To those who think they "Made It" in Engeneering: What was your path?

[tmadness]

So you think you have #Made-It TM . You have reached the upper echelons of not only technical capability, but you bring in bank, serious bank, putting you in the same class as the "I make money from thin air" crowd (investment bankers, real estate ppl, people who bought bitcoin in 2010, drug dealers etc).

I have a few question for you:
1. Is your job really engineering based, i.e did you really do engineering work? if yes,
2. What was your path to success?  were you an engineer through in and through out? did you get into management?
3. What is it that you do specifically?
4. Do you think your path is reproducible? if yes, what do you believe were the "right" moves that got you to where you are?

[sandalcandal]

I wonder if EE legends like Jim William, Bob Pease and Bob Widlar actually even ever "made bank". The love and passion for their art seemed to be their overwhelming drive.

Certainly the only thing I see discussed is their engineering contributions and not their "bank accounts".

I know of at least one engineer that "made it" quite well financially by being early stage in a start-up that was acquired.

[mawyatt]

First off I think those that "made it" knew what they wanted to do at a very early age, they were gifted with a talent for engineering. Widler certainly made it both technically and $ wise, he had stock options at National for 1$ per share!! Rumors I recall indicated his salary was greater than the National president, he knew he was the best analog IC designer and demanded payment for such. A colleague told me that they hired Widlar for a few days and he charged well over $2K/day which included travel time, and this was back in late 60s or early 70s!!

Back in 2008 when we were developing a new type mixer called the PolyPhase Mixer (also called N Path or Mixer First) a PhD grad student at Cornell was working with her advisor professor and later with us on such. She was brilliant, her dad was a Linear Technology IC designer, and she said she grew up with an electronics lab in the basement. After getting her PhD from Cornell she became part of a startup called Passiff, which was acquired by Apple a year later. She became a multi-millionaire well before 30!! Last time I saw her at the IEEE ISSCC a number of years ago, she had left Apple saying they were too confining, and formed another startup! Another from Cornell getting his PhD with the same advisor, got a invitation to interview with Apple after he published his IEEE Best Paper on a new type image sensor that measures the light amplitude and direction (allows post processing focusing). Rumor is Apple gave him, yes gave him no strings attached, 200 shares of stock if he would interview, he could keep the stock if he declined, and of course would get more if he accepted, he accepted!! BTW the Apple stock was $694 per share then!!!

I personally know another engineer that worked on an important project that would get full company paid salary for 6 months off after working a couple years on the project.

The common thing about all these engineers is they were brilliant in their field, very creative, knew it, and demanded compensation Every superb engineer/scientist I've known knew exactly what they wanted to do at a very early age and pursued such with few sidetracks!!

So if you fall into this type classification, want to stay technical, don't let management short change you

I'm retired for a few years now, but one thing I learned later in my career that I wish I had learned much earlier, is "Human Resources" is NOT your friend They are there for one reason to serve the company and not you, they want to keep your salary and benefits at a minimum, so establish what you want and stand your ground. If you are really good at what you do and they really want your skills, HR will bend in your direction

Best,

[jpanhalt]

We see such posts regularly.  One thing in common, none of those mentioned ever posted here or anywhere asking how to do it.

[eti]

If you assume you have - ahem - "made it", then the likelihood is high that you haven't, but your ego can't wait to crow.

[fourfathom]

We see such posts regularly.  One thing in common, none of those mentioned ever posted here or anywhere asking how to do it.

"If you have to ask, you'll never know"  

I think that asking for career advice can be helpful, as long as the asker recognizes that everyone is different, you can never step in the same river twice, and chaos reigns supreme.  I think I "made it" in an engineering career, but I wouldn't for one moment suggest that anyone attempt to duplicate my path.  I had an aptitude, barely finished high school and only took a few random college courses, and was able to retire in my 40's *extremely* comfortably, with a track record of products and friends that I am very proud of.  Here are a few random observations I made along the way:

