<p>I've read that the average annual salary for engineers are around 80-90k, and around 120k for engineering managers. Are there ever exceptions where engineering managers make 150k-200k+? Specifically; electrical engineers/managers.</p>
<p>From my personal experience, the salary outlook for engineers and engineering managers has changed over the years. It used to be that engineering managers were on a higher payscale than the non-managers. That has changed as most companies (at least the ones I’m familiar with) have recognized that the value of their company is the collective engineering expertiece. Not that managers aren’t valuable also, just a different skill set involved. </p>
<p>When I retired a few years ago, the engineers and the first and second level managers were all on the same pay scale although the managers were found only at the top levels of that scale. {BTW, the upper end of the pay scale at my company for the managers/senior technical people was in the 150 - 200 k range.} The pay scale above the second level managers got into the executive pay scale. So, when you start to calculate average salaries you get a mixture of the high and low ranges of the pay scale when you calculate the engineer’s salaries and just the high end for the manager’s. Pay verses years of experience is also somewhat tainted in that there are lower performing engineers who never will climb into the high end of the pay scale and therefore drag the average salaries down while the managers are usually all high performers.</p>
<p>I was in management the middle third of my career and then went into a senior engineering role the last third (I was fed up with the management and wanted to get back into really doing engineering). My salary as a senior engineer kept pace with my peers who stayed in management. And I was able to stay on the cutting edge of my profession although there was the intial shock of having to do real work again.</p>
<p>One thing to consider is that there were about as many senior engineering positions as there were manager positions. When you are in mangement, your engineering skills tend to dull as your focus is people, budgets, scheduling, etc. I have been able to find more opportunities as a senior technical person to do some consulting once I retired than my peers who stayed in management. </p>
<p>Those that went into even higher management levels (ie. exectutive apy scale) did make a lot more money. But the number of those positions are few and you have to make some real work/family life balance decisions. It was also the sacrifice of the family time that also drove me out of management.</p>
<p>In the private sector?..Yeah, but more than likely those engineering managers have the following attributes:</p>
<p>1) 18 to 20 years experience
2) A certain amount of years leading engineering project teams
3) More than likely holds a M.S./M.Eng/MBA
4) Helped bring in new business to past and/or current employer</p>
<p>DoD/INTEL Contracting
- These jobs require Top Secret/SCI (and probably a polygraph). You basically get $30,000 to $60,000 more per year for the same/similar job in the private sector. </p>
<p>I personally know quite a few engineering managers (as well as senior purely-technical engineers and chief engineers) pulling $175K-$225K in the DoD world…but they also have the same credentials as stated above.</p>
<p>I plan on getting a masters in EE/EECS/ECS/etc…, and an M.B.A. after about 4-5 years of work experience. Is it realistic for me to expect 120k a year at around 30-35? Also; do engineers ever work weekends? I’d be willing to work 12-14 hour days as long as if I have weekends.</p>
<p>Depends on the market demand and your area of expertise. Let me add something here so all of you potential engineers know ahead of time.</p>
<p>No employer is going to take a fresh B.S. Engineering + MBA grad and make them a manager over engineers with 10+ years experience and only a B.S. degree. The engineer career ladder in general is:</p>
<p>Jr. Engineer
Engineer
Senior Engineer
Senior/Principal Engineer
Chief Engineer</p>
<p>Each higher position requires BOTH actual engineering experience and engineering team leading experience.</p>
<p>Thank you for the replies. One more thing; does the school from where you graduated matter? Will it affect your pay a lot?</p>
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</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1469357-does-matter-what-college-did-you-go.html?highlight=matter[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1469357-does-matter-what-college-did-you-go.html?highlight=matter</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1412690-does-really-matter-what-school-you-get-your-eng-degree.html?highlight=matter[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1412690-does-really-matter-what-school-you-get-your-eng-degree.html?highlight=matter</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1386816-engineering-does-school-really-matter.html?highlight=matter[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1386816-engineering-does-school-really-matter.html?highlight=matter</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1258486-does-school-matter.html?highlight=matter[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1258486-does-school-matter.html?highlight=matter</a></p>
<p>GLOBALTRAVELLER, I have a question: is DoD contracting the same thing as defense contracting, like working at a company like Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman? Or is like working for the government directly? Thanks.</p>
<p>HPuck35 and GLOBALTRAVELER have done a great job of answering your questions. A lot of factors can impact your pay, based on where you’re at in your career path. For example, and MBA helps in your middle to late career, while the school you graduate from has it’s biggest impact early (before you build up your work experience).</p>
<p>Find the school that’s the best fit for you(school ranking being one of the factors you should look at) and then do the work (classes, co-ops, internships …).</p>
<p>One thing I forgot to mention. Some engineering managers did have some coursework in business but not one engineering manager that I knew at my company had an MBA. I had two courses that could be construed as “business” classes; one in manufacturing management and one that studied the labor movement (both were undergrad classes, my university grad work was all engineering). </p>
<p>There were managers at the company with their MBAs, but they were all in functions other than engineering. Some started as engineers, got their MBAs and then got jobs within the company in marketing, finance, etc.</p>
