Engineering graduates get high pay at the beginning of their careers, but what the statistics don't tell you is that, unlike their peers, they don't get raises.
If you are a programmer/IT person at many organizations, you might find that your organization has advancement paths for (say) salespeople, geospatial analysts, librarians, etc. but no paths for technical people.
Are there any public statistics on this?
What kind of career advancement do those fields have? Pretty close to what we have. Maybe you supervise/manage a group less experienced tradesmen. Maybe you open your own small business or go freelance. The result is the same ceiling where real, continual advancement is on the business management side.
> A study by the Center for Talent Innovation found that 27% of women in tech feel stalled in their careers and 32% are likely to quit within one year; 48% of Black women in tech feel stalled.
One year?! I've been out of school for over 15 years and most of the time moving sideways. You've got to put in the time and effort. For most a senior role is all they'll achieve (or want).
I wouldn't be at all surprised if these are higher than the male numbers, but I'm disappointed the source doesn't have any male numbers. It's pretty well established that software companies are bad offering raises that match job-change gains, and consequently have lots of turnover. I'd love to know what that that produces across genders in terms of feeling stalled or odds or quitting.
That's not as big of a problem as it sounds. Starting your career making lots of money is better than starting with lower pay and getting raises along the way, even if your end salary in the latter scenario ends up being higher (to a point).
The reason is simple: compound interest. If you start off with $100k you can start saving (and investing) much earlier. In contrast, making a lot of money later in your career isn't as helpful.
Of course, this only tackles the financial aspect. I think career advancement is important for psychological reasons as well, such as feeling fulfilled.
I'm curious if there are any numbers out there on the senior-to-junior salary ratio for various professions, corrected for time. I wonder which professions have the lowest and highest salary increase rates, and the mean time to hitting the salary ceiling for a profession.
This tells me that my employers do not look at current market rates when adjusting employee pay rates.
There are detailed survey data regarding actuary pay scales at https://www.dwsimpson.com/salary . It looks like they start lower than software pros, but grow faster and top out higher (everywhere outside of Silicon Valley).
Starting salary is also a lot lower when freshly out of school here than what you could get in SV.