• Have an aptitude for it.  Learn everything you can.
• Figure out how to find something new or interesting in even the mundane tasks in front of you (there will be a lot of those).
• Don't be afraid to try something new.  Volunteer for the tough jobs. Stretch yourself. Don't be afraid to fail.
• Don't get good at stuff you hate.
• Don't burn bridges unnecessarily, but do move on when a better opportunity presents itself.  While you're somewhere do the best you can.  A job is not "'till death do us part".
• Help others.  It's the right thing to do, and it rewards you down the road with recommendations and opportunities.
• Take risks.  People seldom get rich selling themselves by the hour, you need leverage for that.  Stock, options, ownership are powerful forms of leverage.
• Timing is important, but you probably won't recognize this when it's happening.  Hindsight is easy, but pretty useless.
• Be lucky.  To some extent you can make your own luck (or at least not destroy what luck does come your way), but there will be plenty of people smarter than you who worked harder, and still didn't "make it".

I could go on, but already these platitudes aren't really useful.  Here's a final distillation:  Be good, be bold, be lucky, don't be an asshole.

[T3sl4co1l]

I can quite safely and confidently assure you, it does not.

The maximum value of any real labor is in the realm of $500k/yr for, like, expert surgeons.  Nothing a lowly EE or SE will approach.

Pretty much any earnings beyond that, are due to the owning or management of capital.

Tim

[mawyatt]

Tim,

Senior expert IC designers are generally valued above $500K/yr, if they are directly associated with a fab even more. This is justified because of the expertise required, complexity and cost of developing chips today, including the CAD tool costs (think Synoposis and Cadence). Most fabs will "leverage" the few senior IC designers available with more junior folks in a mentoring fashion which hides the valued cost of the senior expert and averages to a lower rate. Try and "book" a senior expert IC designer for a year full time on your project development if the fab will even talk to you, if they do talk you better have deep pockets!! Our course if you are even thinking about a leading edge chip development today where these senior IC designers reside, you'll need seriously deep pockets anyway!!

Best,

[T3sl4co1l]

I don't see anything paying a fraction of that, at least not that's listed publicly.  Anyway, I did say "lowly EE", and that's still nothing out of the ballpark.

Tim

[Berni]

Engineering is the wrong place to look for striking it rich.

Yes some of these rockstar engineers are capable of making some serious big bucks, even those only make big bucks if they fight for it. The company is unlikely to give them some huge paycheck if they don't put there foot down and threaten them with leaving unless they pay up. In some cases the threat even ends up executed because the out of touch management has no idea how critical some employee is and refuse to pay up. Then after the person leaves find out that the companies core business and source of profit is breaking down because the person they threw out turned out to be so very important. The ex-employee then typically quickly lands a new better paying job (because of those very skills that made them so valuable at this job). But to become such a critical employee to be able to justify a paycheck that is a few times higher than everyone else there you need to be at the right place at the right time. Not all engineers are interested in the business side of things and not all have the drive to extract the most money out of there position. The best engineers typically come out of the lifelong passion for engineering, they are so good at it because they focus so much on it that they have little time to focus on how to become rich and similar stuff.

Still engineering jobs pay better than a lot of other jobs, this is purely for the reason that people with appropriate skills and experience are more rare while also carrying a lot of difficult to transfer important knowledge for how to make the companies products. Other low skill jobs pay like crap just because they can fire anyone on the spot and get a replacement the next day. So engineering does give some extra job security and pays well enough to comfortably live from without getting nervous every time you look at your bank balance. But you are certainly not going to be buying a shiny new Ferrari with the paychecks.

[joeqsmith]

So you think you have #Made-It TM . You have reached the upper echelons of not only technical capability, but you bring in bank, serious bank, putting you in the same class as the "I make money from thin air" crowd (investment bankers, real estate ppl, people who bought bitcoin in 2010, drug dealers etc).
...

Sorry but I never attained the skills needed to make money from thin air but I was curious how much drug dealers make.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/939zga/how-much-money-drug-dealers-make
From 2014:
https://www.salon.com/2014/03/09/the_true_lives_of_low_level_drug_dealers_whats_the_point_of_surviving_if_you_cant_live/

I would imagine you would want to be located in an area where the cost of living may play into it in order to have easy access.   

Curious OP, how much you make in your area dealing?   

