>Just to give you an idea. There was a report here that said that guys just getting out of the university (no work experience) could easily get $45K (yeah yeah Canadian money but when you live in Canada you usually can do good with that kind of money).

Who did the report? There's a lot of talk about the lack of programmers in Canada, the brain drain, etc. If you look at the job market, the situations is not really so.

$45K may be a start salary in some statistics, but not in real life. While I know new graduates that start at 40-45K, a more realistic figure is 25-35K. At least from what I heard of in real life... :)

>Here it is to the point where the government will try to find a way to convince new students to study in the computing field because there really is a high demand for IT workers.

yeah, government advertisement! :)

>I suppose it would be about the same in the US so to me a $25K offer is just a joke.

It depends a lot on the location. It surely sounds like a joke in NY. Especially with the "proficient in VFP" spec. :)

Vlad