[lazide]

Do you have any data to share? Most of my family has been involved in Aerospace, with my dad working for skunkworks, my brother working for Garmin (and a formal aerospace engineer).

Most aerospace engineers are lucky to break 75k/yr to start with little to no equity, and often need to move to the middle of nowhere (compared to say NYC, SF, LA, etc for software), and get hit with periodic catastrophic layoffs with the regular cycles in the industry.

It’s pretty common that software folks are paid 2-5x with far less intense or zero credentialing and better work conditions - at the same company.

[ethbr0]

https://online-engineering.case.edu/blog/highest-paying-engi...

Median numbers, so masks variability. But it looks like AEs are generally paid decently, relative to other engineers.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/mobile/...

[lazide]

Oof, even worse than I noted. So median (and that includes established mid and late career aerospace engineers too) is $118k all in?

That’s roughly half of the initial comp for an entry level software engineer at any of the SV firms, and most folks will be making much more than that at said SV firms within a couple years.

Being able to get a team of 4-5 experienced and credentialed aerospace engineers for the comp of a single ‘senior’ (mid-level somewhat competent but not amazing) software engineer sounds dirt cheap to me?

[ethbr0]

You realize you just compared Silicon Valley software engineer salaries in high margin industries to all location aerospace engineer salaries in normal margin industries?

If you want to baseline off SV salaries, you shouldn't be looking at median all-AE numbers.

[lazide]

You’re the one that provided the numbers?

We’re on a SV startup website, where the comparison to cheap or not is of course going to be based on this.

You provided as a counterpoint to my statement on aerospace eng’s being cheap, data which shows median salary across all experience levels of the field being half the starting pay of a typical entry level SV software engineer - which typically requires no specific credentials, unlike Aerospace engineering.

If there is a large cluster of companies who pay 4x the median aerospace engineer salary to Noobs, then please provide said data. My understanding is those don’t exist.

SpaceX, a high profile name and maybe the closest to a SV type place you’ll get in the industry pays between $70-100k to their Aerospace engineers, based on multiple sites. Here happens to be a random Reddit thread about it in the first couple results.

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/engineering/co...]

Which is exactly the point I’m making. When a straight out of school software engineer has a whole section of an industry they can go to that will pay them 2-5x what an experienced aerospace engineer mid-point or even late in their career can make ANYWHERE (except MAYBE a one-off consulting gig somewhere), then aerospace engineers are cheap no?