Addendum for new grads interviewing at Microsoft: when you go to the welcome center on the morning of your interview, the H1-B filings for all recently hired foreign employees are posted near the candidate waiting area. These have salaries.
These are especially helpful for answering that eternal first HR question about salary expectations. The best answer is to dodge the question entirely, but if you're not good at negotiating with skilled recruiters (and if you're a new CS grad, you probably aren't) pick a number that's somewhere in the middle of the posted H1-B range.
Do you know what the middle of the posted range is, just out of curiosity? If I was interviewing at Microsoft, I don't think I'd want to go look at the salary postings before going in :S
The last time I saw the numbers (several years ago), they varied between ~$80k and ~$150k, depending on job title. I would imagine that they've gone up some since then.
I based my remark on the knowledge that the range of H1B salaries covered everything from new grad to very senior positions. New grads are nearly all going to fall into the low end of the range at a company like MS, and there's no point in trying to negotiate into a higher pay grade until you've got experience.
Employees who have unrealistic expectations from the start generally keep that same level of expectation, even across other topics; beginning with an unrealistic figure is not necessarily a good idea, as it may dissuade the HR rep. Alot of the time this is a first question too - first impressions count! </cliche>
Nb - this may be different for engineering; I work in an unrelated field.
I guess the issue could be though, if the employee is fresh out of college or moving into an unrelated position, that they may have no idea what a good salary for this position is going to be. I guess the danger of being to reasonable is that you will end up with the job, just underpaid compared to your peers because you didn't know what that market rate was.
These are especially helpful for answering that eternal first HR question about salary expectations. The best answer is to dodge the question entirely, but if you're not good at negotiating with skilled recruiters (and if you're a new CS grad, you probably aren't) pick a number that's somewhere in the middle of the posted H1-B range.