Entry level salary right after university

[u/Ok-Poem653]

Hi yall, I recently landed an entry level material engineering job and received a salary offer of $63k per year. I graduate with my chemical engineering degree this May. I am wondering if this salary offer is fair or if I am underselling myself.

When I attempted a salary negotiation with the recruiter in HR, they mentioned that the salary system is based on an annual evaluation and that the company has seen an average salary increase of 10% to 12% due to inflation.

I have accepted the offer, but I would appreciate any input or insights from those with more experience in the field. Thank you in advance for your help!

[u/Ritterbruder2]

Sadly entry level salaries have not kept up with inflation. I started at $66k in Jan 2015, and that was a good 25% below average starting for chemical engineers in my area. That same job is still starting their fresh grads out at the same salary in 2022 last I checked.

[u/catfacemcpoopybutt → u/Ritterbruder2]

Maybe recent inflation, but when I graduated (2007), 55k was about the middle of what we were seeing in our small sample size, so its definitely gone up quite a bit.

[u/Thelonius_Dunk → u/catfacemcpoopybutt]

Same here. I graduated in 2011 and it seemed like most people were getting 60k-80k. However, quite a few got jobs on the Gulf Coast, which probably skewed the data, but it's not like they were all getting jobs at oil majors. Seems like now the range (excluding oil majors) should be something like 70k-90k, or at least 65k-85k. I believe our company starts entry level engineers out at 75k-80k, and we're just a midsize specialty chemcials company.

[u/Engineered_Logix → u/catfacemcpoopybutt]

Ditto, I started at $50k in 2007

[u/Downtown_Cabinet7950 → u/Ritterbruder2]

It will have to catch up. There is definitely a brain drain to CS/Tech.

A ChemE can 12 week bootcamp into great offers in Tech. The reverse is not true. This may be mediate by the tech sector suffering, so we'll have to keep an eye on that over the next 5 years.

[u/[deleted] → u/Ritterbruder2]

How has your mid-career salary kept up? Have you found that compensation bumps and such put you in a more competitive position?

I ask because I took the anonymous salary survey here & looked at AIChE data, but I don’t see Glassdoor offering jobs anywhere close to the average salary range posted from those sources.

[u/Adventurous_Piglet89 → u/[deleted]]

Maybe someone knows, but I've often wondered how often glassdoor updates their figures. It looks to me like they don't ever get rid of old data, and their salaries are constantly dated and under current rates.

[u/waynelo4 → u/[deleted]]

I started at $60k and I’m 6 years out now making over double that. I’m on my 3rd job out now though and my biggest jumps easily have come from taking those new positions

[u/Ritterbruder2 → u/[deleted]]

Over doubled

[u/Ritterbruder2 → u/[deleted]]

The 3% annual isn’t a “raise”. It’s just an adjustment. Actual raises should be at least 10%.

By the way, 37% increase in 7 years comes out to 4.6% averaged annually. Double in 8 years comes out to 9% annually. I got all of my big raises except one from changing jobs. I’ve also been laid off twice and taken pay cuts during that time.

[u/[deleted] → u/Ritterbruder2]

Okay I may be doing things wrong…been with current company 5 years. We froze raises for 2 years during Covid, and then coming out of Covid I got a double promotion (so up twice on ladder). We did a market adjustment, so the total of two years raises / double promotion / market adjustment was 16%, which I negotiated to 20%. Basically we restructured and I do what used to be 4 independent roles, hence the raise.

I did look around for jobs, but people kept offering me things like 80k for 5-10 YoE roles so I quit.