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Market Check - Rate of pay

snowman

Diamond
Joined
Jul 31, 2004
Location
Southeast Michigan
College educated project manager that is well versed in providing engineering support and hands on product or concept development.

AKA, Jack of all trades, master of none, that can get the job done whether it's presenting at board meetings, wiring control circuitry, interacting with clients or making stuff.

Just curious...offered to help a friend out part time (3-4 10hr days/ week) to get him out of a hole and get a project off the ground, no benefits or long term expectations past project completion, but it would have gotten me out of a hole as well....we verbally agreed at 60k/yr proroated hourly, but his partners felt that was about 20k/yr too high because of what other people on the floor were paid.

Is this really where wages are?

I've been in a bit of a funk since I found out. Was sort of looking forward to the change of pace.
 
That's kind of vague but I wouldn't expect much out of someone being paid 40K with no benefits. Are you bring something to the table "the guys on the floor" don't have?

It's much easier to justify a good wage when you're making tangible products. Dealing with customers is tough to quantify but can easily be worth more than 60K.
 
The only input on wages that really matters is what someone in the same general area is making for a similar job. I used to live in Southern California, travel 40-50 miles down the road and wages for the exact same job can increase up to 50%, but the cost of housing doubles.
 
Ask em why they are not paying a floor guy to do it then..

Nailed it!! :Ithankyou:

I hate talking about wages because it is sooo divided but, ya, you are right. "Oh you don't pay that much? Ok, well I wish you luck (no sarcasm)."
Sometimes you just need to walk away from those situations....

Some random thoughts... :soapbox:

Offer to work hourly (cash type, they give you a 1099) for xx an hour. Let them decide if you are "bringing something to the table" after a week or two, no 'conditions', commitments, etc.

Inquire about their 'counteroffer'. Questions, skills the other guys have, etc

(as before) Thank them and politely say no thanks. Sometimes they really can't pay what you want, no hard feelings from either party needed.
 
Engineering techs (2 year degree) on my floor are making between $15 and $25/hour depending on who and what and how just out of school they are. So if they're putting you in that bucket in their heads, that'd be about right. But I don't expect them to run projects.

Maybe the better way to look at it, which seems a little vague from your post, is what would they have you... doing? If you're out on the floor, then it's not unreasonable to pay accordingly. If you're in the office with the engineers, then I'd expect you to be paid like an engineer.

You could have Warren Buffet change your oil, but it doesn't change the value of the oil change just because he has the skills to do something more profitable.
 
Fresh out of school (2012), I was at a small machine builder out on the west side of Ann Arbor. Billed myself as an engineer with basic machining capabilities. Ended up doing something like you describe, a little bit of everything. Mostly was used as a catch-all for any mistakes made elsewhere in the company. I got told what was wrong and what it was supposed to do, and came up with a way to make that happen. Started midway between your numbers there, got a nice bump up when the other young engineer got a strong offer from somewhere else, so I "wouldn't get any ideas"

One lateral move later, I was slotted into a design role at a much larger tier 1 auto supplier right around your stated figure (but higher because their benefits were decent). Due to the depressingly flat trajectory of my future there (pay wise), I moved on again. Now I'm back in the small company world, and I'm the primary technical guy at a contract manufacturer, to add more local engineering and testing capability, so again doing a wide variety of stuff.

In my opinion, your buddy's business partners are dreaming if they think they can get someone for engineering support who's worth allowing to meet with customers at anything below your stated rate. Being able to work on things on the floor when no engineering projects are pressing is icing on the cake in your favor.

Remember, that saying used to have a second half: "Jack of all trades, master of none, though oftentimes better than master of one." Keep on fighting the good fight, specialization is for insects!
 
What is the work they are expecting you to do? And are the skills you bring to the table relevant to what you're doing? If you're doing the same as everyone else out on the floor, you can expect the same pay or even top pay for the floor. If you're going to be doing more or higher skilled work than the floor, then yes you should be paid more.

Without saying what your job duties are going to be it's hard to say what your pay should be. I'm ASSuming by you saying your helping him get a project off the ground, that you will be doing much more than typical floor work. In that case you definitely deserve more.
 
College educated project manager that is well versed in providing engineering support and hands on product or concept development. ...
......
Is this really where wages are?

No and Detroit should pay more than the Flint or Saginaw region.
Your 60 with beniees was in the ball park.
The fact the partners saw this as high may speak to something.
Bob
 
I asked mostly for myself, as I have experience with what I have been paid, and what I brought to the table. They can’t afford to pay someone more because it wasn’t budgeted, but their current project load wasn’t in the plans either....but no, the people that get paid less are not expected to run projects, just show up and work.

I left employment a few years ago when my dad got really sick and have been doing my own thing since he passed. I saw it as a good opportunity to ease back in to the work force, but a low paying job would be worse than self employment. And that says a lot, since self employment isn’t all that glamorous. I’m a glass half empty sort of owner, so it’s easy to see all of my mistakes and hard to acknowledge that there’s a lot of success in simply surviving while not drawing a paycheck for three years.




