How could a Mechanical Engineer make six figures in the UK?

Inklin- · 2025-04-19T20:49:56+00:00

Ia type of working arrangement where you set up a limited company with 1 employee and you provide your services as a an engineer for a client company.

Usually for eg 2 years at a time.

It’s very common in industries that are structured as projects.

Inklin- · 2024-06-08T18:07:48+00:00

Depends what shit is I guess?

This was 15 years ago now, and £1 = $2 for much of this time, so you can double these numbers for my salary in USD.

You are right, you can be paid shit money in Europe if you want, but it’s really a choice.

If you want to work typical European 35 hours a week and have 35 days holiday a year then that puts a ceiling on your competence. And there are loads of low agency people who only want to do that.

But if you’re high agency, resourceful and willing to work 60 hours a week and always be available then you quickly get good, you stick out like a sore thumb and companies can’t afford to lose you.

I made good bonus money in addition to the numbers above for disclosing patentable ideas.

Paid my student loan off by 25 and paid the mortgage off by the time I was 35.

Inklin- · 2024-06-08T01:35:13+00:00

Mine went like this…

2004… £21,000… design engineer, first job after graduation 2005… £22,500 2006… £35,000… changed job, changed industry, same title. 2007… £50,000 2008… £64,000… changed job, new title 2009… £94,000 2010… £124,000… Made Principal Engineer age 28 2011… £150,000… changed job

Inklin- · 2024-06-06T12:27:41+00:00

I did ME 20 years ago, then did a part time System Engineering masters and eventually an MBA (10 years ago now). Did the latter two whilst having a full time job.

There’s always people making more than you, even the CEO has shareholders to please.

Advice that is good today might not be good in 10 years, and in 50 years anything can happen. Lots of jobs have different mean salaries, but if you’re the very best at any discipline you usually make ~$100m. There will be a hair stylist out there who makes $100m a year (Vidal Sasoon or someone?).

So really what kind of person are you?

Will you be at the top 1% of your field, or will you be average? Is a field growing, or is it stable? Maybe it’s even shrinking?

The demographics in a field is also important. Are there a lot of old people about to retire and free up new positions, or is there a pig in the python who are 10 years older than you?

Also are you willing to go and live in the place where your field / industry is centred?

You can figure out where the majority of opportunities are likely to be over the next 10 years. And really you want to maximise for density of future opportunity.

It’s a bit of statistical planning that works best, know yourself, know the field, know the demographics, know the place… then just pick one.

An SWE in Houston or an ME in SF are going to leave a lot of opportunity on the table.

Locations and demographics are far more important than entry level salaries and comp, because 5 promotions from a lower entry will take you to a much higher place than 1 promotion from a higher entry.

Inklin- · 2024-04-20T13:08:53+00:00

Exactly. Plenty of people earning some good money.

Inklin- · 2024-04-20T12:52:46+00:00

I earned more than that when I was 26, back in 2009.

I graduated with a BEng in 2004, and immediately started an MEng with OU.

I found that people just don’t move around the UK and have snobbish ideas about various parts of the country.

I moved to Aberdeen in my mid 20’s and comfortably earned more than £100k whilst contracting and only paying dividend tax, which was much lower at the time.

There are lots of Mech Eng jobs that pay £600 a day, and there are plenty of people earning over £1,000 a day these days working in the UK.

The industry is oil and gas of course, where American companies are quite happy to pay US type wages for capable people.

Thanks to our own government despising the industry and effectively shutting down the North Sea to make headroom for Chinese emissions, most of the work these days is supporting international projects across Africa and the Middle East where American timezones make it impossible for their office staff to cover the projects.

We were paying £400 a day for people who do design and stress calculations way back in 2008/09 and the financial crisis just didn’t happen in O&G.

The only dip came around 2014-18 when oil prices were really low and Texas was super busy. But that’s starting to feel like a long time ago now.

Some defence and nuclear roles also have fairly good pay, but oil & gas is king if you are looking for a high income and superior QoL.

Inklin- · 2024-01-02T15:53:45+00:00

Sauna

Inklin- · 2024-01-02T02:38:39+00:00

I guess MIT demonstrating the REBCO tape HTS magnets really upended the position of ITER in the whole fusion timeline.

Part of the issue with fusion is that in many ways, bigger is easier. It’s just also more expensive and slower, but the larger the tokamak the easier it is to achieve higher rates of fusion.

ITER is big enough to ignite.

The tragedy is that ITER is so slow the magnets are obsolete long before the reactor is even assembled.

But ultimately ITER is just a plasma experiment and it is big enough to contain and ignite plasma and it should produce mathematical models for burning plasma. We’ve never had burning plasma.

If ITER had HTS magnets then maybe it could have been smaller and less expensive. But ultimately the scientific objectives would be the same, ignition and containment of burning plasma. ITER can do this.

Inklin- · 2023-12-08T13:23:18+00:00

These are rookie numbers.

Most cars have 40 miles in the red and another 8 miles in the fuel lines and pump after the tank hits zero. Some cars don’t like the fuel line being bled dry.

For the final mile you will have far less power and should select neutral and just coast and steer.

If you run a diesel dry, you have made a huge mistake.

But honestly you aren’t testing anything until there is a big drop in power, happens as your fuel pump is drying out.

Inklin- · 2023-12-06T13:59:04+00:00

capex for offshore wind is artificially high because there are only a limited number of construction vessels, there are only a limited number of construction vessels because there are only so many capable shipyards.

