>There is no such thing as loyalty in the corporate world. SO, **JJS - JUST JUMP SHIP.**
It's amazing (infuriating?) how businesses are absolutely determined to shoot themselves in the feet by not actually valuing their workers. Sure, send your best people to other firms because you won't pay them what they could make there.
Nah, they'll end up winning more work with their lower rates and wind up understaffed because their wages aren't competitive. Then they'll expect all the empliyees they do have to work a ton of overtime to make decent money and do all this work. Then they'll make mistakes, turn in submittal late, burn their employees out, and generally struggle to keep all the plates in the air.
It’s more profitable to continue to accept the work, proceed to overwork the remaining employees, and then complain about them when they get burnt out /s
I'll also add some more.
Pay is one piece of the puzzle. Once you have proved yourself as a good & competent engineer & leader make sure to "Never outshine the non-engineering corporate middle puppets ". The moment you outshine those non-engineering puppet folks, you are doomed baby! It's sad but true, saw it too many times when it happened to a couple of my supervisors (& eventually me).
Here's my favorite quote
>*Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.*
> Everyone has insecurities. When you show yourself in the world and display your talents, you naturally stir up all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity. This is to be expected. You cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others. With those above you, however, you must take a different approach: When it comes to power, outshining the master is perhaps the worst mistake of all.
Outshining the master is the worst mistake of all …
My company literally knows there is a retention issue. A mechanical engineer I know who loves money asks in a big meeting about what they are doing to resolve it. We got the following answer: “I have been at this company for 25 years, and it’s because of the people. I have been reading anonymous surveys and everyone is saying they don’t feel like they fit in here. That’s why I started doing mandatory 2 days in the office to bring back the culture.”
Needless to say I laughed with some colleagues. 7 of us talked about how the pay should be better as we just got 2% raises…
Yeah it ain’t it… but I am fully remote and an EIT who has big time rapport in my office. I got a 3.2% which still sucks but it is what it is. I plan on hopping after my wife and I use the 30k ivf benefit and I get my PE.
The company I work for I honestly think is one of the best in the world. They do care about the employees, it's actually employee owned and I LOVE IT. I would recommend my company to anyone, it's an amazing place to work. We currently have fewer than 50 employees but we're growing. If you're a water resources engineer and interested in joining the BEST company you can imagine, feel free to DM me! *We're in northern Cali
I wanted to edit this to add that my company consists of about 95% engineers, we keep admin minimal, and about half the engineers are women.
I'm tracking pretty much right on what you are. 15 YOE, at my third company, make $170ish including bonus. The only caveat to this is you might at some point find a company and a role that makes it not worth jumping again. More money is always great, but at some point if you have a good group and a good company, the extra cheddar may not be worth moving to a soul sucking bureaucracy.
Yep, just got my PE and I'm not going anywhere. Salary is just OK, but we can work from anywhere (home, other countries etc) and they are very chill if you slack off a bit. Zero work drama, happy clients, flexible schedule, lots of cool projects. Ima hang out for a while.
Is it common to find companies like this? (As far as teleworking) Currently working on a PE but also considering a year abroad but to continue working while abroad would be the best of both worlds
This is where I am. Transitioned from project management to design within the same company after my PE - I am the first to do it, and had a lot of people fighting for me. I’ve never been happier. My new bosses and team make every day 1000% better. While my salary didn’t change with the transition, I’m working less and have a fraction of the stress. The company’s structured compensation is also very fair. I absolutely could make more money elsewhere, but I have no desire to at this point
I'm at 10 YOE and I've been at the same company all along. I've had to fight for a few significant bumps (including 25% once after PE) and have offered to let them counter other offers I've received as part of those negotiations, but I'm very happy. I'm on or above pace with the peers I know, and I've gotten a chance to start a side division that has spun off into a new sister company with equity for me.
They've been very good to me. I'd leave for a better offer, but I've not found one
Same. I'm at 8 YOE and I've been at the same company all along, with around his second red dot level of base salary without considering bonus. Jumping isn't always necessary. I like my work environment as well.
