Anyone see the salaries being offered in Australia? 1

[razzy]

I am a civil designer/CADD manager with over 10 yrs experience. Like another poster below, I have been checking out Australia and the job market there. I did a search of Brisbane engineering jobs and was pretty astounded at some of the high wages they are willing to pay over there for people that do my specific job.

Keep in mind that 40,000 American dollars equals about 34,000 Australian dollars. So from that standpoint, the salaries seem that much higher. And the taxes, all in all, are only slightly higher compared to the US. Check out this chart...

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/tax_tot_tax_as_of_gdp&int=-1

Brisbane isnt particularly expensive to live in either. Nothing like Sydney.

Anyway, I did a search of Brisbane Australia jobs. Here is the link...

http://mycareer.com.au/jobs/brisbane/engineering/civil-structural/?pg=1

On the third page of that link, they had some civil tech cadd jobs paying "64-79k" a year, or "69-70k" a year, etc.

This ad here looks particularly illustrative of how good the market might be for a civil CADD tech person in Australia...

AutoCAD Draftspersons - Any level, start ASAP in Brisbane.
Leading multi-disciplinary/cultural Engineering Consultants
High-Profile Civils/Highways projects in Queensland
Permanent or Temporary roles available
Our client is one of the leading engineering and development consultancies in the world. Over the last several years they have been consistently ranked in the annual survey listings of the US technical publication Engineering News-Record and in 2001 was listed in the top 80 in their listing 'The Top 200 International Design Firms'. Providing multidisciplinary consulting services in engineering, project management, environmental science and development activities, this Australian-owned group has been engaged in assignments throughout the world for 30 years.

They now URGENTLY seek over 10 AutoCAD draftspersons, preferably with Civils & Highways experience to detail Design Engineering projects in their very busy Brisbane office.

Basic requirements are a proficiency with AutoCAD, or similar Civils drafting software, and the motivation and team work to deliver an abundance of drafting work that passes through this office daily.

They are willing to train the less than experienced but only for highly motivated technicians looking to develop their career in this challenging field.

Sponsorship can also be provided for applicants looking to emigrate to Australia but again only for the dedication as mentioned above.

Our client has a very multicultural workplace and would welcome applications from experienced AutoCAD technicians with relevant Civils/Highways projects from any part of the world.

Brisbane is particularly busy at the moment and looks to continue for a number of years. Now is the right time for a move to the Sunny City for the right blend of challenging, high-profile projects and excellent social life.

Remuneration dependent on level of experience and would consider permanent or temporary staff as necessary.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[GregLocock]

You got your currency conversion the wrong way round!

Hope your error checking is better than that usually.

In Sydney I was paying up to $44 per hour for contract AutoCAD guys, ten years ago (wow 10 years!), for rolling 6 week contracts.

I'm out of touch with current contract rates.

Brisbane is a pretty cheap place to live, and can be a lot of fun.



Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[razzy]

Greg,

You are right, how careless of me. Guess I was tired last night. It was a dumb mistake because I already knew that the US dollar was higher than the Australian dollar.

44 bucks an hour 10 years ago for CADD operators??? Thats pretty much unheard of around here! What discipline are you talking about - Civil, mechanical, structural, etc? Of course that was in Sydney which is more expensive than places like Brisbane.

I make 20 an hour here in the states as a civil drafter/designer. I have been doing it over 10 years. Is it true then that Australia pays more money to experienced CADD drafter/designers than they do in the states? I guess when I saw those ads I was looking for a catch or something.

Thanks for your reply, Greg!

Dan

 

[ewh]

Depends on the industry. Before 9/11, $50.00 U.S. was not unheard of for experienced, long term contract CAD drivers in the aerospaqce industry. Even now, I often get calls from job shops offering $45.00/hr for the same positions. Granted, this is not a direct rate, but things do seem to be picking up, thanks to military contracts for the most part.

 

[cadnutcase]

Down here in texas long term contract piping designers are getting $45-50 an hour. But, that is for the really good guys that have proven their worth. I tried explain to my old boss one time I would rather have the one $45 an hour guy who can handle everything on his own, then the 3~$30 an hour guys it would take to replace him.

It took me a year in my last position to get a top notch design staff together that I was paying pretty good money for. 2~Senior Pipers, 1 Struct/Civil, and 1 I&E guy. This team could get anything done right the first time. Needless to say I was a little peeved (not at them) when one of the big boy engineering firms came in and hired all 4 of them away offering rates my small company couldn't touch.

I didn't go with them because it would have destroyed the company I was working for, since I was the only who knew what was going on in the design department. My offer was pretty generous also. I didn't even tell my wife about the offer because she would have made me take a miserable position.

I talk to them everyonce in a while, they say they had alot more fun working for me, but their toys are nicer now.

Loyalty sucks. But if paid off in the long run.

 

[GregLocock]

That was mechanical drafting and tool design. We only had a couple of guys on $44, they were far more useful than half the engineers (not my team, they were great). To give you some idea university grads with good CAD skills were on $32 at the same time ie that extra 12 bucks bought us 20 years of experience.

cadnutcase, (off topic) as you can see I agree completely. It might seem a waste of time to have senior CAD designers detailing their own drawings, the temptation is to chuck that over the fence to a kid. Motivationally that is a bad thing to do, in my experience with draggers. Two reasons (a) they take great pride in producing their designs, and seem to enjoy the twiddly bits as much as the conceptual stuff and (b) it is very easy to introduce mistakes when detailing, and their experience is valuable even there.

Productivity wise a good CAD guy is about 4 times as productive as an average one, and the bad ones have a negative work output.

