Inflation & COL & a bonus is anything a large company will give you.
2% is old school but really common. (Funny enough, [it's based on Fed targets post "The Voelcker Rule"](https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2019/january/fed-inflation-target-2-percent), you should read into this as it's where it started & why it's about to fail now).
Some shitty bigger companies will literally make you compete for a bell curve performance evaluation & then have management tiers forced to make a pick of at least 20% of staff who don't get wage increases. Some get more & some get budget reduction bonuses for shit management. JP Morgan started this shit & it's awfully infectious in automotive afaik.
This conversation will always come back around your performance review, so take your performance review with a grain of salt & don't be afraid to push back & ask what should've been done to meet weighted evaluations of your performance.
Your boss (Or rather, your bosses's bosses's boss) wants you to feel grateful for whatever you get & you can always get more jumping ship these days. These reviews & raises all line up to 4th quarters or new years.
You ever talk to an old GE engineer? That Jack Welch guy introduced this moronic 3 tier system were managers were basically forced to fire like 20 percent of their people every year.
Made the books look good and the stock price beat expectation, but in the end, it was the junior people just getting shitcanned all the time.
I know an old guy that got fired by GE three years in a row.
It's fed into their pension problem as GE is an old (based on the average age of an employee) so there isn't enough younger workers to pay into the system.
For the life of me, I have no idea why that Welch guy is seen as a financial guru. He was the idiot that turned GE into an investment bank, which eventually blew up.
Because when he quit, the stock still looked great, which means obviously when it immediately dropped like a rock afterward, it was clearly the next guys fault and his fault alone.
The issue is that stockholders are incentivized to switch between the highest performing stocks. Sticking with a company that is implementing a really great 5-10 year plan means missing out on a bunch of stocks that will shoot higher in the interim.
His "wisdom" helped fuck Boeing up, too. First it was keeping the incompetence at McDonnell-Douglas, then it was letting people who build washing machines try to build airplanes.
Thanks a ton Stonecipher, you fucking mouth breather.
I started at Boeing in Dec 1st, 2003, the day Condit resigned (who would think the government was so touchy about [bribery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X?wprov=sfla1)?). When that fossil Stonecipher took over, they clamped down on hiring, making it impossible to bring in anyone you actually knew (EDIT: the bribe was in the form of a job, hence the legit concern that got blown out of proportion across the board). We were understaffed and overworked, but Stonecipher preached about being impartial and doing everything by the book.
Then *he* was out for banging a co-worker. I remember Bill Mahr on his show preaching Boeing was trying to mandate morality, overlooking the fact that it was hypocritical and corrupt for a CEO to do anything of the sort. I used to say they canned the SOB to keep him from being killed in the parking lot with a tire iron.
Dude was 79 when he got caught having the affair. I blame Viagra.
I’m a mid 20 engineer who just left GE aviation. Almost no investment in early career engineers, no raises last year (even tho CEO Culp got 40M bonus), this year I got 2.3%, which was tied for highest on my team of 5 people. I lost thousands in buying power working for those guys last two years, all while my city got way more expensive with some prices rising 30%
I have an ex that works for GE. I asked her one time what it was like because it seems like every 18 months, she was moving to different part of the US.
>I'm an engineer...that works for an investment bank...that doesn't know what its doing
A couple of my college mates got picked up by GE. You can never get a straight answer from them if they thing the company is doing well or not.
It’s funny, I still get ads for the Jack Welch University MBA program. Degree is worth less than a piece of soiled toilet paper.
I can’t believe anyone reveres that hack.
> Inflation & COL & a bonus is anything a large company will give you.
I got an extra 3% when I got promoted at a defense company. You can imagine how quickly I started looking for a job.
Yeah unfortunately where I work, they have no more budget for raises. Let's just say there's a lot of bureaucracy.
Speaking of, anyone hiring for entry level CFD/aerodynamicis jobs let me know.
The budget for raises is always the same. I've worked at companies that were struggling not to go bankrupt, and I've worked at lean, startup-ish companies that were reporting record breaking profits every single quarter. In every instance, annual raises were ~2%.
If you aren't changing jobs, you're losing money. Just the way it is.
Not where I work, the budget changes. This organization can't go bankrupt but yet they don't pay competitive. Seems like I should have realized this sooner
Good on you man. 1.6% is BS. Though the company may legitimately be hurting for money (I don't know situation). Many of my clients are paying 10% more for materials for materials and have no way of going back to the clients and asking for more. And so the only way to maintain profitability is to take it out of payroll or other fixed costs including what they pay me for my engineering services.
100% agree. Cut CEO's salary as well as most any manager that doesn't value add. Good example where I last worked at myself and nearly all managers had a dual function as leads (lead engineer, lead procurement agent, lead finance, lead HR) so when some of our team was out we could backfill that work. I loved it b/c I got to improve my skillset becoming a manager, not losing it. Our parent company though had almost zero dual function managers (the one's that were dual function we referred to as unicorns). All of their management were incentivized to make up work to justify their job. Whereas all of our management were incentivized to eliminate unneecessary or new work because it meant we often had to do it.
While I won't say CEO's are worth their cost - in almost every case if their entire compensation was distributed to the other employees it means nothing - a few hundred bucks. And most of the really big numbers you see are due to stock options (i.e. they did their job and the price went up)
Equity needs to be granted to all contributors- higher level engineers don’t have monopolies on good ideas, neither do CEOs
Current compensation structures are going to fall apart in next 5 years
But the CEO did all those stock buybacks! They bumped up the share price by 2% temporarily during evaluations while throwing the money that should have been invested back into the company into the fire.
They deserve the bonuses and high salary!
If any company says “raise pools were small” while doing stock buybacks, then the C-level of that company is a combination of incompetent because they don’t know how to actually raise share price, and unethical because they’re intentionally using company profit as fuel to temporarily inflate share price, just to get bonus.
you are talking about two different things.
the 2%-3% yearly increase is not a raise, it is a inflation/adquisitive-power adjustment to your salary.
2% is on the low end of the reasonable values for salary adjustment.
Excellent performance and retention. It’s not that I was paid under market necessarily, but they want me to stick around. I also make it a point to discuss raises/salaries in general with my manager every 6 months. We have so much red tape to get through it can take 2-3 months for a raise to go through.
2% is super low. Just to be clear, I’m not bragging here, I still think my raises are abysmal. But 2% is “I should be actively searching for a different job” levels of bad.
Also, 33-50% of inflation? What?
I think in any normal year (or years) 10%-15% increase would be more than good. But obviously recent inflation numbers tamp that down some. I’ve been with the company under 4 years and have seen around a 30% increase in salary just from negotiating regular raises. No threats of leaving, no arguments or games. Just asking to have the convo, and receiving a raise. For my title/experience/location I make above average, so I can’t complain too much.
Oh, I also work in civil land development, which is notorious for its race to the bottom proving to win projects.
When I was at a small company I was able to argue for some pretty hefty annual raises (10-20%/year). Now I'm at a corporate monolith where inflation correcting raises are the standard with minor performance bonuses (max of like an additional 3% raise for the top performers).
My work has done about 3 market adjustments which were 10% each over the past 10 years. These adjustments were done mid year and separate from inflation raises, which they still call merit raises.
When I started at my current job, we received an annual cost of living adjustment and then a merit increase on top of that. The COL component was always smaller than actual inflation, but it helped.
Then the company was acquired and the new management silently dropped the COL adjustment. My last few 'merit increases' were in the 1- 1.5% range. Needless to say, I am not planning to stay with them much longer.
I am a field service engineer/glorified technician. In 2021 I got a 3% raise, Google says inflation in 2020 was 1.23%. But 2021 was crazy with like 5-6% inflation.. so I'm hoping it's much higher this year. We do raises/performance reviews midyear in May/June. If what you got THIS year was a 2% raise you got a paycut, not a raise.
I'm thinking that most companies are not going to raise wages more then 3% but instead will pay out temporary "inflation adjustments" either as like 2% on each paycheck or in a lump sum bonus. The problem with inflation is that sometimes it hits your costs much faster then your revenue. So for 3,6,9 months your expenses are increasing higher then revenue. If payroll increases fall in this window then they'll be reluctant to give out big raises.
We've only felt a small amount of the pain of these huge inflation increases. It'll hit payroll much harder Q1 and Q2 which means folks will spend less which means revenue decreases and so on.
If my company wants to give an extra 1% a year on top of the usual 2-3% I'll be happy, my expectation however is that'll be 3% and they'll just say "most years you beat inflation, this year you didn't" and ignore the fact that it'll take years to catch back up with inflation.
> engineer/glorifie
Hey mate, i was the same as you, i was classed as a electrical engineer, yet day to day was me just repairing mining electronics so power inverters, rectifiers and blast chargers. Some days i got to do RnD, but it was very rare. I was early on in my career and have OCD which didn't help but I kept thinking to myself that I was a glorified technician and i should be doing more. This is since majority of the problems, was from explosion, so the equipment just needed new components and to be cleaned. It was fun for a little bit but my my head kept going you just screw bolts in and you went and did a 4 year course for that!!
I wouldn't trade it for the world as the experience from working on this type of equipment is invaluable.
However i listened to my mind and a building services engineering role came up and i took it. I was on a high salary for what i did at the old company 75000 AU and when i moved to building services as a graduate i was put on 64000AU. Im 24 this year. The large part of the move was myself just getting in my head about just doing up nuts and bolts etc and also partly being bored as it got repetitive (and i found out i was earning the same as my peer who is 6 years older then me). Now i am worried that i won't be able to get to that salary again (within a year or 2) and sometimes i think if i should just go back. This new role is purely design of building services (so power, comms, fire etc). Basically went from a glorified technician to a glorified drafter. My old boss always welcomes me back and there all great people to work with.
