ngl I am the same. The CEO at my workplace (big international company) was like "listen guys it was awesome to have WFH but I kinda need yall to go back to the office and waste a ton of time commutting and shit, why? Because fuck you". That shit blows and I bet we could stop this but people would rather just lay low and keep their jobs when they clearly need us more than we need them.
Same here. Turned down a counter offer for an extra $20k above what the new position offered, that's how much it meant to me not to have to go into the office.
That's ultimately what Im gonna do I think. We're still not back because there's not enough office space at all, but as soon as they make us hybrid I'll be looking elsewhere.
Basically ya, it’s going on in this thread lol
I will add tho, one of the best ways to get a raise is to job hop, and it’s harder for engineers because it involves relocating. Often times a competitor is states away. Nurses or lawyers can relocate in their locale, just down the street
Yeah, good point about the relocation. When you have a specific skill set, it’s difficult to easily hop.
I’ve seen my employer walk people out the door with 5 minutes notice (if that), and I’ve made it clear that arrangement is reciprocal.
This depends on the field and location. There's lots of technology hubs where you'll have multiple competitors in the same location. Think Silicon Valley, Boston, the DC area for federal contracting, Detroit before the auto industry collapsed, etc.
Never gonna happen, though I suppose Boeing is an example (though look what shit they are in because engineers didn’t stand up for themselves). It’s the way engineers are trained, put through a wringer where 67% flunk out, then the remaining students are trying to outcompete one another for top grades and prestigious employers (no such thing). They then do the same in industry, trying to out-design one another and putting in tons of uncompensated hours, and handing over the only real thing they are good for (intellectual property) like a drunk hands $ at a strip club. They even brag about how many patents they have; sorry chump, you have no patents, your employer does, and they probably gave you $100 for submitting it. The MBA managers eat this shit up.
In a union, you’d be yelled at for working too fast.
In a bad union you get yelled at for working too fast.
There already is an Aerospace Engineering Union that popped up recently. I don't know much about it as I'm Mech but that's more than we've had in the past
It's weird. All of the engineers I've worked with (I'm chemical, but this popped up in my feed) are great with numbers... until it involves selling their time, then they suddenly don't understand why overtime is usually 1.5X. Because it's very hard to replace time.
I’m guessing it’s in-front of the inflation curve since so few people do it, it’s mostly military-industrial complex related, and several wars have kicked off in the last few years. My employer had emergency mid-year bumps to compensate, though I think it’s just barely enough to compensate.
Maybe it’s because I’m still early in my career (been a licensed PE civil/structural for 3 years), but I have been actively pushing for pay raises as often as I can. I’ve nearly doubled my salary in 2 years. Two years ago I switched to a new firm and got a 20% raise, then I’ve pushed my current boss for raises while proving my worth and have gotten them. Do people not pressure bosses for raises anymore?
Bigger companies have fairly structured raise processes so it's completely out of their bosses hands.
Job hopping is the best option for most but if you don't have a lot of options near you that can also be hard. Now in my thirties with kids and a house moving would put significant strain on my family, even moving jobs and needing to deal with new benefits accounts can be a royal pain.
When I left my first company, my manager couldn't even make me a counter offer that wouldn't come from the department's budget for yearly raises the following year. Not only did I not want to screw over my coworkers, it would have hurt me as well.
>>Do people not pressure bosses for raises anymore?
Engineers tend not to from my experience. Two reasons. 1) They're way too focused on the technical problem at hand, and 2) University doesn't teach them how to negotiate, plan a career, or even acknowledge that it's a crucial skill. No technical school does, and Engineers are poorer for it.
Other industry sectors have gotten round this problem via unionization, which effectively outsources the task of wage negotiation.
As you've found out, they fastest way to a wage increase is to move jobs every so often, but you need to keep your skill set current and broad enough to appeal to many companies for that if it's to work in your favor. Planning a lucrative career is harder than it looks, esp in Engineering as it changes so fast.
3) the market was saturated with new engineers in the early 00-10s.
4) management thinks you can offshore a lot of the work to design firms in other countries and keep a few on board for quality control.
Nice! Yeah as another person commented under my comment, not everyone can just leave their job, which really sucks. Fortunately there's a lot of remote work. At the small firm I'm at (there's like 10 of us) it's pretty laid back. I'm in office about 3 days per week and WFH 2 days per week. However I plan on moving to be closer to my family in the next few years, and I figure my boss will either let me go full remote, or I'll find a new job. I'm guessing he'll let me go full remote since I'm the top billing employee lol.
So for those that can't move, look for jobs that are fully remote. Even if you don't have a home office there's libraries you can go to and work at. I've even worked in the food court at grocery stores and gotten tons done. It's nice being mobile.
I think as engineers most of us tend to overthink in shitty situations, especially when you feel like you can't trust others in your situation.
You could start a union, but the only thing engineers hate more than taking orders from others is taking orders from another engineer. Also, what if 10 people don't listen? Or someone snitches?
Real engineer in industry here: it’s because the guys are timid as fuck. None of them are fighting for raises, none of them are demanding higher salaries from competitors, none of them are demanding WFH. It’s sad.
I saw a doctor on here call engineers “the kings of the peasants”. So true.
Read some other posts on this thread, it’s not even a supply problem it’s the people in the profession actively encouraging others to not fight for higher pay. We have our hands in so much in this world. The phone I’m typing on, the power in my house, the PCM/ECM in my car, the ventilators used on covid patients. We are important, act like it.
Unlike the blood bath in SWE I still have recruiters message me weekly. Every time I message back to ask for 20% above what they offer, don’t even plan to take the job. Just doing it for the profession.
Every job I leave, I tell them it's because their pay isn't enough. Every job I don't take, every LinkedIn recruiter I don't get go next steps with, I tell them it's because their pay isn't enough. I'm doing my part o7
I had a recruiter message me for a salary I started at with zero experience back in 2017. I didn’t respond the first three times but I finally told them why I wasn’t responding to that.
I think engineering pay has also gone down because there’s too much dead-weight and bullshit-job people in engineering companies. It’s similar to education where teachers salaries are shit yet $15k/student is spent, and the administration is bloated. Engineers are billed out at rates far above their compensation, and it’s to support all the dead weight. And no…healthcare, 401k match, employer paid SS and unemployment, etc does not add up to equivalent base pay. I don’t cost 2x what I’m paid.
I work with big consulting engineering firms and the bloat is real. Every meeting with them is a room full of supervisors, BD guys, and all manner of "handlers" to make sure I'm a happy client - yet the engineers doing the actual work are rarely there. The result is muddy communication channels with tons of middlemen. I went to an open house at one firm that moved to a bigger office, and was surprised to learn they didn't even *invite* most of their designers to their own event. It was all sales guys and managers.
...and in my experience, the big firms actually end up delivering worse designs with more errors and omissions than the smaller/more local ones. There's one big firm that has developed such a reputation that we call them the Boeing of consultants...
ETA I'm an engineer by training, just end up on the Client side a lot. I would much rather deal directly with other engineers but I rarely get the choice, lol.
I had a recruiter reach out to me a couple months ago. I was genuinely interested in their position. I met every qualification they listed in their listing, which is probably why they reached out to me. They could see I have 10 years of experience on my LinkedIn if they bothered to look.
I was interested but I’m relatively content at my current employer so I threw out 20% more than I make now as my salary expectation. I asked for 130k.
They emailed me back and said their range was 75k-85k. In an area where the cheapest livable house on Zillow is 380k and even that would be hard to find.
I just said “no thanks” lol.
I wanted to refer them to a college job fair so badly. Like good fucking luck getting an engineer with 10 YOE for 85k.
This is exactly my experience. I asked for right around what you did and they said 95k was their absolute maximum which is laughable for real experience…
Especially since a lot of companies won’t really offer their max. That’s just their unicorn candidate offer.
Okay, because i thought i was tripping for a second. I'm still a pretty fresh engineer. about 2 years under my belt at this point. I see some of these job postings where the company is asking for 7-10 YOE and yet only paying 80-100k. Like yeah that was a good salary maybe back in 2016 but in 2024 those are rookie numbers now, tf.
I might start a separate thread on this story but I had something similar happen to me.
Recruiter reached out and told me they were looking for someone with 10 years of experience and the pay range was 90-100k. I literally laughed at her on the phone. Told her she was way off and good luck. Told her that she might be able to find someone with 2-3 years experience. She asked me what salary I wanted- being polite I told her we were too far off for me to counter and I didn’t want to waste her time. Granted I only have 7 years but I also have a Masters…
She pressed and said, no, I want your feedback. What would it take to get you? I told her minimum I would consider was 130k. I was unsure if I was really worth that because I don’t know many people with my experience in my area making that much.
