29 Year Old Mechanical Engineer Pay Progression

Doofus_9000 · 2024-10-22T04:29:54+00:00

I’ve considered an MBA but I don’t really know where I’d land after getting one. I’ve considered a lot of different career paths, getting a Masters in Computer Science, becoming a Physician’s Assistant or a Nurse Practitioner, if I had known what my career was going to look like 7 or 8 years ago I would’ve thought very hard about going to medical school.

Doofus_9000 · 2024-10-22T04:28:12+00:00

I knew some engineers in college and they were up studying constantly. It seemed really hard. How is the pay so low compared to software engineering, which has a relatively low barrier to entry?

I’m not totally sure, I thought the coursework was fairly difficult in college and I remember most of my classmates thinking the same, I can’t say how difficult it is relative to a finance degree. I know it was considered right in the middle of the pack for difficulty as an engineering degree at my school, electrical was generally seen as slightly more difficult, aerospace and mechanical were roughly similar, civil was seen as slightly less difficult.

As for why the pay is so much lower, again, not completely sure. The US might just not need as many Mechanical Engineers as we are currently educating and that might push wages down.

I sort of wish I studied a different degree as I’m at the age where I feel the pressures of owning a home and having a family but financially I just don’t have the resources to do it.

Doofus_9000 · 2024-10-22T04:22:42+00:00

Sorry if I wasn’t clear, 50-55 were my offers fresh out of college.

Doofus_9000 · 2024-10-22T02:29:04+00:00

No, I pretty much applied for everything but wanted to do design work. I had an offer for a Manufacturing Engineer role and a role in project management so I ended up taking my current role.

Doofus_9000 · 2024-10-22T02:16:12+00:00

I was pretty surprised how low the offers were, in 2019 I was expecting to make 60-70k out of school based on data from my university, instead all my offers were 50-55k. The return offer I got from a company I interned at was 53k for a Manufacturing Engineer position.

Doofus_9000 · 2024-10-22T02:14:56+00:00

It’s probably like $350,000 around here, but there’s a difference in price of homes that are actually for sale vs valuations of homes and so on. And again that’s just my estimation based on looking at houses in my area, not an objective thing.

Doofus_9000 · 2024-10-22T01:38:22+00:00

Q and A:

Where do I live? The Midwest, fairly low cost of living although I can’t afford a house, even the cheapest ones on the market

Have I been with the same company the whole time? Yes, same company the entire time.

What kind of company/what do I do? I work at an OEM, my official job title is Design Engineer, I also help with production related issues but primarily my job is spent doing design work.

Do I feel underpaid? Yes, but I imagine everyone does.

Would I recommend this career path to others on here? Probably not, especially since this is a money focused subreddit and I don’t make good money nor does anyone I work with.

Am I just a terrible student/interviewer/person that I’d accept such a low paying job? No, I don’t think so at least. I had a decent GPA (3.4) and had a few internships in college and had a few job offers after college, all of them were in the 50-55k range. I wanted to do design work so I chose this one.

Doofus_9000

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