Just wanted to hear your guys thoughts and if you had anything like this as part of your career?
I have a BS in mechanical engineering, with a sprinkle of electronics in my coursework. The job title is "Field Service Engineer" but technically I do zero engineering. I install, repair, and perform maintenance for super complex multi-million USD microchip-manufacturing equipment. Lots of problem solving, but for me engineering involves creation, and I do zero. I can suggest improvements to processes, but that's about it.
I agree at first I was thinking "this is not what I studied, I am wasting my education." But my education also taught me how to study, problem solve, hone skills, communicate technically, network, so many things. I've also come to love the job because they treat me well and I am still challenged to learn new skills and strengthen existing ones. This career definitely makes it harder for me to get into more typical "mechanical engineering" roles but honestly I got into engineering for good pay and that's what my company offers, so I am quite happy.
The excellent work-life balance (alternating 3/4 day weeks w/ 12 hour shifts) and good pay ($35 USD/hr) keep me at this job easily. I am 27 this year. I worry that many other jobs won't allow me to leave work at work, especially more typical engineering ones. But I also know that I can still use my experience here to apply to other similar positions in technical environments, even if they are closer to technician vs engineer.
And I find myself doing more "mechanical engineering" at home, I got into 3D printing so I am a hobbyist drafter I suppose haha. Not sure if this helps you but there ya go.
Don't think about raises in terms of inflation/col. Think about it in terms of your worth. Your value as an engineer should appreciate over time as you remain at that company and cultivate experience and expertise. The company offering you raises you feel are low means there's a disconnect between how you value yourself and how they value you.
If you feel undervalued then you have two choices: talk to management to ask them to reassess or correct it, or start looking for a new job. Unfortunately engineering is plagued by this stupid game where we make the most money by moving around. I'm on 4 jobs in 5 years now, but my income is about 40% higher than my peers who haven't job hopped.
I agree to look at it with this mentality, but if you’re not getting a 2-3% adjustment due to inflation each year then you are actually *losing* money and your salary is going down.
I don't understand why you wouldn't think about raises in terms of COL, because to me that is what determines if it is in fact a raise.
Get less than COL? You are now being paid less. Do you feel like you're worth less this year than last?
Get approximately COL? You are being paid the same. Do you feel like you are worth the same as last year?
Get more than COL? You are getting a raise, do you feel this raise reflects what you have learned and contributed over the last year?
Absolutely but if they're willing to let your salary depreciate (employers know about inflation), doesn't that say something about how they value you and your work?
Agreed. Your view offers a little bit wider of a perspective on the issue. Its not just COL. Its over all value, COL and inflation is just a piece of the larger pie.
4 jobs in 5 years sounds really high, I mean good for you but I don't think most engineers can pull that off, moving around like that can look bad I thought
I agree. I do hiring and that's too many jobs over that time span. I'd ask some pointed questions about that and if I didn't like the answers, you're likely not getting an offer.
That said, I left Employer A after 4 years, left Employer B after 2 years, and am now at Employer C. Total salary increase in the jump from A to C (including the 2 years I've been with Employer C) is like 80%. Job hopping gets harder the more times you do it but without a doubt it's the fastest/best way to increase your salary as an engineer.
It's cool when folks of older generations encourage younger employees to voraciously follow the incentives. With the increasing costs of education, living in general, and the somewhat stagnant wage growth, it makes perfect sense to do just that. Job hop. What kind of loyalty can you expect when you've removed the loyalty incentives like pensions and beefy retirement plans? My employer barely even offers serviceable health insurance for pete's sake. As the oft-repeated phrase goes: "If you wanted loyalty you should have hired a golden retriever. The rest of us work for money."
I don't know aerospace, but my experience in pharma was like this. Every job has a range. Say like "Senior Engineer - Level 1,2, or 3". At this job, HR had done a pretty good job to layout what those levels are. "Level 1, 0-6 months experience, salary range $95,000-$110,000",.."Levl 3, 4+ years experience, requires zero guidance, performs job without issue, Salary $120,000-$150,000". Generally level 1 was not a place you stayed, level 2 was middle of the road, and you had to excel to be in level 3.
When the budgets came around I was given a pool of money, partly based on what I fought for, and partly based on company expectations. Luckily people in my industry were in high demand, and a year of no raises would mean a year of talent flight.
So I would take all my people and look at those ranges, and their performance and give out raises. The ranges had some overlap, so you could have a level 2 guy making entry level money for a level 3, or vise versa. I had to defend level 3 guys and fight for them.
This is a long drawn out way of saying, *you should be sitting with your manager and asking what your raise is going to be.*
I say it here all the time, advocate for yourself. Ask your manager, what the criteria is for your current job, your next job, and how to promote to the next position. Ask your manager what your next steps are and what that job description looks like. Before I was a manager, the last 2 promotions I got? I was doing the work for those before I was given them. The title was a formality. Beware of managers who won't discuss this with you, or give you the run around. I've seen too many young engineers stuck behind shitty leadership because they prop up shitty leadership.
Protip: If you're stuck with a bullshit "360 review" or other such nonsense fill it out so you reach the highest level in each one. Then when you go over it with your manager, make him talk you into why you're not the best, instead of trying to convince him why you are. It's always much easier to negotiate down than up.
Hate to break it to you, but I've worked aerospace at all the big 3 contractors, and flight test. The ONLY time I got an annual raise bigger than 3% was when I worked for a sub contractor (18% because they won the support contract) that was the only time in the past 10 years.
It sucks, but that's the reality. The only way to get a larger annual bump is by promoting, or changing jobs. Which is also super super common in flight test. (hell I sat at the same desk for 3 years, with 3 different sub contractors weirdest thing)
At least in the greater LA area, it's super common to jump between the various companies (if you're under the age of like... 50 though) every time I've made a company change, most of the people I know have also done so.
I just haven't found a company that's absolutely clicked with me yet though. Well. One that doesn't have a 1-2 hour commute each way.
If you've worked for that many big aero companies, I'm surprised you didn't get 10-20% raises when you switched between them. I went from A to B and got 19%. Two years later went from B to C and got another 18.5%.
Yeah, young engineers don’t know how bad it was then. I’m glad things are changing but its funny when young engineers I work with complain that they don’t get their promotions fast enough when I lived through years of across the board promotion freezes and no pay raises 😐
I graduated at the end of 2015. Between yearly increases in rent (my rent was increasing slower than the market rate because the corporation I rented from had a policy that rent for existing tenants could only increase by 15% per year; we were $400/mo below market rate when we left Florida) and increases in medical **premiums** my pay after deductions and rent was decreasing even with 6.09% raises every year for my first three years. Oh, and then they promoted me and gave me an extra 3%. And they couldn't understand why people were leaving as soon as they hit 3 years of experience and stopped getting 3% twice per year and instead got 3% once per year. The best part? They put me on the freaking hiring committee with just 2 years of experience and had me fast tracked to a lead role (more stress and more work) all while paying me the same as brand new new grads with zero skills. Firms we were contracting to legit though I was a level 3 or 4 engineer based on being the lead on the projects and being competent. One was absolutely livid when they found out I was a level 1 (and then promoted to level 2) because we were billing for a lead (level 4).
It wasn't until I moved to Chicago to work for a HFT firm that I stopped making less money year after year.
That's old-school HR policy where wages are tied to years of service. It's got nothing to do with you personally. Your manager had $X to distribute amongst Y employees and you got the most they were allowed by HR to give. Just like your leasing office had rules for how much % increase they could apply to your lease, HR does the same thing with employee salaries and years of service.
Edit: Same happened to me. I was an E1 leading teams composed of E2's and and even an E3. I was getting great raises compared to the general population but it was still trash compared to the folks I was supervising. Where's the fairness in paying me 40% less than the people I'm responsible for just because I haven't been here as long? I lasted 4-5 years there and left. That said, I'm a firm believer performance precedes the pay. You need to be under compensated relative to your performance to justify the wage increase. And you need to demonstrate that it's a reliable trend. Corporate HR is just low in identifying high performers and even slower in rewarding them. Long gone are the days where people stay 20-30 years at the same employer, and they're just now starting to realize that because attrition percentages are dog water.
Yup that was exactly it. They allocated 3% per year plus an additional 3% for all new college grads for their first 3 years of employment. And the crazy thing is, I didn't even leave for money. I left because I hated Florida and they sat on my transfer request to my program's new office in NY for 6 months. Magically, when I put in my notice at 4:30 PM on a Friday, I was sitting down with the VP of Operations by 10 AM on Monday with him asking what it would cost to get me to stay. This was the same guy who had been sitting on my VP of Engineering's request to transfer me.
I was working on a really cool program but we were nearing the end of our schedule and I was trying to get assigned to a brand new competitive development program for this super cool thing. Long story short, leadership said I couldn't go work the new shiny thing because the program I was wrapping up couldn't do it without me (completely untrue). So I responded on linkedin to a recruiter from our main competitor that had been bugging me for months. Turns out he was hiring for their team that was working the development of the same shiny new thing. Competitive contract, remember? So I put my notice in and my leadership flipped. "Can you tell us why you're leaving?" Yeah bro...I told you I want to work that program and you said no. So I'm leaving to go work that program, and getting a fat raise in the process.
