<p>Engineers make little to no money. Go away.</p>
<p>I think it depends on how you at look at what a decent salary is. If you are in your 20s, single, with a MS in engineering and a couple of yrs experience you’re not doing too bad. What also depends on how much you will make is what part of the country you live in. Are you willing to move for a job that offers great pay and benefits? Being a single provider for a growing family might be a problem on the other hand, but now a days both parents work. In my opinion its not all about money either, you must enjoy what you do in your career. I couldnt imagine going to bed stressed out and waking up with headaches because of my job, but Im making $150,000+ a year. As for me, Im studying BS in EE from there an MS in BME where I can specialize in the biomedical field. You also have to remember that engineering consists of alot of math and science.</p>
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<p>To me, the primary goal of an engineering education is to teach you how to solve problems analytically. To be successful in engineering, you have to be able to identify, assess, address, and resolve problems. Every position benefits from that skill.</p>
<p>/begin{rant}
To me, this is what differentiates engineering from any other discipline. Consider engineering technology: They teach students “This is a pump. This is how a pump works.” then the test is “How does a pump work?”. To answer that question, you didn’t have to analytically solve any problems. On the other hand “This is fluid dynamics. This these are the fundamental principals of fluid dynamics.” and test “now design a pump” it takes a different set of problem solving skills to come to a solution.</p>
<p>That’s also why I dislike “learning by doing” either in engineering education or in the sense that people say “your company will teach you everything you need to know after graduation”. These two things are not engineering in that they’re not analytical problem solving from first principals. What they are is memorization of facts that are hopefully able to be regurgitated later. They lead to 1) inferior knowledge of a phenomenon and 2) in ability to solve non-standardized problems. That’s why we have so many “engineers” these days that can’t explain simple things, like how a coffee maker works.<br>
/begin{rant}</p>
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<p>Exactly. Many people, especial young men aged 16-25 feel the need to be “better than everyone else”. To many, this means making a seven figure salary, and anything less than $250,000 per year for one person might as well be below the poverty line. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that even making $100,000 per year is a very comfortable life and even if your spouse did not work, that would put you in the top 15% of all US families. I’ve known many people that were very satisfied raising a family of 4-5 on that total income. Do they drive Ferraris? No, but they drive nice cars and have nice homes in a good area while putting their kids through college. </p>
<p>Engineers have the ability to be mediocre at their career and still get well into that range on one income before age 30. Add two incomes and a total salary of $200,000 is very comfortable (top 2.5%).</p>
<p>But you have to take things in context here. This is a site where going to Dartmouth makes you an idiot because it’s not Harvard and Berkeley is trash because it’s not Stanford. I would expect nothing less than the argument that making more than 97.5% of families in the US is not “a lot of money”.</p>
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<p>An engineer should, at the last minute and using only household products, be able to figure out how to feed their cat fresh, refrigerated food without the use of a catsitter for the minimum of a week.</p>
<p>I am in the power plant business. The highest ranked engineers in the company may only make $85,000/year or so. To make $100,000 you have to be a manager.</p>
<p>My salary was $12,000 less three years ago when I started working after graduation. The money was good back then since I was single. But school loans, getting married, having a child, paying for two cars, long commutes to work, and a long list of medical bills, the money doesn’t seem so great anymore. There are people who make less money than I do and are able to do a lot more with it. Depends on your circumstances and how you choose to live.</p>
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<p>That’s actually pretty funny. My automatic fish feeder was made using a clock, a Tupperware bowl, and a funnel.</p>
<p>I agree about reducing the stress. I know I have (and know others) who have turned down database administration positions where they want access to you 24/7. Yes they give you a higher salary but thanks-no-thanks, I have personal and family obligations.</p>
<p>Piggybacking on what Justinmeche said, another thing that attracts some of us to the security clearance world is that you can make “manager” or “director” money while still being a grunt engineer. Quite a few of is in the cleared world WERE former directors, managers and similar in the non-cleared private sector. Once you go work for the cleared/defense contracting sector, you don’t have 20, 50 or 100 folks reporting to you…just do your area tasks and go home.</p>
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<p>Several yards of surgical tubing from a 24-hour Home Depot, a shallow water bath, a wad of coiled tubing running through an ice water bath (which turned into an ice block) in the freezer, and a constant circulation low-flow water pump from the cats’ water fountain. Taped the freezer shut around the tubing, and it kept the small buffet of wet cat food fresh and refrigerated for all of Thanksgiving break.</p>
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How much money did you save?</p>
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<p>None. We have a friend who loves our cats who usually catsits for us, but she was out of town for Thanksgiving and… honestly, I completely forgot that cats typically need to eat until the night before we left.</p>
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<p>The majority of the grads of the top MBA programs, that is. There are plenty of mediocre MBA programs that send relatively few graduates to finance or consulting. </p>
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<p>Usually not. Granted, a background in computer science - which I consider to be part of engineering - is often times helpful, and in some positions actually required, for a quant finance research/hedge-fund job. An engineering background would also be helpful if you plan to pursue a career in venture capital. </p>
<p>But by and large, you don’t really need an engineering background to become a financier or management consultant. </p>
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<p>You’re catching on. </p>
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<p>A first-year (post-MBA) management consulting associate at a major strategy firm is probably looking at $170k-$200k in first year compensation (including bonuses). Ibanking associate is probably the same, perhaps $250k+ if the banks have truly returned to paying record bonuses as has been reported in the news. Ibanking pay, however, tends to accelerate very quickly. </p>
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<p>Depends heavily on the industry. A engineering PhD from a top school heading to industry may make $110k-125k to start, including bonus. However, the pay won’t increase far beyond that point.</p>
<p>^so do people from mediocre MBA program get into managing engineering companies? Also, if it doesn’t bring much more money, why do people do it?!! Just because they want to do management?</p>
<p>sorry for the noob questions</p>
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<p>Because it does bring more money. At my last company, the top engineers made $120,000 / yr with a 5% annual bonus. The first line managers (promoted engineers - managed 8-10 engineers) made $150,000 with 30% annual bonus. The promotion above that was the big one - plant manager (300-3000 employees) made $250,000 with 75% annual bonus. That’s why engineers went into management (of course, less than 1% of engineers got to this level). </p>
<p>The business managers (in charge of products, processes, finance, or relationships - the MBAs) made $150,000 with 50% annual bonus. Promotion was to business director and $250,000 with 75% annual bonus. Almost 100% of the MBAs made it to this level at some point. That’s why people got MBAs.</p>
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I never understood what people mean by top MBA programs. Is it top 5, 10, 20? Is graduating from the top X+1 (say 21) considered mediocre?
Does it matter if USNWR rank X school #1 for one specialty, but it’s ranked #30 overall? Which ranking do you even go by (bw, ft, usnwr, etc?)</p>
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Simply put, I don’t believe 100% of MBAs reached this level at your company. “100%” in virtually any situation is not believable.</p>
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<p>Those that did not quit reached the level eventually. Just like, in many companies, every engineer that sticks around 10 years will reach “senior engineer”. It’s an automatic promotion based on tenure.</p>
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<p>It means different things for different people and it’s often more about perception than rankings.</p>
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University of Phoenix MBA = 250k/year job?</p>
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<p>University of Phoenix MBA = not hired.</p>
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Engineers already hired at your company can get an MBA from a multitude of sources.</p>