global salary for a engineer

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tourbillon_IHB

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<p>Some information regarding global pay for a electrical engineer educated in US with a PhD, no work experience. This information is collected by myself based on the salary offered to some of my friends and me. Salary is based on USD using the most recent available currency exchange rate</p>

<p>South Korea: 6K/month 13 month/year + 50k stock bonus + year end performance bonus (depends on the stock price of course, probably less now since market went down in South Korea as well)</p>

<p>Taiwan: 1.4K/month 13 month/year + 6 month bonus + 140K stock bonus</p>

<p>Japan: 6k/month 13 month/year + 4 month bonus + 5 month bonus if the company is doing well + transportion cost (subway, bullet train, etc) + housing cost for married engineer. (Single engineers live free in company housing) + living expense adjustment for Tokyo area. Life time employment contract</p>

<p>Switzerland: 130K USD + relocation bonus + year end bonus based on company performance </p>

<p>Washington DC: 150K USD (military)</p>

<p>Texas: 92K USD + 20K stock option over 5 years + quarterly stock purchase plan (75% of the lowest market value in the previous quarter)</p>

<p>San Jose: 140K USD + 20K stock option over 5 years + quarterly stock purchase plan (80% of the lowest market value in the previous quarter)</p>

<p>Orange County: 120K USD + 15K stock option</p>

<p>LA 1: 110K USD + pension plan (military)</p>

<p>LA2: 120K USD + 60k stock option over 7 years (commerical)</p>

<p>It is interesting to note Asian tax rate is significantly lower than US at about 15% overall and capital is either not taxed at all or at 10%. </p>
 
<p>Blue:</p>

<p>I think you should be a investment banker if you want to make the big bucks. To me, Irvine is sort of like a engineer, not rich, but well paid, very respectable, and very middle class (In a very good way since middle class is the anchor of the civilization, without which the poor and the rich will tear each other apart.) </p>
 
<p>Damn, 120k in Irvine with no work experience? Not bad for 2-3 years of grad school.</p>

<p>How does one become an investment banker? Say with a wet-ink MBA and no industry experience? </p>
 
<p>Daedalus</p>

<p>PhD degree now days typically requires 4 to 6 years, the medium is about 5 years (based on myself and my friends) plus whatever time one spend on his/her master degree. In rare cases school will allow under to go directly into PhD program, but usually the program will strectch out to about 6 and half years in such cases. Typical time break down based on USC/UCLA/Stanford program. 1 to 2 years for screening exam, 2 years for research, 1 year qualify, 1 year defence so 1+2+1+1 = 5. I know people who managed to squeeze the program under 4 years, but they typically suffered afterwards. </p>

<p>I happen to have a MBA as well, so here is my experience. MBA is sort of like a firepower multipler in military terms. If you have no firepower to start with, then you probably won't have a lot of firepower after you are done. MBA program helps quite a bit if you want to build out your network, but you have to be in a position to use the network immediately after you graduate. </p>
 
<p>tourbillon,</p>

<p>Many companies are utilizing engineer sub-contractors instead and paying hourly rate approximately 80% higher than salaried rate. Then overtime is 1.5X. Therefore, $120K salary is more like $200K if you become a contractor. Everyone should look into this. Hint, hint.</p>
 
<p>tourbillon,</p>

<p>In Orange/San Diego software engineers with 5+ years of experience are in the $100-120K gross income, no year end bonus included, it can go higher depending other factors. After the dot com crash offshore outsourcing has increased here and now is part of each company standard way of working.





</p>
 
NIR:


There are many advantages of being a sub-contractor, but one has to bear in mind the additional cost such as health care, pension, etc before making a comparison. For example, my current health care plan would have cost something like 30K/year if purchased by individuals. Pension will probably cost quite a bit of money too, and then there is the 401K match, sick leave, vacation, etc. The overall cost is likely to be about 60 to 70% higher if you take everything into consideration, and contractor is the first one to let go if the economy is doing badly, like now. In my line of work, a lot of retired engineers in their late 50s become subcontractors since they don't really have anything to do and their pension/retired health care plan allows them great flexibility.