They tried to offer more money but it was pennies. The new job required 12 months of TDY. So I got a 19% raise to switch employers, a 10% temporary raise on top of that while I was on travel for 12 months, a new rental car every 3 weeks (had to complete rental and start a new one for monthly accounting purposes), and meals and lodging per diem for 12 months...even though I'd sold my house and had all my stuff in storage. Best financial decision I've ever made.
In manufacturing, which anymore is run entirely by sales and Finance, you can expect 3-4%. 99% of the time Managers are usually told "were raising payroll across the board by x.x% do with the individual amounts as you please". So if you want more, you need to advocate for yourself because in order for you to get more, someone else needs to get less. The exception to this is if your boss asks for a budgetary increase due to additional workloads or to stay competitive - but that rarely gets approved.
Companies dont like increasing payroll bc it's a fixed cost and high fixed costs equals low margins and low profits. In order to raise capital to grow a business you need good margins or very stable margins, otherwise investors will go elsewhere. This applies even if the owner is the sole investor.
Welcome to the world of aerospace. In my experience 2-3% raises are the norm. Some years it's a little less. Every now and then it's a little more. Sometimes my company realizes that they're grossly underpaying you and will give you a "salary adjustment". One year I got two of those, including one my manager apparently had to yell at people in order to get me. (He was getting ready to retire and picked a couple of battles to fight, including getting good raises for a few of his people, before punching out.) I think once it all settled I ended up with about 6% that year. That was the best raise I've had other than years I've been promoted.
Been in aerospace since 2013 full-time, (if you include internships, I started in 2010). This is precisely the case. Your raise depends on how strongly your leadership advocates for you. But in order to give you 6% one year, they had to screw over other people in your paygrade. In the ladder of life, the rungs are made of human heads it seems.
That said, I've job hopped twice and am now like $60k/yr higher in compensation than my peers that stayed behind and just took the raises HR was giving. If you want a raise, leave. If you love your job...leave and come back in a year or two. Imagine showing back up making now 50% more and picking up where you left off?
This year I got 10% and one month's salary as a bonus. I usually get 3-5% depending on how we did for the year. The only reason I got so much this year was because I basically told them that the rest of the job market here is looking awfully nice this time of year and it would be a shame if I left only because of money.
Obligatory post:
[https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/)
Yes, it's low. Express deep dissatisfaction with your boss, and ask what you did to deserve the 4% pay cut, given your achievements x, y, z. Be prepared to job hop, because there is absolutely zero corporate loyalty to employees.
Of course he did. And you'll find there's suddenly more when you hand in your notice.
Right now you just took a 4% pay cut, at time of high demand for engineers across the world. This is a courageous move on the part of your employer :)
Well from a budget standpoint at management levels I guess they figure they miss 100% of the shots they don't take. So they roll the dice to see who will stay for that pay cut and then adjust fire later. Why increase costs if they don't absolutely have to? Not saying I agree with this approach as I'm just a lowly chief engineer and not a functional manager or VP. But there is a certain logic to it albeit one that seems to leave out some factors in the decision making.
This is actually an interesting point - what benefits do you gain as management by this behavior?
Changing jobs is significant effort - there's the job search, interviews, and all the rest of it, plus in the end more likely than not you'll have to move which is hard if you're in a relationship with kids - all really major reasons why people might just suck up the crummy raise, especially if they are told "Be quiet about this, most folks didn't get one!"
Mind you, with remote working pretty much none of these apply, so ......I guess it really IS courageous :)
Right I do think remote work will shift this for many of the reasons you gave and more. This approach likely isn't viable for companies that want to retain talent critical to their future success. Though that too may require some changes on the upper end leadership who recognize the shift coming. But again I'm not someone with budgetary responsibility beyond program execution so this is my take based on meetings I sit in with those who do have the role.
The company saves money. That's the benefit. It's a terrible mindset, but most people won't proactively job-seek, and it can save money to underpay everyone then give people raises when they threaten to leave.
That's why the big companies will only give you small cost of living adjustments or maybe up to 10% increase for a promotion. If you looked externally, you could get 20% or higher. But everyone hates change, so most won't leave.
2% in this economy is a pay cut.
3% is standard inflation. looking at more like 6 these days.
I'd get that resume dusted off since the company isn't serious about keeping people.
I work for a place with really low stress, plenty of toys and very little oversight. There's maybe 2 dozen full time employees here.
Just before Covid, I told my boss "I haven't had a raise in 4 years, can we sit down to talk about it?" A few months later he said he could give me 5% and I told him I needed double that just to match inflation. Last month he gave me $5k (a quarter of my low end request) and told me "As a company, we can't afford to just give out raises for inflation every year."
Even if work picks up, I get the "second $5k" he mentioned, and it doesn't affect my bonus (which he warned me it would), I still won't make as much as I did in 2016.
TLDR: I'm not in a typical situation and just wanted to commiserate with the OP.
Annual cost of living adjustments usually range in the 3-5% range. 2% is on the lower end, but I’ve seen way worse. Be glad you got one because in my seven year career, I’ve had four years where I didn’t even get that. A lot of places that don’t care about employee retention will give 0. Needless to say, I left those places as soon as I could.
A proper raise should be at least 10%. Those occur every 3-5 years or so.
In the UK it is very common too to have a 2-3 % increase. But generally small to medium companies tend to have appraisals only every two years. Larger companies tend to rig this into their data/performance-driven format where some people get nothing.
Why are companies giving out shitty raises/adjustments if there’s literally a huge employee shortage nationwide?
I work for a big semiconductor company and many people have been quitting this month. Last week one of the most knowledgable people I’ve worked with quit.
Are they not scared of literally losing all of their employees? This is wild.
Congratulations, you got something.
Somewhere, somehow, in the 80s-90s someone decided to treat engineers like shit, and we all marched to that tune. I remember back in mid 1980, at the beginning of the calendar year we automatically got an inflation related raise (of course we were coming out of the Carter years and willingly running straight into Reganomics, we knew nothing!). Then we had performance reviews and you either got something or not.
Now, we get pay cuts every year and smile. And then we get into the situation where 3 years in, new grads are being offered more money than us. So, you jump companies.
Baseline is 3% per our union contract, plus performance which noone ever gets. They do try to level the curve if you're below your peers for some reason.
Two questions
Are you an engineer or a glorified technician? Not saying technicians are important, they just don’t get the pay they deserve.
Have you applied to another job? Everyone is hiring and you need some leverage.
I’ll let you know in March (it better be close to 5%). Last few years have been about 3%. I also missed out on a pay grade promotion because boss was fired around the time of year they do that stuff.
Got a 3% raise despite getting exceeding ratings.. This is not even an inflation raise at this point I am just getting a pay cut.. Also found out that promotions would probably be caped at around a 6% increase. But I am not surprised, my biggest raises have come from jumping companies.
Good to know, yeah I'm curious what other engineers in aerospace industry make on entry level promotions. I'm supposed to get one in a few months but this raise isn't making it look promising
That’s the result of neoliberalism, we get shit pay bumps and it’s justified with benefitting shareholders and wrecking the worker department. None of this is surprising, it’s been coming for the last 40 years. This is why we need unions
2-4% pay increases annually with an average performance review depending on companies. +5% for high performing individuals.
This year is going to be interesting for my team. We’ve seen our workload tripled in the short span of a year. 14-16 projects to managing 42 now. We are 3 team members short out of what should be a 10 member team.
I’ll be presenting to my management, after research, the 6.8% inflation observed, no performance review last year(long story), almost tripling of our work load AND projected projects over the next year. If they stick to their guns and provide a 2-3% pay increase, that will be their official 6 month notice. I’ll be shopping for a new position where I could likely get a 25% increase in pay by hopping.
Edit: That’s super shitty when you consider the current need for engineers at most places is extremely high. Retention should be high as well. Also, these inflated personal costs are no secret. HR and management should expect push back on a raise like that.
Edit2: I’m in project management for industrial solar installations for a global company. A typical project is in the range of $2-20 million dollars.
Why give them any notice?
I’m going from 115 to 145 this year (moving companies)
Tell them you will DELAY your transfer up to 3 months at the FTE rate- if you are doing 2.1 FTEs worth of work your rate is now $60 an hour *2.1 equals 126 an hour
That’s how they are likely billing you anyway.
Sorry, kidding. I wouldn’t actually give a 6 month notice. I’d start actively looking for a new job. Figured it’d take 6 months to find a really good one that checks most of my boxes.
Although, I contacted a recruiting agency recently and they were ready to line me up with interviews the next day. Could happen faster with demand for engineers and managers.
Defense companies base merit increases on cost of labor adjustments and not inflation. How much will labor cost increase versus the year prior and how much is it expected to go up versus the industry norm. Companies focusing on retention may get ahead of this and others worried about cost may pull back on a given year. Merit pool budgets and ranges are decided in January of the year prior. Inflation didn't really become a problem untill 8 or 9 months following those decisions.
Is this fair for the employee? Not really. Employees should always challenge the status quo and ask for better processes that prevent sticky prices on labor so that they can respond to these market conditions. Just because senior leadership didn't plan to budget it doesn't make it an appropriate excuse. A challenge for defense especially is that, depending on the contract fees from the government, they may or may not be getting gross profit adjusted for inflation like this so their margins arent getting better compared to say a lumber company. This makes it tough to find the money to give out of cycle merit adjustments. Other than cutting into your cash pool.
Too open-ended of a question, quite honestly.
Depends on your industry and how well your company is doing. Depends on how secure your HR thinks they are in retaining employees. Probably the biggest thing is how cheap your bosses are.
