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I am about to apply for a job that requires me to give them a desired salary or they wont even look at the resume.

But I've never actually had a real programming job before and am clueless on what a good salary would be.

The job requires me to design (in VC/C++ or VB) object tracking and identification and manage it.

the official title is "Computer Software Engineering".

You dont pay to get them to consider you, thats madness!

lol excuse me, by give them a desired salary, I meant a number on the cover letter specifying how much I would desire to make.

haha.

I depends on your level of eduction, country and work experience. when i started working in 1997 i earned roughly 20000 EURO a year, excluding 16.3 % addition pay for hoildays,b13th month and such.

Ah, sorry, misunderstod.
Well it is hard, the simple fact that you ask the question suggests that you shouldnt go to high.
Remember you can allways ask for a raise later.

I'm a placement student, and thus earn less than the other employees here. The job involves heavy C++ usage and performance tweaking, as well as writing and maintaining perl test and analysis tools.

I earn £15,000 gross (before tax) per annum.

The entry-level engineer here gets between £21,000 and £24,000.

I think the entry-level engineer salary nationally (in England) is around £21 - £22,000 including 20-25 days paid holiday and bank holidays off. Usually some bonus package is added.

Converting GBP into your currency may be difficult, as there's not only the exchange rate (which is huge) but also the fact that everything here is damn expensive to take into account!

Thanks for the the replies.
I am in the U.S. and I am finishing up my bachelors of computer science and also I am A+ certified.

In which case I would assume an entry-level salary of about $40,000?

I'm also in the US, around Kansas City. Here in the midwest, an entry-level salary is usually $35-40K, although of course I've seen higher. I'm from the east coast, where the entry level salary can be as high as $65K. My friends back on the east coast that got a higher entry level salary than I did said salary growth/raises after that were pretty slow. I'm now considered 'senior level', and at almost $85K am a little low on the payscale for that position at my company.

Also note that I do not have a college degree, so your experience may be a little different.

damn i should migrate to the US $85K wait that is 60K EUR i am not there yet. But then again we pay roughly 42 % taxes. So i should move to the US.

os64dev: 42% taxes?!?!?!? Wow! I thought ours were high (UK) - we have bands: 0%, 7%, 22% and 40% - the 40% one is for over £30000 atm but I think they're changing it.

With national insurance etc you can expect to pay roughly one third (33%) of your income in tax.

Note to self: Never move to the Netherlands.

or denmark, i think i heard something about us having the highest income tax in the world...

You might just be missing a really good point - tax isn't just money being taken from you without reason.

The Netherlands has one of the best medical care solutions for everybody and it has a social network that catches you when you lose your job so you don't instantly plummet into poverty. Not to mention the education you didn't have to pay the full amount for when you were studying, which you are paying for now (for the education of new kids, that is).

Fair point. The UK has all of the things you mention, although I believe (not having been to the netherlands) to a lesser standard. If we weren't fighting a damn war maybe we'd have the funds to improve them... :S