She responded and said that she had spoken to 5 different engineers in the previous two weeks and every single one of them said their number was 130k. I felt great about that- we were holding the line and SOMEBODY was going to get paid. Hell yes.
I felt even better after the the recruiter told me she was going to take my resume and approach the hiring manger with her market research and she was going to see if they could pay me what I wanted. To me it was still an off chance since it was a huge increase from what they wanted in the range.
A few days go by.
I finally get a call back from her. She said “just to let you know, the company found another candidate that applied directly to them. They really like her and they think they’re going to hire her.”
I have no idea what they wound up paying her. But my guess is that the poor girl was willing to accept much less than the rest of the market.
It was pretty infuriating to see someone undercut a group of people trying to get value for our work.
It’s possible they dropped the experience requirement as well though. But that’s still a problem because what are they going to do when they have no choice but hire a real 10 year guy?
I'm job hunting in a pay transparency state right now. I'm mid career, but sometimes I'll check early or senior level positions to see what the pay scale is. I saw an entree level engineering position that was $56-$75k. Im in a MCOL with area trending into HCOL in some areas due to rapid growth, and these poor new grads are at less than $60k???
When I checked their mid level openings they maxed out at like $85k. Less than what I'm currently at and I feel like I'm under earning now. What kind of talent do they expect to bring in, or to stay?
They're honestly just taking advantage of new grads. Coming out of college alot of my classmates were seething at the mouth to put their degree to use and make big boy $. That and they just didn't wanna be broke anymore lol. Suffice to say that most have acknowledged they were taken advantage of and are starting to peek around the landscape to see what else is out there.
I get that. Even so, this particular role was a good 10% lower than the next lowest. Most I see are mid 60s up to mid 80s. Generally mid 60s is considered low on reddit, but if someone with some internship exp was able to get into the 70s that would be great.
Yeah they filled it (or at least removed the listing). I hope it was a new grad or someone with 1-2 YOE.
This cheap company can spend a couple years training up the new engineer so they can hop to a place that actually pays a competitive wage.
I make 108k base. Like 112k with bonus.
My previous post was the last employer I entertained. If you know of any test/controls engineering jobs that pay better in the Tampa FL area, I’m all ears lol.
I’ve never been to Tampa, it just seems like it’s really low based off of what I see people on this sub and averages saying. Maybe Tampa is a LCOL area, I don’t know.
King of the peasants is so true, and it’s worse when you consider the responsibility many of us wear is on a similar level of liability to doctors, and probably more than most lawyers… yet we get paid so much less.
Lol, remember college when we used to walk around campus with bundles of books on our backs, stressing exams, and watching the other majors play Frisbee, thinking we'd win after graduation?? Lmao, good tmes...jokes on us...
Yeah I message them back and they’re absolutely floored by my ask. Usually I’m about 30% above their maximum offer.
But hopefully their clients get the hint eventually.
I have below 1 YOE but I noticed that a lot of my colleagues are at the same company for at least 10 years.
They seem afraid of job changes.
One is still visibly traumatized that his old company went bankrupt.
As much as I like my current company and colleagues, I will certainly look around for higher wages soon.
I’m fighting for a living wage. But the result is that I’ve been unemployed for close to a year now and soon I won’t even be able to afford my internet bill to keep searching …
>Unlike the blood bath in SWE I still have recruiters message me weekly. Every time I message back to ask for 20% above what they offer, don’t even plan to take the job. Just doing it for the profession.
What a service for our field. Sometimes we just can't be confident for a raise when we are not that experienced. Or you are talking about those experienced ones.. Yeah
so when engineers find out their wages are losing to inflation, their response is telling others to stop whining because the salary is still high relative to median salary, instead of banding together and fighting for higher salary. No wonder engineer's relative salary has been drastically declining relative to doctor salary.
4+ decades ago, our salaries used to be almost on par with doctors. So basically similar to tech salaries today. Now we're barely above other white collar jobs like business analyst, maybe 5-10% higher.
If you've been job hopping, then your salaries might have beat inflation. But not every engineer job hopped, or else the whole industry would've gone crazy with 100% turnover. So obviously those engineers skewed down the average.
For all the people talking down about engineers there seem to be 10 people who love getting cucked by large companies I guess.
I don’t know what’s wrong with people and feeling the need to justify shit pay.
I work in accounting. I hit $92k after 3.5 years. I'm now at 5.5 YOE making $115k and I'm getting occasional interviews for $150-160k jobs. Realistically I could job hop to $135-140k right now if I wanted to give up full time WFH (I don't want to.) I'm in a MCOL area.
It's insane that EEs have much more difficult work and are getting fucked on salary, to the extent that it takes like a decade to hit $130k.
It’s because engineering grads make more than other degrees starting out so they think they make more than other white collar careers forever. I literally see it all the time, an engineer a decade in is shocked to realize a bunch of other white collar workers end up making more than them even though they started 20k lower (and spent a year less in college).
The number of engineers that still talk about $100,000 like it’s some enormous amount of money that nobody else makes except engineers is laughable. 100k today is literally, no hyperbole the same as 80k in 2019.
This. I realized if I hadn’t got a huge bump during Covid (from getting another offer of course) I would’ve been making today roughly how much I did when I started accounting for inflation.
That’s fucked.
Yeah that’s pretty true and I’ve noticed a lot of them don’t like talking about pay when the company or boss puts out a request not to talk about pay but I’ve seen massive differences in wages within similar grades for people who tend to fight for higher raises vs those who don’t advocate for it
There are painters at the plant I work out that make more than most of engineering coworkers. This is not me hating on painters. This is me saying that us engineers are no longer the highly paid people like we used to be. A lot of blue collar people make more than us and that’s just the hard truth. Almost makes me regret going to college
Ya, but then again I wfh in front of a computer and am, usually, at least somewhat mentally engaged in the project I'm working on.
If a construction worker makes more than me, good for them. They wake up early as hell and beat up their bodies. They deserve it.
My degree affords me a stable career with good pay, virtually no overtime, and a job that will not give me chronic pain or cancer. I think that's worth it even if there are other ways I could have achieved this salary.
I’ve seen my coworkers get 1 and 2% raises year after year for the last 4 years. I only stayed because I got a 18% raise for a promotion. I’m only a technician but I’m going back to school. I’m wondering if it’s better for me not to move into engineering these days
Yeah, engineers staying at their current positions tend to get raises lower than inflation. That's been my experience for nearly 15 years, with perhaps a short respite at a smaller firm (before they got bought by a big conglomerate). It's the cost of (hopefully) job security.
But, as we all (should) know, if you want the raise, you've got to change company. I'd be curious to compare these numbers to job changes to see if there's a correlation.
Been at my current employer for 28 years. I’ve never had a raise less than the rate of inflation. Most years double and promotion years much more. And for the last ten years bonuses have been 50-70%.
I’ve looked for other jobs. None are willing to pay what my current employer is paying.
In my experience, if you are a top performer and key to a business’ success, they will pay to keep you, assuming they are making money.
>In me experience, if you are a top performer and key to a business’ success, they will pay to keep you, assuming they are making money.
I talked with a manager at one of my former companies, and they said it was only around 10% of the engineering staff was categorized this way. Great if you're in that bucket, otherwise it explains the data.
Yeah, I work in the Semiconductor industry as a technician, and just got a 25% COLA this year.
I realized at my current *base* of $120k ($150k with OT and bonuses), I’m already effectively paid as much as a mid-career engineer, and no I’m not in California making that much. I’m in a MCOL desert city.
I’m still going to finish my degree because I want to make that transition, but objectively there’s really no financial incentive for me to.
Got any advice on getting towards what you’re doing?
If I was making 120k I’d be absolutely changing towards the semiconductor industry lol. I’m in consumer electronics and 70k is okay, but I’m targeting rates that get me 120-130k because it’s being eaten way down.
Apply! Come to Arizona.
Seriously, the industry is extremely short handed in skilled labor for the build out that’s happening now.
The pay is great, but it can be challenging work and the expectations are that you’ll hold your weight. It’s the coolest job I’ve ever had.
Never thought I’d be commissioning a leading edge Semiconductor factory in my life.
Not the guy you asked, but someone else with a technician background.
