SFCityBear;841907863 said:
Thanks for your pension information. My friend who worked at Lockheed retired in about the 2nd or 3rd year of the Tedford era. I remember this because when he retired, the Lockheed recreation club no longer matched his donation to Bear Backers, and our season tickets for football were moved from the 35 yard line to the 10 yard line. So perhaps salaries were not as high then. He ran a project or department of about 300 engineers.
My last position as a manager of two offices in a Mechanical/Electrical consulting firm, running about 30 projects at once, was $130K. Two years before that, I was operating as a consultant to Genentech, for a salary of $170K. I was taking advantage of an opportunity, because I was the only person with the detailed knowledge of the history of a particular project. Genentech managers resented my salary, and laid me off the first chance they got. I have never met an engineer making the high salary of which you speak. If your family member knows of one who needs an assistant, let me know.
Engineering is not a very stable profession. I have been laid off or fired at least 12 times that I can remember. I have worked on power plants, refineries, airports, water and wastewater plants, chemical plants, critical data centers, etc. Back in the ‘60s, aerospace was huge and jobs were plentiful, unlike now. I worked in a plant in San Diego that had 24,000 employees. Within a few years the plant was shut down, and entire subdivisions had for sale signs on every home. In the ‘70’s, there were lots of federal grants for wastewater plants. After a few years, the grants dried up. I worked in nuclear power, and then there was 3-mile Island, and an entire industry shut down. We haven’t built a refinery or power plant in 40 years. So the result of this is the typical engineer is out of work a lot, and has to keep reinventing himself to get into some other industry where he can make a living. My friend at Lockheed was one of the smart or lucky ones. He was only laid off once, I believe, from North American, and was unemployed for a year. Then he went to McDonnell, and then to Lockheed. I don’t have statistics, but among my friends and co-workers who I still stay in touch with, the average is about 5 layoffs in a career.
Interesting. I don't have much else to contribute except I highly recommend you check out Glassdoor. Not because you need it, but because it's fairly interesting to check out the kind of accurate statistics they can compile regarding industry salaries.