<p>Pizzagirl, Why you have even inserted yourself into this thread is beyond me. You see no prestige in engineering. Who cares. Most engineers are not that into prestige anyway. They are just going about their business making your life better, You, your husband , kids are not engineers . Fine. But why you seem to try to knock down a very important profession is sad. </p>
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No, the linked starting salary report was based on surveys during the period 05/16/2013 to 08/13/2013 . Payscale surveys during earlier years show a similar result.</p>
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They specify the most common job titles groups for different majors. The most common job title group for persons with a BS in EE was “electrical engineer,” and the median entry level salary for that “electrical engineer” job title group was $62,200. The number BSEE’s with job a job title group of software engineer (the most common one for CS majors) was 9x smaller than the number of BSEE’s with a job title of electrical engineer.</p>
<p>If you don’t believe Payscale, other surveys show a similar result. For example, National Association of Colleges and Employers does a starting salary survey for different majors several times per year. They group EE majors with electronics technology type majors, which pulls EE down, yet in their latest survey from earlier in 2014, there was still only a $1700 difference between the starting salaries of EE and CS majors. In 2004, the gap was slightly under $1000, so the survey shows little relative change between the majors over the past decade.</p>
<p>I also was an electrical engineering major. I started at a position that required a BSEE degree, and I currently work at position that requires an EE degree (job listing would specify higher than bachelor’s). An EE degree may have been a poor choice for your family, but that doesn’t mean all other EE majors will have similar experiences.</p>
<p>" I assure you that none of us non-engineers could tell much difference between what-all you do, nor do we really care" </p>
<p>That’s not surprising. I am engineer, not familiar with specialties in other professions… and I don’t really care. </p>
<p>The difference in engineering is that it’s hard for the general public to related to jobs they never see in real life or on TV. </p>
<p>I know for defense companies like Boeing, maybe EE get paid a little more than CS(I read here on CC), but the starting salary usually means nothing.
All I know is that DH and I had a harder time finding job when we were unemployed because we both like hardware better or have hardware experience while my brother and his wife found job easier because they are both software. BTW, In order to find job easier, I had to make my resume looks like I did a lot of software and that seems to do the trick.
Somehow If payscale is for one year I don’t believe it’s accurate, the data is reporting after all, also according to U of Michigan CoE placement report, EE graduates get paid less than CS. I see the same with UCSD, so I don’t know what to believe or who to believe.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-michigan-ann-arbor/1651183-best-major-at-coe-i-m-lost-p1.html”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-michigan-ann-arbor/1651183-best-major-at-coe-i-m-lost-p1.html</a></p>
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<p>I wonder if it would useful to count unemployed graduates when colleges boast median incomes. Perhaps the volume of zeros would differentiate discipline demand more than the paycheck.</p>
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I meant to say the data is self-reporting.</p>
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Payscale, The National Association of Colleges and Employers, and others who do national starting salary surveys are not lying. I expect the difference between salary surveys of certain individual college surveys relates to 3 main factors – small sample size (some colleges have same as fewer than 20 within a major who choose to participate in surveys), location bias in hiring & demand for specific majors, and bias in which colleges offer the major (CS is offered at more and different colleges than EE). For these reasons, you can also find salary surveys at individual colleges that favor EE, such as Lehigh’s survey at <a href=“http://www4.lehigh.edu/admissions/undergrad/success/placement.aspx”>http://www4.lehigh.edu/admissions/undergrad/success/placement.aspx</a> , which is quoted below. Note that the mean EE salary is ~$20,000 greater than than mean CS salary, a greater difference than occurred in the Michigan survey you quoted. And the highest reported CS salary of $70k was similar to the lowest reported EE salary of $68k, suggesting nearly all EE majors in the survey had a greater starting salary than their CS counterparts.</p>
<p>Bioengineering – $64,333<br>
Chemical Engineering - $67,699
Civil/Environmental Engineering - $57,551<br>
Computer Engineering – $59,250
**Computer Science – $59,375<a href=“range%20of%20$49k%20to%20$70k”>/b</a>
**Electrical Engineering - $79,333 <a href=“range%20of%20$68k%20to%20$100k”>/b</a>
Industrial Engineering – $60,875<br>
Information Systems & Engineering – $65,667<br>
Materials Science & Engineering - $58,250
Mechanical Engineering – $60,933</p>
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Your sample of 2 people has a similar issues to the college salary surveys discussed above – small sample size and location bias. I also started in EE hardware and had no problem finding jobs after graduation. I later transitioned into systems/theory/design. My company’s website currently lists open positions in both fields (not certain it is still accurate). We’ve had trouble finding talented persons in both hardware and systems. However, being a sample of 1, I do not assume my experiences are representative of all EE majors/jobs in the United States.</p>
<p>You can also check BLS salary data:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000[/quote]”>http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000
[/quote]
</a></p>
<p>EE’s have a mean wage between $93-98k, excluding CompE’s who are at $107k. CS is a little harder to pin down, ranging from ~$81-104k with most sitting right at $93k… the same as the bottom end of EE’s.</p>
<p>So perhaps not a big difference on average, but with a wider variation for programmers depending on the actual title.</p>
<p>I’m not knocking the very important work engineers do. I’m knocking the whole concept that there are supposedly different levels of “prestige” with different types. A prospective engineer should do the type that interests him or her most, not pretend that there are prestige differentials. </p>