Just like the word engineer, technician covers a few different things. For my experience the less capable guys did preventative maintenance such as calibrations, greasing bearings, inspections etc. The guys with a more technical mind focus on troubleshooting.
Very hands on. Decently challenging, especially being multi craft. I was expected to be just as effective with a multimeter and plc as I was with bearing theory, mechanical assemblies, pneumatics, hydraulics etc.
Engineers in manufacturing have a hirer growth potential but it takes a while. Where I am a tech with 5 yrs experience (at a big company) expects around 80k-85k base but it’s an hourly position so don’t forget that’s on 40hrs/ wk and OT adds up. I’m in a LCOL area.
A traveling tech, the conversation starts probably 100k-120k and that’s usually actual salary position.
Honestly probably not, if money is what you're looking for tech or healthcare is your place. Do engineering if it's what you really like but it's not where the big bucks are
Hmm I'm not entirely sure for healthcare a lot of good jobs require more than 4 years of studying like radiologist nurse practitioner etc and for technology probably something AI or web related
But again you'll be paid well if you take the engineering route but I'd argue it has to be something you like cause if you want money there's better avenues
no surprise that jobs that are closer to a percieved "minimum worth wage" (i.e. "below X $ per hour, I rather stay at home") are the first ones to adjust to a rapid inflation wave.
It's not really surprising to me. When people need a lawyer, they really need them. When people need a surgeon, they really need them. When they need an accountant its all money maximizing, and you dont skimp.
Most people will never interface with an engineer for their needs the same way they do with these other professionals. Someone knows their doctor, their lawyer, their accountant by name. It's very personal. They don't know who signed off on the design of their house or car or phone. They don't care, and they probably will never think about it.
Now, if engineers overall asked for higher rates for work and didn't race to the bottom, they might keep up. If they had a little better PR, too, it would help. I had a job inter new last week, and the Principal mentioned engineers not wanting to answer the phone or talk to clients. Color me shocked they don't push for wages either.
Yeah I think the rage is rising. My group has lost about half of its experience when people realized they could make 30k more doing the same work for a contractor.
Same here, lost 2 of the most senior EEs on my team within the last month, about a 10 person team, and I also just left for a 60% raise. One is even commuting 1.5hrs for his new job that’s hybrid.
Lol...there was another sub where I commented that engineers make a good amount out of school, but they reach the ceiling pretty quick. I got so many downvotes for that comment and lots said I had no idea what I was talking about.
Management thinks management is what makes the company money, and they look out for management. My company constantly talks about providing a 'ladder' for the technical side, but when I asked in a town hall for a comparison of numbers of management vs engineering/science AT THE SAME PAY GRADE they declined. Even the managers I talked to admitted the ratio was probably at least 3:1.
No clue, there's really no way to infer causes from the data BLS puts out and I don't have the training or resources to try and figure out why this happened. I was just curious to see how engineers in general have been keeping up with inflation because I know so many personal stories of people that saw their income skyrocket during the pandemic I wasn't seeing that at all in the (non software) engineering world, I wanted to take a broader look at the data and see if it confirmed what I was seeing.
I like to Look at it this way: at least I was able to quickly find a job after graduation. A job that paid well enough to move out of my abusive parents house and become financially independent.
Meanwhile everyone on r/cscareerquestions talks about how hiring for CS majors is such a bloodbath and people haven’t found a job after months of searching (I found a job 1 month after graduation). It could’ve been a LOT worse.
The software industry definitely saw a downturn but as someone who just swapped jobs with a few years of experience, it wasn’t really that bad.
Gotta remember that sub is mostly just people bitching, and a lot of them aren’t near as talented/qualified as they think they are. There’s tons of 28 YOE, never went to college, only ever worked in fast food, etc guys complaining that they can’t find a job after submitting 100 quick applies apps on Indeed even though their sole qualification is 3 weeks of Python videos on YouTube.
I agree. It’s not 2021 hot, but it’s not completely dead in the water. You just need more than a pulse nowadays which is more sane.
It will also recover and a lot of the people who were just here for the gold rush will wash out.
As a computer engineering student, this is what gives me hope. I get my degree is more tailored towards software but the ability to jump into embedded makes it much more secure. Software jobs are insane
Off topic for sure, but I graduate in December (finally), and nobody has talked about what to expect, in terms of salary, when you get a first job. I have 3 years interning experience at a bigger tech company, so I don’t know how much that factors into it.
I’m heavily considering switching to EE from CS because of this. I like CS and I enjoy programming for the most part, but the job market seems so hopeless that doing anything feels useless and inconsequential and hopelessly depressing lol
It doesn’t matter what you do but remember one thing: the boss you have and the people you work with matter WAY more than the actual work you are doing. Assuming the pay was the same, You could be happy working as a janitor or miserable working at some big fancy tech company. You never figure this out until after you’ve worked a full-time job for a few years.
Some of my fondest work memories of working was for a part time catering job where we were all friends. Pay was bleh and conditions often sucked, but there was a comradery that doesn't exist in other jobs I've worked. I make more money now than I ever have, but due to some restructuring at work I'm pretty unsatisfied and lack any of that peer connection.
That’s the way my job is now. I’m good friends with all my coworkers and there’s something about working here that I haven’t experienced at other employers. The average tenure for engineers at my company is 10 years.
Unfortunately I’m going to have to leave soon because while my employer is great, the area they are based in is not. I live in the middle of nowhere and I have no friends in the area.
I believe it. My real, inflation adjusted, wage is lower now than when I graduated college. I feel like I'm hustling on a treadmill and falling further behind each year!
I’ve been bitching about how when I graduated in highschool electrical engineer average was the same in 2010 as it is now in 2024. Engineer wages have basically been flat, which means that it’s losing money when accounting for inflation.
Put your resume on Linked In. You'll get messages from recruiters all the time. There's money to be made if you want wage growth.
I'm fortunate enough where the company I work for leaves me alone to do my job, so I'm fairly complacent. That is almost as important to me as the money.
Key to wage and level growth as an Engineer: Change jobs as soon as you meet the next required level of knowledge and experience.
You have to look out for number 1. Always.
Yeah I believe it. Inflation since 2020 is ~21%.
My salary increased 30% in that time, but that took a job hop to modestly beat inflation. Not to mention I just hit 10 years of experience so my salary trajectory should have been increasing the most in that timeframe anyway.
Ive been trying to tell people this. The amount engineers are getting paid recently is stupid low, and they still want you to have 8-10 years of experience for that low pay. Insane.
I'm not that guy, pal. I'll go back to working other trades before I'm absolutely backed into a corner for a shit salary.
OP, I love you and nearly subscribed to electrical engineering as a knee jerk reaction, due to your well constructed insight.
Signed,
A Consulting Chemical Engineer
OP, I also love you and subscribed to electrical engineering as a knee jerk reaction, due to your well constructed insight.
Signed, A Consulting Civil (Transpo/Traffic) Engineer
Thanks for shining the light, Data Freak. I'm making 25% more than I did in 2019 and inflation (in my county considering home prices and rest) has gone up 30%. That -5% difference matches your data.
My memory of the pandemic is that while many other workers got sent home or got to work from home, the most I got to do it was once a week IF all the stars aligned just right.
The field covered the whole range. Even just myself, I had everything from full remote (which my current position still is) through to being deemed essential and given a legal document in case I got stopped by police on my way to a test event the week my state got shutdown orders.
In my experience the oldest guys end up being some of the more underpaid. They usually stayed at jobs for decades and only got 1-2% raises a year.
I interned at a place in college, and my first job out of school was more than both my bosses as an intern, and they were both in their 50’s with +20 YOE.
My current boss likely makes 30-40k less than he would if he left for a comparable job, he’s been at our current job since he graduated in 2010.
Yeah, I have an older guy at work, full on principle engineer being paid like 150K. He’s one of the most important engineers at the company.
I have been an engineer for 6 years and make almost that much. It’s crazy what people will just accept
I'm an EE in a LCOL making $120k and just interviewed several positions offering $140k. Will I take them? No! I'd have to give up 100% WFH and miss out on my young kids life. Some things you can't put a price on.
As a bioengineer I can confirm things did get worse. We really gotta stop allowing this shit to happen. So many offers I get are at the 80k range for 5+ years experience... that is wayyyyy too low. I started telling them to piss off. its infuriating.
Why bother having Electrical engineering and electrical engineering minus computers. Just call them what they are: electrical engineering and computer engineering, or software and hardware engineering. Most electrical engineers I know are not computer engineers and vice versa.