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In a nutshell, how bad do they need you? If they just need more bodies, not to much bargaining power. If your friend thinks you would be a integral part of the success for this project then he needs to sell it to the other partners. On the other hand if you truly need the money, make the best deal you can. Possibly renegotiate at a later date if your work and impact on the project warrant such.

One thing comes to mind, if the project turns out a success negotiate a nice bonus. In writing of course.
 
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The fact the partners saw this as high may speak to something.

It does actually. The potential of this shop is nothing short of amazing to me, but he's being held back.

I can get shit done on a shoestring budget, but if I'm not making ends meat, I won't be able to immerse myself in the work.

Case is closed at this point, there is no negotiation. I just had one of those "is this really what the market is like" moments. Cause while I'm not exactly making bank doing my own thing, I'm also not out pounding the pavement looking for work. It was simply a moment of "getting a job would be easier".

And I won't do engineering support work on a 1099, not insured for it.
 
I see 4 things wrong

1. Working for a friend is a mistake
2. it sounds like there trying to compare you to there other workers not doing the same kinda work.
3. your friend and his partner cant do your job , but think they know what its worth ?
4. if they don`t think they want to pay you for part time work ,, tell them to go find a full time guy .. ( part time work costs more per hour )
 
You don't 1099, you go "snowman engineering services llc"

or go to work for a pimp, many engineers do this.
 
Say that in third person with a straight face. Engineer dude with no stamp is willing to work 30 to 40 hours a week for 60g. I give you swagger points, but that is almost comedic.
If you are employee of snowman engineering services and stuffs llc , then yes- you can even add to that.
 
Say that in third person with a straight face. Engineer dude with no stamp is willing to work 30 to 40 hours a week for 60g. I give you swagger points, but that is almost comedic.
If you are employee of snowman engineering services and stuffs llc , then yes- you can even add to that.

Do you understand the term "prorated hourly"?

"Engineer dude with no stamp is willing to work 30-40 hours a week for $30/hr to do jobs your 90k/yr engineer is too overloaded to do, with no benefits or long term contracts, that you'll have to hire out to subcontractors for at least $75/hr shore to shore"

I have the LLC already, but it's really nothing more than "sole proprietorship". You really have to have a multi member corporation before you start to be shielded from liability. And I imagine that once you start working for a pimp, the rates go up quite a bit just to pay for his fancy technicolor dreamcoat and gas for his large body sedan. That's an image that makes me chuckle. Pimp to engineer types. "My man Harry, you know Harry...middle aged balding programmer with pocket protector...he said you aint treatin him right...so were gonna rough you up a bit"
 
90% of engineers don't have a stamp. Outside of civil engineer and construction it's probably more like 99%. In the six companies I've worked for (smallest of which did $100MM/year), I've worked with a grand total of two PEs, and one of those guys was the IT guy who got it because the company had a blanket $10k bonus for anyone with one. The industrial exemption is good enough for most engineers, and rising requirements for granting and maintaining licensure have made it so that basically no one who doesn't need it for their job gets or keeps it anymore. I could go on and on about this, probably all day. If you're working for another company, you just carry appropriate insurance or don't work on things that maim or kill people when they fail. If you're selling your own stuff then you carry product liability insurance. Neither should be prohibitively expensive (unless you're only pulling in $60k a year...).

$60k/yr is entry level pay for a BS engineer on the east coast, I dunno about Michigan. But if they can't cough that up they aren't gonna get an engineer. At that price someone who can design and manage their own project without handholding is a great bargain, regardless of educational credentials.
 
$60k/yr is entry level pay for a BS engineer on the east coast, I dunno about Michigan. But if they can't cough that up they aren't gonna get an engineer. At that price someone who can design and manage their own project without handholding is a great bargain, regardless of educational credentials.

I don’t know...it’s too hard to keep track of rates of pay. Hence the post.

I know that 20 years ago the guy sitting across from me got an offer of 45k/yr as a graduate of GMI....at the employer he’d been working for for four years as a co-op. At the same time, others were getting paid equivalent of 40k/yr as a co op and their offers upon graduation were closer to 80k.

I left that company six months later because his offer was writing on the wall (he was a good engineer and a reliable employee).

I did not matriculate from GMI. Had life happen, but have continued down a variety of technical paths.

But either way, my point is, engineer pay, whether BS, PE or just a dude with a proven track record of not needing you to hold his hand....all over the place.

Thank you. This has helped my psyche quite a bit.




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Yeah, pay grades for engineering is always pretty variable, especially comparing big companies to smaller ones. For a while I was neck-and-neck with my brother, who is 3 years older, has his master's and about 30 extra IQ points on me.

I only took the 50k job (7 years ago) because I had recently met a nice young lady who expressed interest in my NOT following my then-current plan of heading to the Caribbean for a year to teach sailing before entering the workforce in all its soul-crushing glory. Kinda fell in my lap at the right time for me to take a hard swerve in another direction.

Hard to say for sure, but I'm thinking it's their loss for not taking you up on a prorated 60k, that'd be a bargain to get a decent gun-for-hire.
 








 
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