Engineers- Question about Salary

billnmelinda wrote:

metro nick wrote:

This blows me away. My starting salary out of college in 1981 was $45K as a chemical engineer for an oil company. You are making $20/hour. Might as well be the manager of a Sunglass Hut.

Exactly. This is the state of most engineering fields (petroleum and computer currently exempted) in the USA right now.

You have highly-skilled, highly-educated engineers busting their arses for 40k-60k salaries in high cost of living cities across the nation. Whereas if these engineers had never gone to college they probably would be making more per hour 5 years later as a HS grad turned sunglass hut manager. No disrespect to retail store managers, but that is a shame.

Median starting is like 58k and that quickly rises to 80-100k. You can also make a lot more than that, but it depends on some things (e.g. COL, whether your industry has an odd payscale like Oil n Gas, etc).

OP, as a civil engineer you need to get your PE and/or a MS if you want to do interesting work and get paid for it. Sounds like you're also getting screwed because you live in HI, but with a PE you'll be better off.

Quickly rises to 80k-100k? Gonna call b.s. on that one. You must work for the gov't

PE and/or MS does bump pay, but not that much. The consulting engineers that make the money are the ones that bring in clients (i.e. the ones that know sales and arse-kissing). Has little to do with their actual engineering skills.

This thread is ALL about reluctance to move. Of course they can get away with that pay. It's Hawaii. It's your typical resort-town pay scale.

OP wants to surf pipeline AND be a pipeline Engineer. Well, you take the pay cut for that.

OP needs to man up and move, OR stop whining about being paid a low salary. OR tough it out and start his own practice after getting his certification.

I'm an ME, should've been clearer that's what I was talking about. Median at 10 years is about 80-90k per the ASME.

Are you a civil engineer? I'm curious how the pay scale works there (yes I could google it, sue me). Seem to hear a ton of complaints about the field, consulting in particular.

Ho Hum wrote:

generally good advice wrote:

Quickly rises to 80k-100k? Gonna call b.s. on that one. You must work for the gov't

PE and/or MS does bump pay, but not that much. The consulting engineers that make the money are the ones that bring in clients (i.e. the ones that know sales and arse-kissing). Has little to do with their actual engineering skills.

I'm an ME, should've been clearer that's what I was talking about. Median at 10 years is about 80-90k per the ASME.

Are you a civil engineer? I'm curious how the pay scale works there (yes I could google it, sue me). Seem to hear a ton of complaints about the field, consulting in particular.

Civil median at 10 years is probably in the same ballpark (80k-90k). I wouldn't say that is actually "killing it" for an employee with such skills and experience. And keep in mind, it's hard to survive 10 years in the soul-sucking engineering consulting world as it is.

You could slave away for 10 years, or you could go work for the City of SF and be making 80k STARTING out of school. Public sector is where it's at.

Or you could go petroleum and pull 100k out of school private sector with massive potential for that to grow. Granted, you might have to live in Houston, but Houston's not THAT bad.

Or you could be a dbag, dumb-witted frat boy, major in business, use connections to get a gig at a management consulting firm, and be pulling 200k 3 years out of undergrad.

My point is that civil engineers get the short end of the stick. Remember, engineers are the smartest guys in the room and should be worth way more than 80k salary-wise after toiling 10 years.

Aerospace Engineer

Age 29

7 years post BS

2 year MS + 5 year work

100k base

bonuses ~5k

~30k value in options per year