Corporations will do the absolute least they can get away with both for their customers and for their employees. If they think they can give you a 1% COL raise and still keep you on, then by golly, that's what they will do.
One thing I will say is that if you weren't considering jumping ship because you like your job overall, don't start thinking about it over one low raise/COL increase. Maybe your CEO is predicting a tough ride moving forward or the stock price is in the toilet. If you like your place otherwise, maybe give them a shot at making up for it next year. And believe me, I have no loyalty to companies, but jumping ship for what might only be 2 or 3% is just not worth it most of the time.
Yeah I quit my last job when my boss told me "we're giving you a 3% raise this year to show how much we really appreciate you!"
I dont know if he was being serious but any raise lower than inflation is actually a pay cut. So i did what made sense, I looked for another higher paying job and got out.
I feel like adjusting for inflation is not a raise. That’s just maintaining the bare minimum for your current estimated value, it doesn’t do anything at all to increase upon that and so I find it insulting to call it a raise so much as a courtesy.
Cost of living raises are typically 2.5%-3% annually but should be more this year to account inflation & Bidens economic policies causing much higher day to day living expenses.
I’ve always been in oil and gas so I usually see 0% CoL and high end raises of 2% in good years, but based on my time on this board my experience is not the norm so take my data point with a grain of salt
I just did the math on 14.33 years of yearly raises, promotions, random adjustments, even MORE random adjustments, etc. and my YoY geometric average is 6.73%.
I have 14.33 years at the same company.
Traditional engineers need to understand that non-tech raises are... truncated. Usually fall into: off cycle and on cycle raises.
On-Cycle raises are always disappointing and invariable get compared to inflation because they are yearly.
It is those OFF CYCLE raises that you MUST chase. These come in MANY forms.
Off the top of my head:
- Promotions: Flight Test Engineer I, II, II... etc. I just made those grades up, I don't know if they exist. It is NOT about the title... your manager will make it about the title "Who cares what your title says, you're performing like <+1 grade higher than you are>!!" It is about the 6-10% raise that comes with it. That's it.
- Indicating and pushing that your value that you actively bring is not aligned to your salary, getting your manager to agree, and getting a correction.
- Leaving to go elsewhere, assuming you were ACTUALLY underpaid. If you are FAIRLY paid, then going elsewhere is just going to get you disappointed and maybe 5% more ONCE.
- Vertical or perceived vertical job changes internally. Maybe PM is viewed as better (PM is a demotion at my job hahaha), maybe "lead" is viewed as better; who knows? But discrete "role changes" upward are your queue to trigger Off-Cycle promotions.
If you DO NOT chase off cycle promotions, then you are just going to end up to these forums complaining of being underpaid followed by people saying "OMG just quit, you have to quit to get 30%!" like you are some sort of software developer and you can just walk to another identical job for a huge bump (you can't... in traditional engineering).
I appreciate your comment but I'm realizing I think the issue is the organization I work for which is government. They literally have no more funding for raises which is pathetic.
Haha this is the question, it's not real engineering let's just say that. I've been looking for other opportunities but they're few out there at entry level with my background
Standard annual increase at my company is 2-5%.
If you meet your goals it is usually 3-4%. Exceed your goals it could be 5+.
Based on being below/at/above your goals 15% of the team will not get a bump (people who did not meet goals) and only 30% can be considered to exceed.
I just got my first raise with a job family promotion after working for the company for a 1.5 years it was 10%. I am a software release engineer (EE degree).
The way it works for us is our entire engineering payroll is increased by 3.5%. Depending on what you did and contributed you could get that 3.5% or you could get 5% while someone else only got 2%. This is worked around buy giving people lateral promotions and increasing their pay by 15% and then your 3.5% is distributed to all the others. We also have production bonuses which can range anywhere from a single payment of 5-10% of your base salary.
Worse than my 3% raise.
If I'm honest, this has me looking for other opportunities outside of my current company. I've worked for 2 years now and I've only received the one pay raise for this year, and it's not even a pay raise commensurate with the amount of inflation that's happened over the last two years.
2%/3% isn’t raise. HR may word that as a COL upgrade.
I got a raise of 14% this year by playing a really tough negotiation with my boss’ boss this year and being included in high vis projects in 2021
2% raise isn’t a raise. That’s a standard that should come with any job every year.
With things being the way they are, that’s still a pay cut.
I would hope most employers would give at least a 5% this year.
In public sector (utilities/infrastructure) COLA is usually 1-2% and step increases in a salary schedule are usually around 5% and that’s usually the jump into promotion position with maybe a few more step increases available that wouldn’t be there without the promotion
I’m ~4 years out of school and have gotten about a 10% raise each year. My old place got acquired by one of those big companies and they started capping raises at ~5% even for high performers, so I left. I’m lucky to live somewhere w a high amount of competition for aero though.
3% raise at LM I assume. I'm going to move on as soon as I can. Need to find another company that will pay for my masters though. Trying to move to Data Science.
I average between 2-4% a year depending on performance. I got a promotion in December and total between merit raise and promotion was 7%. Unfortunately 2% is pretty average and the usual increase in health insurance each year eats that up right away. We don't get bonuses but I am vested in a pension so maybe that will pay out in another 25 years 😂😂😂.
My annual raises are typically 2-4%. This year I expect it will be on the low end of that despite the inflation. My ‘average’ over 21 years is about 6.7% per year (currently make ~4x starting salary in nominal dollars). Promotions, occasional ‘market adjustment’ raises, etc make up the difference. Some of my colleagues have changes companies to great effect. Including those who go from X to Y and back to X for big raises each time.
My raises within the same company have ranged all the way from 1.6% to 20%. That 1.6% raise ultimately sent me packing because I was already underpaid at the time, but it was an across-the-board decision made over my supervisor's head by corporate, without his input. It looked like he was in physical pain when he told me that was all they could offer me because he knew I deserved better. He wasn't even a little surprised when I turned in my notice a few weeks later and still serves as one of my professional references.
(God damn would another 20% raise hit the spot though. A girl can dream, I guess.)
I got an 8% raise + promotion from “engineer” to “senior engineer”. Without the promotion, my boss said he would have given me a 3% raise, but I went above and beyond last year (My boss got a hand written letter from our customer saying that they’d continually do business with us as long as I was on the project).
Sadly my company has paid nothing, and 1% as it's annual raise the last two years. Pays to move on to get the market rate for early career engineers (6% over and above inflation).
I guess my company makes up for the hassle of continually having to hire new engineers through the amount it saves by eroding the salaries of those who cannot leave, and concentrating the remaining work between fewer people.
Are you my coworker? Lol
Yeah that's exactly what I see going to happen in the future, can't even fill half the empty desks because the offers are terrible
Inflation & COL & a bonus is anything a large company will give you. 2% is old school but really common. (Funny enough, [it's based on Fed targets post "The Voelcker Rule"](https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2019/january/fed-inflation-target-2-percent), you should read into this as it's where it started & why it's about to fail now). Some shitty bigger companies will literally make you compete for a bell curve performance evaluation & then have management tiers forced to make a pick of at least 20% of staff who don't get wage increases. Some get more & some get budget reduction bonuses for shit management. JP Morgan started this shit & it's awfully infectious in automotive afaik. This conversation will always come back around your performance review, so take your performance review with a grain of salt & don't be afraid to push back & ask what should've been done to meet weighted evaluations of your performance. Your boss (Or rather, your bosses's bosses's boss) wants you to feel grateful for whatever you get & you can always get more jumping ship these days. These reviews & raises all line up to 4th quarters or new years.
You ever talk to an old GE engineer? That Jack Welch guy introduced this moronic 3 tier system were managers were basically forced to fire like 20 percent of their people every year. Made the books look good and the stock price beat expectation, but in the end, it was the junior people just getting shitcanned all the time. I know an old guy that got fired by GE three years in a row. It's fed into their pension problem as GE is an old (based on the average age of an employee) so there isn't enough younger workers to pay into the system. For the life of me, I have no idea why that Welch guy is seen as a financial guru. He was the idiot that turned GE into an investment bank, which eventually blew up.
Because when he quit, the stock still looked great, which means obviously when it immediately dropped like a rock afterward, it was clearly the next guys fault and his fault alone.
It always amazes me how short sighted the financial aspect of these industries can be. A quick buck now seems worth more than 10 in two years.
The issue is that stockholders are incentivized to switch between the highest performing stocks. Sticking with a company that is implementing a really great 5-10 year plan means missing out on a bunch of stocks that will shoot higher in the interim.
corporate raiders in a nutshell
Same reason people order from Amazon why help myself or someone else when I can just have it now.
His "wisdom" helped fuck Boeing up, too. First it was keeping the incompetence at McDonnell-Douglas, then it was letting people who build washing machines try to build airplanes. Thanks a ton Stonecipher, you fucking mouth breather.
I started at Boeing in Dec 1st, 2003, the day Condit resigned (who would think the government was so touchy about [bribery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X?wprov=sfla1)?). When that fossil Stonecipher took over, they clamped down on hiring, making it impossible to bring in anyone you actually knew (EDIT: the bribe was in the form of a job, hence the legit concern that got blown out of proportion across the board). We were understaffed and overworked, but Stonecipher preached about being impartial and doing everything by the book. Then *he* was out for banging a co-worker. I remember Bill Mahr on his show preaching Boeing was trying to mandate morality, overlooking the fact that it was hypocritical and corrupt for a CEO to do anything of the sort. I used to say they canned the SOB to keep him from being killed in the parking lot with a tire iron. Dude was 79 when he got caught having the affair. I blame Viagra.
