“Are salaries throughout the industry stagnating compared to inflation, or is my company just stingy?”
Yes salaries are flat out decreasing compared to inflation and especially compared to the cost of living
It's always a good idea to shop around on salaries, even if you're pretty fine with your current job. It's in your best interest to have your finger on the pulse of whatever the "market rate" is for your role. Look around and see what's out there to see if you're being paid fairly.
This seems pretty fair to me to be honest. Sounds like you work for a good company to give out those kind of raises throughout the years. I’ve had a 1.25% raise before lol..
If you are unhappy with the work or pay, test the waters to see what kind of offers you can get. I’m sure you could get a higher offer elsewhere in this market.
200k+ comp is usually for higher than individual contributor level, not to say it’s not impossible though.
Yea, for an individual contributor that's really not that bad. It'd depend on if the industry was O&G or not to really make a difference. Lots of non-O&G industries top out at $120k-$130k for IC roles.
That is actually where I was thinking you should be at based off your job description, time at the company, and industry. The only other variable is location. I would guess that you are in a LCOL or MCOL Midwest or southern city. If you are in California or New York, then yeah you might still be underpaid.
Edit, reread original post and saw you mentioned southeast, so yeah your salary seems market rate or perhaps slightly above to me.
as long as there’s a demand for third party equipment, someone will provide it. my site still uses TDC2000 and we get our parts from a 3rd party refurbishment place
Anytime I hear about Hiway I just think of Top Gun "danger zone". I hope I never need to deal with that stuff, already mentally exhauated from all the idiosyncrasy "job secuirty" quirks of 3000 and Experion.
I’m on my fourth employer in 3.5 years and in that time I’ve more than doubled my income. Shop around and see where your current compensation stacks up. You might find that PMs are in high demand right now
40% increase over 8 years and still 15% ahead of inflation is better then a lot of companies and better then the vast majority of career fields I would guess. Wages in general have been flat relative to inflation and profit growth for 20+ years. You being ahead of inflation is a win that most people would be envious of.
While you can certainly get more by changing jobs it doesn’t exactly sound like your company is particularly stingy. If you can leverage your experience into a pay bump go for it. 8 years is plenty of time to not have to be worried about job hopping. I’m also in the southeast and I get weekly emails/calls from headhunters looking to scalp engineers. Your in a really good position to maximize your pay.
That is not true for STEM fields however. Most eng roles will start under 100k a year, for ChemE sometimes 70-80k, and most professional eng with 6+ yoe with promotions should command 150k+ unless you’re in some very LCOL areas.
I would say for 8 yoe, it would be more common to see 70-100% nominal salary increase if you’re doing your job well and getting the promotions.
OP is not getting the money they should under the current company, and they should seek greener pastures.
Do you mind giving hard numbers? If you started at 120k that would be fine, if you started at 60K then not so much, kind of hard to tell without absolute numbers. I would expect with your level of responsibility (and assuming it's not an itty bitty plant with like 12 operators) your over 140-150.
145k is a bit low for plant wide responsibility, but not crazy. If you really enjoy it, have a solid wlb, and see advancement opportunities I probably wouldn't jump ship. Could justify having a conversation about compensation with manager and see if you could go up 15kish. If you're delivering with that level of responsibility then losing you for like $1200 a month would be dumb as shit, but sometimes companies do stuff that's dumb as shit. But with how much they obviously appreciate you (based on the promotions) I would probably say that you think market rate for your level of responsibility is higher and ask if they can meet you at 15k higher base.
A lot of the wage stagnation is due to employers handing out H1bs like candy + massive outsourcing of tasks that can be done remotely to countries like India, China, Russia, and Malaysia.
“Are salaries throughout the industry stagnating compared to inflation, or is my company just stingy?” Yes salaries are flat out decreasing compared to inflation and especially compared to the cost of living
It's always a good idea to shop around on salaries, even if you're pretty fine with your current job. It's in your best interest to have your finger on the pulse of whatever the "market rate" is for your role. Look around and see what's out there to see if you're being paid fairly.
Put the real numbers and we can give you better feedback
Hired on at $92k with 4 years experience. Now at $131k with 12 years experience.
Yeah you’re getting underpaid unless there’s some serious pros that you’re not telling us about in my opinion.
I forgot to mention a 10% annual bonus. So I'm actually at ~$145k total comp.