[nctnico]

I wonder if EE legends like Jim William, Bob Pease and Bob Widlar actually even ever "made bank". The love and passion for their art seemed to be their overwhelming drive.

I agree. One of my mentors once told me that EE is probably the worst job (requiring a formal education) where it comes to money.

[fourfathom]

The maximum value of any real labor is in the realm of $500k/yr for, like, expert surgeons.  Nothing a lowly EE or SE will approach.

Pretty much any earnings beyond that, are due to the owning or management of capital.

Yes.  While (as has been mentioned) there are a few top engineers making more than this as a salary, the vast majority of good engineers will make much less. 

You usually need ownership to make the big bucks.  When it happened for me (in the 1990's) this was in the form of stock and stock options at a start-up.  The risk is high, but the potential payoff is big.  You generally need to be in management.  I helped found our company as Director of Systems Engineering, but we were initially a small team and I also had a significant design responsibility (architecture, ASIC design).  But many of the non-management employees also received significant stock options -- after we were acquired there were a couple of technicians driving new Ferraris.

This was in 1999.  We had a hot product in a hot sector (fiber optics networking), with real customers.  I don't think that it would be possible to repeat our story in the current environment.

But I started my career in the late 1970's when things were pretty bleak.  You never know what's going to happen, so find something you like to do, something that other people value, and get good at it.  Be  bold.  You will probably become comfortable and (mostly) enjoy your job -- not too bad, really.  But you might just get lucky.

The company I helped start was "Cerent".  One of the marketing guys wrote a book about it: https://www.amazon.com/Upstart-Startup-Cerent-Transformed-Cisco/dp/1505303826/  It's a bit of an "inside" story -- perhaps you had to be there.

[TimNJ]

For the most part, you have to sell your soul, at least a little, if you want to make bank. If money is your main career driver, then you probably wouldn't even consider this "selling your soul". But, if you are truly passionate about electronics (or engineering in general), I don't know...but I don't think you're going to strike it rich, at least not as your "typical" engineering company. Apple, et. al., maybe different story.

You can live very comfortably with salaries >$100K/year, but I think even gray beard EE's are probably not (on average) making too much more than $120-130K/year, and lots of young and middle-age engineers working for $60-90K/year.

I feel like company's play off the fact that design engineers generally value ~what~ they do more than ~how much~ they make, and then pay you as little as possible. On the contrary, I have so many friends working in finance/corporate in Manhattan making absolutely stupid money, and I think they make so much because the companies are a.) in the business of using money to make more money, so the culture is already there and b.) they know their employees probably put salary first.

Maybe a lot of generalizations, just ramblings of a grumpy 26 year old EE. 

[tmadness]

I don't see anything paying a fraction of that, at least not that's listed publicly.  Anyway, I did say "lowly EE", and that's still nothing out of the ballpark.

Well Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos both have electronics backgrounds. Now, I would not call them Engineers, but they are easily some of the riches people on earth.

In a more honest retrospective,
Raja Koduri
Lisa Su
Pat Gelsinger
Drew Baglino

etc
are all extremely respected for their technical talent and contributions. And these are people just at the top there are probably at least a dozen technical leads below them who are doing quite well for themselves.

Holy crap @fourfathom. Damn you were the person I had In mind when I posted my question, $7.2 billion exit for your company, congratulations. I have a few questions for you:
how did you decide on Cerent?
There are hundreds of new startups each year with compelling products, what do you look for In a startup?
On staying on the technical track, it is relatively easy to be a middle manager, how did you have your engineering capabilities and contributions valued at the same level?
What advice would you give to your 25 year old self? what about educational attainment?

[PaulAm]

You're more likely to do well if you're in the founding team of a startup (or you're the lead).  Of course your chances of failure are much higher than a big payoff.  There's quite a bit of luck involved on whether the product you're making gets picked up by the market.  (Been in 3 startups, got the T-shirt, not much else)

You're unlikely to make a lot of money working for somebody else unless you can develop a rare skillset that is in high demand, and that takes years of experience and a bit (ha!, a lot) of luck in choosing the correct path to a place that doesn't currently exist.

