I talked with my brother earlier tonight about this and he did correct one thing: this friend's starter job was around 50k at Ubisoft, so not above my best ever but still better than when I came out of undergrad, when I was at 42k/yr then 43k/yr in 2 different divisions of SNC-Lavalin. Going back for my M.Sc. only bumped me 10k/yr, but it also made finding work noticeably harder.

TBH, back then I considered myself "lucky" to have landed an engineering-related job, as between 50 to 85% (depending on the year) of my fellow students in that engineering program ended up working outside of Quebec, and of those who stayed in province, last I checked half had never worked a technical job in the past decade-ish (i.e., one guy is selling tires, another started a small farm, a third worked security at YUL for a year and a half before finding a research assistant position out of province, etc...)

They don't tell you this, but there's 2 secrets to engineering school:

1- pick a COOP program. What you learn is essentially 100% useless on the workforce, as is who you learned it from. Who you know is 100% useful on getting hired. Landing feet-first in an internship is a virtual guarantee of a good job down the road if you give at least minimal effort.

2- It's all about contacts. Especially today, where 1 job posting will receive 80 qualified applicant within 7 days, you are a ghost unless you directly know the recruiter / those hiring. I remember one job I really wanted, I talked with the recruiter and they had received 250 applications within the first 3 days. That was the number of applicants that exceeded the requirements, btw.