<p>But average salaries are higher in LA, for one, and for two, who said you have to live in LA? I know the suburbs are expensive, too, but move out of the city a little and you can save yourself some money. I bet land in the Mojave is affordable… ;-)</p>
<p>I just came from LA. You don’t want to live in LA. Nice place to visit but terrible place to live.</p>
<p>Cyclone the average salary is no where near that amount unless your working for google or some IB firm.</p>
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What are you talking about? All my friends in Southern California are <em>at least</em> making 65k/year. These are people with less than 18 months experience.</p>
<p>Motion to declare greenvision to be a ■■■■■. Do I hear a second for this motion?</p>
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Especially since AZ passed the immigration law, all illegals went back to their native land: Los Angeles — Jay Leno</p>
<p>Love the weather tho! And the food… Very diverse food culture.</p>
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If they’re still employed… =p</p>
<p>The average nationwide is like 58k, why is 70 so outlandish? Haha</p>
<p>aibarr’s being mean. Not getting enough ice cream I suppose.</p>
<p>Mr.Payne, the average <em>starting</em> salary is definitely not in 70k region. And 18 months of work would make anyone slightly overqualified for an entry level position. Please re-read cyclone’s post below:</p>
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<p>The technical term is “poopyhead,” o young one.</p>
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<p>I know quite a few people who got jobs in California from my graduating class who all had at least 70k starting. It is anecdotal evidence, but it still is a very common occurrence.</p>
<p>^ Well of course it’s possible to start off that high. I believe Caltech has a page for the starting salaries and there are quite a few with over 80k. Mr.Payne is probably one of them. ‘them petroleum ones make good dough’</p>
<p>and guys, aibarr is being poopyhead :D</p>
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You are right, I missed that. I tend to think median/average salaries in CA are ~65k/year. That’s what the statistics from Cal Poly (my school) seem to indicate.</p>
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Well, I think the good times are coming to end in the Petroleum industry. Raises probably averaged 2.5% last year.</p>
<p>This is simply due to supply & demand, the supply of PetE grads is huge (there has been repeated huge PetE increases YoY), and the demand is weaker due to natural gas weakness.</p>
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<p>Petroleum engineers usually start out well over $70k. Most of the guys I know that went to work for big oil started around $80k.</p>
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<p>…so is engineering really all that much different than other professions where only a select few really get rewarded. </p>
<p>In I-banking, an analyst straight out of undergrad actually doesn’t make that much(maybe $70,000 +(30k to 40k bonus on average) for living in New York, NY and working terrible hours. Few analyst get to be associates and much fewer rise further than that. My understanding is most I-bankers leave for lower paying jobs after being an analyst.</p>
<p>The same goes for big law. Few lawyers stay after a few years and for those few miserable years they work all the time to pay off major law school debt. Recently, I’ve read that many of these “Big Law” positions aren’t even being offered as much anymore due to this recession.</p>
<p>Even Doctors are heavily burdened with debt and need to go through a very low paying residency for years. Yea, a surgeon rakes in the money, but only ~10% of Doctors are surgeons. A general practioner may make ~$140,000…
[PayScale</a> - Family or General Practitioner Salary, Average Salaries](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Family_or_General_Practitioner/Salary]PayScale”>Family or General Practitioner Salary in 2024 | PayScale)</p>
<p>…so is engineering so different to reward only a few?</p>
<p>No, it’s not really that few are rewarded, it’s more that there’s a set ceiling for engineering salaries unless you come up with some sort of breakthrough invention that’s wildly marketable and you go into business for yourself. In general, engineering’s a pretty darned good field to be in… Even if you kind of cruise through a big state program, you’ll probably get a job, and you’ll probably make a decent salary, and you’ll probably advance in your career. It’s just that working a LOT harder will only make about $20K worth of difference, so if you’re really good and you work your rear off, you’ll not reap too much in terms of monetary reward. You’ll get much cooler projects and you’ll have more exciting things to work on, but you’re not going to break the bank, so money had better not be your motivation for working hard.</p>
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<p>I’ve earned my rights, whippersnapper.</p>
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<p>In which case, I would argue that you’re no longer being an engineer anymore, but rather being an entrepreneur. </p>
