Careers.CSE

From the state:

Computer Sciences Corp. plans to add even more employees than the 300 announced this month at the software firm’s Blythewood campus, a company official told The State last week.

CSC is expanding in the Midlands to accommodate new computer-service business with aerospace manufacturers. Over the past 30 years, the Columbia-area operation has developed software for insurers.

The company hopes to win even more aerospace work that could add as many as 700 more workers to the Blythewood campus on top of the 300 coming on board over the next year, said Ray August, president of CSC’s Blythewood insurance group.

Those expansions — spurred by the Columbia area’s low costs and customers who want work to stay in the U.S. instead of going overseas — would double CSC’s current employment, which stands at roughly 1,000 workers.

The article also had some number on salaries for software engineers in Columbia, they are:

Computer-related professions employed about 7,800 people in the Columbia metro area* in 2006, but they earned less than their peers elsewhere in the country, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

	Columbia	U.S.
All occupations	$35,000	$39,200
Information systems managers	$84,100	$107,300
Computer programmers	$58,000	$69,500
Software engineers, applications	$70,900	$82,000
Software engineers, systems	$74,200	$87,300

SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment Statistics, May 2006 survey

*NOTE: The Columbia metro area covers Richland, Lexington, Calhoun, Fairfield, Kershaw and Saluda counties.

In case you are wondering what the difference is between a computer programmer and a software engineer: a software engineer is someone with at least a BS in CSE, a programmer is a liberal arts, math, or science major who was not able to get a job in his field of study and had to learn to program.

Also, lower salaries in Columbia are to be expected as the cost of living here is lower. The bulk of software engineers in the US work in either California (Silicon Valley, LA), metro NY/NJ area, Austin, Boston, or in the research triangle park in NC. All these have much higher cost of living than Columbia.