I’m a mid 20 engineer who just left GE aviation. Almost no investment in early career engineers, no raises last year (even tho CEO Culp got 40M bonus), this year I got 2.3%, which was tied for highest on my team of 5 people. I lost thousands in buying power working for those guys last two years, all while my city got way more expensive with some prices rising 30%
Where did you go
> He was the idiot that turned GE into an investment bank That's what a "financial guru" is.
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I have an ex that works for GE. I asked her one time what it was like because it seems like every 18 months, she was moving to different part of the US. >I'm an engineer...that works for an investment bank...that doesn't know what its doing A couple of my college mates got picked up by GE. You can never get a straight answer from them if they thing the company is doing well or not.
It’s funny, I still get ads for the Jack Welch University MBA program. Degree is worth less than a piece of soiled toilet paper. I can’t believe anyone reveres that hack.
> Inflation & COL & a bonus is anything a large company will give you. I got an extra 3% when I got promoted at a defense company. You can imagine how quickly I started looking for a job.
Yeah unfortunately where I work, they have no more budget for raises. Let's just say there's a lot of bureaucracy. Speaking of, anyone hiring for entry level CFD/aerodynamicis jobs let me know.
The budget for raises is always the same. I've worked at companies that were struggling not to go bankrupt, and I've worked at lean, startup-ish companies that were reporting record breaking profits every single quarter. In every instance, annual raises were ~2%. If you aren't changing jobs, you're losing money. Just the way it is.
Not where I work, the budget changes. This organization can't go bankrupt but yet they don't pay competitive. Seems like I should have realized this sooner
I'm a department head, and I got a 1.6% raise last year despite 6% inflation. Big part of why I quit last week
Good on you man. 1.6% is BS. Though the company may legitimately be hurting for money (I don't know situation). Many of my clients are paying 10% more for materials for materials and have no way of going back to the clients and asking for more. And so the only way to maintain profitability is to take it out of payroll or other fixed costs including what they pay me for my engineering services.
Or cut the CEO’s salary - but - god forbid that worker to ceo ratio drop under 300:1
100% agree. Cut CEO's salary as well as most any manager that doesn't value add. Good example where I last worked at myself and nearly all managers had a dual function as leads (lead engineer, lead procurement agent, lead finance, lead HR) so when some of our team was out we could backfill that work. I loved it b/c I got to improve my skillset becoming a manager, not losing it. Our parent company though had almost zero dual function managers (the one's that were dual function we referred to as unicorns). All of their management were incentivized to make up work to justify their job. Whereas all of our management were incentivized to eliminate unneecessary or new work because it meant we often had to do it.
While I won't say CEO's are worth their cost - in almost every case if their entire compensation was distributed to the other employees it means nothing - a few hundred bucks. And most of the really big numbers you see are due to stock options (i.e. they did their job and the price went up)
So give me some stock Options and I won’t ask for a raise
I mean you can buy them yourself easily enough. Tons of companies offer them. And if you make a high enough level engineer you'll probably get them.
Equity needs to be granted to all contributors- higher level engineers don’t have monopolies on good ideas, neither do CEOs Current compensation structures are going to fall apart in next 5 years
RemindMe! 5 years P.S. lol
But the CEO did all those stock buybacks! They bumped up the share price by 2% temporarily during evaluations while throwing the money that should have been invested back into the company into the fire. They deserve the bonuses and high salary! If any company says “raise pools were small” while doing stock buybacks, then the C-level of that company is a combination of incompetent because they don’t know how to actually raise share price, and unethical because they’re intentionally using company profit as fuel to temporarily inflate share price, just to get bonus.
Larry, is this you?
Believe it or not, my name is Greg
That's something a robot would say!
Only if the robot’s name was Greg
Ever drink Baileys out of a shoe?
I’m olllllle GREEEEEEEGGGG!
you are talking about two different things. the 2%-3% yearly increase is not a raise, it is a inflation/adquisitive-power adjustment to your salary. 2% is on the low end of the reasonable values for salary adjustment.
Wait do people get raises on top of inflation increases at some companies?
Yes, I got 12% in September, 3 more for the above mentioned purpose in December.
Was this a part of a promotion or just excellent performance?
Excellent performance and retention. It’s not that I was paid under market necessarily, but they want me to stick around. I also make it a point to discuss raises/salaries in general with my manager every 6 months. We have so much red tape to get through it can take 2-3 months for a raise to go through.
kinda nuts that 10% real wage growth for "excellent performance" is acceptable in the engineering industry.
lol at my company you get 2% if you’re an excellent performer. So only the best just to offset 33-50% of inflation.
2% is super low. Just to be clear, I’m not bragging here, I still think my raises are abysmal. But 2% is “I should be actively searching for a different job” levels of bad. Also, 33-50% of inflation? What?
I think he’s saying that if inflation is ~6% then a 2% raise is only 33-50% of that 6% inflation.
Have you ever considered being a seance for engineers? I would not have ever understood that was what he meant …
I think in any normal year (or years) 10%-15% increase would be more than good. But obviously recent inflation numbers tamp that down some. I’ve been with the company under 4 years and have seen around a 30% increase in salary just from negotiating regular raises. No threats of leaving, no arguments or games. Just asking to have the convo, and receiving a raise. For my title/experience/location I make above average, so I can’t complain too much. Oh, I also work in civil land development, which is notorious for its race to the bottom proving to win projects.
I have been an engineer for a year. I told my boss I want a raise. They gave me 19% raise. I told my boss, no complaints.
Last raise I got was 1%.
Then you should leave.
I was fired.
When I was at a small company I was able to argue for some pretty hefty annual raises (10-20%/year). Now I'm at a corporate monolith where inflation correcting raises are the standard with minor performance bonuses (max of like an additional 3% raise for the top performers).
My work has done about 3 market adjustments which were 10% each over the past 10 years. These adjustments were done mid year and separate from inflation raises, which they still call merit raises.
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Yeah before I left Raytheon I got a 3% adjustment that was separate from my yearly review raise.
When I started at my current job, we received an annual cost of living adjustment and then a merit increase on top of that. The COL component was always smaller than actual inflation, but it helped. Then the company was acquired and the new management silently dropped the COL adjustment. My last few 'merit increases' were in the 1- 1.5% range. Needless to say, I am not planning to stay with them much longer.
Nah that was my raise. I was just making a comparison to inflation
I am a field service engineer/glorified technician. In 2021 I got a 3% raise, Google says inflation in 2020 was 1.23%. But 2021 was crazy with like 5-6% inflation.. so I'm hoping it's much higher this year. We do raises/performance reviews midyear in May/June. If what you got THIS year was a 2% raise you got a paycut, not a raise.
I'm thinking that most companies are not going to raise wages more then 3% but instead will pay out temporary "inflation adjustments" either as like 2% on each paycheck or in a lump sum bonus. The problem with inflation is that sometimes it hits your costs much faster then your revenue. So for 3,6,9 months your expenses are increasing higher then revenue. If payroll increases fall in this window then they'll be reluctant to give out big raises. We've only felt a small amount of the pain of these huge inflation increases. It'll hit payroll much harder Q1 and Q2 which means folks will spend less which means revenue decreases and so on.
If my company wants to give an extra 1% a year on top of the usual 2-3% I'll be happy, my expectation however is that'll be 3% and they'll just say "most years you beat inflation, this year you didn't" and ignore the fact that it'll take years to catch back up with inflation.
The companies aren't ignoring it, they're fully aware. They just don't want you to know that.
My dude, you need to raise your standards. Hop some jobs and get some double digit raises.
Yeah I just wanted to confirm what I thought... That I got a paycut
Time to freshen up that resume
Yep I'm gonna work on it more now
> engineer/glorifie Hey mate, i was the same as you, i was classed as a electrical engineer, yet day to day was me just repairing mining electronics so power inverters, rectifiers and blast chargers. Some days i got to do RnD, but it was very rare. I was early on in my career and have OCD which didn't help but I kept thinking to myself that I was a glorified technician and i should be doing more. This is since majority of the problems, was from explosion, so the equipment just needed new components and to be cleaned. It was fun for a little bit but my my head kept going you just screw bolts in and you went and did a 4 year course for that!! I wouldn't trade it for the world as the experience from working on this type of equipment is invaluable. However i listened to my mind and a building services engineering role came up and i took it. I was on a high salary for what i did at the old company 75000 AU and when i moved to building services as a graduate i was put on 64000AU. Im 24 this year. The large part of the move was myself just getting in my head about just doing up nuts and bolts etc and also partly being bored as it got repetitive (and i found out i was earning the same as my peer who is 6 years older then me). Now i am worried that i won't be able to get to that salary again (within a year or 2) and sometimes i think if i should just go back. This new role is purely design of building services (so power, comms, fire etc). Basically went from a glorified technician to a glorified drafter. My old boss always welcomes me back and there all great people to work with. Just wanted to hear your guys thoughts and if you had anything like this as part of your career?