Engineers are fine getting the paltry 3% raises every year. Your skills have improved, you work more efficiently, and you have experience. Raises should be 6% minimum. We do important things, and most of us are fine getting paid chump change.
Crazy how all the “high paying” careers saw big drops and all the “low paying” careers saw gains. The transition to a service economy continues. As the rich get richer, they have less reason to invest in high educated workers who can help their corporations and products compete. The free market is getting less free, and the upper class is ossifying, leaving the rest of us to trade our pennies in the mud or if we are lucky, get the chance to personally serve Jeff bezos on his private yacht.
What makes you say civil engineers “aren’t real engineers and don’t have to take all the hard university courses?” You realize civil engineers are a very broad group of “real engineers” right?
I don’t think someone being annoyed they were referred to as “not real engineers” when they take on the most liability and risk out of every other type of engineer means they have a chip on their shoulder.
In fact, if you ask any layman what a “real engineer” does, 80% of them will say “designs bridges and buildings”. So it’s pretty ironic they don’t say “overeducated electrician”.
I make 72k a year on an Associates degree working as a technician. Learn a hands on skill like using bench test equipment.
We let a tech go who had a bachelor's in EE but had zero hands on experience with equipment. Too many EEs with theoretical knowledge who have never held a set of probes. Get your hands dirty and suddenly your pay skyrockets.
What's the COL? My first job out of college 15 years ago as an EE was $85k, and I've more than doubled that since.
Which isn't to say that a skilled technician isn't great to have, they're worth their weight in gold. Though in my experience it's not so much bench test where they make the big bucks, but the ones who can do assembly and rework.
Even an engineer can plug a component into a test system (I say this as a former test development engineer), but even the best engineer with a soldering iron isn't going to hold a candle to a good rework technician. You can bet the tech who can solder 30 AWG wires to an upside down SMD to fix a layout error is going to make bank.
I mean, my salary ballooned from $120k to $185k.
But I used the market to my advantage and switched jobs. Most engineers are introverted nerds that don't have the backbone to make moves and demand change. They sit quietly at the same desk for 20 years taking the shaft.
The items along the y-axis in the first graph also conviently double as a list of occupations roughly sorted by decreasing median salary 🤔 (with a few outliers).
I assume this is for the USA only.
It'll be very regional.
In my company (not in the USA), those engineers working in the built environment / building services sector, had major issues holding on to their jobs. Many were retrenched or moved to another group.
In energy, we were going gangbusters, couldn't get enough people! Wages still moved up, demand was high.
I was on a project that had just signed leading into the pandemic and we still had to deliver... so I was crazy busy myself.
I'm starting my first engineering job for a large company in a week, how much experience should I get before I ask for mote pay or move jobs? Is it good to job hop early in your career?
My rule of thumb is to not look to jump in less than a year except in a super toxic environment, and try to keep the average well above a year so you're not seen as a flight risk (my wife almost didn't get hired for a job because they didn't ask her to explain her work history and just assumed the worst, the referring manager needed to step in).
I'll also add that you need to consider the rest of the compensation and lifestyle. Benefits, location, etc. I stayed at my first company for almost a decade, almost entirely for the stability and security. I sometimes wish I had been a little less risk averse, but it was the right decision at the time and it paid off in the end with job and life experience.
I agree with folks suggesting to either job hop or demand a pay raise, although it's a shame that international students have the sole option of just sticking to what job they get due to a fear of being kicked out, rather than getting a liveable wage, especially considering the job market for folks who graduated this year
I'm not too worried about this graph. I took a new job in same town in 2021 and got a raise, from 40 to 0% travel, 0 OT, 0 stress. My only possible complaint is 25-40min commute. The rest of you can be the statistic this graph exhibits.
Semiconductor industry boomed during the pandemic. Total compensation increased due to bonuses and stock based compensation.
The timidity of engineers in fighting for raises is still true.
Electric Engineer here with 12 years of experience in high voltage substation commissioning, I think most of us just want to job get done we just don't have time to complain I'm a type of guy which sits back and make things happen.
It's sometimes hard because most of mangers doesn't see how important our work is beucae one things go wrong we are responsible to protect transmission lines and transformers.
There aren't many young people getting into industry and I think most companies will find out to late that getting training engineer is harder than training IT guy because engineers need to learn on site when I was entering job market I was working on travel most of time but the experience which I got was priceless.
Engineers have thought life but for people which like challenges and have some impact it's great job and won't complain loud but better salary is always good
How does this data actually get compiled? Anecdotal of course, but I got a 10% raise the last two years. So does that mean I did 15% better than the industry? Or is it based on inflation too (assuming 7%) so that I was only 8% better than the industry? The graph itself is informative, but I’m trying to figure out why the numbers are they way they are when I didn’t experience the same thing. It could also be that I’ve been underpaid, so my raises have been “catch-up” from previous years’ standards.
Electrical engineers don’t make twice the median household income, the median household isn’t actually a two person household like you’re imagining, and you shouldn’t compare your income to people on fixed incomes (like social security recipients), you should compare it to other full time workers that have college degrees (an actual apples to apples comparison).
If someone is making 40k working 20 hours a week and I make 80k working 40 hours a week I don’t want them in the dataset I’m comparing my income because it makes it look like I’m doing much better than I am.
I don’t know why you’re not upset that the purchasing power of your career path went down nearly 10% in 4 years, it can take a decade in a good economy to get 10% real income gains, that’s not trivial.
Well, I mean a lot of those positions above engineer are essential workers and they deserve to be paid more and engineers deserve to be paid less. Like grounds keeping, or food prep? Even if your wage as an engineer lowers and their raises go up I doubt you'd want their jobs anyways lol.
Engineers tend to let themselves be shit-on.
Agreed. I’m surprised at how complacent my co-workers are with a lot of things.
ngl I am the same. The CEO at my workplace (big international company) was like "listen guys it was awesome to have WFH but I kinda need yall to go back to the office and waste a ton of time commutting and shit, why? Because fuck you". That shit blows and I bet we could stop this but people would rather just lay low and keep their jobs when they clearly need us more than we need them.
I voted with my feet on that one. I'm still 100% remote... At a different company.
Same here. Turned down a counter offer for an extra $20k above what the new position offered, that's how much it meant to me not to have to go into the office.
That's ultimately what Im gonna do I think. We're still not back because there's not enough office space at all, but as soon as they make us hybrid I'll be looking elsewhere.
Get up and do your time maggot.
yes sir
Basically ya, it’s going on in this thread lol I will add tho, one of the best ways to get a raise is to job hop, and it’s harder for engineers because it involves relocating. Often times a competitor is states away. Nurses or lawyers can relocate in their locale, just down the street
Yeah, good point about the relocation. When you have a specific skill set, it’s difficult to easily hop. I’ve seen my employer walk people out the door with 5 minutes notice (if that), and I’ve made it clear that arrangement is reciprocal.
This depends on the field and location. There's lots of technology hubs where you'll have multiple competitors in the same location. Think Silicon Valley, Boston, the DC area for federal contracting, Detroit before the auto industry collapsed, etc.
Agree. Wild what we put up with. One of the reasons I’ve long felt we should have unions.
Never gonna happen, though I suppose Boeing is an example (though look what shit they are in because engineers didn’t stand up for themselves). It’s the way engineers are trained, put through a wringer where 67% flunk out, then the remaining students are trying to outcompete one another for top grades and prestigious employers (no such thing). They then do the same in industry, trying to out-design one another and putting in tons of uncompensated hours, and handing over the only real thing they are good for (intellectual property) like a drunk hands $ at a strip club. They even brag about how many patents they have; sorry chump, you have no patents, your employer does, and they probably gave you $100 for submitting it. The MBA managers eat this shit up. In a union, you’d be yelled at for working too fast.
In a bad union you get yelled at for working too fast. There already is an Aerospace Engineering Union that popped up recently. I don't know much about it as I'm Mech but that's more than we've had in the past
It's weird. All of the engineers I've worked with (I'm chemical, but this popped up in my feed) are great with numbers... until it involves selling their time, then they suddenly don't understand why overtime is usually 1.5X. Because it's very hard to replace time.
There's no way to have unions with HB1visas coming in dude. Companies will just lobby to remove the 80k per year cap.
Hisssssssssss Stop saying the forbidden words. IT BURNS US!
