Engineers like their jobs, but they also value their free time. Those are two conclusions from EE’s 2012 Salary Survey. More than 85% of respondents are somewhat or very satisfied with their jobs with the plurality—45.9%—reporting being somewhat satisfied. Only 2.8% reported being very dissatisfied.
When asked to choose three career issues most important to them, 64.2% choose work/life balance and 63.8% selected salary. Job security is certainly a concern, with 61% choosing that response, but job security fell to third place from the first-place spot it held in the last EE survey taken in 2009 during the depths of the great recession that began in 2008.1 As for exactly how secure today’s engineers feel, 48.6% of the respondents reported feeling very secure, and 34.4% reported feeling somewhat secure. Only 5.5% reported feeling very insecure.
Not all respondents were satisfied with their salaries and work environments. Said one who wished to remain anonymous, “Due to the poor economy, managers feel they have the right to make engineers work more and for less money. This will haunt them someday when the economy recovers.”
Reader Beth Matlock cited a common complaint, saying, “I currently have technical responsibility for my division but no real authority.” She is taking action to change that, however, saying, “I’m working on getting this changed to position my division for growth.”
Off-shoring remains a concern. Reader Thomas Kearney said, “Large companies must stop outsourcing work and start developing suppliers in the United States if we are to continue to be a manufacturing source. The manufacturing segment creates more jobs than any other area.”
And Joe Wilegus at S&W Precision Tool said, “Far too much business has gone overseas, and when it’s checked here, it is accepted because it is cheaper, but it is not as good. Price plays the largest factor. And the U.S. government allows it. The only country I have seen good quality workmanship from is Germany.”
Region, Job, and Industry
With respect to region (Figure 1), the Pacific Coast remains the place to be for high salaries with the average respondent reporting making $102,614. But that region barely edged out the Central region, whose respondents reported an average salary of $101,895. Overall, average salary stood at $96,915, up from $85,000 in 2009.
With respect to job function (Figure 2), corporate managers continue to do well, reporting average salaries of $114,417. However, respondents who work in component engineering/evaluation reported slightly higher salaries at $115,000 although the small sample size in that area (less than 3% of the total respondents) may have skewed the results.
The plurality of respondents at 38.1% reported working in design and development engineering at an average salary of $99,548. Field-service engineers, representing only 3.2% of respondents, reported $75,357, the lowest income of all the functions listed.
As for industry (Figure 3), respondents working for software companies reported the highest average salary at $117,500. Other industries yielding six-figure average salaries included consumer electronics ($111,250) semiconductor ($106,875), military/aerospace ($102,924), and computer ($101,875). Contract design and manufacturing firms offered respondents the lowest average salary at $83,561.
Experience and Education
Salary roughly tracks experience, our results indicate (Figure 4), with respondents having less than three years experience making an average of $60,500. Those with 25 to 29 years experience fared best with an average salary of $105,563. Those with more than 30 years experience reported a slightly lower average salary at $102,100.
Advanced degrees are helpful in boosting salaries (Figure 5). Respondents with a Ph.D. reported the highest average salary at $120,313. An M.B.A. also is helpful, with respondents holding that degree reporting $117,500. Those with an M.S.E.E. degree reported an average salary of $108,534, and those holding some other master’s degree also reported a six-figure salary at $106,833.
We asked about any additional expertise respondents have had to acquire over the past year (Figure 6). A plurality of 36.7% reported not having had to acquire additional expertise—the remainder acquired knowledge in areas such as safety compliance, green engineering and low-power design, RF/microwave technology, EMC, signal integrity, medical-product design, and cloud computing.
Since most respondents subscribe to print or digital editions of EE-Evaluation Engineering, we assume the magazine plays a role in efforts to gain expertise in such areas. We asked what other means respondents use to acquire knowledge in new areas. Nearly half at 49.1% make use of webcasts and online events, 28.9% take advantage of in-person training sessions provided by a vendor, 24.8% attend trade-show technical sessions, and 9.6% enroll in classes at a university. Several volunteered on-the-job training as a key way of building expertise. Others reported reading standards and books.
We also asked if mobile devices are becoming tools of the engineer’s trade. A majority of respondents said no, but many report using smart phones or tablets in their jobs (Figure 7).
Benefits
Nearly everyone (95.9% of the respondents) receives health insurance as a benefit (Figure 8), and most have a 401k or pension plan, dental insurance, and disability insurance. More than half receive bonuses. Perhaps addressing employee’s preferences for work/life balance, more than half can take advantage of flextime although less than 10% receive child-care benefits from their employers. And overtime hours are unlikely to be compensated. Less than 20% of respondents report receiving overtime pay.
Some employees, however, reported having to pay more for benefits. According to one anonymous respondent, “Healthcare insurance costs have increased every year for the last three to five years, with more being deducted from weekly paychecks. Some people have reduced or stopped their 401k weekly deduction and applied it to cover healthcare insurance increases.”
Many readers are doing more with less. Said one respondent, “My company is typical in that it wants more finished product with less technical staff. When the [company does] hire, it is for more managers and paper-pushers—not engineers and technicians. I cringe to think what it is like for an entry-level engineer trying to find his or her first job.”
Our survey did ask for readers’ age, but we have not correlated that with sense of security. However, older respondents’ comments do indicate that they believe their age is an impediment to advancement.
