It seems that STEM degrees, although being the most sought after by employers, usually pay less, starting off than your average call centre. That’s about the top salary you can get as an electronics engineer. Why Do Engineers Get Paid So Much? I started as a graduate structural engineer in a big corporation (London) on £27k now after 4 years and being nearly chartered I have £37k. It shows the ability to learn and work hard to obtain a degree unlike those in (dare I say it) the humanities whose hardest part of the course is getting out of bed before 10am! We should tear down the belief that doctors, and solicitors deserve some special status. If you stick with it you’ll have your C&G or HNC, be called an engineer and will be on practically the same amount I earn. Steve Jobs cheeky response to an engineer who asked why Apple paid so little Steve Jobs’s sharp and cheeky response when an engineer once asked why Apple paid so little. What do most engineers do? Oil & gas engineers, railway signalling engineers, mining engineers, marine salvage engineers, can often earn £90-150,000 a year, albeit sometimes working in rough locations, and often in tax-free countries. Lastly I know that most fields can vary wildly in salaries and some exceptional engineers will be earning £90k whereas some solicitors will be on £30k and vice versa, but in general engineering is not an efficient or easy route to untold riches. Compare this to other professions and you’ll realise that they’re in a different universe. Last week, the New York Times published an article about how civil engineering was looked down in India. Among the best options has always been the field of engineering. How can this be? As a moderately successful and more than adequately qualified engineer working for a FTSE 100 hi-tech engineering firm I can confirm that I do NOT earn anything like an MPs salary. My daily job is analyzing information, making high-level decisions and sending and receiving at least 50 emails a day. At oe interview, when it came to negotiating wages, the MD lughed when I said how much I previously earned and offerred £17.5K. I should add to my last comment that there is only one way to improve the pay and status of true Engineers and that is to build a union to truly represent them such as the BMA for Doctors. Engineers and solicitors may earn the same on average, but you don’t hear regular complaints that there’s a shortage of lawyers. Or small local town clubs? The trouble with trying to analyse the salaries of engineers is that the subject is far too vast to be covered in a few statistics. I have 5 years experience and on 50% more than that. Then there’s lawyers. Why are engineers paid so little? My wages are amongst the lowest in the company yet I’m one of only two who is actually an engineer. Don’t be a mug! My advice is don’t be so swift to judge. Your net family income will not be that high, one of you will likely give up work to look after the kids as they grow up, because child-care costs make it pointless to stay working. That said, having lived away from the UK for 6 years its quite shocking to note (from afar) that engineering and management salaries (related to engineering) are less than they were 6 years ago. At least from an intellectual requirement and societal utility point of view. The ImechE had done nothing to protect the profession and elevate its status. Fact is that engineers get paid the correct salary as set by supply and demand on a global basis. Though these people have great benefits, they have significantly lower salaries, so if you want to go into civil engineering and want lots of money, don't go into government! Civil engineering is very important and needed skill in this world but very underpaid. is a highly coveted qualification and accords the holder with the same status and salary range as those attributable to physicians, chartered accountants, etc. A good PM will motivate, performance manage and manage stakeholder expectations whilst also managing a projects finances. The title professional engineer is protected by law and is attained only thru successful completion of a four year accredited university degree in engineering accompanied by three to four years of training/responsible work exposure. All I have to say is Engineers make horrible money in the UK as compared to almost any other country. Up to a certain size, jobs are often, as you say, best run by a Chief Engineer, and many of my own best projects have been ones I’ve run, Engineered and PM’d. However they don’t care what subject, they’ll state “must have an interest in XYZ engineering”. Visit the UK’s dedicated jobsite for engineering professionals. Aside from being one of the most interesting things one can do as a career, Engineering does pay well. CEng. So we're back to the original question, why is it that doctors are paid better than engineers? There is a shortage of engineers – who are happy with little pay. As such when they cease to be practising doctors they should not use the title – not that Dr Fox MP would accept that idea for a moment! My salary as an experienced Professional Chartered Engineer, working in the private sector for over 30 years, has actually lost value at the rate of about 1.4% per annum relative to the cost of living for the past 15 years, whilst graduate starting salaries have flat lined or barely kept up with the RPI. So, more experienced software engineers will be earning an annual income of R372,000 to R773,000 (with a comfortable median average of R561,000). Anyone who thinks the numbers are wrong should come up with their own. Also, I know Engineers who just don’t want to work anymore in the industry even after 20 years experience just because the true hourly rate is extremely low. If I worked as a GP I could get paid as much as £104,000 a year. The annual What do graduates do? And if you think about you can see why. It is simply wrong that a CE or any Engineer, is paid at the levels he is. According to the most recent figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, mechanical engineers