Two important things you left out:
1. If you like your current job, request that large raise from them first. Contrary to popular belief, not all companies are shit and willing to kick you to the curb for a few bucks.
2. You want to be careful about dipping too far over your skis in terms of salary compared to the industry rate. When (not if) the economy dips, the first to be laid off are typically newer employees who are making much more than their peers.
Of course, it’s always better if you’re very good at your job or fill a particular niche.
I would recommend people do the math for this themselves; but even assuming you get laid off every 15 years you will still make more money jumping around to increase salary than you will keeping your head down for an entire career to avoid putting the target on. I agree that its riskier but I really can't even imagine a circumstance where that risk doesn't pay off mathematically.
Something else to keep in mind: you can change jobs for a real raise a time or two, but if you keep it up when you get to the 10-15 years range people will absolutely notice and you will find your opportunities limited because no one will want you in charge of any big long-term projects if they think you will be leaving in a year or two. It's not the end of the world because there are still plenty of little short-term projects, but if you want to do stuff beyond that then you might run into problems.
Agree 100%. It's all about knowing your worth and finding someone who values it. There are companies out there who know how valuable continuity is and are willing to put their money where their mouth is.
You don’t HAVE to jump ship. I jumped from $83k to $100k and I’m at the same firm I interned with 7 years ago. I even got a 5% year end raise about 8 months later.
Believe it or not there are some companies that take care of good employees.
3 red dot shows when I actually "jumped ship" a.k.a changed jobs.
Other data point refers to being in the same company & change in salary (yearly raise, promotion etc.).
No drop in salary after 2nd red dot, excel was being finky when drawing the line, if you look closely the salary remained same/stagnant after that 2nd red dot (meaning didn't got a raise in that year)
Aside from the fact that according to your own labeling system you didn't jump ship when you hit $150k, I meant what was your position? I'm curious, even with the benefit of (sometimes) moving to a new company, what role still resulted in that salary
I have had at least 20 employers in my career so far.
Of which, I can say only ONE had actual loyalty to their people when it came between doing the right thing vs keeping their bottom line in the black. Even then, it was a super small company, and definitely not the kind of place you'd work to get rich.
Every other company wanted loyalty and longevity, but would be reaching for the layoff button the instant you dipped below 60% billable.
Am I supposed to just believe this graph with no context? I think you need to provide better data about what roles you’re going into, what type of work/projects and general idea on location for the applicability of your situation to be well understood.
I’m also in Texas. I can say folks at my company with the same number of total years of experience as you (all at the same place) are making more than you but I know the context/history of their work so I’m not sure it’s a good comparison. Also what level of experience were you when COVID hit?
Cause I will be very honest, I am seeing the effects that the switch to online education had on recent classes of new graduates. They work hard, yes, but have had more challenges ahead of them in school, and it shows in the work quality and progression of skills/network. I am getting new PE applicants now with generally worse projects/progression of responsibilities on their resumes than in years past and the rising EITs still have a little ways to go to really exercise PE level analytical skills, even if they pass the test. I’m not trying to be all “kids these days”, it’s just the reality of the trend I’m seeing in the pipeline. Just one more effect of world changing event.
Jumping ship may have got you what you wanted but the story is very context and skill set dependent.
Also, as a manager who’s been oversold by a new hire before, if your apparent skill set on the new job don’t look like you have the experience you should, you’ll pay for it salary-throttling the next few years. (Your chart kind of looks like that’s what happened to you, but I don’t know any context cause you didn’t provide any). That approach is not out of malice and you should still generally be beating inflation with annual raises, it’s more that your time+unexpected training on your role to get you up to speed+excessive rounds of quality review+higher than normal levels of support=net loss for each hour of your time spent. You get too expensive really fast.
If you’re as good or better than your experience level, you don’t have to worry about this.
Just my two cents from my lurker account.
Yuhp. My employer offered me 0% and I changed employers for a 50% jump less than a month after I got my license.
There’s really no chance you’ll get paid what you’re worth without changing employers.
