<p>Same as above I’m asking because I recently checked the OCO and saw the median salary for aerospace engineers is ~$95,000. I’ve been wondering how long does it take to reach that mark?</p>
<p>I also saw that the starting salaries raised a bit.</p>
<p>Some things to consider:</p>
<p>Be careful with median salaries. A median is a numeric value that separates half of a sample from the other half of a sample normally creating a symmetric distribution. For example, if you have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 the median value is 3 because it is exactly in the middle creating a symmetrical shape; in contrast, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 has no whole number median value.</p>
<p>Since we know better than to expect salaries to distribute in an orderly fashion what they probably mean is mean value. The mean value is the sum of all values divided by the number of values. Example, you have 2, 3, 3, 4, and 10. The sum is 22 divided by 5 = 4.4 You can see that the mean (or disguised median) is 4.4 but only one person is earning above the mean. On the other hand, if you remove the outlier (the 10) you see that the sum is 12 divided by 4 = 3 and that’s much closer to reality (the majority earns the avg salary).</p>
<p>Conclusions? Make sure those salary figures are not skewed by some outliers earning ridiculous salaries.</p>
<p>No, Enginox, if they say median, they mean median. Oftentimes people quote median salary so as to minimize the effect of said outliers. The real question is how the sampling was done and is it representative o the larger population.</p>
<p>I stand corrected.</p>
<p>You sounded good though : )</p>
<p>So how long would it take?</p>
<p>There’s no accurate answer for that. Estimate? Somewhere between 5 years and never.</p>
<p>It varies with engineering major, geographic location, degree held, etc.</p>
<p>If you live in Los Angeles as an AeroE, you will have a decent shot of getting close to 100k after a relatively short period of time as compared to living somewhere like, say, Indianapolis.</p>
<p>It also has to do with how well you do your job. If you do your job well and network well, you will be a lot more likely to get larger raises and more promotions.</p>
<p>Geographic location, that’s the big one. Let’s say you live in NYC and you make $100k a year. Sounds great until you realize a 1 bedroom apartment in a decent neighborhood will cost you around $1500 - $2000 a month; potentially up to 20% of your salary gone in rent and taxes have not even been taken out of your paycheck; want to live in nice areas of Manhattan? Rents begin at $3000 and up. $100k does not take you very far if cost of living expenses are between 20% - 40% of what you earn (before taxes!). It’s not how much one makes but how much one keeps in the pockets.</p>
<p>"If you live in Los Angeles as an AeroE, you will have a decent shot of getting close to 100k after a relatively short period of time "</p>
<p>what do AeroE’s in LA do?</p>
<p>They do the same things as AeroE’s anywhere. LA is just a very expensive city to live in and therefore, salaries there tend to be higher. The average starting salary for an AeroE nationwide is somewhere around $60k last time I checked. In SoCal, it is closer to $70k. It has to be to make up for cost of living.</p>
<p>I’d like to add something else that is generally missing from these threads.</p>
<p>Nearly all of us expect to get a high-paying, prestigious job preferably at a point in our lives where we are still relatively young. Unfortunately, there’s a limited number of high-paying, glamorous jobs available at any time and these are normally occupied by experienced individuals that have been playing the game far longer than you; very rarely does the ultra-bright young college grad land one of these positions.</p>
<p>Most employers will offer you the lowest possible salary that will keep you from walking out the door. Very few will offer you the kind of salary raise you think you deserve just because you have spent some time with them. Employers will keep you around as long as you continue adding significant real value to the bottom line; the more real value you add, the more money they might throw at you. At the same time, most of your co-workers will be competing in the same rat race. Sometimes the people that rise to the top are hard-workers, other times they are intelligent, a few times lucky, usually know how to play office politics better than anyone else.</p>
<p>Ask yourself, how many people in a company/class/nation earn $100k a year or more? 10%? 30%? 50%? Here’s where it is very important to understand what the mean, median, and mode are.</p>
<p>The mean salary at company X might be $100k but that’s probably the CEO making $1 million while everyone else is making $10k; the median salary at company X might be $100k but that could be the bottom four people earning below $50k, the median at $100k, and the top four people earning well above $100k. The median does not tell you anything about YOUR salary if it’s poorly analyzed. </p>