Anecdotally, older workers might be in good shape. A recent AARP Bulletin reported on an engineer, 52, who lost his job, retrained, and found a new job paying more than the original. The Bulletin said that older workers seem to be convincing employers of the value of their experience, and it further noted that, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, 778,000 job seekers 55 and older found new jobs in the first quarter of this year, compared with only 385,000 for younger workers during the same period.2
There is a flip side, though. National Employment Law Project figures released in March showed that the number of people 50 and older who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more increased from 300,000 in 2007 to 1.8 million in 2011.3
Whatever the true situation facing older workers, respondents to our survey expressed concerns. Said one self-described older worker, “…age discrimination and age preference are real concerns for the last 10 years of my working life. Experience is valuable, but lower-aged senior management does not always view it that way.” Said another respondent, “Despite the company performing financially better, the salary increases were disproportionally allocated to a few favorites and were below average for the older employees.”
Added reader Howard B. Evans, Jr., “I seem to have chosen the wrong company to work for in the later years of my career. At age 68, there is no opportunity for advancement, no opportunity to transfer to another division that might offer more opportunities for advancement, and my hours have been reduced to 20 hours per week.” He said he’s collecting Social Security as of this year but would prefer a full-time job. He added, “I try to stay current with embedded systems design, but my employer does not support my continuing education in this area. It is all on my own dime.”
Said yet another reader, “The company is doing very well, my division poorly. At my age, prospects of a new job are very poor.”
Retirements and Opportunities
A dearth of older, experienced workers in some fields might, in fact, be creating opportunities. Said one reader, “I work in the automotive area. Because our industry downsized so extensively during the recession, many journeyman-level engineers left for other fields. They won’t be returning. Meanwhile, the engineers with two to five years of experience can leave readily—and do—for other jobs.As a result, we have huge turnover and little long-term experience.”
This reader added, “I am continually training new people who leave my group for other positions (essentially promotions). It impacts the depth of analysis and understanding in a qualitative way that I expect will come back to bite us. The emphasis on such drastic fuel-economy improvements means that deadlines are always late, and that causes shortcuts to be taken. The pressure from management to get sign-off regardless of issues is intense.”
Another reader pursuing energy-efficiency technologies is Jim Kleinert at Siemens Energy. He said, “While most U.S. companies have downsized through the recent recession and slow recovery, ours has consistently grown. The demand for new and more efficient and effective electrical generation has placed us in a ‘bubble’ of sorts. We have not grown our staff as much as our market has grown, so every engineer is doing the work of three. The company has been unable to find qualified engineers to hire to reduce the workload.”
Another reader from the energy sector, Mark Unruh, said, “I work in the nuclear industry, and we find it difficult to fill the open electrical-engineering positions due to the demand. We traditionally pay more than other industries, but it is difficult to keep up with the brain drain caused by the number of retirements.”
Reader John Wyncott summed up his thoughts on older engineers this way: “What a waste of good engineering talent…. Hire more older engineers now!”
Working for or with the Government
Readers’ comments also reflected the challenges of working for or with the government. “I work in the government contractor environment,” said Carl Poe of IEA Corp. “The government is regularly renegotiating contracts, and contract companies are having to adjust for the changes annually. This minimizes any security (beyond a year) in the field. Thus, the individual must be constantly sampling the job market to be ready for another job change,” he explained.
Reader Dave Clark of the U.S. Department of Transportation said, “I work for the federal government, so we have been in a pay freeze. Work is very rewarding, and unlike the perception, in our department, government employees do work, put in a 40-hour-plus work week, and do not get overtime.” An anonymous respondent added, “The federal wage freeze is negatively affecting employee retention and morale at the national labs.”
General Concerns
Although most readers reported being satisfied with their jobs, many cited problems. “The growth of zero loyalty in both directions between engineers and employers is leading to growing ethics problems,” said one anonymous respondent. “With no cause for loyalty, engineering is more mercenary than I have ever seen it—a bad thing in my view. ‘Kill your neighbor’ to get ahead is becoming a ‘normal’ value.”
Another said, “Our society is becoming more and more risk averse. As such, the U.S. technical leadership is being overcome by paralysis from too much regulation and from ‘what-if’ syndrome in support of a zero-risk mentality. The desire for the removal of all uncertainty also will lead to the removal of all innovation from large companies that are unwilling to take risk or are unable to make proper risk-based market/technical decisions.”
Other readers addressed management and marketing deficiencies and the need to keep jobs at home. One said, “The profession continues to worsen as a career choice. Modern management and marketing do not seem to know how to sell a product anymore.”
Another addressed off-shoring: “The United States needs to be more proactive about preventing jobs from migrating overseas…. If we want to maintain any kind of leadership role for the future, we need to respond and keep jobs here.”
And reader Bruce Cyburt said, “The negative thing about my career path is that we are constantly being pressured to do more in less time, leaving me with the thought that I could do a better job if they only gave me more time.”
And of course, all people like to be recognized for their achievements. Balbir Johl of the State of California Public Safety Communications Office, said, “Public-sector engineers are never recognized for their contribution to the advanced infrastructure they have helped create. We have the best telecommunications, roadways/bridges, clean water systems, and environmental monitoring systems, and the general public is completely oblivious to what makes this country so great.”
References
1. Bokorney, J., “Security Trumps Salary for Today’s Engineers,” EE-Evaluation Engineering, April 2009, p. 14.
2. Fleck, C., “In the News,” AARP Bulletin, May 2012, p. 4.
3. McKenna, C., “Long Road Ahead for Older Unemployed Workers,” National Employment Law Project, NELP Issue Brief, March 9, 2012.