undefined | Better HN

0 pointsaerostable_slug3y ago0 comments

Mechanical engineers are similarly low-paid.

Some time back I hired a few MechE's (with advanced degrees) to write simulation code for a startup. I paid them what I thought was fair for a Bay Area coding role, which turned out to be a significant amount more than the same job would have paid if they had a different title (they would have been doing substantially the same work at Honda/John Deere/Ford/Boeing/Lockheed/etc.).

Strange.

0 comments

DoingIsLearning3y ago

> I paid them what I thought was fair for a Bay Area coding role

The 'fair' pay in the Bay area is sustained/inflated by the vast amounts of VC money with a _huge_ appetite for risk. I am not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but it is absolutely unique, you just don't have those finance conditions anywhere else in the world, bar maybe New York.

Also all the quoted companies in your comment will have physical goods with way way smaller profit margins compared to most Bay area products.

My point is that it is not strange at all if you follow the money.

aerostable_slugOP3y ago

Those same companies pay much more in the same metro areas for different titles, working on those small profit margin items you speak of, like electric vehicles and satellites. Journeyman software developer plunking along in a middling role gets A; while a mechanical engineer, with graduate degrees and who actually grasps the material, writing well-formed Modelica code, gets B.

That made me go "hmm."

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse