Computer Science represents a combination of different IT related fields. At university, we are getting familiar with majority of these fields in the first half our studies, with the option to expertise our favorite field or two by choosing related subjects. 

Even though, compared to other graduates, CS graduates have easier barrier of entry when searching for the first job, not everything is unicorns and fairytales, with the field being so competitive.

After graduating, CS students are expected to make $50k on average. So, all good, we can end the article here. Well, not really. This average is highly influenced by salaries in the USA, and especially by the salaries in the biggest companies, like: Google, Meta, Amazon etc. In reality, not everyone lives in the USA, and definitely not everyone works for the companies mentioned above.

For example, in India, the entry level CS jobs pay 6 lakh per year, which is equivalent to just over $7.2k. In Eastern Europe for example, it can go from $3.6k to $6k per year, and let me tell you, it will take you ages before you start making something decent. With the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen huge increase in remote jobs, and we’ve also seen that once you let people work form the comfort of their homes, they are way more effective.

For example, me and my team managed to build a full Ruby on Rails app in just two months, during the COVID, and our employer got $1.3M, while we got our $500 per month. This also inspired us to start getting few other jobs to fill the time and get more money in the pockets. And this is where this article comes to life.

How to start making $50k per year

Well, we can start by first finding a job at a company. As I’ve said, you might not make a lot at the beginning, but getting employed is crucial. The IT companies have tons of funds, we are talking cutting edge equipment, private healthcare, investment plans, pension funds etc. And also, putting yourself in the classic corporate structure might be good. You’ll learn how actually everything works, you might have client meetings, you’ll have meeting with your colleagues, maybe there will be some senior who will want to teach you knew stuff.

Also, one important thing is, that majority of the companies will encourage you to get certifications in different fields. Imagine that, they will pay for your education and certificate. If you are smart enough, you will be able to get certifications worth thousands of dollars for free. Considering you are working as a junior dev, you will have 2-3 easy tasks per week. Believe me, that is 2 hours a day of work, if you want to take it slow or 4-5 hours in total if you decide to go ballistic and finish all of the work in a day. Let’s say that you decided to work 2 hours a day and 2 hours of studying for a certificate, you have 4 hours left.

Now, you can find another remote job. Now when searching for a new remote job, it is better if the company is based in a foreign country. Firstly they pay more. There are entry level jobs as a developer that pay up to $50 an hour. Also as a junior developer you might be able to work part-time. There are platforms like Proxify, where you are able to set your preferences like availability in hours per day, as well as how much you want to get payed per hour. Then their service will find the right client. Obviously it will not be as easy as it sounds, but it very possible.

Lets say you don’t want to work full time, so you manage to land 5 hours per day, $30 per hour, that is $150 per day. We have 260 working days per year on average, that makes it $39k per year. As we’ve said, not everyone lives in the USA, so let’s say you make $6k a year from your regular job, so far that is $45k per year. Now, looks like you need to hustle for the additional $5k. I mean, you can take a full-time job, but lets make it more interesting and have more options. That other option is doing research based jobs, or content creation, or organization.

I’ve found a Game development company based in LA, that was paying $40 per hour, to just download iOS games, play them and share your experience and describe the gameplay. The job was 10-35 hours per week, starting with the 10 and then progress to 35. We don’t want to become millionaires yet, so lets say you work 10 hours per week, that is 2 hours per day, meaning $80 per day. For 260 days, that is $20.8k per year.

Now, this puts our earning over $66k per year. But nothing guarantees us that we’re going to get all of these jobs, so lets take a look at different options. There are quite a lot of IT companies that have their blogs. Some of those pay $25 per hour to write technology related blogs, or per post. I’ve stumbled at a company that payed $125 per day, to write their coding posts for their blog. $125 per 260 days makes it over $32.5k. I

f you are into Data Science and Machine Learning, there are quite a lot companies that want researchers. They also pay top dollar, and researcher jobs can be quite flexible with the working time. For example, I’ve worked as a backend developer on a project. The project had Machine Learning team, made out of part time researchers. They were getting over $45 per hour, to work 4-5 hours per day.

That makes it $46.8k-$58.5k per year. Also, there are tons of educational platforms that need part-time tutors. Since you’re fresh from university, this might be ideal for you. Some of them require 10-15 hours per week, and pay minimum of $15 per hour. That is $7.8k-$11.7k per year, considering you’ll work for minimal pay.

Conclusion

As you can see there are tons of ways to start making top dollar per year. We’ve set the limit to $50k so we can display multiple revenue streams where you can find what suits you the best. We’ve also included the fact that you’ll be working a regular job, with all benefits. Job that does not pay much, but is there as your security. If we remove that from the picture, you can make way more, or even start your own project, and work at your own pace. 

I know it might sounds impossible, but with the right plan, this is achievable. Also, as you can see, we’ve tried sticking to IT related jobs, you can obviously find some jobs related to a hobby of yours and be even more relax working.

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