Quote:
Originally Posted by yarik83
Lets get something straight.
NO JOB OUT THERE will pay you $120 straight from university. As a person working in the mining industry among engineers I can honestly say that for anyone to get that much money you MUST have 30+ years of experience IN the company or IN SIMILAR industry, education pedigree spewing from your ears and only as a superintendent. No company out there will allow a 4 year degree to compete 1:1 with people who have been employed in the company for years. You have to earn your place on the totem pole through years of experience.
Starting salary for most engineers is $60,000 at best.
BUT and this is a very BUT.
Mining industry in Australia for things like aluminum and iron is a very lucrative business that pays a lot of money but all work is contract work that requires you to relocate there in middle of nowhere and earn some cash. How that fairs against your potential pay is pretty self explanatory. They will not need 1000 engineers to work for the company. They will keep a stock of say 20 permitting engineers, 20 reclamation and ecologist folks, 10 surveyors and 20 monitoring folks. Standard pay scale is $60K+ for engineers $120K for superintendents, $60K for reclamation, $45 ecologists, $30 surveyors and monitoring folks.
Some industries do pay a ton of money for unskilled labor but its very dangerous (ie working on an oil rig, natural gas rig, deep ocean fishing) injury rates for those jobs are through the roof.
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A guy who graduated two years before me started making a hair over $100k on a drilling platform in Africa. He had three co-op cycles of experience. Long term ex-pat assignments typically pay significantly more (only way they can convince people to go out there).
I take particular exception to your bolded statement. My graduating class people got 50-60k for government jobs, 60-80k in the chemical industry, and 80-90k for oil (all domestic assignments).