Finally being in a union as an engineer is the best feeling ever
I'd like to see what this is broken down by discipline within EE Mostly looking to see how RF did, ha
I’m guessing it’s in-front of the inflation curve since so few people do it, it’s mostly military-industrial complex related, and several wars have kicked off in the last few years. My employer had emergency mid-year bumps to compensate, though I think it’s just barely enough to compensate.
Sounds about right
Maybe it’s because I’m still early in my career (been a licensed PE civil/structural for 3 years), but I have been actively pushing for pay raises as often as I can. I’ve nearly doubled my salary in 2 years. Two years ago I switched to a new firm and got a 20% raise, then I’ve pushed my current boss for raises while proving my worth and have gotten them. Do people not pressure bosses for raises anymore?
Bigger companies have fairly structured raise processes so it's completely out of their bosses hands. Job hopping is the best option for most but if you don't have a lot of options near you that can also be hard. Now in my thirties with kids and a house moving would put significant strain on my family, even moving jobs and needing to deal with new benefits accounts can be a royal pain.
When I left my first company, my manager couldn't even make me a counter offer that wouldn't come from the department's budget for yearly raises the following year. Not only did I not want to screw over my coworkers, it would have hurt me as well.
>>Do people not pressure bosses for raises anymore? Engineers tend not to from my experience. Two reasons. 1) They're way too focused on the technical problem at hand, and 2) University doesn't teach them how to negotiate, plan a career, or even acknowledge that it's a crucial skill. No technical school does, and Engineers are poorer for it. Other industry sectors have gotten round this problem via unionization, which effectively outsources the task of wage negotiation. As you've found out, they fastest way to a wage increase is to move jobs every so often, but you need to keep your skill set current and broad enough to appeal to many companies for that if it's to work in your favor. Planning a lucrative career is harder than it looks, esp in Engineering as it changes so fast.
3) the market was saturated with new engineers in the early 00-10s. 4) management thinks you can offshore a lot of the work to design firms in other countries and keep a few on board for quality control.
"The board hasn't approved any raises right now" So I left and got a 40% raise. If I can't do another 10 or 20% in the next year I'll leave again.
Nice! Yeah as another person commented under my comment, not everyone can just leave their job, which really sucks. Fortunately there's a lot of remote work. At the small firm I'm at (there's like 10 of us) it's pretty laid back. I'm in office about 3 days per week and WFH 2 days per week. However I plan on moving to be closer to my family in the next few years, and I figure my boss will either let me go full remote, or I'll find a new job. I'm guessing he'll let me go full remote since I'm the top billing employee lol. So for those that can't move, look for jobs that are fully remote. Even if you don't have a home office there's libraries you can go to and work at. I've even worked in the food court at grocery stores and gotten tons done. It's nice being mobile.
Facts. Noticed that out of school, very low testosterone folks.
I think as engineers most of us tend to overthink in shitty situations, especially when you feel like you can't trust others in your situation. You could start a union, but the only thing engineers hate more than taking orders from others is taking orders from another engineer. Also, what if 10 people don't listen? Or someone snitches?
It’s like we like suffering lol
Real engineer in industry here: it’s because the guys are timid as fuck. None of them are fighting for raises, none of them are demanding higher salaries from competitors, none of them are demanding WFH. It’s sad. I saw a doctor on here call engineers “the kings of the peasants”. So true. Read some other posts on this thread, it’s not even a supply problem it’s the people in the profession actively encouraging others to not fight for higher pay. We have our hands in so much in this world. The phone I’m typing on, the power in my house, the PCM/ECM in my car, the ventilators used on covid patients. We are important, act like it. Unlike the blood bath in SWE I still have recruiters message me weekly. Every time I message back to ask for 20% above what they offer, don’t even plan to take the job. Just doing it for the profession.
Every job I leave, I tell them it's because their pay isn't enough. Every job I don't take, every LinkedIn recruiter I don't get go next steps with, I tell them it's because their pay isn't enough. I'm doing my part o7
Facts. I haven't taken a job this past year due to that. Just taken my time, waiting for someone to pay me right. (I'm not in a rush.)
I'm doing my part! o7
I had a recruiter message me for a salary I started at with zero experience back in 2017. I didn’t respond the first three times but I finally told them why I wasn’t responding to that.
I think engineering pay has also gone down because there’s too much dead-weight and bullshit-job people in engineering companies. It’s similar to education where teachers salaries are shit yet $15k/student is spent, and the administration is bloated. Engineers are billed out at rates far above their compensation, and it’s to support all the dead weight. And no…healthcare, 401k match, employer paid SS and unemployment, etc does not add up to equivalent base pay. I don’t cost 2x what I’m paid.
lol. I was billed out around 5x what I was paid at my last job. Defense aero numbers are simply made up.
Same here. Someone’s got to pay for all those overhead bullshit jobs.
I work with big consulting engineering firms and the bloat is real. Every meeting with them is a room full of supervisors, BD guys, and all manner of "handlers" to make sure I'm a happy client - yet the engineers doing the actual work are rarely there. The result is muddy communication channels with tons of middlemen. I went to an open house at one firm that moved to a bigger office, and was surprised to learn they didn't even *invite* most of their designers to their own event. It was all sales guys and managers. ...and in my experience, the big firms actually end up delivering worse designs with more errors and omissions than the smaller/more local ones. There's one big firm that has developed such a reputation that we call them the Boeing of consultants... ETA I'm an engineer by training, just end up on the Client side a lot. I would much rather deal directly with other engineers but I rarely get the choice, lol.
That’s not too bad. I checked my comp vs rate and I get paid $49 for every $260 charged.
Might wanna check your math lol
I had a recruiter reach out to me a couple months ago. I was genuinely interested in their position. I met every qualification they listed in their listing, which is probably why they reached out to me. They could see I have 10 years of experience on my LinkedIn if they bothered to look. I was interested but I’m relatively content at my current employer so I threw out 20% more than I make now as my salary expectation. I asked for 130k. They emailed me back and said their range was 75k-85k. In an area where the cheapest livable house on Zillow is 380k and even that would be hard to find. I just said “no thanks” lol. I wanted to refer them to a college job fair so badly. Like good fucking luck getting an engineer with 10 YOE for 85k.
This is exactly my experience. I asked for right around what you did and they said 95k was their absolute maximum which is laughable for real experience… Especially since a lot of companies won’t really offer their max. That’s just their unicorn candidate offer.
95k today is about 78k in 2020 money. That's just pathetic.
Yup and this particular job wasn’t for a small no name. It was for Toyota.
Okay, because i thought i was tripping for a second. I'm still a pretty fresh engineer. about 2 years under my belt at this point. I see some of these job postings where the company is asking for 7-10 YOE and yet only paying 80-100k. Like yeah that was a good salary maybe back in 2016 but in 2024 those are rookie numbers now, tf.
I might start a separate thread on this story but I had something similar happen to me. Recruiter reached out and told me they were looking for someone with 10 years of experience and the pay range was 90-100k. I literally laughed at her on the phone. Told her she was way off and good luck. Told her that she might be able to find someone with 2-3 years experience. She asked me what salary I wanted- being polite I told her we were too far off for me to counter and I didn’t want to waste her time. Granted I only have 7 years but I also have a Masters… She pressed and said, no, I want your feedback. What would it take to get you? I told her minimum I would consider was 130k. I was unsure if I was really worth that because I don’t know many people with my experience in my area making that much. She responded and said that she had spoken to 5 different engineers in the previous two weeks and every single one of them said their number was 130k. I felt great about that- we were holding the line and SOMEBODY was going to get paid. Hell yes. I felt even better after the the recruiter told me she was going to take my resume and approach the hiring manger with her market research and she was going to see if they could pay me what I wanted. To me it was still an off chance since it was a huge increase from what they wanted in the range. A few days go by. I finally get a call back from her. She said “just to let you know, the company found another candidate that applied directly to them. They really like her and they think they’re going to hire her.” I have no idea what they wound up paying her. But my guess is that the poor girl was willing to accept much less than the rest of the market. It was pretty infuriating to see someone undercut a group of people trying to get value for our work. It’s possible they dropped the experience requirement as well though. But that’s still a problem because what are they going to do when they have no choice but hire a real 10 year guy?
I'm job hunting in a pay transparency state right now. I'm mid career, but sometimes I'll check early or senior level positions to see what the pay scale is. I saw an entree level engineering position that was $56-$75k. Im in a MCOL with area trending into HCOL in some areas due to rapid growth, and these poor new grads are at less than $60k??? When I checked their mid level openings they maxed out at like $85k. Less than what I'm currently at and I feel like I'm under earning now. What kind of talent do they expect to bring in, or to stay?