earned $85,880 on average in 2017. I cannot believe how atrocious the salaries are for Engineering Professionals in the UK. The salary can be really good i.e. Why do ordinary people have to pay £20,000 to get divorced? However, these figures suffer the same limitations as many that have come before them. My son has chosen Maths, extra Maths and physics and really still not sure what to do in terms of University courses. It makes me sad to say this. New Grad salary is about 50k $ here. They add substantial value, reduce deficits if there are any, bring a considerable engineering capability to a company and a diverse range of problem solving skills, along with the ability to negotiate at all levels. Our first years turn over was around £20k our second was £90k (after righting off around £30k due to bad debts). Very good Engineers, in general, are contractors and can get around London approx. In contrast , I experienced the opposite during a three month secondment to GEC, UK, midway thru my career. After a paid internship with a good design consultancy in the mudlands I turned down a £22k offer, I’d be curious to know which uni…I got a 2:2 and started on 28k with a 10% bonus up north…, Hi Gents, I found this site on the same topic. And when you compare to other similarly respected disciplines such as Law, Economics & Finance and Medicine, engineering salaries are way behind. In the future Engineering may still probably be more fun than the legal profession appears to be but will be different and probably, on average, paid less. Dave Smith. If you want more you need to contract and you can probably make 50k-150k depending on technical and soft skills. ££) fields, or become entrepreneurial. Students should learn how to learn and gain knowledge. And while it’s commonly believed that the other professions typically pay far more handsomely than engineering in general, a look at the figures suggests that for most individuals this isn’t true. Use that generalisation in the US or Canada, call yourself a professional engineer without the proper papers and I’ll visit you in prison. Nowadays, with a post graduate qualification, your starting salary would be about £25k. Quality Assurance Officer. Any chance of some proof to these claims? Either you are out of your mind, or you have a special vendetta against engineers for some reason to bleat such baseless inaccuracies. Civil Engineers in UK get paid 30 to 50% less than many other industries like Law, Accounting, Medicine or Finance&Banking. Its not just about the starting salary its about the progression and opportunities, I started on £25k with an engineering firm, I’m now well above that after 5 years having moved companies. Figures released this week by the Times Good University Guide fall into this category. Truth being said, Civil Engineering graduates in UK are total jokes in comparison with Canada, USA, Australia or other countries. The legal cartel is trying to protect its high salaries but I don’t think they can hold out forever. Electrical Engineer ¥4,136K. Their remit would be to get the title Engineer protected in the UK as in Europe and prevent unqualified people doing Engineer’s jobs on the cheap. Then where are all these high paid jobs, apparently there is a shortage of engineers so why are so many out of work if there is such a demand. I initially started as a project engineer on a major UK nuclear site on 32kpa and did this for 3 years. So why scientists are paid so shabbily? Done well, with Engineering experience to back it up, I personally believe that Project Management is the more demanding job. Take a gander at the starting salaries earned by Berkeley grads and you will see that BioEngineers and Bio majors earn a relatively low salary, compared to other engineers or natural science majors. A chartered engineer gets in the range £35k-40k , that is after 5-6 years experience. The salaries paid for engineers in the UK is an utter disgrace. Sorry but that’s only if you manage to go contracting and even that’s falling due to recruitment agencies and mass immigration pushing wages down ( half the people i find contracting now i cant pronounce their names or understand them and it takes 10 times longer to get the information across!) As my wife, a South African who knows absolutely nothing about engineering, says ….. “In the UK, they call anyone an engineer” : therein lies the problem. The comments here about engineers being paid a lot are mistaken. Is it good to be an engineer? What they do all have however is around 30 years experience a piece whereas I’ve only 8 (plus education years which don’t count). So we’ve lost that competitive edge. Unfortunately we live in a gloabalized world. even so the gap between recent graduates and time served professionals has become very narrow. If I had been willing to work in Defence or overseas in Oil & Gas I might have been able to make it work, but that wasn’t why I studied Engineering. This is particularly the case when a college student has to select a study course to enroll in. And mean figures like those in the Times guide can be skewed by a small number of very high earners. Why do I deserve status? This estimate is based upon 12 Federal Government Engineer salary report(s) provided by employees or … Generally we get to know more and more about less and less. We are moving to a 2 class society. That money on him is totally wasted. (3) won’t negotiate with the customer This further creates an incentive for the best and brightest to leave engineering as fast as possible. Only the manager was a C.Eng. The lowest 10% earned less than $55,310 while the highest 10% […] Not only for my preference of hands-on to sitting at a desk, but also for the earlier financial benefits. The salary in engineering is not low but the effort for reward is highly unbalanced. I was doing a search, wondering why security guards got such low pay. In my later career as a management consultant advising on corporate strategy I was surprised at the very high proportion of chemical/process engineers in senior management