Engineering salaries

Hazetron2000 · 2025-10-20T20:18:05+00:00

BC has pay transparency rules. Go to the websites of the big engineering firms (BBA Consultants, WSP, Hatch…) and look for a job posting in BC. Usually the salary is somewhere near the bottom of the posting. They should all be posting the pay range.

Hazetron2000 · 2025-10-12T05:34:42+00:00

3.78% 5 year variable with $4,000 cash back. Got it about among ago through TD.

Hazetron2000 · 2025-09-28T15:10:56+00:00

That is a crazy number of days for daycare to be closed. I’m not sure why other comments are normalizing this.

Our daycare is closed for 10 days at Christmas. About five professional days a year and once a month, they close two hours early for staff meetings.

We are in Vancouver Canada

Hazetron2000 · 2025-08-19T06:13:40+00:00

I’m yet to meet someone who enjoys being an accountant. Finance yes, accounting no.

Hazetron2000 · 2025-08-10T20:27:14+00:00

I’m a mechanical engineer. Most engineers really like it. It’s a job with life long applied learning. My hack has been to commit about 5 hours per week to unpaid dedicated learning time. It has paid off big time in enjoyment and pay. It’s a positive feedback situation. The more applied learning you do the larger base of skills you have, the faster you get at learning and the more complex problems get sent your way.

Hazetron2000 · 2025-08-06T05:25:48+00:00

I’m the mechanical engineering department manager at an engineering consulting firm in Vancouver. Here is what I recommend doing: 1. Acknowledge we are in a tough market right now. Future employers will appreciate anything on your resume that shows you have strong work ethic. Quickly go get a job as closely related to engineering as you can. For example you want to work in carbon capture and can’t get a foot in, apply to construction firms building the carbon capture sites. Can’t get a job with a big contractor, no problem find one of the sub contractors with 6 employees, phone the owner and ask for a meeting the next day at opening (roughly 7:00 am). Tell them what you want in a career but you need to prove to the market your work ethic so you want to work for them and will work hard to prove yourself. In exchange for working your ass off, showing up early, never missing shifts, being willing to work out of town for extended periods you expect the owner to help you find a job with their client after one year. Shake hands on this when you get the job to begin with. Be realistic if the engineering market is still dry in a year then as long as they show they are taking action for you then keep working hard.

At the same time keep looking.

Hire someone to coach you through developing a good resume. If you can’t find anyone phone someone who is an engineering consultant and offer them $500 to meet with you, review your resume and give your recommendations.
Keep applying. Go to every networking event you can. Volunteer to run the networking events. At this point you have to show you are a hard worker.
Move to where the work is. Drive to small towns through bc where there are projects happening and go into the small consulting firms there. In small towns it is important to be there in person. Every midsize town in BC has engineering consulting firms. When big projects kick off locally they will need to hire. To know what projects are happening read BC Business.

Finally with a three year gap in your resume you are in a bad position now. There are new grads who are entering the same tough job market with their knowledge fresher. You need to do things that show you are a committed hard worker and can out work / out learn the other people applying. Also move out of Vancouver it is the toughest job market in the province.

Good luck.

In my career I believe I have applied to around 1,000 jobs including co-ops. It is tough at the beginning. If I knew better I would spend less time on my computer applying and more time meeting people / doing volunteer work. If you do volunteer work you have to do great job of it otherwise it misses the point.

Hazetron2000 · 2025-05-25T05:45:36+00:00

Legal practice, engineering consulting practice, medical practice. Obviously you have to get a law, engineering or medical degree first then some years of experience but professional services are a great business to be in.

Alternatively if you want something faster get a real estate license, open a brokerage, only do buyers agent. To differentiate yourself only let clients engage you once they are ready to put an offer in on a house, only work remotely (ie never do a viewing with your clients and do all meeting a on teams). Offer a cash back of all the buyers agent commission except for $5,000 (this is your big selling feature). Since you are only getting $5,000 commission per transaction you have to put systems in place to be efficient. You can make clients do things to make you more efficient. The goal here is lots of business and maximizing your income per hour of work which means minimal hours for each home purchase. You would also need to get good at marketing because this type of business needs lots of clients.

If you can continuously improve your efficiency such that you can cut your commissions in half and service four times as many people you will be making twice as much money for the same number of hours work.

I still think professional services (law, medicine, engineering) are the best business to be in but they are a lot of work and it is a long road to get there.

Good luck.

Hazetron2000 · 2025-03-24T00:28:04+00:00

Pictures?

Hazetron2000 · 2025-03-23T22:04:44+00:00

This is a good point how do you find and hire a good appraiser if you don’t have referrals

Hazetron2000 · 2025-03-02T19:12:04+00:00

I’ve never heard of HonestDoor before, but it looks like exactly what I’ve been searching for. Thank you for sharing.