They're honestly just taking advantage of new grads. Coming out of college alot of my classmates were seething at the mouth to put their degree to use and make big boy $. That and they just didn't wanna be broke anymore lol. Suffice to say that most have acknowledged they were taken advantage of and are starting to peek around the landscape to see what else is out there.
I get that. Even so, this particular role was a good 10% lower than the next lowest. Most I see are mid 60s up to mid 80s. Generally mid 60s is considered low on reddit, but if someone with some internship exp was able to get into the 70s that would be great.
What hurts is.. someone will take it :(
Yeah they filled it (or at least removed the listing). I hope it was a new grad or someone with 1-2 YOE. This cheap company can spend a couple years training up the new engineer so they can hop to a place that actually pays a competitive wage.
They'll find some HB1 slave to take it.
That's what H1B visas are for, and why companies love them so much.
You only make 104k with 10 YOE? I’m sorry but that sounds awful! Can you just not find a better job?
I make 108k base. Like 112k with bonus. My previous post was the last employer I entertained. If you know of any test/controls engineering jobs that pay better in the Tampa FL area, I’m all ears lol.
I’ve never been to Tampa, it just seems like it’s really low based off of what I see people on this sub and averages saying. Maybe Tampa is a LCOL area, I don’t know.
Tampa is definitely MCOL pushing higher COL. The problem is the wages don’t reflect how much the area costs to live in unfortunately.
King of the peasants is so true, and it’s worse when you consider the responsibility many of us wear is on a similar level of liability to doctors, and probably more than most lawyers… yet we get paid so much less.
Lol, remember college when we used to walk around campus with bundles of books on our backs, stressing exams, and watching the other majors play Frisbee, thinking we'd win after graduation?? Lmao, good tmes...jokes on us...
And people will constantly downvote me on this sub when I tell people go into accounting instead of engineering.
"just doing it for the profession" - not only is this guy goated but he's also, morally and ethically, upholding the value of the entire trade. BASED
Yep I had a company approach me 3 times. Each time I turned them down until I was happy with the offer.
Yeah I message them back and they’re absolutely floored by my ask. Usually I’m about 30% above their maximum offer. But hopefully their clients get the hint eventually.
I have below 1 YOE but I noticed that a lot of my colleagues are at the same company for at least 10 years. They seem afraid of job changes. One is still visibly traumatized that his old company went bankrupt. As much as I like my current company and colleagues, I will certainly look around for higher wages soon.
My uncle is in the same boat, he's nervous of talking to HR because they want differently then what the department needs.
I’m fighting for a living wage. But the result is that I’ve been unemployed for close to a year now and soon I won’t even be able to afford my internet bill to keep searching …
>Unlike the blood bath in SWE I still have recruiters message me weekly. Every time I message back to ask for 20% above what they offer, don’t even plan to take the job. Just doing it for the profession. What a service for our field. Sometimes we just can't be confident for a raise when we are not that experienced. Or you are talking about those experienced ones.. Yeah
so when engineers find out their wages are losing to inflation, their response is telling others to stop whining because the salary is still high relative to median salary, instead of banding together and fighting for higher salary. No wonder engineer's relative salary has been drastically declining relative to doctor salary. 4+ decades ago, our salaries used to be almost on par with doctors. So basically similar to tech salaries today. Now we're barely above other white collar jobs like business analyst, maybe 5-10% higher. If you've been job hopping, then your salaries might have beat inflation. But not every engineer job hopped, or else the whole industry would've gone crazy with 100% turnover. So obviously those engineers skewed down the average.
100% this. The amount of excuses in this thread is concerning.
For all the people talking down about engineers there seem to be 10 people who love getting cucked by large companies I guess. I don’t know what’s wrong with people and feeling the need to justify shit pay.
I work in accounting. I hit $92k after 3.5 years. I'm now at 5.5 YOE making $115k and I'm getting occasional interviews for $150-160k jobs. Realistically I could job hop to $135-140k right now if I wanted to give up full time WFH (I don't want to.) I'm in a MCOL area. It's insane that EEs have much more difficult work and are getting fucked on salary, to the extent that it takes like a decade to hit $130k.
It’s because engineering grads make more than other degrees starting out so they think they make more than other white collar careers forever. I literally see it all the time, an engineer a decade in is shocked to realize a bunch of other white collar workers end up making more than them even though they started 20k lower (and spent a year less in college). The number of engineers that still talk about $100,000 like it’s some enormous amount of money that nobody else makes except engineers is laughable. 100k today is literally, no hyperbole the same as 80k in 2019.
$200k is the new $100k, and $1M will only get you poverty retirement.
This. I realized if I hadn’t got a huge bump during Covid (from getting another offer of course) I would’ve been making today roughly how much I did when I started accounting for inflation. That’s fucked.
Yeah that’s pretty true and I’ve noticed a lot of them don’t like talking about pay when the company or boss puts out a request not to talk about pay but I’ve seen massive differences in wages within similar grades for people who tend to fight for higher raises vs those who don’t advocate for it
There are painters at the plant I work out that make more than most of engineering coworkers. This is not me hating on painters. This is me saying that us engineers are no longer the highly paid people like we used to be. A lot of blue collar people make more than us and that’s just the hard truth. Almost makes me regret going to college
well blue collars have unions to fight for higher salaries. We have our fellow engineers fighting for lower salaries lol
And skilled technicians are rare and in demand. Last I checked, referrals for a talented technician could pay out as much as referring a PhD.
Ya, but then again I wfh in front of a computer and am, usually, at least somewhat mentally engaged in the project I'm working on. If a construction worker makes more than me, good for them. They wake up early as hell and beat up their bodies. They deserve it. My degree affords me a stable career with good pay, virtually no overtime, and a job that will not give me chronic pain or cancer. I think that's worth it even if there are other ways I could have achieved this salary.
Engineer married to a doctor- no the hell they weren’t 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I’ve seen my coworkers get 1 and 2% raises year after year for the last 4 years. I only stayed because I got a 18% raise for a promotion. I’m only a technician but I’m going back to school. I’m wondering if it’s better for me not to move into engineering these days
Based on OP's data, you should quit and work in fast food. That's where the real wage growth is. /s
Sell low buy high.
Yeah, engineers staying at their current positions tend to get raises lower than inflation. That's been my experience for nearly 15 years, with perhaps a short respite at a smaller firm (before they got bought by a big conglomerate). It's the cost of (hopefully) job security. But, as we all (should) know, if you want the raise, you've got to change company. I'd be curious to compare these numbers to job changes to see if there's a correlation.
Been at my current employer for 28 years. I’ve never had a raise less than the rate of inflation. Most years double and promotion years much more. And for the last ten years bonuses have been 50-70%. I’ve looked for other jobs. None are willing to pay what my current employer is paying. In my experience, if you are a top performer and key to a business’ success, they will pay to keep you, assuming they are making money.
>In me experience, if you are a top performer and key to a business’ success, they will pay to keep you, assuming they are making money. I talked with a manager at one of my former companies, and they said it was only around 10% of the engineering staff was categorized this way. Great if you're in that bucket, otherwise it explains the data.
Yeah, I work in the Semiconductor industry as a technician, and just got a 25% COLA this year. I realized at my current *base* of $120k ($150k with OT and bonuses), I’m already effectively paid as much as a mid-career engineer, and no I’m not in California making that much. I’m in a MCOL desert city. I’m still going to finish my degree because I want to make that transition, but objectively there’s really no financial incentive for me to.
Got any advice on getting towards what you’re doing? If I was making 120k I’d be absolutely changing towards the semiconductor industry lol. I’m in consumer electronics and 70k is okay, but I’m targeting rates that get me 120-130k because it’s being eaten way down.
Apply! Come to Arizona. Seriously, the industry is extremely short handed in skilled labor for the build out that’s happening now. The pay is great, but it can be challenging work and the expectations are that you’ll hold your weight. It’s the coolest job I’ve ever had. Never thought I’d be commissioning a leading edge Semiconductor factory in my life.
You mind if I DM you and pick your brain about it?
Go for it!
Sent. Thanks dude
I got a 20% raise at the beginning of the 2020s, but I kept slipping up and calling it a COLA when thanking my supervisor for giving it to me.
What exactly does your role entail as a technician? Do you work with your hands, and is it mentally challenging?