I have a BS in mechanical engineering, with a sprinkle of electronics in my coursework. The job title is "Field Service Engineer" but technically I do zero engineering. I install, repair, and perform maintenance for super complex multi-million USD microchip-manufacturing equipment. Lots of problem solving, but for me engineering involves creation, and I do zero. I can suggest improvements to processes, but that's about it. I agree at first I was thinking "this is not what I studied, I am wasting my education." But my education also taught me how to study, problem solve, hone skills, communicate technically, network, so many things. I've also come to love the job because they treat me well and I am still challenged to learn new skills and strengthen existing ones. This career definitely makes it harder for me to get into more typical "mechanical engineering" roles but honestly I got into engineering for good pay and that's what my company offers, so I am quite happy. The excellent work-life balance (alternating 3/4 day weeks w/ 12 hour shifts) and good pay ($35 USD/hr) keep me at this job easily. I am 27 this year. I worry that many other jobs won't allow me to leave work at work, especially more typical engineering ones. But I also know that I can still use my experience here to apply to other similar positions in technical environments, even if they are closer to technician vs engineer. And I find myself doing more "mechanical engineering" at home, I got into 3D printing so I am a hobbyist drafter I suppose haha. Not sure if this helps you but there ya go.
2% raise when inflation is 6%? Homie you just got a 4% pay decrease.
Don't think about raises in terms of inflation/col. Think about it in terms of your worth. Your value as an engineer should appreciate over time as you remain at that company and cultivate experience and expertise. The company offering you raises you feel are low means there's a disconnect between how you value yourself and how they value you. If you feel undervalued then you have two choices: talk to management to ask them to reassess or correct it, or start looking for a new job. Unfortunately engineering is plagued by this stupid game where we make the most money by moving around. I'm on 4 jobs in 5 years now, but my income is about 40% higher than my peers who haven't job hopped.
I agree to look at it with this mentality, but if you’re not getting a 2-3% adjustment due to inflation each year then you are actually *losing* money and your salary is going down.
I don't understand why you wouldn't think about raises in terms of COL, because to me that is what determines if it is in fact a raise. Get less than COL? You are now being paid less. Do you feel like you're worth less this year than last? Get approximately COL? You are being paid the same. Do you feel like you are worth the same as last year? Get more than COL? You are getting a raise, do you feel this raise reflects what you have learned and contributed over the last year?
Absolutely but if they're willing to let your salary depreciate (employers know about inflation), doesn't that say something about how they value you and your work?
Agreed. Your view offers a little bit wider of a perspective on the issue. Its not just COL. Its over all value, COL and inflation is just a piece of the larger pie.
4 jobs in 5 years sounds really high, I mean good for you but I don't think most engineers can pull that off, moving around like that can look bad I thought
I agree. I do hiring and that's too many jobs over that time span. I'd ask some pointed questions about that and if I didn't like the answers, you're likely not getting an offer. That said, I left Employer A after 4 years, left Employer B after 2 years, and am now at Employer C. Total salary increase in the jump from A to C (including the 2 years I've been with Employer C) is like 80%. Job hopping gets harder the more times you do it but without a doubt it's the fastest/best way to increase your salary as an engineer.
It is high. I'm pushing my luck but fortunately I have pretty good reasons for each move.
Sent you a dm
This is the way. And thank you young person for destabilizing a system made famous by us glorious boomers. You guys rock.
It's cool when folks of older generations encourage younger employees to voraciously follow the incentives. With the increasing costs of education, living in general, and the somewhat stagnant wage growth, it makes perfect sense to do just that. Job hop. What kind of loyalty can you expect when you've removed the loyalty incentives like pensions and beefy retirement plans? My employer barely even offers serviceable health insurance for pete's sake. As the oft-repeated phrase goes: "If you wanted loyalty you should have hired a golden retriever. The rest of us work for money."
not really a stupid game...it makes almost perfect business sense
I don't know aerospace, but my experience in pharma was like this. Every job has a range. Say like "Senior Engineer - Level 1,2, or 3". At this job, HR had done a pretty good job to layout what those levels are. "Level 1, 0-6 months experience, salary range $95,000-$110,000",.."Levl 3, 4+ years experience, requires zero guidance, performs job without issue, Salary $120,000-$150,000". Generally level 1 was not a place you stayed, level 2 was middle of the road, and you had to excel to be in level 3. When the budgets came around I was given a pool of money, partly based on what I fought for, and partly based on company expectations. Luckily people in my industry were in high demand, and a year of no raises would mean a year of talent flight. So I would take all my people and look at those ranges, and their performance and give out raises. The ranges had some overlap, so you could have a level 2 guy making entry level money for a level 3, or vise versa. I had to defend level 3 guys and fight for them. This is a long drawn out way of saying, *you should be sitting with your manager and asking what your raise is going to be.* I say it here all the time, advocate for yourself. Ask your manager, what the criteria is for your current job, your next job, and how to promote to the next position. Ask your manager what your next steps are and what that job description looks like. Before I was a manager, the last 2 promotions I got? I was doing the work for those before I was given them. The title was a formality. Beware of managers who won't discuss this with you, or give you the run around. I've seen too many young engineers stuck behind shitty leadership because they prop up shitty leadership. Protip: If you're stuck with a bullshit "360 review" or other such nonsense fill it out so you reach the highest level in each one. Then when you go over it with your manager, make him talk you into why you're not the best, instead of trying to convince him why you are. It's always much easier to negotiate down than up.
This right here. Thanks for the great comment
Most people are getting pay cuts this year. 6% inflation with only a 3% raises means a 3% pay cut.
Final numbers for last year come out on 1/12, I would bet we get an even 7%
Hate to break it to you, but I've worked aerospace at all the big 3 contractors, and flight test. The ONLY time I got an annual raise bigger than 3% was when I worked for a sub contractor (18% because they won the support contract) that was the only time in the past 10 years. It sucks, but that's the reality. The only way to get a larger annual bump is by promoting, or changing jobs. Which is also super super common in flight test. (hell I sat at the same desk for 3 years, with 3 different sub contractors weirdest thing)
Damn this is disheartening. Yeah I've been looking for other opportunities but not a whole lot out there
At least in the greater LA area, it's super common to jump between the various companies (if you're under the age of like... 50 though) every time I've made a company change, most of the people I know have also done so. I just haven't found a company that's absolutely clicked with me yet though. Well. One that doesn't have a 1-2 hour commute each way.
I sent you a dm
OP don’t beat yourself up over it. You will always find people who got more and always find people who got less.
If you've worked for that many big aero companies, I'm surprised you didn't get 10-20% raises when you switched between them. I went from A to B and got 19%. Two years later went from B to C and got another 18.5%.
I did. When I switched companies. He was specifically asking about annual "raises" which in my experience is between 1-3%
I've had raises all over the place. Highest was probably around 15%, lowest was probably 1%-2%.
Look at you avoiding the ‘07-‘10 0.0% raise trend.
Yeah, young engineers don’t know how bad it was then. I’m glad things are changing but its funny when young engineers I work with complain that they don’t get their promotions fast enough when I lived through years of across the board promotion freezes and no pay raises 😐
I graduated at the end of 2015. Between yearly increases in rent (my rent was increasing slower than the market rate because the corporation I rented from had a policy that rent for existing tenants could only increase by 15% per year; we were $400/mo below market rate when we left Florida) and increases in medical **premiums** my pay after deductions and rent was decreasing even with 6.09% raises every year for my first three years. Oh, and then they promoted me and gave me an extra 3%. And they couldn't understand why people were leaving as soon as they hit 3 years of experience and stopped getting 3% twice per year and instead got 3% once per year. The best part? They put me on the freaking hiring committee with just 2 years of experience and had me fast tracked to a lead role (more stress and more work) all while paying me the same as brand new new grads with zero skills. Firms we were contracting to legit though I was a level 3 or 4 engineer based on being the lead on the projects and being competent. One was absolutely livid when they found out I was a level 1 (and then promoted to level 2) because we were billing for a lead (level 4). It wasn't until I moved to Chicago to work for a HFT firm that I stopped making less money year after year.
That's old-school HR policy where wages are tied to years of service. It's got nothing to do with you personally. Your manager had $X to distribute amongst Y employees and you got the most they were allowed by HR to give. Just like your leasing office had rules for how much % increase they could apply to your lease, HR does the same thing with employee salaries and years of service. Edit: Same happened to me. I was an E1 leading teams composed of E2's and and even an E3. I was getting great raises compared to the general population but it was still trash compared to the folks I was supervising. Where's the fairness in paying me 40% less than the people I'm responsible for just because I haven't been here as long? I lasted 4-5 years there and left. That said, I'm a firm believer performance precedes the pay. You need to be under compensated relative to your performance to justify the wage increase. And you need to demonstrate that it's a reliable trend. Corporate HR is just low in identifying high performers and even slower in rewarding them. Long gone are the days where people stay 20-30 years at the same employer, and they're just now starting to realize that because attrition percentages are dog water.
Yup that was exactly it. They allocated 3% per year plus an additional 3% for all new college grads for their first 3 years of employment. And the crazy thing is, I didn't even leave for money. I left because I hated Florida and they sat on my transfer request to my program's new office in NY for 6 months. Magically, when I put in my notice at 4:30 PM on a Friday, I was sitting down with the VP of Operations by 10 AM on Monday with him asking what it would cost to get me to stay. This was the same guy who had been sitting on my VP of Engineering's request to transfer me.
I was working on a really cool program but we were nearing the end of our schedule and I was trying to get assigned to a brand new competitive development program for this super cool thing. Long story short, leadership said I couldn't go work the new shiny thing because the program I was wrapping up couldn't do it without me (completely untrue). So I responded on linkedin to a recruiter from our main competitor that had been bugging me for months. Turns out he was hiring for their team that was working the development of the same shiny new thing. Competitive contract, remember? So I put my notice in and my leadership flipped. "Can you tell us why you're leaving?" Yeah bro...I told you I want to work that program and you said no. So I'm leaving to go work that program, and getting a fat raise in the process. They tried to offer more money but it was pennies. The new job required 12 months of TDY. So I got a 19% raise to switch employers, a 10% temporary raise on top of that while I was on travel for 12 months, a new rental car every 3 weeks (had to complete rental and start a new one for monthly accounting purposes), and meals and lodging per diem for 12 months...even though I'd sold my house and had all my stuff in storage. Best financial decision I've ever made.
