Over 270 engineers on Reddit told us their starting salaries. Here are the results of the informal “survey”
This post hopes to answer the question on the minds of every high school student interested in engineering: “How much can I expect to make as a [Aerospace, Biomedical, Chemical, Civil, Environmental, Electrical, etc] engineer?”
I’ve summarized the key statistics in the “Summary” section, but you’re welcome to view the whole spreadsheet, which includes personal comments that help color each data point (for example, a hydraulics engineer in Texas said “Glass ceiling. Company got in legal trouble for not promoting any minorities”). You might even be able to message the respondent on Reddit if you’re inclined.
I’ve seen reports of starting salaries before, but the datasets were either too wide, too narrow, or too biased (although this “survey” has its own strengths and weaknesses). For example, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is reliable, it does not stratify by “experience level” (understandable since it’s somewhat nebulous), so we get higher salary averages/medians that aren’t realistic for an entry level person.
I also found that data on traditional engineering salaries was harder to come by since many results are mixed in with software engineering salaries. There’s nothing wrong with that (everyone should have good data), but software development is a pretty different career track and that data wouldn’t be too helpful for other engineers.
Respondents:
Every data point here was carefully collected from comment responses to this Reddit post (data collection wasn’t structured like a survey):
So we obviously can’t verify that everyone there is actually who they say they are, but that’s par for pretty much every survey. People of all ages, majors, and locations answered. There were a decent number of low salaries there and I liked seeing that (not really, but..). I think colleges tend to underreport on their lower paid graduates (not necessarily the fault of the data collectors since lower earners might be less likely to respond).
Summary of Engineer starting salaries:
Quantitative Insights:
· Job title does not matter. It appears that location and experience are the major confounds for salary
· Engineers don’t always work in the same field as their Bachelor’s degree’s title. Often interchanged are MechE, ElectE, SysE and CompSci. Civil tends to stay Civil. Aero and Chem have the capacity to delve into other fields, but isn’t as interchanged as the Mech/Elect/Sys/Comp family
· Experience is king. Moving companies is how people capitalize on it. Showing your increased experience to a new company appears to be the best way to increase your paygrade, although it’s possible the person was underpaid before.
· Oil and Gas tends to pay more, but may have high turnover, undesirable location or poor work-life balance
· Benefits and bonuses show little correlation with salary amount. Salaries both above and below the median have “good” or “excellent” benefits
· “Travelling” Engineers make comparable base pay and receive a per diem to account for their nomadic sacrifice. Expect roughly 1.5 times the median or you’re being lowballed.
· There was one Ivy League respondent identified. Although, alma mater was not closely tracked in this survey
· Like snowflakes, every engineering job is unique. The “Engineering Job Market” should be thought of less like a marketplace and more like a group of mafias, where each company or gov agency has its own rules and ways of doing business. The only things which can be assuredly common between firms are regulatory compliances. Thus, Professional Engineer certifications, regulatory experience, and security clearances will continue to be fungible “experience currency” throughout the entire industry.