positions given the relatively small proportion of the engineering profession coming from that background. I try to maintain a degree of scepticism whenever I’m told engineering graduates are high earners. Im a recent graduate trying to weather the oil and gas downturn and have plenty of stories of friends who just cant see the point in continuing in different industries for very little advancement and recognition, so have flown the nest to travel or pursue other things. I can’t believe that this indeed is the case: market forces would have corrected the imbalance by now and engineers would be commanding salaries commensurate with those of other professions. In the UK at the moment, companies recruiting into engineering roles are asking for graduates…. The market sets these pay scales and without really very extreme changes in our economic system, they will remain so. Do you mean Premiership? Perhaps one of the more important reasons for an engineering/science/nedical degree is that its a degree that actually has some value. So do lawyers earn more than engineers? It’s like saying ALL footballers are over paid. Your problem with your graduate is that there is so much to learn that some basics have to be dropped and can be picked up easily once in a post as much taught may not relate to the job one actually finds after graduating. At the electrical firm I work at practically none of the so-called engineers have a degree not even the chief engineer who only has an HNC. Engineer salaries at Federal Government can range from $65,145 - $154,090. Last week, the New York Times published an article about how civil engineering was looked down in India. You also get orders of magnitude more pressure put on you when you are a manager. The salary can get around £70000 at the director level and this is normally happening after 50 in big corporations and after 40 in smaller companies. In that country, the civil is the least paid of engineering … Now that you have covered yourself, let’s talk about a carehome for your parents, schooling for your children, and possible some education for yourself to keep up to date with developments in science and technology. 12. I’m with “cynical old engineer”. There seem to be only two ways to progress financially as an engineer. If you are clever enough to do engineering then I advise you to consider a profession that gives you better rewards and public esteem. Thatcher has screwed you. The old hands: More experienced software engineers will start to see a higher hourly earnings rate, ranging from just under R150 on the lower end, to R780 on the high end. In general the skills and value of engineers are better recognised and rewarded in capital intensive industries such as utilities or oil and gas rather than lower margin manufacturing where labour costs are critical. I’m retired, ex-UK with B.Sc., C.Eng and have lived in South Africa since 1971. Father. There are a number of other people in the same wage bracket – supervisors, team leaders, sales managers, used car salesmen, estate agents – and therefore there is a lot of competition for housing in this bracket which means you don’t get much for your money. Doctors , lawyers, solictors , stockbrokers ,politicians, bankers are not reststrained in this way. I also believe the law is well overdue for a shake up. The pay in the UK is SHOCKING for engineers taking into consideration the high cost of living; hand to mouth. According to the Office for National Statistics’ Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, the median salary of an engineer is £38,428 whereas for solicitors it’s £38,271 and for chartered accountants it’s £34,745. According to his LinkedIn page, Doll worked at Apple during the period 2003 to 2009. I think the demand is there the problem is that engineers are not valued. Lecturer in applied science. The salaries are almost at the same level with non university professionals like Secretarial services or clerks etc. This time, it's money's fault. But we are not paid for the work that we do.’ – Hope Brown, Kentucky The wave began in West Virginia, where in February and March some 20,000 teachers walked out across the state. There are of course those who will view the average starting salary of a mechanical engineering graduate of £26,076 as low, or at least not relatively high. It is slightly better in bigger companies. In my experience, professional project managers are a lot like professional politicians: limited qualifications for their role and a belief that because of their title they know everything. If an graduate went into an advanced engineering role those things would be useful. Why are software engineers' salaries so much higher in major US tech hubs than everywhere else? I found these jobs advertised in the New Scientist and wondered why the pay was so little. Generally speaking the lower th cost of an item the more it will sell. You had no chance to meet them in your career and this does not mean they do not exist. Many of the reports of engineers on the poverty line are wrong. Your kids would be sent to independent school. Two conclusions: 1 No one should be legally allowed to call themselves an engineer if they aren’t qualifued as one: I can’t go around calling myself a doctor for example and2: in the UK at least if you want to be a well paid ‘engineer’ do not bother with the absolute con of graduate education. You get paid more if you run your own business but there’s a lot of work involved and considerable risk. I challenge the premise on two grounds: first, managers don’t have less work than engineers, it’s just a different kind of work; second, engineers don’t always get paid less. ... research, analyst or those in Management Associate programs are paid from 3k to 4k. You would have such a high disposable income you would quickly pay off your mortgage on a big house and then invest in other properties. Ambulances in rural communities are often staffed by volunteers, which depresses wages for those who do pursue the role as a career. 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