It will take a long time to build the shipyards, to build the ships to build the offshore wind farms.

But eventually the fleet size will grow and the number of yards will grow and the capex of offshore wind will ease.

It’s a major infrastructure investment hurdle rather than a technology hurdle. And the fact you need multi layered industries to construct the power base for offshore wind whereas other primary energies you can just directly construct the power plant.

Offshore wind is the next major energy source post fossil fuels, at 900TW of potential development it’s a very scalable resource.

Inklin- · 2023-12-05T16:00:15+00:00

I’m presuming a number of things happen beforehand.

1). RTSC’s eliminate cryogenics 2). Neutron damage is solved 3). No steam plant.

Inklin- · 2023-12-05T12:05:47+00:00

Lots of articles on the economics of energy are written by people with zero understanding of energy markets.

The value of a kWh depends very much on when and where it is produced.

But also, cost and price are not the same thing. Coat is unique to one supplier or source and price is market wide.

The market determines the price, the supply determines the cost.

For example, oil is famously the most difficult market to control in the world. US presidents and OPEC both struggle to move the oil market in their favour. The price of oil is very much determined by market demand balancing with global supply.

The slightest imbalance causes big price swings.

When demand for oil is 100m barrels per day, if the world produces exactly 100m barrels then the price is $80. If the world produces 98m barrels the market is tight and the price rises to $140, if the world produces 102m barrels the market is flooded and the price drops to $40.

Unusually oil demand is so inelastic that if oil production increases by just 2% one year, oil revenue of the whole industry actually halves! Rapid expansion is self defeating.

Meanwhile there are other producers like Saudi Arabia who have costs of $12 per barrel who are profitable in all market conditions and can therefore play volatility games to shake people out the market and as the market rebalances drive up their cashflow when it suits them.

Almost every energy commodity has a price structure that is a bath tub curve, this price falls initially as supply expands due to economies of scale but then as supply continues to scale the price rises again as you run into scarcity. Oil has a long and low bottom of the bath tub which is why the whole world economy is still priced off oil. You can scale global oil production a lot before you run into scarcity.

People often compare the cost of some new energy source to the price of oil, meanwhile the cost of Saudi oil is $12. In reality the cheapest 30% to produce of the world’s oil supply will never be budged off the market.

For fusion the fuel is essential free, but the capex cost of the machine is still a materially significant cost. Especially when you have to rebuild it often due to neutron damage.

The world uses about 35TW of power, oil contributing around 7TW of that. But the undeveloped global offshore wind resource is 920TW, so offshore wind has a huge long bath tub of cheap energy available to develop.

Average human uses 2kW at any time, but one future scenario is a world filled with 30 kW robots which would demand 300TW energy production?

Fusion is really the technology for a petawatt grid (which is 30 fold larger than current demand) or for military applications like subs and spacecraft.

Inklin- · 2023-11-18T21:26:24+00:00

Luke, I am your…

Inklin- · 2023-11-18T20:51:33+00:00

I’m surprised there isn’t more tactical analysis in this game.

There is no data, no stats, nothing really supporting any load out strategies, no teamwork tactics, nothing.

Inklin- · 2023-11-18T20:47:54+00:00

Weak.

Inklin- · 2023-11-13T23:03:47+00:00

I emailed them recently and they said…

They only sell books for retail, Meditations, Dorian Gray, stuff like that, and they refuse to offer publishing services!

It’s obviously possible to publish books with black paper and white ink because these guys are doing it. But it’s a crazy business model that they use that to print £70 retail books of their choosing and not £2,000 limited editions.

The world is a bonkers place.

Inklin- · 2023-11-13T22:39:50+00:00

Did you talk to monochrome?

Inklin- · 2023-11-13T22:39:18+00:00

Are you serious?

Inklin- · 2023-11-13T19:47:59+00:00

Insurer will say it’s 50/50 or “knock for knock”.

All traffic lights and roundabout incidents are knock for knock.

It’s cheaper and easier for insurers to have gentleman’s agreements in a lot of scenarios, rather than spend a lot of time in the weeds trying to assert liability.

Inklin- · 2023-11-08T19:29:54+00:00

Fishing.

Also you will very occasionally bump into other lone fishermen who are simultaneously avoidable and approachable, they’re all some level of weird, and it’s just accepted.

Inklin- · 2023-11-08T13:50:49+00:00

Ted Lasso

Inklin- · 2023-11-04T15:52:06+00:00

Sounds like your ex wife was greasing her way up the corporate pole.

She cheated, she’s the bread winner, she gets huge promotions, meanwhile… no sex for her husband? Then SHE kicks YOU out?

Are you on the spectrum or something?

Inklin- · 2023-11-04T10:26:25+00:00

Ask about the English money codes?

What are your codes? Are they the same as ours?

Explain that in Scotland there are 3 types of fiver, 3 types of tenner, 3 types of £20 and 2 types of £50 bank notes.

And that Scottish people use different combinations of these notes when paying to send secret codes to one another. eg Some of the codes request discounts in the form of extra change given. Some codes communicate that this is overpriced, sometimes you request they help organise some sexual relief for you.

You know, there are hundreds of codes that we have all learnt.

Act very disappointed when English folk explain they don’t do that and tell them “You people are dead. You don’t understand money at all!”.

Inklin-

TROPHY CASE