<p>What you should be looking for is the mode. The salary that repeats itself the most (approximately) at company X among workers with the same skills and qualifications. If you are a new college grad, looking at a salary chart that includes the salaries of management is a waste of your time; you are not going for those positions. Focus on the salaries of people that have similar skills and backgrounds to yours to get the most accurate picture of what you will be earning initially and eventually.</p>
<p>One final thing, people that use future salary projections as the basis for their career decisions are idiots. Thanks for taking the time to read this lengthy post.</p>
<p>I disagree about looking at the mode. When you find salary data for engineers, it only includes people working as ENGINEERS, not CEO’s, so it should give you an estimate for what you will be making. Obviously it varies for different individuals, but it’s an average. There are some problems with looking at the mode. If you look at the the mode, which is the most occurring salary, it’s just gonna be some random number. It could be that the most common salary in the data is 50K from people just starting out, so you can’t get any trend or feel for what you should be making. So yea, I think the mean and median are better to look at than the mode.</p>
<p>I think you need a refresher in statistics Enginox. Median is a better representation than mean for a large sample size, as it is not skewed by the really high earners that are outliers. The OP is referring to aerospace engineers in general, so the median value is going to be a good indication because it is not going to be a really small sample size. Even for a decent sized company, median salary will be a good value to look at. The mode wouldn’t do you any good either. The mode could just so happen to correspond to a group of young or old employees.</p>
<p>Anyway, the answer to the question is there is no answer. Every situation is so different. There are so many variables as others have mentioned such as location, education, company, industry, job performance, etc…</p>
<p>Engineering salary surveys, as norris212 said, do not include CEOs in their estimates. It is unclear even how high up the management chain is still considered in most engineering salary surveys.</p>
<p>Also, mode is useless. All it will really do is tell you the most common age or experience level of the employees. If the mode is higher, you can bet that the company is most likely filled with a bunch of experienced workers and not just entry level workers. It doesn’t really tell you much about anything else other than the company’s (or workforce’s) most common level of experience.</p>
<p>Mean and median remain the two major ways to measure salary, and really, it is more useful if you look at the average salary for people with your same experience level. Average starting salary, average mid-career salary, etc.</p>
<p>Once again, we need to be more practical and realistic. Let’s use a recently graduated college grad as an example. Let’s call him Bobby.</p>
<p>Bobby is a young aerospace engineer looking for work with Company XYZ located in Random City, USA. Bobby tells the HR person that the median salary for aerospace engineers is $100k and he deserves that salary or something very close to that. The HR person replies that a) those statistics represent national averages, b) they are cross-industry, c) represent several levels of expertise. Company XYZ will pay wages according to local markets and not what some theoretical aerospace engineer in Alabama is theoretically earning.</p>
<p>Bobby is an intelligent person and decides to investigate further. He discovers that the median for his region is much lower than $100k. He focuses only on engineers around Random City, USA and discovers the median there is actually $80k. But he realizes that median includes young and experienced engineers, so he decides to remove the experienced ones; he quickly realizes that the median for young, inexperienced engineers is actually $60k.</p>
<p>So Bobby now focuses exclusively on Company XYZ. He discovers that new, inexperienced engineers at XYZ have been consistently offered approx. $58; this is the figure that repeats itself more often (mode), and Bobby should expect to be offered somewhere around this salary.</p>
<p>Wow. Enginox, you should seriously stop while you are behind.</p>
<p>Great rebuttal. I like how you honestly think a company is going to offer you a salary based on national averages.</p>
<p>I wonder how you would get all those stats on a city and their median engineering pay and then the pay of only inexperienced. I’d love to find it for my city.</p>
<p>You won’t. But employers have that information and they know much better than you what to offer. But some fools seem to think that national stats paint the whole picture. Even multi-nationals will pay you according to what the local market dictates.</p>