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Do engineers not make good money anymore?
- Thread starter The motor guy
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I was always told the only career that keeps up isn’t a career at all.
My son graduated last year with a BS in Aerospace engineering. He received several offers but they were all were starting in the same range, 75-80k a year. No one would go over that range even with the other offers on the table. He ended up with Collins Aerospace which is part of RTX. People who started with him said they all received the same offer range. It's appears a gentleman's agreement is in place not to pay new graduates more than a certain amount.
Well, I'm an engineer, and I wish your assumption was correct. Sadly, no, not even close.
More advertising of pay ranges? More transparency might make it easier for HR to see what everyone else is paying, and might somehow help suppress wages. Maybe, that's just a guess. They don't have to have an agreement to do that, they just have to follow the herd--they know that if they bump the pay, some sort of race might ensue.
More people coming from overseas? Increase supply but not demand, that tends to hurt.
Maybe more not out of college engineers looking for jobs? There's been off shoring, and maybe some on shoring, so perhaps there's more engineers than thought.
More people thinking AI is going to do away with the hard stuff? Just ask the chat thing how to do whatever, how hard could it be.
Beats me. Wages seem stagnated. But engineering might be a field where people were competing with one another, working all those extra hours. Now that many have pulled back from that, in search of work-life balance. actual throughput has dropped. If a company has to hire that many more people to get the job done, perhaps pay is following that trend.
Government loves to do that. New title, same job, same pay. It's like they just picked a term out of the dictionary sometimes.
Not "bad" product, but products, very probably excellent products, that do not sell or otherwise miss the market. From tech, Digital is a partial example as well as others who bet on mainframes (back in the Dark Ages) and more recently, those who didn't see enterprise customers adopting the cloud and failed to adapt.
I am a retired M.E. and receiving more $$ now that I have retired. Thank You: CMMS, my 401k, Mr. Jones et al.
But in my final 15 years working I was just doing "odd jobs" outside of my specialty - just to bridge to retirement.
But I do live in a little cabin out in the forest ...
But in my final 15 years working I was just doing "odd jobs" outside of my specialty - just to bridge to retirement.
But I do live in a little cabin out in the forest ...
What do you call an "engineer" ? My brother-in-law's only concept of an engineer is the person who operates a (freight/passenger) train.
Jobs advertised in NY on Indeed, LinkedIn and other places need to include starting salary range as part of the pay transparency for the last 1-2 years. Part of the whole equity thing. They all state base salary and maybe adjusted higher based on experience, location etc.
The Executive Director from another building was over for a while with all the ideas. Our conversation came to a salary thing and that if I changed positions I would need to give up night differential. I said I'm not at your level and not making that much, night differential for 20 years is now part of my salary. I pointed out that he was making at least XXXXX, maybe not the top of range but with years with company etc probably closer to it. He got all pissed off saying I have no clue, that's not what it is, he doesn't make that etc. I sent him the HR email covering the reason they now include it and his similar job posting with the ranges. I also said if you are not making that then you should go to HR and work out your next raise. Our relationship was not the same afterward. He also left a year later.
Look up an engineering job description on them for somewhere in NY and you'll see it.
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It's not so much of an agreement as a function of the local compensation market and the players having access to the same information; supply and demand. It is typical for folks starting out to be in the same salary band and, outside of superstars in certain fields, companies shouldn't get into bidding wars.
A friend's son just graduated from MIT w/ a degree in aerospace, all set to join one of the big players....and was recruited to be a Quant on Wall Street!
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We use all kinds of terms loosely now. Doctor. Engineer. Etc. IT has lots of engineers by title, who never went to school for engineering. There are doctors that never went to medical school.
Even law, some schools award JDs where the graduate is not able to sit for the bar in any state other than Calif.
The plus side is we’re way past the days of displaying a degree on a wall. Nobody cares anymore.
We use all kinds of terms loosely now. Doctor. Engineer. Etc. IT has lots of engineers by title, who never went to school for engineering. There are doctors that never went to medical school.
Even law, some schools award JDs where the graduate is not able to sit for the bar in any state other than Calif.
The plus side is we’re way past the days of displaying a degree on a wall. Nobody cares anymore.
Our school district calls all building maintenance or custodians 'building engineers.'
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Perfectly fine, as in IT.
One of my friends when I was in college was a gentleman named Bill. He was a janitor at a state armory, with a masters in library science. He helped me to replace my valve cover gasket on the ‘70 LeMans 250 I-6, but it didn’t cure my leak…back then it was janitor
Don't some U.S. firms utilize engineers from overseas in Poland..?
Yea, I just mentally separate them if somebody, for example, says they're a building engineer but they're really moreso maintenance (nothing against them but past a certain extent I have learned job titles mean nothing.). We have building engineers at work but they're a do-all-trades type of deal, HVAC, elevator, electrical, more than I'll never be able to learn. First time I learned of their job titles I was like "wait, are they designing something new in the building?"
Because you think $200,000 to $300,000 is “good money”.
When the average family of four is getting by with two incomes that together, total $115,000.
So, each of them is making just under $60,000.
Which means “good money” for most of use would be $100,000 and up.
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You need to be really smart to be a Chem-E and the schooling is difficult and expensive. $70k is way underpaid for someone that much smarts and schooling.