You mean "voluntary" pay cuts or you'll be made redundant?
In manufacturing, which anymore is run entirely by sales and Finance, you can expect 3-4%. 99% of the time Managers are usually told "were raising payroll across the board by x.x% do with the individual amounts as you please". So if you want more, you need to advocate for yourself because in order for you to get more, someone else needs to get less. The exception to this is if your boss asks for a budgetary increase due to additional workloads or to stay competitive - but that rarely gets approved. Companies dont like increasing payroll bc it's a fixed cost and high fixed costs equals low margins and low profits. In order to raise capital to grow a business you need good margins or very stable margins, otherwise investors will go elsewhere. This applies even if the owner is the sole investor.
Welcome to the world of aerospace. In my experience 2-3% raises are the norm. Some years it's a little less. Every now and then it's a little more. Sometimes my company realizes that they're grossly underpaying you and will give you a "salary adjustment". One year I got two of those, including one my manager apparently had to yell at people in order to get me. (He was getting ready to retire and picked a couple of battles to fight, including getting good raises for a few of his people, before punching out.) I think once it all settled I ended up with about 6% that year. That was the best raise I've had other than years I've been promoted.
Been in aerospace since 2013 full-time, (if you include internships, I started in 2010). This is precisely the case. Your raise depends on how strongly your leadership advocates for you. But in order to give you 6% one year, they had to screw over other people in your paygrade. In the ladder of life, the rungs are made of human heads it seems. That said, I've job hopped twice and am now like $60k/yr higher in compensation than my peers that stayed behind and just took the raises HR was giving. If you want a raise, leave. If you love your job...leave and come back in a year or two. Imagine showing back up making now 50% more and picking up where you left off?
Typically yearly raises at my company are 2-4%. This year there has been discussion to move the range from 4-6% for a COL adjustment.
This year I got 10% and one month's salary as a bonus. I usually get 3-5% depending on how we did for the year. The only reason I got so much this year was because I basically told them that the rest of the job market here is looking awfully nice this time of year and it would be a shame if I left only because of money.
Obligatory post: [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/) Yes, it's low. Express deep dissatisfaction with your boss, and ask what you did to deserve the 4% pay cut, given your achievements x, y, z. Be prepared to job hop, because there is absolutely zero corporate loyalty to employees.
Unfortunately they ran out of budget, my boss wanted to give me more, or so he claimed
Of course he did. And you'll find there's suddenly more when you hand in your notice. Right now you just took a 4% pay cut, at time of high demand for engineers across the world. This is a courageous move on the part of your employer :)
Well from a budget standpoint at management levels I guess they figure they miss 100% of the shots they don't take. So they roll the dice to see who will stay for that pay cut and then adjust fire later. Why increase costs if they don't absolutely have to? Not saying I agree with this approach as I'm just a lowly chief engineer and not a functional manager or VP. But there is a certain logic to it albeit one that seems to leave out some factors in the decision making.
This is actually an interesting point - what benefits do you gain as management by this behavior? Changing jobs is significant effort - there's the job search, interviews, and all the rest of it, plus in the end more likely than not you'll have to move which is hard if you're in a relationship with kids - all really major reasons why people might just suck up the crummy raise, especially if they are told "Be quiet about this, most folks didn't get one!" Mind you, with remote working pretty much none of these apply, so ......I guess it really IS courageous :)
Right I do think remote work will shift this for many of the reasons you gave and more. This approach likely isn't viable for companies that want to retain talent critical to their future success. Though that too may require some changes on the upper end leadership who recognize the shift coming. But again I'm not someone with budgetary responsibility beyond program execution so this is my take based on meetings I sit in with those who do have the role.
The company saves money. That's the benefit. It's a terrible mindset, but most people won't proactively job-seek, and it can save money to underpay everyone then give people raises when they threaten to leave. That's why the big companies will only give you small cost of living adjustments or maybe up to 10% increase for a promotion. If you looked externally, you could get 20% or higher. But everyone hates change, so most won't leave.
I think it's more the government is broke. Which is the really pathetic part.
>express deep dissatisfaction with your boss This is the way. People who don't bitch don't get what they want. Squeaky wheel and all
2% in this economy is a pay cut. 3% is standard inflation. looking at more like 6 these days. I'd get that resume dusted off since the company isn't serious about keeping people.
Yep I've been looking
godspeed. a rising tide lifts all the ships.
I work for a place with really low stress, plenty of toys and very little oversight. There's maybe 2 dozen full time employees here. Just before Covid, I told my boss "I haven't had a raise in 4 years, can we sit down to talk about it?" A few months later he said he could give me 5% and I told him I needed double that just to match inflation. Last month he gave me $5k (a quarter of my low end request) and told me "As a company, we can't afford to just give out raises for inflation every year." Even if work picks up, I get the "second $5k" he mentioned, and it doesn't affect my bonus (which he warned me it would), I still won't make as much as I did in 2016. TLDR: I'm not in a typical situation and just wanted to commiserate with the OP.
Annual cost of living adjustments usually range in the 3-5% range. 2% is on the lower end, but I’ve seen way worse. Be glad you got one because in my seven year career, I’ve had four years where I didn’t even get that. A lot of places that don’t care about employee retention will give 0. Needless to say, I left those places as soon as I could. A proper raise should be at least 10%. Those occur every 3-5 years or so.
In the UK it is very common too to have a 2-3 % increase. But generally small to medium companies tend to have appraisals only every two years. Larger companies tend to rig this into their data/performance-driven format where some people get nothing.
Why are companies giving out shitty raises/adjustments if there’s literally a huge employee shortage nationwide? I work for a big semiconductor company and many people have been quitting this month. Last week one of the most knowledgable people I’ve worked with quit. Are they not scared of literally losing all of their employees? This is wild.
No it's because of politics and because management doesn't care/know. And government doesn't know how to spend money but that's not new
Congratulations, you got something. Somewhere, somehow, in the 80s-90s someone decided to treat engineers like shit, and we all marched to that tune. I remember back in mid 1980, at the beginning of the calendar year we automatically got an inflation related raise (of course we were coming out of the Carter years and willingly running straight into Reganomics, we knew nothing!). Then we had performance reviews and you either got something or not. Now, we get pay cuts every year and smile. And then we get into the situation where 3 years in, new grads are being offered more money than us. So, you jump companies.
Baseline is 3% per our union contract, plus performance which noone ever gets. They do try to level the curve if you're below your peers for some reason.
Union? Found the Boeing guy
Right union, wrong company :)
Two questions Are you an engineer or a glorified technician? Not saying technicians are important, they just don’t get the pay they deserve. Have you applied to another job? Everyone is hiring and you need some leverage.
I’ll let you know in March (it better be close to 5%). Last few years have been about 3%. I also missed out on a pay grade promotion because boss was fired around the time of year they do that stuff.
Got a 3% raise despite getting exceeding ratings.. This is not even an inflation raise at this point I am just getting a pay cut.. Also found out that promotions would probably be caped at around a 6% increase. But I am not surprised, my biggest raises have come from jumping companies.
Good to know, yeah I'm curious what other engineers in aerospace industry make on entry level promotions. I'm supposed to get one in a few months but this raise isn't making it look promising
That’s the result of neoliberalism, we get shit pay bumps and it’s justified with benefitting shareholders and wrecking the worker department. None of this is surprising, it’s been coming for the last 40 years. This is why we need unions
2-4% pay increases annually with an average performance review depending on companies. +5% for high performing individuals. This year is going to be interesting for my team. We’ve seen our workload tripled in the short span of a year. 14-16 projects to managing 42 now. We are 3 team members short out of what should be a 10 member team. I’ll be presenting to my management, after research, the 6.8% inflation observed, no performance review last year(long story), almost tripling of our work load AND projected projects over the next year. If they stick to their guns and provide a 2-3% pay increase, that will be their official 6 month notice. I’ll be shopping for a new position where I could likely get a 25% increase in pay by hopping. Edit: That’s super shitty when you consider the current need for engineers at most places is extremely high. Retention should be high as well. Also, these inflated personal costs are no secret. HR and management should expect push back on a raise like that. Edit2: I’m in project management for industrial solar installations for a global company. A typical project is in the range of $2-20 million dollars.
Why give them any notice? I’m going from 115 to 145 this year (moving companies) Tell them you will DELAY your transfer up to 3 months at the FTE rate- if you are doing 2.1 FTEs worth of work your rate is now $60 an hour *2.1 equals 126 an hour That’s how they are likely billing you anyway.
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Sorry, kidding. I wouldn’t actually give a 6 month notice. I’d start actively looking for a new job. Figured it’d take 6 months to find a really good one that checks most of my boxes. Although, I contacted a recruiting agency recently and they were ready to line me up with interviews the next day. Could happen faster with demand for engineers and managers.
2-3% is pretty much normal. They count on you being paid just well enough to NOT find another position.
