working with FPGAs. I know for a fact that NAVAIR and NAVSEA are very good with this.

>>8661313
I have a BS in CS and Math. I'm doing a PhD in CS where I have to do a lot with FPGAs but it may not work out.

How much do I have to do to convince an employer to hire me to develop for FPGAs? I've never taken ECE class but I'm taking Adv. Computer Architecture now, which is crosslisted as one.

Can I work through a few books and do a personal project or two and land a job in the FPGA world?

>>8661313
$110,000 per year. Assuming your taxes take out 20%, which is way more than what's actually taken out, that leaves you with $88,000 per year. That's ~6,000 per month, if you take out $1,300 for rent, water, electric, etc. That leaves you with 200 dollars per day for spending on food and whatever else you need. That's enough money for a solid ounce of weed every week. Plus benefits! I'd take that if I were you.

>>8661313
What kind of shit are you gonna be doing with the FPGAs?

>>8661602
security clearance required, so no weed smoking for me.

>>8661596
idk, I only took a little bit of HDL in school, but was working a job at a small contractor after school that got me a lot of experience. I think every employer will be different, but they didn't really give a crap about my education but had a lot of questions about my experience.

Obviously there was some selection bias going on. I didn't get an interview with the ones that care more about education.

>>8661612
I actually don't think I can go into detail. But generally data processing for spacecraft sensors.