Not the guy you asked, but someone else with a technician background. Just like the word engineer, technician covers a few different things. For my experience the less capable guys did preventative maintenance such as calibrations, greasing bearings, inspections etc. The guys with a more technical mind focus on troubleshooting. Very hands on. Decently challenging, especially being multi craft. I was expected to be just as effective with a multimeter and plc as I was with bearing theory, mechanical assemblies, pneumatics, hydraulics etc. Engineers in manufacturing have a hirer growth potential but it takes a while. Where I am a tech with 5 yrs experience (at a big company) expects around 80k-85k base but it’s an hourly position so don’t forget that’s on 40hrs/ wk and OT adds up. I’m in a LCOL area. A traveling tech, the conversation starts probably 100k-120k and that’s usually actual salary position.
Thank you very much for your response!
The pandemic was one of the most profitable times for my company and I doubled my income during it, so I'm not complaining.
Honestly probably not, if money is what you're looking for tech or healthcare is your place. Do engineering if it's what you really like but it's not where the big bucks are
The hard part is finding out what exactly is the route if it’s not engineering. There’s a lot of jobs in tech and in healthcare
Hmm I'm not entirely sure for healthcare a lot of good jobs require more than 4 years of studying like radiologist nurse practitioner etc and for technology probably something AI or web related But again you'll be paid well if you take the engineering route but I'd argue it has to be something you like cause if you want money there's better avenues
no surprise that jobs that are closer to a percieved "minimum worth wage" (i.e. "below X $ per hour, I rather stay at home") are the first ones to adjust to a rapid inflation wave.
Lawyers somehow still go up, overcharging regardless of economic climate
Yeah such pieces of shit not bringing value for humanity, fuck them
Plenty of value! Mostly in protecting you from other people abusing the legal system.
or helping people abuse you using the legal system.
Well of course! I mean bros before the greater good, right!?!?
I mean I think they bring value but they just have a history of being sleazy
I love being a lawyer lol
It's because lawyers are the programmers of the real world. Everyone is following the laws/codes that they have written.
It’s a positive feedback profession. The more lawyers you have, the more you need.
It's not really surprising to me. When people need a lawyer, they really need them. When people need a surgeon, they really need them. When they need an accountant its all money maximizing, and you dont skimp. Most people will never interface with an engineer for their needs the same way they do with these other professionals. Someone knows their doctor, their lawyer, their accountant by name. It's very personal. They don't know who signed off on the design of their house or car or phone. They don't care, and they probably will never think about it. Now, if engineers overall asked for higher rates for work and didn't race to the bottom, they might keep up. If they had a little better PR, too, it would help. I had a job inter new last week, and the Principal mentioned engineers not wanting to answer the phone or talk to clients. Color me shocked they don't push for wages either.
Yeah I think the rage is rising. My group has lost about half of its experience when people realized they could make 30k more doing the same work for a contractor.
Same here, lost 2 of the most senior EEs on my team within the last month, about a 10 person team, and I also just left for a 60% raise. One is even commuting 1.5hrs for his new job that’s hybrid.
Lol...there was another sub where I commented that engineers make a good amount out of school, but they reach the ceiling pretty quick. I got so many downvotes for that comment and lots said I had no idea what I was talking about.
It’s super true. Which was fine when the ceiling actually made sense for the required knowledge.
Management thinks management is what makes the company money, and they look out for management. My company constantly talks about providing a 'ladder' for the technical side, but when I asked in a town hall for a comparison of numbers of management vs engineering/science AT THE SAME PAY GRADE they declined. Even the managers I talked to admitted the ratio was probably at least 3:1.
How much of that had to do with rising interest rates and engineering jobs going overseas?
No clue, there's really no way to infer causes from the data BLS puts out and I don't have the training or resources to try and figure out why this happened. I was just curious to see how engineers in general have been keeping up with inflation because I know so many personal stories of people that saw their income skyrocket during the pandemic I wasn't seeing that at all in the (non software) engineering world, I wanted to take a broader look at the data and see if it confirmed what I was seeing.
Or even labourers being brought in from other countries. Most of the interns this summer at my work place are not from the country I live in.
I like to Look at it this way: at least I was able to quickly find a job after graduation. A job that paid well enough to move out of my abusive parents house and become financially independent. Meanwhile everyone on r/cscareerquestions talks about how hiring for CS majors is such a bloodbath and people haven’t found a job after months of searching (I found a job 1 month after graduation). It could’ve been a LOT worse.
The software industry definitely saw a downturn but as someone who just swapped jobs with a few years of experience, it wasn’t really that bad. Gotta remember that sub is mostly just people bitching, and a lot of them aren’t near as talented/qualified as they think they are. There’s tons of 28 YOE, never went to college, only ever worked in fast food, etc guys complaining that they can’t find a job after submitting 100 quick applies apps on Indeed even though their sole qualification is 3 weeks of Python videos on YouTube.
I agree. It’s not 2021 hot, but it’s not completely dead in the water. You just need more than a pulse nowadays which is more sane. It will also recover and a lot of the people who were just here for the gold rush will wash out.
As a computer engineering student, this is what gives me hope. I get my degree is more tailored towards software but the ability to jump into embedded makes it much more secure. Software jobs are insane
Web dev jobs blow my mind. The compensation vs understanding curve is pretty messed up right now. It’s even more wonky in the AI space though.
Off topic for sure, but I graduate in December (finally), and nobody has talked about what to expect, in terms of salary, when you get a first job. I have 3 years interning experience at a bigger tech company, so I don’t know how much that factors into it.
I’m heavily considering switching to EE from CS because of this. I like CS and I enjoy programming for the most part, but the job market seems so hopeless that doing anything feels useless and inconsequential and hopelessly depressing lol
It doesn’t matter what you do but remember one thing: the boss you have and the people you work with matter WAY more than the actual work you are doing. Assuming the pay was the same, You could be happy working as a janitor or miserable working at some big fancy tech company. You never figure this out until after you’ve worked a full-time job for a few years.
Some of my fondest work memories of working was for a part time catering job where we were all friends. Pay was bleh and conditions often sucked, but there was a comradery that doesn't exist in other jobs I've worked. I make more money now than I ever have, but due to some restructuring at work I'm pretty unsatisfied and lack any of that peer connection.
That’s the way my job is now. I’m good friends with all my coworkers and there’s something about working here that I haven’t experienced at other employers. The average tenure for engineers at my company is 10 years. Unfortunately I’m going to have to leave soon because while my employer is great, the area they are based in is not. I live in the middle of nowhere and I have no friends in the area.
I believe it. My real, inflation adjusted, wage is lower now than when I graduated college. I feel like I'm hustling on a treadmill and falling further behind each year!
I’ve been bitching about how when I graduated in highschool electrical engineer average was the same in 2010 as it is now in 2024. Engineer wages have basically been flat, which means that it’s losing money when accounting for inflation.
Put your resume on Linked In. You'll get messages from recruiters all the time. There's money to be made if you want wage growth. I'm fortunate enough where the company I work for leaves me alone to do my job, so I'm fairly complacent. That is almost as important to me as the money.
Key to wage and level growth as an Engineer: Change jobs as soon as you meet the next required level of knowledge and experience. You have to look out for number 1. Always.
Yeah I believe it. Inflation since 2020 is ~21%. My salary increased 30% in that time, but that took a job hop to modestly beat inflation. Not to mention I just hit 10 years of experience so my salary trajectory should have been increasing the most in that timeframe anyway.
Ive been trying to tell people this. The amount engineers are getting paid recently is stupid low, and they still want you to have 8-10 years of experience for that low pay. Insane. I'm not that guy, pal. I'll go back to working other trades before I'm absolutely backed into a corner for a shit salary.
OP, I love you and nearly subscribed to electrical engineering as a knee jerk reaction, due to your well constructed insight. Signed, A Consulting Chemical Engineer
OP, I also love you and subscribed to electrical engineering as a knee jerk reaction, due to your well constructed insight. Signed, A Consulting Civil (Transpo/Traffic) Engineer
And considering how Petroleum tends to be folded into Chemicals... Man, shoulda gone with EE as my major.
Let's unionize
Thanks for shining the light, Data Freak. I'm making 25% more than I did in 2019 and inflation (in my county considering home prices and rest) has gone up 30%. That -5% difference matches your data.
My memory of the pandemic is that while many other workers got sent home or got to work from home, the most I got to do it was once a week IF all the stars aligned just right.
The field covered the whole range. Even just myself, I had everything from full remote (which my current position still is) through to being deemed essential and given a legal document in case I got stopped by police on my way to a test event the week my state got shutdown orders.