<p>Agree that a prospective engineer should do the type that interests him or her most. You have said your husband is a physician and I’m sure there are different levels of “prestige” in that profession. Most of the whole prestige thing is nonsense but it tends to exist. My husband is an engineer (and his father was ) and both kids are engineers. My kids’ great grandfather was a physician (back in the old days when they still made house calls and were not paid that well). Nobody had an interest in medicine since then but it certainly is “prestigious” to the majority of people. As colorado_mom said, the majority of people just don’t see what engineers do (unlike doctors, firefighters, etc.) but certainly benefit from what they do in many ways. </p>
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Wait until you in your 50s and looking for a job. Out of curiosity, do you happen to work in defense or defense related companies, I can only think of Qualcomm for San Diego that needs hardware.</p>
<p>@cosmicfish, thanks for the link, it still puzzles me why Computer Engineering does better than CS, I think it depends on which school? I remember last year, some kid posted on CC and asking why UCB CS makes more than EECS.</p>
<p>" You have said your husband is a physician and I’m sure there are different levels of “prestige” in that profession. "</p>
<p>Beats me. Some specialties may be more lucrative than others, but that’s not “prestigious,” just more lucrative. But it’s still all apples and oranges. The dermatologist doesn’t want to be an ear-nose-and-throat-guy and the ear-nose-and-throat-guy doesn’t want to a dermatologist. </p>
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<p>To whomever this was directed - remember that you do not have to wait around for someone to give you a job, as you can create your own. </p>
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Qualcomm is one of scores of engineering companies in the southern CA area with origins that are in some way related to Linkabit. A far from complete tree of Linkabit-origin companies is at <a href=“http://legacy.utsandiego.com/news/business/images/080122linkabit.pdf”>http://legacy.utsandiego.com/news/business/images/080122linkabit.pdf</a> . There are far more SD area companies that hire HW EEs for related positions that are not related to Linkabit. I’d guess the total number of SD area companies that work with HW EEs to be in the hundreds. A quick search on a job listing website shows open HW EE positions in many SD companies including Altera, APN, ATR, Beyondsoft, Broadcom, Collabera, Cymer, Eastridge, Encore Semi, Ethertronics, L-3, Leidos, HGST, HP, Huawei, Ingenium, Oracle, Mentor Graphics, Mitre, MLS, Northrop Grumman, Peregrine Semi, SDHR, and Systel, among many others.</p>
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The stats I linked to are across ALL schools, but yes, at any given school there will be fluctuations. As to why CompE? I think it is because CompE’s are more likely to produce a final product than most engineers, and the closer you are to the sale, the more money you will make (on average).</p>
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California in particular is high on software right now, it does not surprise me at all that California CS grads make more money than California EE grads. That having been said, remember that while the data I linked to is from the IRS and is therefore a mandatory report, colleges use voluntary reporting with often very small sample sizes that can have a high margin of error.</p>
<p>"Some specialties may be more lucrative than others, but that’s not “prestigious”, just more lucrative. Yes, some specialties are more lucrative but some probably more “prestigious” as well, even to laymen. It is not hard to dig up prestige info about medicine when googling about prestigious specialties, pecking order in medicine, etc… </p>
<p>As said upthread in various ways… the best choice of major is the one that best fits your skill and interests, If </p>
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<p>Out of the Linkabit offspring’s, two companies that I’m aware that are mostly hardware and defense related is Qualcomm and ViaSAT.
And the rest from your list, I highlighted in bold the ones that are defense/defense related and hardware/semiconductor, and some of them really advisory, such as MITRE which is a FFRDC, government related, Leidos, another adversary but not FFRDC. I know back in the East Coast MITRE hires a lot of engineers from MIT but it’s hardly a company that I consider working if I want to keep my skills set. The jobs are stable but as my husband sometimes put it, it can be intellectually insulting(no, don’t ask me to explain in public).</p>
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Then you either aren’t aware of many companies on the list or have a strong SW bias in the types of jobs/companies you have knowledge of. I’ve worked for some of the companies on the list and know quite a few HW EEs who have worked for other companies on the list. Nearly all of the companies I am familiar with employ some HW EEs for related positions, which makes sense when you consider that their origin relates to Linkabit. Most of them also employ SW engs, but that doesn’t mean that there are no HW EE positions.</p>
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The ones that are not highlighted may not meet your criteria for HW, nevertheless, they still offer HW engineering related jobs. For example, a quote from an open job listing for a staff electrical engineer at Cymer is below.</p>
<p>“Participates in the design, development, maintenance, testing and manufacturing support of Control Systems for DUV and EUV light sources. Contributes to the design of the integrated light source system control system, hardware architecture, modules, and elements; provides engineering support for product’s full life cycle. Participates in cross-functional Program teams and works with suppliers and other engineering groups to define, create and implement Controls and Electrical Systems designs and associated engineering and manufacturing documentation. Technologies include cPCI, PC104, other bus structures, Ethernet, photo-detectors, differential signaling, wideband circuits; high speed embedded computing, VHDL Logic Design, distributed signal acquisition, and signal integrity in a noisy environment.”</p>
<p>We CS people get paid more because we have cooler buzzwords…</p>
<p>CS jobs are not as great as you may think. If you’re very good there’s good jobs but there’s a pretty good race to the bottom plus over specialization. Spend five years doing HMI coding and see if you can get into another area…</p>