<p>Is this very common? This is just something I've wondered and I've read on some websites. When I say this, I don't just mean those who stay in engineering jobs, this is including those who enter management.</p>
<p>It depends on the location. For Silicon Valley, I think it’s more. Management gets paid more but once you loose the technical skills and get laid off, it’s harder to find work unless you have connections.
Pascale published a mid career level salary. And also the Labor of Bureau of employment or something similar did publish some statistics on salary.</p>
<p>In the Midwest, south, and Texas, is it common?</p>
<p>@redrising8 You just picked the three areas with the lowest cost of living in the country, and salaries will reflect that. It isn’t uncommon, but I wouldn’t say that it is the norm to reach that level by 35, either. It also depends a lot of the type of engineering job, the strength of the economy, how good the worker is, etc. Then again, I haven’t done a salary survey so I certainly can’t tell you what percentage to expect here.</p>
<p>This is all with the exception of petroleum engineers, who just get paid ungodly amounts of money to start and might make that much by their mid- or late-20s…</p>
<p>*Pascale should be Payscale, autocorrect be damn.</p>
<p>Petroleum engineers get paid a lot. I’m guessing from my neighbors is that it could be in the $200K+ for 5-10 years experience. This is in Southern California.</p>
<p>It depends on what kind of engineer and in what area. You can easily find a book in public library about major and career and find out the information in it. I can tell $90k-$100k within 5 years of graduation is very possible for some field. That would be in their mid 20s.</p>
<p>In the Midwest, I thnk this is a stretch for a typical company. I personally know several engineers in their late 30s to early 40s that aren’t over $80K unless they’re in management positions. However, I can see, like in other professions, where younger employees are being hired in at much higher salaries than these engineers were. Salary increases multiply over time. So possibly, a new grad today may get to $90K after 15 years or so. </p>
<p>Petroleum engineers crack that straight out of college. </p>
<p>Not with my generation. </p>
<p>At every school that I’ve kept track of, enrollment in engineering programs has been going up rather quickly, especially in the last two years; it went from 6% or so year-on-year to something like 20%. Job opportunities available grow slowly but steadily over time, a few percent per year under reasonable conditions. Supply and demand.</p>