In my opinion, most web firms are not paying a lot of money for a younger programmer unless you can get on at a start-up that has money to burn. To do that, you have to have a pretty solid resume. However, I would still recommend you get started with a smaller web firm. The reason being is that you can crank out code that translates into final products very quickly without a whole bunch of red tape.

If you start out at a corporation, you may get 50k (very dependent on where you live) but large salary increases will take forever. If you want to increase your salary quickly, you got to be able to move around. I have been in the "real world" for about six years and I am already working at my third place of employment.

I will either stay with the corporation I am with now or look to land a cush government job down the road. That is where is at for those who choose not to go down the start-up path. You get excellent pay, government holidays, lots of opportunity to travel for training, and telecommuting options. But to land one of those, you need large system experience and probably a Fortune 100 company on your resume.

That all assuming you live in the US.

You sound like you hate programming.

Wow, this seems almost completely wrong to me.

Decide which industries you are aiming for first. The industry has a stronger influence on later salaries than the actual programming language. Which language to focus on will depend a lot on the industry.

Then, start gathering skills and knowledge in those fields that will make you more attractive for potential employers. Visit non-CS classes, complete a few courses in that direction.
And this explicitly means getting as much hands-on experience as possible already during your studies. Work a few hours a week next to your studies. This job does not have to be in your target industry at all, just get to crank out code and learn, learn, learn. You will be lousy at first, but that's ok, your pay will match your skill set.

After graduation, it is then time to break into your field of choice, forget about the starting salary but do everything you can land that first job in your field.
Once you've got applicable experience, the formal education to go with it, and good knowledge wrt to the industry beyond coding skills, you will be able to increase your pay substantially over a handful of years unless you refuse to leave a job for better opportunities.

The guy asks for advice on how to make money and I posted how I was able to do it in a pretty short period of time. The salary that I make for the years of experience I have in the market that I live in is very good.

Looking to make the most money is probably a difficult route. An easier route would be to find something you love, and then pursue it as much as you can. The money should follow!

Oh, I love programming. I wish I could devote a lot of time to start-up idea that I have, but with a full-time job and an average of playing 30 hours a week of poker, I don't really have time.

But I am attempting to learn new languages like Scala in my spare time. I am taking a course on Coursea for that in September. I am also doing some of the Code Academy stuff to try to stay up to date on web development, as right now I just write Java applications for my job.

But, if you are like me and you live in a smaller, regional market that is not a tech hot-spot, then going the corporation route is where you are going to make the most money.

Figured I owed a bit more explanation on why I think this post is completely wrong.

First, there are lots of places in the US where tech talent is in very high demand and companies are paying a lot of money. Second, the vast majority of start-ups are going to be paying you less than an established company.

Agreed, that its very dependent on where you live. But for major cities this is 100% not true. In fact my experience is the exact opposite - salary increases come more quickly as you start your career.

Definitely not a certainty. There are lots of companies that are going to increase your salary quickly. My salary was increased over 50% in 3 years at my first company.

I have literally never heard that Government is where the cushy jobs are for software developers. Not once have I heard someone even talk about trying to get a job there (one exception - I knew a guy who really wanted to work for NASA. But that was because it was NASA and not because it was a cushy job).

What?

What part of the US are you talking about?

Yeah 90k in the valley or NYC are probably not as much as 90k in Austin

I tihnk if you're just in it for the money the safe bet is to specialize on data. Databases, datamining etc. pp

I live in Canada. But willing to re-locate... not much family up here and GF has dual citizenship.

SharePoint
CRM
BizTalk

any platform based stuff on the MS stack. you can make mad money with those skills

I'd learn to be a kickass mobile app developer

Yeah I was looking into Mobile app development as well.

The only problem I see with it is that by the time I finish learning something now... in about a year or two it'll be outdated and we'll have to learn new stuff.

Not exactly. At some point you will need to do things you don't want to. In order to get where you want to be.

I agree. I'm in this field with little experience and I'm doing well. Takes an analytical mind, but for some reason there are tons of experienced developers who are just godawful at Business Intelligence-related tasks.