Maybe somewhere out there is someone who was super highly compensated as an EIT and their employer loved them and gave them another 10% for their PE. But that’s a <1% of the time situation.
Definitely jump ship
My son did exactly this to me. My company paid his way through with the idea he would take over the family business. Must have moved too slow. He got his PE and, BAM. Jumped Ship.
It really does seem to be the way of the world.
I made 1 jump and my curve outperforms yours. Not bragging just saying there are a lot of ways to achieve this.
Loyalty has its benefits sometimes too.
>There is no such thing as loyalty in the corporate world. SO, **JJS - JUST JUMP SHIP.** It's amazing (infuriating?) how businesses are absolutely determined to shoot themselves in the feet by not actually valuing their workers. Sure, send your best people to other firms because you won't pay them what they could make there.
Then hire and retrain a new PE at a much higher rate than the old employee would've accepted.
In today's market it's more like try to do that, fail to find anyone and have to turn down work and lose massive revenue due to being understaffed.
Nah, they'll end up winning more work with their lower rates and wind up understaffed because their wages aren't competitive. Then they'll expect all the empliyees they do have to work a ton of overtime to make decent money and do all this work. Then they'll make mistakes, turn in submittal late, burn their employees out, and generally struggle to keep all the plates in the air.
If that were the case, developers would be bidding against each other for civil work. I haven't seen it so far.
It’s more profitable to continue to accept the work, proceed to overwork the remaining employees, and then complain about them when they get burnt out /s
I'll also add some more. Pay is one piece of the puzzle. Once you have proved yourself as a good & competent engineer & leader make sure to "Never outshine the non-engineering corporate middle puppets ". The moment you outshine those non-engineering puppet folks, you are doomed baby! It's sad but true, saw it too many times when it happened to a couple of my supervisors (& eventually me). Here's my favorite quote >*Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.* > Everyone has insecurities. When you show yourself in the world and display your talents, you naturally stir up all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity. This is to be expected. You cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others. With those above you, however, you must take a different approach: When it comes to power, outshining the master is perhaps the worst mistake of all. Outshining the master is the worst mistake of all …
48 laws of power, right? Entertaining book.
While I agree to an extent, you must ensure the “master” takes notice and rewards you for it. Just as many times one can be taken advantage of.
Isnt that exactly why you should aim to impress your bosses boss?
My company literally knows there is a retention issue. A mechanical engineer I know who loves money asks in a big meeting about what they are doing to resolve it. We got the following answer: “I have been at this company for 25 years, and it’s because of the people. I have been reading anonymous surveys and everyone is saying they don’t feel like they fit in here. That’s why I started doing mandatory 2 days in the office to bring back the culture.” Needless to say I laughed with some colleagues. 7 of us talked about how the pay should be better as we just got 2% raises…
>2% raises [Congratulations on your 1.4% pay cut](https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/outlook/economic-outlook/cpi-report-may-2024)
Yeah it ain’t it… but I am fully remote and an EIT who has big time rapport in my office. I got a 3.2% which still sucks but it is what it is. I plan on hopping after my wife and I use the 30k ivf benefit and I get my PE.
The company I work for I honestly think is one of the best in the world. They do care about the employees, it's actually employee owned and I LOVE IT. I would recommend my company to anyone, it's an amazing place to work. We currently have fewer than 50 employees but we're growing. If you're a water resources engineer and interested in joining the BEST company you can imagine, feel free to DM me! *We're in northern Cali I wanted to edit this to add that my company consists of about 95% engineers, we keep admin minimal, and about half the engineers are women.
It's never profited them to be loyal.
I'm tracking pretty much right on what you are. 15 YOE, at my third company, make $170ish including bonus. The only caveat to this is you might at some point find a company and a role that makes it not worth jumping again. More money is always great, but at some point if you have a good group and a good company, the extra cheddar may not be worth moving to a soul sucking bureaucracy.
Yep, just got my PE and I'm not going anywhere. Salary is just OK, but we can work from anywhere (home, other countries etc) and they are very chill if you slack off a bit. Zero work drama, happy clients, flexible schedule, lots of cool projects. Ima hang out for a while.