Yeah, there was a lot of variation. At least I was never at risk of losing my job
Could be that older engineers retired or died from Covid, so the median wage went down because they were the highest paid…
In my experience the oldest guys end up being some of the more underpaid. They usually stayed at jobs for decades and only got 1-2% raises a year. I interned at a place in college, and my first job out of school was more than both my bosses as an intern, and they were both in their 50’s with +20 YOE. My current boss likely makes 30-40k less than he would if he left for a comparable job, he’s been at our current job since he graduated in 2010.
Yeah, I have an older guy at work, full on principle engineer being paid like 150K. He’s one of the most important engineers at the company. I have been an engineer for 6 years and make almost that much. It’s crazy what people will just accept
I'm an EE in a LCOL making $120k and just interviewed several positions offering $140k. Will I take them? No! I'd have to give up 100% WFH and miss out on my young kids life. Some things you can't put a price on.
…and yet the US still supposedly needs H1B workers?
I am glad to see fast food employees getting more wages. They deal with so much shit.
Hey don't wrap us in with glorified artists.
As a bioengineer I can confirm things did get worse. We really gotta stop allowing this shit to happen. So many offers I get are at the 80k range for 5+ years experience... that is wayyyyy too low. I started telling them to piss off. its infuriating.
Imagine if every engineer started asking for actual pay compared to the hr or marketing department that pretends to know how everything works
Why bother having Electrical engineering and electrical engineering minus computers. Just call them what they are: electrical engineering and computer engineering, or software and hardware engineering. Most electrical engineers I know are not computer engineers and vice versa.
Engineers are fine getting the paltry 3% raises every year. Your skills have improved, you work more efficiently, and you have experience. Raises should be 6% minimum. We do important things, and most of us are fine getting paid chump change.
Crazy how all the “high paying” careers saw big drops and all the “low paying” careers saw gains. The transition to a service economy continues. As the rich get richer, they have less reason to invest in high educated workers who can help their corporations and products compete. The free market is getting less free, and the upper class is ossifying, leaving the rest of us to trade our pennies in the mud or if we are lucky, get the chance to personally serve Jeff bezos on his private yacht.
My dad retired in '99 making 80k with his bonuses. That wasn't unheard of in that era if you were in the right industry.
What makes you say civil engineers “aren’t real engineers and don’t have to take all the hard university courses?” You realize civil engineers are a very broad group of “real engineers” right?
That was a bad attempt at a joke, I'm sorry
Good thing they have all the skills they need to spec the repair to the chips on their shoulders
I don’t think someone being annoyed they were referred to as “not real engineers” when they take on the most liability and risk out of every other type of engineer means they have a chip on their shoulder. In fact, if you ask any layman what a “real engineer” does, 80% of them will say “designs bridges and buildings”. So it’s pretty ironic they don’t say “overeducated electrician”.
I make 72k a year on an Associates degree working as a technician. Learn a hands on skill like using bench test equipment. We let a tech go who had a bachelor's in EE but had zero hands on experience with equipment. Too many EEs with theoretical knowledge who have never held a set of probes. Get your hands dirty and suddenly your pay skyrockets.
What's the COL? My first job out of college 15 years ago as an EE was $85k, and I've more than doubled that since. Which isn't to say that a skilled technician isn't great to have, they're worth their weight in gold. Though in my experience it's not so much bench test where they make the big bucks, but the ones who can do assembly and rework. Even an engineer can plug a component into a test system (I say this as a former test development engineer), but even the best engineer with a soldering iron isn't going to hold a candle to a good rework technician. You can bet the tech who can solder 30 AWG wires to an upside down SMD to fix a layout error is going to make bank.
Doing the worm lmao
I got a 40% increase during pandemic
I mean fast food workers went from 15-20/hr, I haven’t gotten that same percentage but I definitely make more than 5$ more than when I started 🤷♂️
Seems like Petroleum Engineer is not a long-term sustainable career!
I mean, my salary ballooned from $120k to $185k. But I used the market to my advantage and switched jobs. Most engineers are introverted nerds that don't have the backbone to make moves and demand change. They sit quietly at the same desk for 20 years taking the shaft.
Mech E. I definitely felt this in the wallet.
The items along the y-axis in the first graph also conviently double as a list of occupations roughly sorted by decreasing median salary 🤔 (with a few outliers).
Across the board, maybe but I have made significant and consistent progress in my career since 2020
In a five year period my pay has went from 73k to 107k. I’m not complaining
I was making $110k before the pandemic. I’m at $160k now. I’m $15k ahead of inflation. No complaints here.
I assume this is for the USA only. It'll be very regional. In my company (not in the USA), those engineers working in the built environment / building services sector, had major issues holding on to their jobs. Many were retrenched or moved to another group. In energy, we were going gangbusters, couldn't get enough people! Wages still moved up, demand was high. I was on a project that had just signed leading into the pandemic and we still had to deliver... so I was crazy busy myself.
I'm starting my first engineering job for a large company in a week, how much experience should I get before I ask for mote pay or move jobs? Is it good to job hop early in your career?
My rule of thumb is to not look to jump in less than a year except in a super toxic environment, and try to keep the average well above a year so you're not seen as a flight risk (my wife almost didn't get hired for a job because they didn't ask her to explain her work history and just assumed the worst, the referring manager needed to step in). I'll also add that you need to consider the rest of the compensation and lifestyle. Benefits, location, etc. I stayed at my first company for almost a decade, almost entirely for the stability and security. I sometimes wish I had been a little less risk averse, but it was the right decision at the time and it paid off in the end with job and life experience.
Time to ask for a raise
I agree with folks suggesting to either job hop or demand a pay raise, although it's a shame that international students have the sole option of just sticking to what job they get due to a fear of being kicked out, rather than getting a liveable wage, especially considering the job market for folks who graduated this year
I'm not too worried about this graph. I took a new job in same town in 2021 and got a raise, from 40 to 0% travel, 0 OT, 0 stress. My only possible complaint is 25-40min commute. The rest of you can be the statistic this graph exhibits.
Semiconductor industry boomed during the pandemic. Total compensation increased due to bonuses and stock based compensation. The timidity of engineers in fighting for raises is still true.
Electric Engineer here with 12 years of experience in high voltage substation commissioning, I think most of us just want to job get done we just don't have time to complain I'm a type of guy which sits back and make things happen. It's sometimes hard because most of mangers doesn't see how important our work is beucae one things go wrong we are responsible to protect transmission lines and transformers. There aren't many young people getting into industry and I think most companies will find out to late that getting training engineer is harder than training IT guy because engineers need to learn on site when I was entering job market I was working on travel most of time but the experience which I got was priceless. Engineers have thought life but for people which like challenges and have some impact it's great job and won't complain loud but better salary is always good
We need to get rid of the industrial exemption for licensed PEs.
what about now (2024)?
Unionize
How does this data actually get compiled? Anecdotal of course, but I got a 10% raise the last two years. So does that mean I did 15% better than the industry? Or is it based on inflation too (assuming 7%) so that I was only 8% better than the industry? The graph itself is informative, but I’m trying to figure out why the numbers are they way they are when I didn’t experience the same thing. It could also be that I’ve been underpaid, so my raises have been “catch-up” from previous years’ standards.
It’s based on inflation. So you performed about the same as this data, because inflation was a lot more than 7% over 2 years.
Why are Software Engineers not included in the second figure?
Computer Hardware gang represent. We lost the least out of us losers
I wonder how much offshoreing engineering work contributes to this?
those graphs look a lot like the more money you made the more money you lost to inflation
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Electrical engineers don’t make twice the median household income, the median household isn’t actually a two person household like you’re imagining, and you shouldn’t compare your income to people on fixed incomes (like social security recipients), you should compare it to other full time workers that have college degrees (an actual apples to apples comparison). If someone is making 40k working 20 hours a week and I make 80k working 40 hours a week I don’t want them in the dataset I’m comparing my income because it makes it look like I’m doing much better than I am. I don’t know why you’re not upset that the purchasing power of your career path went down nearly 10% in 4 years, it can take a decade in a good economy to get 10% real income gains, that’s not trivial.
I agree with you. And I think the reason why wages are down is because of people like who you replied to
Well, I mean a lot of those positions above engineer are essential workers and they deserve to be paid more and engineers deserve to be paid less. Like grounds keeping, or food prep? Even if your wage as an engineer lowers and their raises go up I doubt you'd want their jobs anyways lol.