<p>Base salaries for the most highly compensated purely technical-skill positions at the major aerospace companies exceed $175K. To that base sum, bonuses are possible for things like patent awards and key company contributions.</p>
<p>what do managers usually major in during college and what skills do they specifically have that get them paid more?</p>
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<p>And, again, I think it would be most helpful to discuss the specific concrete steps that people on this forum could reasonably take to obtain one of those jobs. Not mere bromides such as: “Be the best at what you do”, but actual concrete steps that people may not be taking now, but could and should be. </p>
<p>Otherwise, I can think of plenty of companies who will never pay even their best engineers a 6-figure salary. No matter how skilled you may be, no matter how productive you are to the company, they are simply not going to pay you that sort of salary.</p>
<p>why be an engineer then? no one here can explain! no wages above 100k when there are people from other majors doing that, large amounts of work in college…this sucks! good thing my ED acceptance to cornell wasn’t specific to the engineering school…o wait - it was! **** this crap, I’m transferring out and I’ll do a math/econ double major so I won’t be screwed for the rest of my life.</p>
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<p>You know, there is something called interest. And no, not the fiscal form of that word.</p>
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<p>Disclaimer: I will be using the phrase “At the end of the day” quite often.</p>
<p>Step 1) Forget about finding some niche technical specialty that you absolutely LOVE. It’s all about finding a technical specialty with the following traits:</p>
<p>a) High-demand
b) Low-supply
c) Critical to a company’s bottom line
d) where a, b & C leads to higher salaries
e) That you can TOLERATE…not love</p>
<p>At the end of the day, I really do want to work so I might as well do something that pays. It really doesn’t matter if I don’t 100% LOVE what I do because it is still 8 hours that I could spend in Brazil (if I had the money).</p>
<p>Step 2) Some engineering employers are too caught up on paper certifications, degrees and certain “buzzwords”. Look, you cannot beat them, so might as well play the game with them. Present yourself as this person who can wear this hat…wear that hat…and a couple of more hats. You can always reject the hats once you get the offer letter and a few pay checks. Do I do any project management?..sometimes and I am in the HR office everyday bothering them on when are they hiring a PM because I am only “acting”. Still, get the certifications.</p>
<p>Step 3) For the technical specialty in Step #1, stay CUTTING EDGE on the newest technology. Even if you have to buy the brand new technical books on the subject, lock yourself in the house and TIVO all of your TV programs for a weekend. Be that person who knows the new technology. Hell, even YOU KNOW that these companies will find some new technology in 2 more years. What do you care?..which leads me to…</p>
<p>Step 4) The BIGGEST pay raises come from switching employers. There is NO LOYALTY in engineering. These companies will waive you like the NFL. Besides, at least in the I.T world…3 years at one employer is an eternity nowadays.</p>
<p>Step 5) STOP thinking that the academics is an end-all-be-all. You will get your feelings hurt. It’s mostly about making Steps 1-to-4 work for you. When dealing with experienced engineers, school names are ONLY mentioned if they are in the BCS championship game or the Final-Four. Beating your chest about the “academics” is going to make you look foolish because your team lead graduated from the University of North Central Wyoming.</p>
<p>Step 6) Take advantage of you being highly-skilled in your technical area of Step 1. This may include doing something that may slightly alter/compromise your lifestyle for the extra money. I will name two such actions: 1) accepting a high-level security clearance and 2) being an independent consultant. The security clearance is still a little bit of luck because someone has to sponsor you for a clearance. Once you obtain one, either you have to move to Washington DC area or be prepare to travel/stay at international locations which…let’s say are not as stable as your nice USA neighborhood. On top of that, you you have to “ask” to go anywhere outside the USA (like a child) and pretty much cannot even miss a payment on a bill EVER while you have a clearance. But hey…that’s $30,000 to $50,000 more per year for the SAME JOB in the non-cleared world. For being the indepedent consultant, you have to REALLY be an expert. Remember, you will have a lower liability than if you were an employer of a big firm, so for a company to sign you on as some independent consultant, you…have…to…know…your…stuff. That can add some pressure.</p>
<p>Always base yourself on being NEEDED. Who cares if you are WANTED. I have always lived by the saying that I want my mate to WANT me…but want my employer to NEED me. At the end of the day, you live in a country where just about EVERYTHING costs.</p>
<p>Tell your parents this:
You (and I) are going to be getting paid $100k to mess around and have fun with “robots” as our “job”. Seriously, great job if you ask me (and I’m sure you agree!).</p>
<p>As for that finance crap people here are saying engineering is used as a spring into, I have been looking into it, and if you want to struggle getting a job, work 100 hours a week, miraculously get married, get divorced within 3 years by your unsatisfied wife, and lose half of your possessions, then become an IBanker. Granted, you are going to make bank and retire early, but it just isn’t worth it.</p>
<p>Also, Global’s post before my last one was a really high quality post. Thanks, I’ve bookmarked it.</p>
