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Originally Posted by EnR
TLDR: I want to hear about what you guys do for a living, what you made out of college and how much you're making now(you can PM me this info if you'd like), how easy it was to get a job in the field and if what they taught you in college was related to the job you currently have.
I honestly appreciate any information given.
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Graduated with a 4 year B.S. in Aerospace Eng., concentration in Astronautics (spacecraft design). Currently a Payload Test/Systems Engineer at Space Systems/Loral in CA. My job description is long, but basically I oversee testing and troubleshooting of large telecommunications satellites. I'm sure you all have heard of DirecTV, Dish Network, SiriusXM, etc - those are our customers and we build and test those satellites from the ground up. First job offer out of college was about $70,000 yearly salary, which does not include yearly bonuses and any paid OT I might work. The only people that I know who were paid more out of college either had M.S. degrees, or they had studied Computer Science/Programming. CS grads make major bucks. I'm only 10 months into my job, so I'm still making the same amount I told you above, but I'm in line for my first promotion from Associate Engineer to Systems Engineer at my yearly review. Would be about a 6-7% pay raise and put me at $75,000. Annual pay raises that don't include promotions are on the order of 1-3%, depending on your performance.
I graduated college in June 2011 and started work in January 2012, so it took me ~6 months to rope in a job. It was a pretty bad time to come out of school from an economic standpoint and I had also made the mistake of not applying to jobs until after I had graduated. Definitely should've jumped on the job application train 6 months before I graduated. Lesson to all you kids out there who are reading this. Of the 40 or so Aerospace Eng. classmates I graduated with, about 12 of them ended up at the place I work now, Space Systems/Loral. Others I know have gone to Boeing, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Orbital Sciences. I noted that the people who got jobs fairly quickly out of school had relatively good grades and were generally the better students. At my alma mater (Cal Poly - SLO), the average aerospace engineering grad GPA was around 2.5. If you did any better than that, which means you worked your fucking ass off, you're in a good place when you come out. Good grades are good for only one thing, in my opinion, and that is getting your first job. This was the first job I interviewed for and I got an offer within three weeks. After you land your first job, your work experience becomes a much more heavily weighted factor on your resume. Still, if you finish a 4 year Engineering program and you have a GPA of 3.0, or higher, you should keep it on your resume regardless.
I am applying things that I learned in college to my job on a daily basis, but it's not quite in the way you think. I'm not exactly talking about applying the book-based theory you have to memorize and regurgitate while you're in class (though I have done some of this). I'm talking about more the passive skill set that you acquire after having gone through a rigorous 4 year program. Some of this includes communication, work ethic, and learning to work with other individuals who may not do things the way you do.
While I was in college, I learned the Microsoft Office suite inside-and-out by necessity and had become very experienced with Microsoft Excel. Good enough that I put it as a skill on my resume and it definitely helped me get this job. I now use that program at work every day. I've been at the company for 10 months and I already have experienced and technical staff coming to ask me for help in Excel. In addition, I learned a programming language (MATLAB, the bane of every engineer's existence) that I have used on a couple occasions at work already. It's not necessarily learning how to program that is important either, it's learning the process of problem solving and
thinking like a programmer. That mindset helps me every day and the things I mentioned aren't things that you have formal classes in; they are just part of the greater college experience.
This is getting pretty long, so I'll end it here. In my opinion, any investment you make in your education is a good one.