<p>I think Enginox totally missed the point of the original post. It said the national median is $95k, so how long into one’s career would the average AeroE actually reach that point. no one ever said that someone was going to start out at $95k immediately after graduation. Try reading the original post a little bit more closely next time.</p>
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<p>Apparently 4/7 of your new hires are impressive. And thus, more normal than your $10 employees.</p>
<p>Anyway, you also forget that salary offers are negotiable. A number of my friends coming out of college were able to negotiate for slightly higher pay, some relocation benefits, or other slight perks to help make the adjustment easier.</p>
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<p>Short answer: because employees aren’t bottled water. Specifically, bottled water doesn’t care about anything, least of all its selling price. However, employees care profoundly about their level of pay, and will modify their productivity accordingly. Let’s face it - no employer ever really knows exactly how hard any particular employee is working. If employees feel underpaid, they will inevitably grow demoralized and reduce their effort, figuring that even if they are terminated accordingly, they didn’t really lose much because they were underpaid to begin with. Contrast that with a company in which employees are “overpaid” - hence, driving them to become far more concerned about losing that job, knowing that if they do, they likely won’t find a comparably paying job. </p>
<p>This is incidentally why labor markets never clear and why the economy always features a permanent unemployment rate. Economists have debated how large this rate is - probably around 5% - but the point stands that if labor markets were truly efficient, then unemployment rates would always tend to fall to zero with only temporary cyclical deviations as the supply and demand of labor would always approach a market-clearing price equilibrium. That never happens. </p>
<p>You can also examine the situation from a sociological standpoint. Let’s say that in previous years, you hired new engineers for $50k a year. Because of a recession this year, you try to hire new engineers for $25k, hence half-price. Let’s face it: most new graduates would choose to take no job at all rather than take your job, because they saw their friends who had graduated in previous years offered $50k a year, and they would want that too. {You could argue that such behavior is economically irrational given market conditions, but like it or not, that is how people will react.} Even if you do somehow find some new employees who agree to take half-pay, they will inevitably feel resentment towards the existing employees that are making double their pay, inevitably fueling strife within the company and hence lowering the productivity of everybody in the firm. </p>
<p>The other tactic would be to lower the pay of everybody - including the existing employees - of the company, but that is beset with pitfalls as numerous behavioral economists have noted the tremendous resentment that is incurred by lowering pay for employees who have grown accustomed towards a certain pay level. Wages tend to be ‘sticky’ as research has consistently verified the cognitive bias that people are far more sensitive towards losing something that they previously had than if they had never had it in the first place. {This is also the reason why during a downturn most companies will lay off some employees while maintaining pay levels for the rest rather than reducing pay across the board while laying off no-one, as the former has been found to be less demoralizing for the employees at the company. Layoffs are obviously highly demoralizing to those who were laid off, but since they’re no longer with the company anyway, that doesn’t matter.} </p>
<p>The bottom line is that bottled water isn’t affected by social and psychological forces, but people are. Bottled water has no sense of ‘fairness’, but people do. Let’s face it, all of us would be greatly irritated to know that somebody in the same company was being paid more than we were for doing the same job and having the same qualifications, just because he happened to graduate during a better economic period. A bottle of water doesn’t care about how much another bottle of water is being paid.</p>
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<p>And you are making the numbers to fit your case… What if the sample was $10, $11, $12, $13, $14, $15, $15? Is the company going to hire a new employee a salary based off of the mode of this sample? No, not likely as it’s also the max of this sample. The median or even mean are much better metrics to evaluate what a new employee could expect to be offered.</p>
<p>Alright. I am wrong. My apologies.</p>
<p>Okay, enginox completely lost me with his examples.</p>
<p>What if I were to work in ny n live in md? Would the 95k be actually useful for something other than taxes n living expenses?</p>
<p>How on earth would you work in NY and live in MD? You know that is way too far to commute, right?</p>
<p>And $95k in NYC would probably be enough to do a little more than live and pay taxes, but only if it was just you and no one else. Of course I could be wrong… it may barely even be enough for that for all I know. It certainly isn’t a ton of money in NYC though.</p>
<p>What exactly could you even find to do in NYC? It isn’t exactly a hotbed for engineering companies.</p>
<p>Not sure I just like NYC if not I’d go down south n live in Miami. </p>
<p>I want to live in md though since it seems to pay a lot but NYC pays more.</p>
<p>How about la? Or md home and dc workplace?</p>
<p>You know that in the places that pay a lot, it is generally because it costs a lot more to live there, right? Generally, you will be better off financially in a cheaper city with lower wages because in those expensive places, the additional salary doesn’t usually cover that additional expense.</p>
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<p>How many drop out of the rat race before then? Some? Half?</p>
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<p>I know you all probably get tired of me mentioning this but if you go the INTEL/cleared route where you need top-secret security clearance to do the work, you can get NYC money while living in MD.</p>
<p>Clearances add $25,000-$50,000 more to your salary.</p>
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Well, I don’t know. Out of my peer group of seven (total financial comp, ie: salary + bonus):
100K+: 1
80-90K: 1
70-80K: 1
65-70K: 1
60-65K: 1
Unemployed: 2 (one for 12 months, another for 24 months).</p>
<p>Please list their GPAs.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter their GPA’s.</p>
<p>
100K+: 1 [~3.5]
80-90K: 1 [~3.5]
70-80K: 1 [~3.5]
65-70K: 1 [~2.5]
60-65K: 1 [~2.0]
Unemployed: 2 (one for 12 months, another for 24 months). [~2.75, ~3.0 - respectively.]</p>
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It does, but less than people realize. GPA is only relevant in that it might correlate a little with intellect and work ethic.</p>
<p>What about the schools attended</p>
<p>If you are truly interested in NYC, you should also consider northern/central New Jersey. There are enough engineering jobs in New Jersey and you are still within a few minutes to no more than 2 hours away from the city.</p>
<p>$100k in NYC places you at the lower end of the working/poor class. NYC cops make around $90k after 5 years and many choose to reside in the outskirts or more affordable neighborhoods to actually manage a decent lifestyle.</p>
<p>Personally, as soon as I finish undergrad I’m escaping this ****hole. Pardonez mon francais, s’il vous plait.</p>
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<p>I know real well at least 5 other systems engineers/database engineers at various defense firms and although I do not know their GPA (BECAUSE IT DOES NOT MATTER), here is the school breakdown:</p>
<p>University of Maryland - College Park
University of Maryland - Baltimore County
North Carolina A&T
Howard University
University of Delaware</p>
<p>And myself?..Michigan State (undergrad 2.75 GPA), University of Wisconsin (grad school 3.8 GPA, no GRE)</p>
<p>Keep getting hung up on the GPA’s and schools if you want to. It’s all (or mostly) about supply and demand out here.</p>