<p>Besides, the entire entrepreneurship/startup track towards becoming rich is orthogonal toward the notion of engineering, because every employee (who owns equity) becomes rich in a successful startup, not only the engineers. The secretaries of Microsoft during its early days became rich. In some sense, that’s ‘unfair’, as those secretaries probably didn’t work harder or make significant contributions relative to secretaries at a regular company, yet they nevertheless became filthy rich when those other secretaries did not. It is the startup environment itself that provides opportunities to become rich, rather than necessarily being an engineer within the startup environment. {For example, I know one engineer who at the time had laughed about quitting engineering to become just a low-level secretary/office-gopher at Google during its early days, but isn’t laughing anymore, but rather has been kicking himself ever since, as the IPO showered riches upon all of its employees.} </p>
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<p>Which gets back to what I’ve been saying: the best engineering students often times don’t really want to work as engineers. About half of all MIT graduates who entered the workforce before the recession chose jobs not in engineering, but rather in finance or consulting (and even during the recession, about 1/3 of them still choose finance or consulting). </p>
<p>I completely agree - and in fact have stated myself - that engineering is a fantastic career for the average (or worse than average) person. If you were just a mediocre high school student who went to a low-tier college and received unexceptional grades, then an engineering job with its $50-60k starting salary is a sweet deal. Honestly, with your academic record, what else were you going to do? But what that also means is that the engineering ranks of this country will become increasingly populated by mediocre students, as the best students increasingly shy away from engineering jobs. They may earn engineering degrees, but not actually take engineering jobs.</p>
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I disagree. I think Engineering is a great career all the way up to the 99th percentile intellect. When you say average are you referring to the 50th percentile? Please quantify the terms you are using. The amount of high paying finance jobs are minute in comparison to the sheer volume of the engineering profession.</p>
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<p>As aibarr explained, the difference is that the chances of high rewards in those other professions, while perhaps still small, are still (mostly) in your hands. For example, while it is surely true that only the top Ibankers make outsize rewards, those Ibankers are identified by their merit by enacting transactions that generated more revenue than the other Ibankers did. {Granted, much of the crash was incited by perverse banking incentive schemes to encouraged bankers to place excessive risk upon the bank’s balance sheets, but nevertheless, the point stands that those bankers who found ways to ‘excel’ within those incentive schemes were heftily rewarded.} Similarly, while few lawyers make partner at large law firms, there is a conceivable chance you could be one of them through hard work and legal acumen. Few doctors may become highly paid surgeons, but you could become one of them through hard work and strong clinical performances in med-school. </p>
<p>But even the hardest working and most talented engineer doesn’t really make that much more money than does a mediocre engineer, despite vast differences in productivity. For example, it has been said that a top software engineer is easily 10x more productive than is a mediocre one - and indeed, I would say that the difference might be on the order of 100x or even more - yet their employers never pay them 10x more, and certainly not 100x more. {Yet many of those very same employers pay princely sums for consulting and Ibanking services.} </p>
<p>The one identified escape hatch - that being the startup/entrepreneurship pathway - is fraught with uncertainty. History is replete with examples of brilliant technologies that nevertheless failed in the market, or even when successful, do not financially benefit their inventors. Arguably the most brilliant engineer of modern times - certainly more brilliant than Edison - was Nikola Tesla, whose innovations are still being studied even to this day, died in abject poverty. {Nor was Tesla’s case similar to that of artists such as Van Gogh whose work was appreciated only after their deaths - Tesla was widely recognized as an engineering genius - and was mentioned as a serious Nobel Physics Prize candidate and appeared on the cover of Time Magazine - during the prime of his career, yet never became rich.}</p>
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<p>Well, like I said, during non-recessionary times, half of all MIT graduates who entered the workforce took jobs not in engineering, but in consulting or finance. I suspect that similar results could be said regarding Stanford. Hence, for their students, the number of available finance and consulting jobs, relative to engineering jobs, is clearly not minute in the least. </p>
<p>Certainly, I agree that MIT and Stanford represent only a tiny minority of engineering schools. But they are by far the most influential of them. MIT and Stanford do not want to have the engineering rankings of average schools, but the average school would love to have the engineering rankings of MIT or Stanford. By the same token, I think it is safe to say that far more engineering students at average schools would rather be going to MIT or Stanford than are MIT/Stanford students who would rather be going to average schools (and those who do are free to transfer away, yet few apparently do as both schools sport a ~95% graduation rate).</p>