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<p>Globaltraveller, that’s not a bad start. But I think, to be even more helpful, you could provide some specific examples of technical specialties that somebody could reasonably obtain today that fulfill the conditions that you stated above, with the obvious caveat that they may not hold in the near future. </p>
<p>Also see below. </p>
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<p>And now I fear that we have identified clear boundary conditions for the strategy entailed. It seems to me that your strategy holds only within the IT and software space, and has no bearing upon any engineering discipline except for computer science (which is arguably not even an engineering discipline). </p>
<p>As a case in point, if you’re a chemical engineer, you can’t simply decide one fine day that you’re going to become an expert on your employer’s newest hydrocracker To learn that skill is hardly a simple matter of just studying a few books and practicing on a home lab as is the case with many IT skills - you actually need access to the (multi-million dollar) hydrocracker. What if your employer refuses to provide that to you? Similarly, if you’re an aerospace engineer and you want to learn the latest techniques to design cutting-edge craft with thrust vectoring and supermaneuverability, you can’t just hole yourself up and study it. You need access to extensive lab and test equipment, as well as probably some actual prototype aircraft itself. In other words, you basically need to be assigned to that particular project, yet what if your employer refuses to assign you? </p>
<p>In other words, truly staying on the cutting edge of most engineering disciplines requires access to resources that no individual who isn’t a millionaire could ever hope to reasonably own. Such resources are made available only at the discretion of the company who owns them. </p>
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<p>And again, that heightens my suspicions that this strategy is only tenable within the software or (especially) the IT space. Every company nowadays needs IT skills. But there are probably no more than 10 companies in the world who really need cutting-edge expertise in aerospace supermaneuverability, and of those 10, half are foreign companies for which you lack the necessary citizenship to be eligible to any jobs. Hence, even in the odd chance that you are provided extensive opportunities to learn that skill thoroughly, there is little room for you to jump to a competing employer to leverage your newfound expertise. </p>
<p>The conclusion that I draw is that people should then not major in engineering at all, or if they do, then not actually work as engineers, but should instead learn software and IT skills. Interestingly, that is a strategy that I myself have recommended in past posts on CC. Yet that is surely cold comfort to the engineers on this forum.</p>
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<p>sakky, what experience are you coming from here? Do you have experience in engineering? There might be certain small companies where this might be true but from experience in consulting and at larger companies and knowing many engineers, I can say that engineers that are technical specialists can make well over 100k in many different industries (without management responsibilities). I know of cases where a technical specialist can make as much or more than their manager. I am only speaking from experience here, but I won’t deny that perhaps at some small companies your argument might be true. I don’t know of any but that doesn’t mean they are not out there.</p>
<p>Nobody is saying that you can become a technical specialist day one out of college, but you won’t become a technical manager either. If you want to stay technical then graduate degrees are always a good start and trying to find companies that do very technical design or consulting work is also to your advantage. The only point I am trying to make is that it is definitely possible to make well over 100k without being an engineering manager at many different companies and in many different industries.</p>
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<p>Is that an ad-hominem attack? Trust me, I know engineering quite well, and I have seen these companies. </p>
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<p>Note that what I said is that there are many companies that will simply refuse to pay their engineers more than $100k a year. Obviously many of these companies are indeed lower-level, small companies. But these are still companies. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t some companies that do, for obviously there are. But that still means that there are plenty of companies who simply will not pay those sorts of salaries, necessitating that you move to another company.</p>
<p>But don’t take my word for it. Consider the BLS’s reported engineering salary distribution in 2008. Notice how even the highest-paid 10% of all engineers in most disciplines- which I think we can all agree tend to be the most skilled and qualified engineers with the best graduate degrees, including PhD’s, and who work for the best companies - only barely crack the $100k threshold, and that the highest-paid 25% of engineers are generally paid below the $100k mark, depending on discipline. Granted, the data is from 2008, but surely we can agree that the last 2 years hasn’t exactly been a period of burgeoning salary growth. That tends to strongly indicate that there are a substantial number of companies who will simply refuse to pay more than $100k to their engineers (in real dollars). </p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm#oes_links]Engineers[/url”>http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm#oes_links]Engineers[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Let’s be perfectly honest. Many (perhaps most) engineering companies don’t really need star engineers. They just need adequate ones. They therefore won’t pay you extra if you do become a star, and if you demand such pay, would rather simply replace you with another adequate engineer.</p>
