“Master’s degree getting paid $90-120k in salary,” This explains it all to me honestly. Insultingly low salary for the difficulty of the work required and the degrees required. Anybody smart enough to do high energy work is smart enough to become a web dev and get paid twice as much for less effort. The people there need to wake up and realize that they need to double their salary bill to have any hope of fixing things, but I suspect that they’ll do anything other than that. It’s better to spend millions on projects nobody can execute ya know.
Indeed, indeed. Altho, as someone who went to school in New England and has an Electrical Engineering degree, to some extent, I think that interrogating myself as to why I wouldn't take this job, the pay does figure a fair amount! I think that, as you say in the linked post, the dudes don't realize that its not their market, there's a lot of demand for smart people in the US economy, and their salaries are just not at all competitive.
And the rents probably aren't like that much of a factor. I'd probably pay $1k a month in Somerville for a shitty 1 bedroom, make $7k a month. I make twice that in SF, pay $2k for a nice 1 bedroom, and live a pretty good life on my income where I can pretty much eat out as much as I like and save a fair bit of it.
Bro those 1-beds are $2k now, Somerville is even more cooked than you remember.
I’ll also note that electric utilities don’t need A-tier talent. B-tier will do just fine and in fact stay longer. I probably could make 50% more if I worked a more intense job, but I like going home. More pay WOULD make a difference, but even a General Manager at a muni makes $200k gross annually, tops. City employees, and all.
$14k/mo take home is craaazy tho, no wonder people still move to SF
$2k in Somverville, crazyyyy! It is true that electric utilities don't need A tier talent, but like, having a masters in Electrical Engineering is a fairly rare distinction - approximately 40k STEM masters degrees are awarded each year, so take the last 10 years or so, there's only about 400k of the dudes, and half of them are foreigners, who would be harder to convince to move out to the boonies to work on electricity. So that leaves a total pool of about 200k engineers with masters degrees. That is 0.06% of the US population being eligible.
In contrast, there are 4.4 million software engineers, with a median salary of 135k. Like no contest, this population of electrical engineers is going to be absorbed by the tech industry if you offer a salary like $120k - why would they settle for less? In the end the only people taking the job in the electricity sector are the dudes who couldn't do better, which is probably why it's badly run.
“Master’s degree getting paid $90-120k in salary,” This explains it all to me honestly. Insultingly low salary for the difficulty of the work required and the degrees required. Anybody smart enough to do high energy work is smart enough to become a web dev and get paid twice as much for less effort. The people there need to wake up and realize that they need to double their salary bill to have any hope of fixing things, but I suspect that they’ll do anything other than that. It’s better to spend millions on projects nobody can execute ya know.
It’s less the pay (you’re not paying Somerville rents at these gigs) as the whole package: pay, benefits, stability, mentorship. I talk about it here: https://energycrystals.substack.com/p/a-better-strategy-for-hiring-utility
But they’re not taking my advice, are they?
Indeed, indeed. Altho, as someone who went to school in New England and has an Electrical Engineering degree, to some extent, I think that interrogating myself as to why I wouldn't take this job, the pay does figure a fair amount! I think that, as you say in the linked post, the dudes don't realize that its not their market, there's a lot of demand for smart people in the US economy, and their salaries are just not at all competitive.
And the rents probably aren't like that much of a factor. I'd probably pay $1k a month in Somerville for a shitty 1 bedroom, make $7k a month. I make twice that in SF, pay $2k for a nice 1 bedroom, and live a pretty good life on my income where I can pretty much eat out as much as I like and save a fair bit of it.
Bro those 1-beds are $2k now, Somerville is even more cooked than you remember.
I’ll also note that electric utilities don’t need A-tier talent. B-tier will do just fine and in fact stay longer. I probably could make 50% more if I worked a more intense job, but I like going home. More pay WOULD make a difference, but even a General Manager at a muni makes $200k gross annually, tops. City employees, and all.
$14k/mo take home is craaazy tho, no wonder people still move to SF
$2k in Somverville, crazyyyy! It is true that electric utilities don't need A tier talent, but like, having a masters in Electrical Engineering is a fairly rare distinction - approximately 40k STEM masters degrees are awarded each year, so take the last 10 years or so, there's only about 400k of the dudes, and half of them are foreigners, who would be harder to convince to move out to the boonies to work on electricity. So that leaves a total pool of about 200k engineers with masters degrees. That is 0.06% of the US population being eligible.
In contrast, there are 4.4 million software engineers, with a median salary of 135k. Like no contest, this population of electrical engineers is going to be absorbed by the tech industry if you offer a salary like $120k - why would they settle for less? In the end the only people taking the job in the electricity sector are the dudes who couldn't do better, which is probably why it's badly run.
https://thescalers.com/development-deep-dive-how-many-software-engineers-in-the-us/