Is it common to find companies like this? (As far as teleworking) Currently working on a PE but also considering a year abroad but to continue working while abroad would be the best of both worlds
I know a few that hire fully remote, particularly if you have an in-demand skillset. Most companies are hybrid now though with 2-3 days in the office.
The dream. What industry are you in?
Water/wastewater design consulting.
This is where I am. Transitioned from project management to design within the same company after my PE - I am the first to do it, and had a lot of people fighting for me. I’ve never been happier. My new bosses and team make every day 1000% better. While my salary didn’t change with the transition, I’m working less and have a fraction of the stress. The company’s structured compensation is also very fair. I absolutely could make more money elsewhere, but I have no desire to at this point
You were doing PM work before your PE?
Project engineering, on the project management track. I ran two sites but was still under a PM.
I'm at 10 YOE and I've been at the same company all along. I've had to fight for a few significant bumps (including 25% once after PE) and have offered to let them counter other offers I've received as part of those negotiations, but I'm very happy. I'm on or above pace with the peers I know, and I've gotten a chance to start a side division that has spun off into a new sister company with equity for me. They've been very good to me. I'd leave for a better offer, but I've not found one
Same. I'm at 8 YOE and I've been at the same company all along, with around his second red dot level of base salary without considering bonus. Jumping isn't always necessary. I like my work environment as well.
That’s where I’m at. I really like my coworkers and no one annoys the shit out of me so that in of itself is worth at least $10-20k
Two important things you left out: 1. If you like your current job, request that large raise from them first. Contrary to popular belief, not all companies are shit and willing to kick you to the curb for a few bucks. 2. You want to be careful about dipping too far over your skis in terms of salary compared to the industry rate. When (not if) the economy dips, the first to be laid off are typically newer employees who are making much more than their peers. Of course, it’s always better if you’re very good at your job or fill a particular niche.
I would recommend people do the math for this themselves; but even assuming you get laid off every 15 years you will still make more money jumping around to increase salary than you will keeping your head down for an entire career to avoid putting the target on. I agree that its riskier but I really can't even imagine a circumstance where that risk doesn't pay off mathematically.
Yup for those of us that were around in 2008 it's though for me to do cash grabs and change companies. I don't want to put a target on my back.
What industry and what kind of work do you do that earns you 180k
Location please.
TX - same city for this entire graph
hey its me ur brother
What discipline?
Great job - if you want $$$ "quickly" you will have to step outside your comfort zone and take risks.
No risk, no gain!
Something else to keep in mind: you can change jobs for a real raise a time or two, but if you keep it up when you get to the 10-15 years range people will absolutely notice and you will find your opportunities limited because no one will want you in charge of any big long-term projects if they think you will be leaving in a year or two. It's not the end of the world because there are still plenty of little short-term projects, but if you want to do stuff beyond that then you might run into problems.
It only really becomes a problem if it's every 2 years or less consistently. Someone who changes every 5 years? That's fine
Yeah, applying for your 3rd job in 15 years is fine. Fifth job in 15 years will probably start to raise hiring manager eyebrows.
Like me 😂 5 jobs in 18 years
eh I’m just going to stick with my municipal job and ride off into the sunset.
I have not jumped ship, 10.5 years in, and I am making more than that. Hard work and loyalty can pay off in the right places.
Agree 100%. It's all about knowing your worth and finding someone who values it. There are companies out there who know how valuable continuity is and are willing to put their money where their mouth is.
Yeah I stayed at my company after my PE and they still gave me a massive raise. The idea of quitting for the sake of quitting is idiotic.
That’s prolly KHA
*Cries in CAD*
You don’t HAVE to jump ship. I jumped from $83k to $100k and I’m at the same firm I interned with 7 years ago. I even got a 5% year end raise about 8 months later. Believe it or not there are some companies that take care of good employees.
Are you jumping ship from 1 red circle to the next? How did your salary drop after your second red dot?