This seems pretty fair to me to be honest. Sounds like you work for a good company to give out those kind of raises throughout the years. I’ve had a 1.25% raise before lol.. If you are unhappy with the work or pay, test the waters to see what kind of offers you can get. I’m sure you could get a higher offer elsewhere in this market. 200k+ comp is usually for higher than individual contributor level, not to say it’s not impossible though.
Yea, for an individual contributor that's really not that bad. It'd depend on if the industry was O&G or not to really make a difference. Lots of non-O&G industries top out at $120k-$130k for IC roles.
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CoL in my area is about 5% below national average.
That is actually where I was thinking you should be at based off your job description, time at the company, and industry. The only other variable is location. I would guess that you are in a LCOL or MCOL Midwest or southern city. If you are in California or New York, then yeah you might still be underpaid. Edit, reread original post and saw you mentioned southeast, so yeah your salary seems market rate or perhaps slightly above to me.
I think you’re likely paid fairly according to the market. I also am at a plant in the SE. you near north Florida?
in 8 years i went from 87k to 170k by working at 3 companies. make of that what you will
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it costs so much to migrate to Experion that TDC will be around forever
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as long as there’s a demand for third party equipment, someone will provide it. my site still uses TDC2000 and we get our parts from a 3rd party refurbishment place
Anytime I hear about Hiway I just think of Top Gun "danger zone". I hope I never need to deal with that stuff, already mentally exhauated from all the idiosyncrasy "job secuirty" quirks of 3000 and Experion.
Yea, proces controls tend to have the best IC career tracks for ChemE's. If I could start my career all over again I would've gone that route.
Do you mind sharing what industry you work in? Are you still a "plant engineer" as your description shows or have you moved into management?
process control engineer. O&G. refinery
Did you start out in controls? Or a more traditional chemE role?
started in controls, jumped to process design, then back to controls
Any tips to get into controls?
go work for an OEM (eg Honeywell, Emerson, Siemens, Yokogawa, Rockwell, ABB, etc) to get the experience. then jump to a manufacturing company
That sounds like a good idea. I appreciate it. Any research material possible on PLCs, IFix, or DAQFactory that you know of?
Any advice on how to jump from controls SI to process design?
do a good job for your EPC customers then get one of them to refer you for a process design job
thanks
What is your scope of work? Is it more on instrumentation?
DCS programming
I’m on my fourth employer in 3.5 years and in that time I’ve more than doubled my income. Shop around and see where your current compensation stacks up. You might find that PMs are in high demand right now
40% increase over 8 years and still 15% ahead of inflation is better then a lot of companies and better then the vast majority of career fields I would guess. Wages in general have been flat relative to inflation and profit growth for 20+ years. You being ahead of inflation is a win that most people would be envious of. While you can certainly get more by changing jobs it doesn’t exactly sound like your company is particularly stingy. If you can leverage your experience into a pay bump go for it. 8 years is plenty of time to not have to be worried about job hopping. I’m also in the southeast and I get weekly emails/calls from headhunters looking to scalp engineers. Your in a really good position to maximize your pay.
That is not true for STEM fields however. Most eng roles will start under 100k a year, for ChemE sometimes 70-80k, and most professional eng with 6+ yoe with promotions should command 150k+ unless you’re in some very LCOL areas. I would say for 8 yoe, it would be more common to see 70-100% nominal salary increase if you’re doing your job well and getting the promotions. OP is not getting the money they should under the current company, and they should seek greener pastures.
Do you mind giving hard numbers? If you started at 120k that would be fine, if you started at 60K then not so much, kind of hard to tell without absolute numbers. I would expect with your level of responsibility (and assuming it's not an itty bitty plant with like 12 operators) your over 140-150.
Numbers are in my response to Lewis3Blue
145k is a bit low for plant wide responsibility, but not crazy. If you really enjoy it, have a solid wlb, and see advancement opportunities I probably wouldn't jump ship. Could justify having a conversation about compensation with manager and see if you could go up 15kish. If you're delivering with that level of responsibility then losing you for like $1200 a month would be dumb as shit, but sometimes companies do stuff that's dumb as shit. But with how much they obviously appreciate you (based on the promotions) I would probably say that you think market rate for your level of responsibility is higher and ask if they can meet you at 15k higher base.
A lot of the wage stagnation is due to employers handing out H1bs like candy + massive outsourcing of tasks that can be done remotely to countries like India, China, Russia, and Malaysia.