If you want to make money working for somebody, go into finance or be management in an insurance firm (the second highest paid CEO in our state was the head of a medical insurance company, he was exceeded only by the CEO of GM)

You can do pretty well by identifying a niche, getting really good at it, developing a reputation and a network of contacts and working for yourself.  An then be ready to do it all over again when everything changes and your niche is obsoleted.  You probably won't be buying a Ferrari though.

Save extensively and invest conservatively and you're be a millionaire by the time you're 40 anyway.

[RJSV]

This is the type of post I look for, and will read first.
As for Bob Widlar historically speaking:
  My instructor started talking about Bob Widlar and his 'CURRENT SOURCE' innovation, in an analog IC class in engineering course. "What does 'personal' mention have to do with learning analog?" I was thinking. But soon I realized, the instructor was talking about (Widlar's inventiveness and willingness to, yeah, think outside the box).
  What a great story to weave, in an otherwise sterile classroom setting. Essentially, Widlar reasoned that a 'current source' circuit be placed in a totally different way, as a LOAD ! That way your bigger circuit sees a huge load value, like 15 megohms, something like that. I've come to learn that 'mis-placements' of components from traditional circuit roles is a common aspect, of inventions and other novel research.
Taking those ideas, I'd have to say a person like Ron Widlar was a great story, relating to success in careers.

[james_s]

If you're in engineering to make big money then you're in it for the wrong reason and you will probably never achieve that goal. You can make a good living for sure, but you won't get rich. To do that requires a combination of dumb luck being in the right place at the right time and getting in on the ground floor of a new company that takes off big. My partner's grandfather cofounded Data-IO and retired by 40, it was a crapshoot, PROMs could have turned out to be a dead end, or a dozen companies could have produced similar programming devices and the whole thing could have fizzled but they got lucky and it took off. The uncle of a friend of mine was one of I think the first 10 employees at Valve (game company) and he's loaded. I know a couple of guys who were early employees of Microsoft and retired very well off when they were younger than I am now. All of these people got rich mostly because they were lucky. They also happened to be very competent engineers but that isn't what got them rich.

Guys like Widlar were brilliant, members of a very small and elite group of people forging new territory. Most of them don't do it for the money though, they probably would have done it for free if there was no money to be had in it. For a lot of engineers it isn't so much a career path as a life calling, I could not imagine doing anything that didn't involve some form of engineering, and I knew that by the time I was a toddler.

[tom66]

Depends what you consider 'made it'.  My salary with annual bonus is in the top 10% of incomes now, for the UK.  I still can't afford a home in the area I live,  I still don't have the best pension fund outlooks,  and I don't have fast cars and attractive women chasing me down.  But I'm pretty happy with my job, I don't struggle to pay bills and it's nice to be able to put my skills to use in something I enjoy.

Pretty much the top end for electronic engineering in the UK is about £100k/year, but you have to be pretty much gold dust to earn that much with an extremely niche but competitive skill set.  I think the best a genuine engineer (ie not a manager or CTO or anything like that) can hope to make is around £75k/year.   That would be an FPGA engineer or maybe an analog signals engineer,  not just a generalist in electronics.   It's about £6,250 per month pre-tax.  After tax you'd have about £4,000 per month.  You can do a lot with that, but you won't be buying 10GHz oscilloscopes every month.

But there comes a point when more money isn't worth it -- Because life is for living and money is the lubricant to make your life easier to live, but to work just to earn money is pointless, you cannot take it with you to the grave and the prime years of your life are before you are 40, so enjoy them while you can.   I have a friend who was earning £150k/year as a consultant at KPMG,  who resigned his position for a pay cut by almost 60%, because he hated his job so much.

[rstofer]

You can live very comfortably with salaries >$100K/year, but I think even gray beard EE's are probably not (on average) making too much more than $120-130K/year, and lots of young and middle-age engineers working for $60-90K/year.

You can't live comfortably in Silicon Valley on that kind of salary.  Maybe a couple of such incomes could get by...

https://sf.curbed.com/2018/3/2/17073100/silicon-valley-house-home-sunnyvale-record-price-crisis

You can go to bls.gov and check median incomes by occupation and location.  Growth is not favorable for EEs, CS types make more money and the field is growing faster by a LOT.