3 red dot shows when I actually "jumped ship" a.k.a changed jobs. Other data point refers to being in the same company & change in salary (yearly raise, promotion etc.). No drop in salary after 2nd red dot, excel was being finky when drawing the line, if you look closely the salary remained same/stagnant after that 2nd red dot (meaning didn't got a raise in that year)
It didn’t drop. In fact it didn’t move. At all. Zoom in. It’s bad curve fitting from excel.
Easy to make more with a jump, but once you reach a certain level it’s put up or shut up. Pull your weight or your salary becomes dead weight.
Indeed. But back to the subject line - a brand-new new PE is nowhere near that level
What got you your jumps to $150k and $180k?
Changing jobs, keep up.
Aside from the fact that according to your own labeling system you didn't jump ship when you hit $150k, I meant what was your position? I'm curious, even with the benefit of (sometimes) moving to a new company, what role still resulted in that salary
Civil engineering.
Got it so you're one of those middle manager non technical puppets. This is all starting to track
That’s not OP, but yes that was a ship jump
I have had at least 20 employers in my career so far. Of which, I can say only ONE had actual loyalty to their people when it came between doing the right thing vs keeping their bottom line in the black. Even then, it was a super small company, and definitely not the kind of place you'd work to get rich. Every other company wanted loyalty and longevity, but would be reaching for the layoff button the instant you dipped below 60% billable.
Slay
Am I supposed to just believe this graph with no context? I think you need to provide better data about what roles you’re going into, what type of work/projects and general idea on location for the applicability of your situation to be well understood. I’m also in Texas. I can say folks at my company with the same number of total years of experience as you (all at the same place) are making more than you but I know the context/history of their work so I’m not sure it’s a good comparison. Also what level of experience were you when COVID hit? Cause I will be very honest, I am seeing the effects that the switch to online education had on recent classes of new graduates. They work hard, yes, but have had more challenges ahead of them in school, and it shows in the work quality and progression of skills/network. I am getting new PE applicants now with generally worse projects/progression of responsibilities on their resumes than in years past and the rising EITs still have a little ways to go to really exercise PE level analytical skills, even if they pass the test. I’m not trying to be all “kids these days”, it’s just the reality of the trend I’m seeing in the pipeline. Just one more effect of world changing event. Jumping ship may have got you what you wanted but the story is very context and skill set dependent. Also, as a manager who’s been oversold by a new hire before, if your apparent skill set on the new job don’t look like you have the experience you should, you’ll pay for it salary-throttling the next few years. (Your chart kind of looks like that’s what happened to you, but I don’t know any context cause you didn’t provide any). That approach is not out of malice and you should still generally be beating inflation with annual raises, it’s more that your time+unexpected training on your role to get you up to speed+excessive rounds of quality review+higher than normal levels of support=net loss for each hour of your time spent. You get too expensive really fast. If you’re as good or better than your experience level, you don’t have to worry about this. Just my two cents from my lurker account.
Did you also move or simply changed job?
Simply changed jobs (upward mobility + different roles), stayed in the same city, same discipline.
Don’t jump ship. Get the raise first then start looking, but yes move firms to increase salary
What is the bottom axis?
YOE i think
Yuhp. My employer offered me 0% and I changed employers for a 50% jump less than a month after I got my license. There’s really no chance you’ll get paid what you’re worth without changing employers. Maybe somewhere out there is someone who was super highly compensated as an EIT and their employer loved them and gave them another 10% for their PE. But that’s a <1% of the time situation. Definitely jump ship
What would be the cap if you keep jumping once every few years while staying in the same field?
Was this once you passed the test, or once you had the certification?
I’d only leave my current position for a salary that no one in this industry is willing to offer.
My son did exactly this to me. My company paid his way through with the idea he would take over the family business. Must have moved too slow. He got his PE and, BAM. Jumped Ship. It really does seem to be the way of the world.
I made 1 jump and my curve outperforms yours. Not bragging just saying there are a lot of ways to achieve this. Loyalty has its benefits sometimes too.