Somewhat *Off Topic* - Article on engineering pay, interesting thing is that ASIC designers seem to command the highest salaries....
Technology News
Engineers: You Can Earn A
$100,000 Salary
(08/25/98; 10:57 a.m. ET)
By Robert Bellinger, EE Times
Reaching a $100,000 salary is no longer an unreachable
goal for engineers.
Employers aren't hiring college grads today at $100
grand, but after landing a first job after college this
spring or fall, chances are an engineer will be more than
40 percent of the way toward a six-figure salary.
Since September 1997, salaries have soared for
graduates in electrical engineering, IT, and computer
science/computer engineering. Hardware, software -- it
doesn't make a difference. Witness what the National
Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found:
BSEE wages rose 8.6 percent on average, to
$42,900.
Computer-science starting salaries averaged
$41,500, a whopping 11.7 percent higher than a
year ago.
Information-science graduates can expect
$37,300, up 5 percent over a year ago, but
some IT/IS people are easily cresting past
$40,000.
Other engineering disciplines are going well. Petroleum
engineers, always the highest-paid engineering
discipline, topped $50,000 in average starting wages in
the past year. So they're well on their way to the
Six-Figure Club. Chemical engineers, who often end up
as process engineers in fabs, saw wages go up 5.7
percent, to $45,000, NACE reported.
Comparisons to the average wage offer of $27,600 for
liberal-arts graduates indicate the choice to enter the
technical field in 1994 or so is paying off royally.
NACE reported employers "seeking students for
engineering and technology jobs found themselves
fighting off other recruiters in a veritable feeding frenzy
of offers, counteroffers, signing bonuses, and perks."
That's right, signing bonuses. Welcome to the world of
engineering, 1998.
Will a career choice as an EE/IT/computer scientist pay
off later? It sure will. The average salary for
experienced EEs and computer scientists, according to
the upcoming 1998 EE Times Salary & Opinion
Survey, is $72,000, up more than 8 percent over the
previous year.
Remember, however, that at an average age of 40,
most of these EEs started their careers 14 or 15 years
ago, when starting salaries were in the $20s and $30s.
So unless deflation kicks in, one can expect to be
averaging considerably more by the time you reach the
"average" age.
But suppose one doesn't want to be average. Bigger
bucks and a bigger career warrant taking some steps
toward that. Let's see how 11.3 percent of the 681
readers who responded to the salary survey got to
$100,000.
Marry another wage earner.
Many of EE Times' two-earner engineering families
now top $100,000, assuming a spouse earns the
average of $30,000 and the engineer is at the $72,000
average. Obviously, the picture can be even brighter if
your spouse is a lawyer, a doctor, or other high-paid
professional.
Acquire an in-demand, highly paid technical skill.
The best-paid engineers in our survey were those with
application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design
($77,400), deep-submicron ($86,900), or
networking-design skills ($78,600). Earning more than
$100,000 are 15 percent of the ASIC designers, nearly
20 percent of the networking designers, and more than
22 percent of the deep-submicron designers. The cast
will change as technology evolves, so stay on top by
being in demand.
Pick up key business skills.
Certain business skills are associated with the higher
earners. More than 18 percent of those with
personnel-hiring responsibilities earn $100,000 or
more. As a technical newspaper, we don't get HR
people responding to our survey, so these are
engineering supervisors who are acting as hiring
managers. When you go for a hiring interview at a
company, you will meet a hiring manager. Other key
skill are budgeting and written reports for outside
publications -- communications skills.
Become a manager.
As the ASIC and deep-submicron IC designers show,
you don't have to enter management to collect big
bucks. But it helps. Managers earn an average of
$80,000 in our survey vs. $60,000 for engineers. Some
of this, mind you, reflects age. The engineers are
younger, and thus are less likely to be at the $80,000
level. But the more people you supervise, the closer you
get to $100,000. Case in point: Among engineers who
supervise 10 or more people, the average pay was
$94,400 vs. $67,700 for the guy with no supervisory
responsibility. There's a direct correlation.
Own a piece of the company.
There are several ways to accomplish this. One is to
become an entrepreneur. Hook up with a start-up
company, gain some lucrative stock options, work like
the devil, and pray it goes public. This is how some
engineers become millionaires. Of course, the company
might go belly-up, leaving you with nothing to show for
your 60- to 80-hour work weeks.
Another, less risky alternative is to join an established
company that offers stock options or performance
incentives. Nearly half the EE Times readers own stock
options in their company. About 10 percent of those
engineers and managers own more than $100,000
worth. Included among those Six-Figure Investors are
senior engineers and project engineers. You don't have
to be a chairman to cash in on your company's success.
Live in Silicon Valley.
Northern California employers pay engineers better
than anywhere else. The average wage is $86,500, only
$13,500 short of your ambition. New Englanders earn
$77,500, South Atlantic engineers pull in $65,000, and
Mountain States designers count on $74,000.
Get a master's?
You get more money with a higher degree, but it's no
assurance of reaching $100,000. About 13 percent of
the MSEEs surpassed that mark. Nevertheless, they
surely do better than BSEEs, at $76,200 vs. $65,700.
Just under a quarter of our Ph.Ds belong to the
Six-Figure Club. They average $86,600 overall. Good,
but they spent tens of thousands to get that degree and
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