<p>Most managers had a series of engineering management classes that led to a certificate in management. In fact, that certificate became a requirement to enter into management after I had become a manager (I had many but not all of the classes that led to the certificate). These classes were thru the National Management Association and were taught after hours, on site, at my company.</p>
<p>If you search this site, you will see several rants by me about how I would never hire a person with an engineering degree AND an MBA. To be an engineering manager, you need to be a good engineer first. The two with the dual degrees that I made the mistake of hiring never understood that.</p>
<p>And yes, I did work in the private sector in big aerospace; retiring with over 30 years with one company.</p>
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</p>
<p>DoD and defense contracting is pretty the same although the specific federal agency determines how the working environment is like. I am primarily in INTEL industry, basically doing work to support agencies like FBI, CIA or NSA (I contract for NSA).</p>
<p>The general process is that FBI/NSA/CIA puts out “statements of work” and the contracting companies like Boeing, Northrop, General Dynamics and a host of others (of all sizes) bid on the contracts and the federal agency selects who gets the work.</p>
<p>In some parts of each agency, you may have a few government workers doing some of the work and the contractors do the rest but at NSA, there are many contracts where the contractors are doing the “heavy lifting” and the government workers are either the end-users or the task-leaders.</p>
<p>
It is not unrealistic! Ignoring inflation, that is not an unreasonable salary assuming you continue to advance within the company - if you stop growing as a professional, so will your salary.</p>
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Sometimes - it depends on the position and your work ethic. Most of my career I have not had to do so, but sometimes emergencies come up and proposal writing nearly always extends over weekends.</p>
<p>
HPuck, why would you never hire a person with an engineering degree and MBA? I don’t understand why one can’t be a good engineer and manager.</p>
<p>“HPuck, why would you never hire a person with an engineering degree and MBA? I don’t understand why one can’t be a good engineer and manager.”</p>
<p>Because a MBA does not make someone a manager. Most people who hold MBA’s would not be able to manage the local Dairy Queen to save their life.</p>
<p>Years of experience working with engineers in real life, stressful, challenging situations is what makes an engineer a potential good engineering manager, not a piece of paper.</p>
<p>
Not sure about his specific reasons, but “engineering management” is not something well taught in MBA programs. There are technical management degrees that teach the people management skills best suited to an engineering manager, while MBA’s are best for those who are financially focused. I do not know ANY engineering managers in my rather large company who have MBA’s, but there are a lot of MBA’s in program management and on the business side. It is simply a different set of skills.</p>
<p>Experience is also an issue (as bschoolwiz notes), but even with experience an MBA is a poor fit for engineering management until you get to that level (perhaps Director) where everyone is money-focused.</p>
<p>
Clearly, you wouldn’t make someone a manager only because they have an MBA. </p>
<p>If there’s an applicant with years of management experience and an MBA why would you turn them down because they have an MBA? </p>
<p>HPuck’s statement raised my attention mainly because getting an MBA is something I am looking into and I wouldn’t want a degree to negatively impact my job outlook. I wouldn’t be getting an MBA to further my ranks in engineering. An MBA would benefit my personal goals.</p>
<p>The previous posters have it about right. I managed a group of about 30 engineers that were hired to do engineering work. The two that I hired out of college with an engineering degree and and MBA said they wanted to do engineering work but they really didn’t. They were constantly in my office asking why they weren’t doing tasks befitting their MBA degrees. Because they were hired as engineers, that’s why. Their engineering skills were at the usual new hire level when they started but they didn’t grow in skill because they were always mopping that that they weren’t getting management assignments. </p>
<p>What they didn’t (and didn’t seem they would ever) figure out is that to be an engineering manager, you needed to be a good engineer first. After all, how could one mentor the younger engineers without knowing engineering. You only learn the very basics in college. There is a whole new world of engineering when it comes to doing the real world engineering work, especially for the company I worked for that did a lot of cutting edge aerospace work. </p>
<p>You also need a good understanding of the tasks at hand in order to budget, schedule and resource plan those tasks. Takes experience to get there. It used to be thought that you were pretty hot stuff if you made it to an engineering management position by 30. There were several that did. I wasn’t one of them but I was early 30’s when I got my first engineering management job. I was somewhat lost at first but my second level manager guided me and helped me learn quickly.</p>
<p>The two dual degrees that I hired solved my problem for me by leaving fairly soon. They didn’t enjoy the work and and it showed in their energy level at work, their lack of acquiring of the necessary skills to be a good engineer and their poor raises as evaluated by me.</p>
<p>After that, dual degrees = round file. There are plenty of jobs in which an MBA can use those skills well in, detail engineering isn’t one of them.</p>
<p>
I now understand. The two employees you had were right out of college. I thought you would not hire an engineer with an MBA…ever. To think that an employer wouldn’t hire an engineer because they had an MBA puzzled me…a lot.</p>
<p>I’m wondering about the business potential of engineers. Would I be able to start my own engineering business? What exactly would my company be doing? I’m also wondering about civil engineering. What exactly do they do? Do they create the blueprints for construction workers to use? Sounds like an architect to me.</p>
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Yes.</p>
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That is mostly up to you.</p>
<p>
It isn’t. Start here:
[Civil</a> engineering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_engineering]Civil”>Civil engineering - Wikipedia)</p>