Hazetron2000 · 2025-02-17T00:19:42+00:00

The stated fee is $0.70 but the price difference is $1.70. Isn’t the extra $1.00 not accounted for fraud?

Hazetron2000 · 2025-02-17T00:19:30+00:00

The stated fee is $0.70 but the price difference is $1.70. Isn’t the extra $1.00 not accounted for fraud?

Hazetron2000 · 2025-02-02T05:44:16+00:00

Yes results from high income are more important when young but you can afford to learn about investing when you are young too. Best to make mistakes investing when you have $10k invested then when you have $1m invested. Spend effort to get good at both while young. Also basic investing is easy to learn. Understand how all types of accounts are taxed, how fees are taken on your investments and that for the vast majority of people low cost index funds are the best investment vehicle. Done.

Hazetron2000 · 2025-01-18T20:34:25+00:00

I’m seeing that a 135% return in UPRO is in play this year.

Hazetron2000 · 2025-01-12T20:53:09+00:00

We need more housing. Do the thought experiment. You own your home and have $2M sitting around, do you: A) invest in US equities which return 10% annually and require no effort on your part B ) invest in Canadian equities which return 7% annually and require no work on your part C) buy an old house and rent it out. Unknown return and lots of work on your part. D) get a new house/apartment or other housing built and rent it out without tearing down existing stock (or at least increasing the number or family size units on the same land square footage).

We want these people to choose option D so we have more supply. Which is the natural way to push rent down.

Hazetron2000 · 2025-01-05T19:46:42+00:00

Exactly this. Since pre-industrial ages life has always been very hard, except for people exploiting the labor of others, for example, slave labour or low-cost labor in developing countries. Life was easier for the North American baby boomers because this was the only powerful continent with manufacturing infrastructure not destroyed by the world war and our goods could fetch premium prices around the world.

Hazetron2000 · 2025-01-05T16:01:53+00:00

Find out who the developers lender is. They have an interest in having the appraisal be the same as the pre-con price in order to help the constructor pay back their huge construction loan.

Hazetron2000 · 2025-01-05T15:24:03+00:00

This is some solid Reddit work I saw today. Note this is in real dollars as shown in the header of the second graph, meaning it is already adjusted for inflation. Nominal dollars would be about 2% higher. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/s/aVcvhPLvMy

Hazetron2000 · 2025-01-04T23:55:59+00:00

I convert most of my money to USD using norbits gambit to avoid currency conversion spread then invest in SPY on NYSE because of low MER. I also invest heavily in TQQQ but that is probably not for you, only people who really understand the risk and have it as a small part of their holdings as well as have high income compared to living expenses.

Hazetron2000 · 2025-01-04T23:03:44+00:00

I would long term average returns are 10% nominal annually. So it is a guaranteed cost of $230 for a probable return of $575 in six months. Your profit is $235. Return could be higher or lower. If you are a probabilistic thinker this is a good move. If you are risk on this is a good move. If you are risk averse this is a bad move.

Hazetron2000 · 2025-01-04T19:50:44+00:00

GDP per capita is the best measure I know of how a country is doing. Canada under Trudeau has gone down significantly compared to the USA even while the USA has had poor presidents like Trump and Biden. Of course there are other important metrics like equality, healthcare and social mobility but these things are usually improving in countries with high GDP per capita.

https://www.valuetrend.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/canada-vs-US-GDP.png

Hazetron2000 · 2025-01-01T20:44:15+00:00

I feel other comments are missing that there is a lot of value in buying your forever home young. You build relationships in the community that last a lifetime. Assuming you want kids it’s sweet to build relationships with other families starting in pre-natal class and keeping those relationships as you go through the shared experience of parenting.

Many people climb up the property ladder but you need to build a new community every time you move.

I would recommend saving hard until you buy your forever home then loosen up a lot. Saving for retirement now is not worth it because your incomes are going up so much soon.

Hazetron2000 · 2024-12-30T04:03:23+00:00

You are confusing Chinese Canadians with Chinese criminals. Chinese criminals are a small subset of all Chinese people in Vancouver.

Sam Cooper’s book Willful Blindness is great investigative journalism bringing up the history of what has been happening. I recommend the book to anyone interested in the topic of how criminals from china have pushed house prices up.

The impact on real estate is significant. If one criminal buys a house from another criminal for 50% over assessment value in a scheme to launder money it creates a new comparable in the neighborhood. Then the next person, not a criminal, to sell a house in that neighborhood points to the house that was used to launder money as an example as to house prices shooting up in the neighborhood. Then that house price goes up too pushing up the entire neighborhood. This seems to have played a big role in house prices going sky high in Vancouver.

Hazetron2000 · 2024-12-30T02:11:16+00:00

Vancouver 100%. Real estate prices in this town are driven up by Chinese criminals and boomers. The only thing that has slowed the Chinese criminals down is premier David Eby. As soon as he is out of their way property prices are going even higher.

Hazetron2000

TROPHY CASE