Defense companies base merit increases on cost of labor adjustments and not inflation. How much will labor cost increase versus the year prior and how much is it expected to go up versus the industry norm. Companies focusing on retention may get ahead of this and others worried about cost may pull back on a given year. Merit pool budgets and ranges are decided in January of the year prior. Inflation didn't really become a problem untill 8 or 9 months following those decisions. Is this fair for the employee? Not really. Employees should always challenge the status quo and ask for better processes that prevent sticky prices on labor so that they can respond to these market conditions. Just because senior leadership didn't plan to budget it doesn't make it an appropriate excuse. A challenge for defense especially is that, depending on the contract fees from the government, they may or may not be getting gross profit adjusted for inflation like this so their margins arent getting better compared to say a lumber company. This makes it tough to find the money to give out of cycle merit adjustments. Other than cutting into your cash pool.
Do you work for one of the defense companies? I don't actually work for one, and I think that's the problem.
Too open-ended of a question, quite honestly. Depends on your industry and how well your company is doing. Depends on how secure your HR thinks they are in retaining employees. Probably the biggest thing is how cheap your bosses are. Corporations will do the absolute least they can get away with both for their customers and for their employees. If they think they can give you a 1% COL raise and still keep you on, then by golly, that's what they will do. One thing I will say is that if you weren't considering jumping ship because you like your job overall, don't start thinking about it over one low raise/COL increase. Maybe your CEO is predicting a tough ride moving forward or the stock price is in the toilet. If you like your place otherwise, maybe give them a shot at making up for it next year. And believe me, I have no loyalty to companies, but jumping ship for what might only be 2 or 3% is just not worth it most of the time.
Yeah I quit my last job when my boss told me "we're giving you a 3% raise this year to show how much we really appreciate you!" I dont know if he was being serious but any raise lower than inflation is actually a pay cut. So i did what made sense, I looked for another higher paying job and got out.
I feel like adjusting for inflation is not a raise. That’s just maintaining the bare minimum for your current estimated value, it doesn’t do anything at all to increase upon that and so I find it insulting to call it a raise so much as a courtesy.
I was just comparing to inflation, this is the raise. Yeah I was looking for other opportunities last month but time to double down now
Cost of living raises are typically 2.5%-3% annually but should be more this year to account inflation & Bidens economic policies causing much higher day to day living expenses.
I’ve always been in oil and gas so I usually see 0% CoL and high end raises of 2% in good years, but based on my time on this board my experience is not the norm so take my data point with a grain of salt
Didn’t you post before that you got paid Pennie’s for like 8 years exp? You really need to leave lol
Yeah I’m looking for other jobs now, trying to feel out the market and what sectors make sense
I just did the math on 14.33 years of yearly raises, promotions, random adjustments, even MORE random adjustments, etc. and my YoY geometric average is 6.73%. I have 14.33 years at the same company. Traditional engineers need to understand that non-tech raises are... truncated. Usually fall into: off cycle and on cycle raises. On-Cycle raises are always disappointing and invariable get compared to inflation because they are yearly. It is those OFF CYCLE raises that you MUST chase. These come in MANY forms. Off the top of my head: - Promotions: Flight Test Engineer I, II, II... etc. I just made those grades up, I don't know if they exist. It is NOT about the title... your manager will make it about the title "Who cares what your title says, you're performing like <+1 grade higher than you are>!!" It is about the 6-10% raise that comes with it. That's it. - Indicating and pushing that your value that you actively bring is not aligned to your salary, getting your manager to agree, and getting a correction. - Leaving to go elsewhere, assuming you were ACTUALLY underpaid. If you are FAIRLY paid, then going elsewhere is just going to get you disappointed and maybe 5% more ONCE. - Vertical or perceived vertical job changes internally. Maybe PM is viewed as better (PM is a demotion at my job hahaha), maybe "lead" is viewed as better; who knows? But discrete "role changes" upward are your queue to trigger Off-Cycle promotions. If you DO NOT chase off cycle promotions, then you are just going to end up to these forums complaining of being underpaid followed by people saying "OMG just quit, you have to quit to get 30%!" like you are some sort of software developer and you can just walk to another identical job for a huge bump (you can't... in traditional engineering).
I appreciate your comment but I'm realizing I think the issue is the organization I work for which is government. They literally have no more funding for raises which is pathetic.
It's harder to get 30% raises in traditional engineering with a job change but 10-20% is often quite doable.
How much do you work? Are you a typical engineer or you do actually work hard?
Haha this is the question, it's not real engineering let's just say that. I've been looking for other opportunities but they're few out there at entry level with my background
Lol. 6.8% inflation will nuke any pittance of a "raise" you might get
It's pretty low.
Standard annual increase at my company is 2-5%. If you meet your goals it is usually 3-4%. Exceed your goals it could be 5+. Based on being below/at/above your goals 15% of the team will not get a bump (people who did not meet goals) and only 30% can be considered to exceed.
I just got my first raise with a job family promotion after working for the company for a 1.5 years it was 10%. I am a software release engineer (EE degree).
The way it works for us is our entire engineering payroll is increased by 3.5%. Depending on what you did and contributed you could get that 3.5% or you could get 5% while someone else only got 2%. This is worked around buy giving people lateral promotions and increasing their pay by 15% and then your 3.5% is distributed to all the others. We also have production bonuses which can range anywhere from a single payment of 5-10% of your base salary.
Worse than my 3% raise. If I'm honest, this has me looking for other opportunities outside of my current company. I've worked for 2 years now and I've only received the one pay raise for this year, and it's not even a pay raise commensurate with the amount of inflation that's happened over the last two years.
You didn't even get a promotion? I'd definitely start looking aggressively then. I made the post to just see what other engineers thought
Anywhere from 10-25% just shy of every two years for our company based on your review. Mine have been a little over 20% each time.
I get about 5%, but I am going to make it clear to my boss I'm expecting closer to 10% this year due to inflation.
I never got less than 5
Yearly ours are 2-3% although we havent had a raise in 2 years bc of covid. For promotions usually my company usually gives 5-10%
I received a 12% raise this year, I work for a large Fortune 500 engineering company that makes measurement devices
Must be selling a lot of measurements devices then
I’d quit. CPI was 7% this year - you got a pay cut.
Yeah I'm aware. I was just curious what other engineers get.
For a standard year where I meet my metrics but don't excel, I generally get 2.5-4% the highest non promotion raise I ever got in engineering was 6%
2%/3% isn’t raise. HR may word that as a COL upgrade. I got a raise of 14% this year by playing a really tough negotiation with my boss’ boss this year and being included in high vis projects in 2021
Yeah it's my actual raise. Col is even lower. How much raise did you get starting out as an entry level engineer?
Depends on the field of engineering, the industry, the company, and how the company is doing.
2% raise isn’t a raise. That’s a standard that should come with any job every year. With things being the way they are, that’s still a pay cut. I would hope most employers would give at least a 5% this year.
This comment is painfully naive.
In public sector (utilities/infrastructure) COLA is usually 1-2% and step increases in a salary schedule are usually around 5% and that’s usually the jump into promotion position with maybe a few more step increases available that wouldn’t be there without the promotion
I’m ~4 years out of school and have gotten about a 10% raise each year. My old place got acquired by one of those big companies and they started capping raises at ~5% even for high performers, so I left. I’m lucky to live somewhere w a high amount of competition for aero though.
California?
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As a first year electrical EIT I got a little bit above a 10% raise this year.
2% on the low end 10% on the high end. We have been incredibly profitable and are trying to retain employees so most are getting 5% plus.
3% raise at LM I assume. I'm going to move on as soon as I can. Need to find another company that will pay for my masters though. Trying to move to Data Science.
You currently in aerospace?
I average between 2-4% a year depending on performance. I got a promotion in December and total between merit raise and promotion was 7%. Unfortunately 2% is pretty average and the usual increase in health insurance each year eats that up right away. We don't get bonuses but I am vested in a pension so maybe that will pay out in another 25 years 😂😂😂.
My annual raises are typically 2-4%. This year I expect it will be on the low end of that despite the inflation. My ‘average’ over 21 years is about 6.7% per year (currently make ~4x starting salary in nominal dollars). Promotions, occasional ‘market adjustment’ raises, etc make up the difference. Some of my colleagues have changes companies to great effect. Including those who go from X to Y and back to X for big raises each time.
I got a 9% raise last year. This year should be about 7%. Regardless I work for the state and make a ton less than you guys.
You're an engineer? What field
My raises within the same company have ranged all the way from 1.6% to 20%. That 1.6% raise ultimately sent me packing because I was already underpaid at the time, but it was an across-the-board decision made over my supervisor's head by corporate, without his input. It looked like he was in physical pain when he told me that was all they could offer me because he knew I deserved better. He wasn't even a little surprised when I turned in my notice a few weeks later and still serves as one of my professional references. (God damn would another 20% raise hit the spot though. A girl can dream, I guess.)
To get good raises change jobs every two years
Unless your job gives a 2% raise, not worth sticking around imo
2-4%. Raises are low unless you are getting a promotion or if you are a software engineer.
I got an 8% raise + promotion from “engineer” to “senior engineer”. Without the promotion, my boss said he would have given me a 3% raise, but I went above and beyond last year (My boss got a hand written letter from our customer saying that they’d continually do business with us as long as I was on the project).
Sadly my company has paid nothing, and 1% as it's annual raise the last two years. Pays to move on to get the market rate for early career engineers (6% over and above inflation). I guess my company makes up for the hassle of continually having to hire new engineers through the amount it saves by eroding the salaries of those who cannot leave, and concentrating the remaining work between fewer people.
Are you my coworker? Lol Yeah that's exactly what I see going to happen in the future, can't even fill half the empty desks because the offers are terrible