Rocker


I have no idea about the salary of software engineers, but your number sounds about right. My line of work deals of mainly with algorithms so outsource is very rare (all the best Indian/Chinese algorithm engineers are here in the US). In addition, algorithm development community is usually very small, depends on the actual field. For my field, there are about 30 algorithm developers in the world, I know personally about 20 of them, and know the other 10 through mutual friends/professor. About half of them are located in Switzerland/Germany (the ones really want life/work balance), about 5 in Asia (head of research for various famous Asian companies, the ones want a lot of money) and rest in US (people like me).
 
One more thing, it is important to note the difference between stock bonus and stock option





Stock bonus is offered at face value of the stock, Usually one NT$ or Korean Wan a share, so 140K stock bonus is essentially 140K in cash if one turns around and sells the stock in the open market.





Stock option is usually offered at the open market stock price at the time of the hire. One takes the difference between the option price and actual market price at time of the exercises. This number is usually significantly less than the amount offered since very rarely the stock will double in price in such a short time. In addition, it is possible to end up with worthless options if the market price goes below option price.





With this in mind, Taiwan actually offers the highest salary since the stock bonus is 140K. One also has to consider the low living cost. Incidentally, while most of my friends in this country tend to marry MDs/bankers, (the ones that are really smart, but not necessary known for their collective beauty), my friends in Taiwan usually marry model/flight attendant (sort of like the Wall St. folks in this country).
 
fumbling:


I have no idea, that is just the way Asian companies work. They will give you a monthly salary, and it is always calculated based on 13 month/year. Maybe a way to see if you are good at math? Asian compensation package is really complicated, take the Japanese one for example, the total compensation will be about 120 to 150% higher than the base salary. As far as I can tell, the Japanese companies are always doing well even when they are not, so the 5 month bonus is pretty much a given.
 
I heard from someone once that had family in Hong Kong that they don't pay taxes throughout the year then typically use the 13th month's salary to pay off all their taxes at once.
 
Jw


That would make the tax rate approximately 7.6%, which is on the low side, but you may very well be right. I know for Japanese tax rate is around 14% (more or less)
 
I'm an Engineer and worked for BMW in S Africa for 6 years, the summer/christmas Holidays coincided and we always got a 13th check...that was an extra full months salary....and a new Beemer every 9 months...

A 13th check was very common in SA
 
A 13th check does sound nice. I always wanted to work for a nice automotive company, but didn't find anything I liked after graduation. I ended up in the medical device industry (which is great), but my passion is still with cars. Either way you look at it, product development is product development. Developing products that you have a passion for is just icing on the cake.





Not to get too off topic here, but does anyone work for a medical device company in Irvine/south OC? I don't plan on commuting to LA after I move to Irvine.
 
Yeah Joyce, I work for a device company in Irvine; there are a bunch of 'em here. Some of the big ones are Edwards, Alcon, Advanced Sterilization Products, Bio-Rad, Advanced Medical Optics, plus tons of others.
 
Joyce, working for a "nice" Auto Company does seem rather glamorous from the outside looking in but it can be very stressfull. I've worked for Nissan, Ford, BMW, jaguar, RR etc etc both on an employed and contract basis, it's a culture that you really have to be born into to beable to withstand all the rigors of what's actually involved...one single issue can stop the entire production line, one company I worked for put out 52 units every hour...

Mind you, these Days any kind of Manufacturing can be torturous, we're competing with Asian Countries who have a clear advantage, it's getting harder to compete by the Day....It's OK being a Property developer, investor, stock broker etc etc but I don't think People in Manufacturing ie: us poor souls who are struggling against fierce competition get enough credit and rewards for trying to export goods and create real wealth...
 
Peter


I think in the end basic manufacturing will all be moved to low cost countries like China and India. That is actually not a bad thing, once the manufacturing cost is down, US/European companies can focus on technologies instead of making goods. For example, although majority of the LCD TV/DVD/Cell phones are made in China, the majority of patents are hold by US/European companies, and a company can become very very rich by licensing the patent/technology. The increasingly popular fabless design houses are the clear indication of that trend. I predicate in the future, high end manufacturing will be done in Europe and US, and general manufacturing will be done in China and India, while majority of the technologies will be developed in the US/Europe. One country I am not sure will continue to be meaningful in the future is actually Japan. Japan is increasingly becoming a high cost manufacturing base, yet it is still unable to lead in technology. Although things like Bluray is developed by Japanese, the underlying technologies are actually owned by US/European countries.
 
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