The problem I have with bls.gov is that they seem to comingle electrical engineering (power and such) with electronics engineering.

[rstofer]

The money making is in the stock market - especially in 401(k) accounts.  Even the Biden presidency has been returning pretty high percentages.  Not as high as under Trump (up 40+% and 10,000 points during his presidency) but not bad at all.

Make sure you contribute the maximum allowed and hope your employer matches a significant percentage.

[sandalcandal]

Time for some quick fact checking.

You can live very comfortably with salaries >$100K/year, but I think even gray beard EE's are probably not (on average) making too much more than $120-130K/year, and lots of young and middle-age engineers working for $60-90K/year.

You can't live comfortably in Silicon Valley on that kind of salary.  Maybe a couple of such incomes could get by...

https://sf.curbed.com/2018/3/2/17073100/silicon-valley-house-home-sunnyvale-record-price-crisis

You can go to bls.gov and check median incomes by occupation and location.  Growth is not favorable for EEs, CS types make more money and the field is growing faster by a LOT.

The problem I have with bls.gov is that they seem to comingle electrical engineering (power and such) with electronics engineering.

Well they sort out electronics engineers if you look closer. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/electrical-and-electronics-engineers.htm#tab-5


Bay area wages also tend to be much higher than the national average in correlation with the higher cost of living in the area. A quick search reveals plenty of jobs postings with >$150k advertised compensation.


Made an account and went through the user tracking crud and got statics on "Electronics Engineer", Bachelors, 10yrs experience, SF, from https://www.payscale.com/ (full report attached)


Also for Sydney

Edit: I have a friend with much less than 10 yrs experience earning more than the A$111k 90% in this statistic, I also have many friends earning less.
Edit2: Even a lot of my friends got around A$80k and some even higher at their first positions right after graduating though they were all pretty component "high achievers" with decent work experience before graduating.

[DEV001]

I just watched a brilliant interview with Jim Keller. The interview was focused naturally around his CPU designing skills and some architecture questions but he talks about a lot of interesting topics from books he reads to how he got to where he is now.

If you don't want to watch the video, the text version is on their site.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16762/an-anandtech-interview-with-jim-keller-laziest-person-at-tesla


The video has bookmarks if you expand the summary below the video.

[TimNJ]

You can live very comfortably with salaries >$100K/year, but I think even gray beard EE's are probably not (on average) making too much more than $120-130K/year, and lots of young and middle-age engineers working for $60-90K/year.

You can't live comfortably in Silicon Valley on that kind of salary.  Maybe a couple of such incomes could get by...

https://sf.curbed.com/2018/3/2/17073100/silicon-valley-house-home-sunnyvale-record-price-crisis

You can go to bls.gov and check median incomes by occupation and location.  Growth is not favorable for EEs, CS types make more money and the field is growing faster by a LOT.

The problem I have with bls.gov is that they seem to comingle electrical engineering (power and such) with electronics engineering.

I was talking in generalities, not really talking about the few oddball places around the country. Bay Area is a ridiculous place on so many levels. Yes there are lots of EE jobs in Silicon Valley, but I’m talking about Joe Average at a more normal place in the country. You will almost always be compensated more if you work in Silicon Valley.

[RJSV]

Thinking over these ideas while reading here, some opposites come to mind. Personally, most of us could use more success. It could be a special class of science, meta-data related: to document any interesting factors, related to successes missed. (Termed a 'near success', lol).
   Like, for example, a study relating 'gum chewing' to business success (just a silly example).
But more to this point maybe a (social / psychology) study examining thoughts and observations a particular engineer / participant had been experiencing, at a break-thru time.
AND, since we want / need technical progress, it is a good thing, to examine BOTH dynamics, of failures because we want to improve, and dynamics of success.
   So, in that vein, I remember Van Gogh, arguably the most successful but simultaneously miserable. Plus you know, the legacy of Van Gogh's work took decades
to grow, separate from his life-span.
  So, uh, What advice could be given, to a 26 year old Van Gogh, for increasing his success more immediate.
Make sense ?