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<p>What makes you think that asking you a question is an attack? I’m simply asking if you have experience with these companies or if you know engineers at these companies. Again, based on the companies that I have been with and the numerous engineers that I know, work with, and are even in my family, I am saying it is very possible to make well over 100k as a technical engineer.</p>
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<p>Again, trust me, I do indeed. </p>
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<p>Again, look at the BLS data. Obviously it is true for that it is indeed possible for some engineers to make well over 100k as a technical engineer…but it is also true that plenty of engineers even within the top 10-25% of experience, education, and quality of employer do not. The question then is, how confident are you that you will belong to that subgroup that will make well over 100k?</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm#earnings]Engineers[/url”>http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm#earnings]Engineers[/url</a>]</p>
<p>The engineers I was referring to that make $175K (or over) in the major aerospace companies are the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). These are the engineers that are considered essential to maintaining a competitive edge in the marketplace and are compensated accordingly. Most technical departments have one or two SMEs in them (out of perhaps 15-30 engineers total in a given department). Simply put, these are the engineers that the company feels are critical to business. Ironically, if someone on these boards is targeting these kinds of salaries (for an aerospace company anyway) as a primary career-goal, they almost assuredly will not make the cut as an SME because they lack the dedication to pure engineering that is required for such a position. They are better off pursuing an MBA or going into some sort of project management function rather that a purely technical career. In either case, an undergrad engineering degree is still a good starting point.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, rogracer, I will pose the same question that I posed to globaltraveller: what specific steps would one have to take to become a SME? Again, not just blithe palaver such as “working hard” or “doing your best”, but actual, concrete, non-obvious steps that budding young engineering students aren’t doing right now, but ought to be. </p>
<p>As a specific example, I would have to imagine that becoming a SME would first involve being assigned to cutting-edge projects that allow one to develop proper domain expertise. That begs the question - what are the steps you should take to maximize your chances to be assigned to these projects? Again, concrete, non-obvious steps.</p>
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<p>I agree. My observation on this board is that GLOBAL’s views on engineering seems to hold more water in IT (maybe CS).</p>
<p>While I agree that my “steps” are probably more fitting for the software engineering arena, I do work in supporting a INTEL agency that employs (whether government employee or contractor) folks who have experience is signals analysis and electronic communication. I would guess that many EE’s and CompE’s fall into this.</p>
<p>I seriously doubt that these defense contractors just pay IT/CS/Software Engineers the 6 figures and not the EE’s and CompE’s. The job titles all have salary ranges and I KNOW there are EE’s and CompE’s with the same job title (or higher) at my company.</p>
<p>I’d have to agree with Sakky and Globaltraveler at the same time. I’ve been an engineer for 8 years with an EE degree but have been doing software QA since graduating. Most engineers I know make less then 100k/yr unless, like global said, they work in a niche field or have clearance. </p>
<p>If you want accurate salary descriptions, check out glassdoor.com. It has salarys that are entered by the employees themselves.</p>
<p>As for me, I’m 31 and will just cross the 80k mark starting next year. When I was in college, I would always hear that I would be making 6 figures by the time I was 30, but with the DOT com burst, outsourcing, and this recession, it feels like I might never reach that 100k mark, and it’s kind of a let down.</p>
<p>On top of that, almost all my friends that didn’t graduate with an engineering degree almost all make more then me. This is a list of my friends who are all the same age as me and how much they are making.</p>
<ol>
<li> FDNY - no college degree, 8 years in, 110k/yr </li>
<li> FDNY - no college degree, 3 years in, 60k/yr <strong><em>has a side job to</em></strong></li>
<li> Boat Mechanic - No college degree. $40/hr $60/hour overtime and gets OT every week.</li>
<li> Compliance officer at a hedge fund - History degree $85k base + bonus=~$100k all in.</li>
<li>Biotech - Chemistry Bachelors - $93,000 + bonus of ~$13k.</li>
</ol>
<p>I’ve been having a hard time lately with staying with engineering because i feel like there no longer is the upside in it as it used to be. I’m contemplating on going back for an MS in PetE but not sure about going $60k in debt and being a broke ass student again.</p>
<p>and…</p>
<p>When the number/amount $100,000 is thrown out there, one may need to recalculate that based on where someone lives. I live in the Washington DC area so a “DC $100K” is some other city’s $80K.</p>
<p>Casper993,</p>
<p>1 and 2 are unionized, and possibly #3 as well. #4 and #5 are very interesting; can we get more details on those? Thanks.</p>
<p>GLOBALTRAVELER,</p>
<p>Good point.</p>