So that 44 bucks is a bit of a bargain, in context.





Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[cadnutcase]

Greg,
(/off topic)
I agree, now we have to find a way to convince the bean counters. At my last position, I had to justify to the accountant on how I could possibly be paying more per hour to my team, then 95% of the people in the rest of the company.

I told her, look at who is getting all the work done around here and walked out of her office. 20 minutes later I was called into the 2 bosses office saying I was right, but I handled it the wrong way. She was just mad because they had just denied raises to her and her team. She was also told by a friend (whoever he was) a cad guy shouldn't be making more than $20/hour, regardless of their skill.

This was one of many runnins with her.

 

[razzy]

Greg,

I get paid 20 an hour here in the states, and that is considered pretty good money. The most I know of any good, experienced CAD operator making in this area, at least in the civil engineering field, is about 25 an hour. The average salary in my area for Civil Techs is about 16-17 an hour.

And I think in general that the experienced ones are unappreciated by the bosses of many companies here in the states, but usually not by the engineers who they work with.

From looking at the jobs listings in Brisbane and other places, it really looks like they pay better in OZ.

 

[GeoSmith]

Hi,

I am the new comer here, I work at mechanical engineering field. My pay is around 20/hr in Austin, Texas. I not only work at CAD design, but also the finite element analysis. The pay is reasonable?

 

[ewh]

GeoSmith,
What software do you use? Do you have a degree? How many years experience?

 

[QCE]

The catch is usually that they are contract jobs with no benefits or holidays. When I was in London, UK. I was paid 20 pounds per hour($45Canadian at the time) on a temp AutoCAD job and I had never used AutoCAD before. I actually had to ask the guy beside me how to draw a line because the tutorial I did the night before was a little foggy. The job lasted 4 weeks. $7000 in 4 weeks and I was off to travel Europe again. It is nice sure but it isn't usually steady and you can't count on it. You also need to take care of all the other factors that fulltime jobs usually look after.

 

[GeoSmith]

ewh,

Master, 2 years experience.
Pro/E, Pro/Mechanica

 

[GregLocock]

Well, I guess it beats flipping burgers, but I'd have thought it was a bit low for a permanent job.

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[QCE]

Geosmith we have a mechanical engineer (no masters degree) with 2 years experience in Canada and he makes approx $24 Canadian so it is about right. He also pays more tax so the take home would be about bang on. The bigger pay comes with experience and PEng status in Canada.

 

[wes616]

I guess with the cost of living and all California pays a little better. Our office pays engineers with l.t. 5 years experience about 35/hr full time.

I've made a pretty good living so far in my life working as a contract engineer. I suppose I've been fortunate that I have always been able to get a job (except for a 10 month period when I was going through a divorce and didn't activly look for work).

I have also gotten a lot of fantastic experience in a variety of different areas of design. Volume Plastics, Capital Machinery, Automotive, for the last few years Aerospace. Usuall 9 month contracts that extend out to a year or more. $55/hr right now. They keept asking me to go full time... but well, my wife just got a job in Dallas, so we are moving to TX... maybe i'm in for sticker shock when i get there... But I'm not too worried, cause I have a pretty robust background, I'll find somtihing I like.

There are downsides to this "freelance" work; pay my own retirement, pay my own health insurance... which I gladly do. Often I have better plans than the people that I work with (and I guess I have the personality to save)... I wouldn't trade it for anything... It's like i'm my own boss, but without all the "actual" overhead. I kinda like it.

But I can work in pretty much

Wes C.

 

[GeoSmith]

Amazing.

It seems my salary is pretty low, although there is no state tax in TX. Anyway, I think I need to find a job with my background. In fact, the position that I work require only CAD design experience with degree only.

Wes,

It seems you earn a good living. How many years of experience that you have and do you have a degree? So, what do you think the important selling power of myself?

 

[wes616]

Geo,

Well, I started a new thread on me {insert ego here} thread731-134637 ... casue I'm leaving my job to go to texas myself (w/o a job)...

Anyway, I have an Engineering Degree, kind of a general degree even though my piece of (toilet) paper says it's mechanical.... I did my own thing and they let me graduate anyway (thank god papa was a professor)...

Here is my little rant (that seems to PO people on this fora) Americans need to learn to be creative again. If you want to maintain a career in engineering (over the long haul, I know it does in manufacturing / product design & dev, but I would think it does in other areas as well), you must trade in the details for a quantity of ideas. I think the place that I have enjoyed sucess in my small nitch of the world is i have made it a priority to stop trying to perfect my one and only idea to where it will work.

Having 50 decent ideas, is a lot better than having 2 or 3 good ideas. This is because (in engineering terms) statistically the chances of one of the 50 decent ideas turning into a great new (and well accepted) product is much greater than the chances of one of the three good ideas.

Learn to draw. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Example... 2 weeks ago, about 7 engineers in a conference room talking about this problem that we have to deal with. Each takes turns trying to explain why we should do something "their" way. When it was my turn to speak, I had 4 little sketches (that were pretty decent) describing my solution to the problem. Neat. Packaged, and visually representative of the way (i invision) the end product to look.. Maybe my idea was not the best one in the room. But the boss could see it, and that is what we are doing.

Read the book The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelly. It is a great book about the philosiphy of a company called IDEO. It is a fantastic book. My dad gave it to me years ago when it came out. I have used it like a bible, and a guidebook to work ever sense.

IMHO no one ever got anywhere being satisfied with the status quo. Rock the boat. Be a little different. Don't buy into what someone else thinks until you process it a little and really agree with them. Don't get caught up in titles and heiarchies, management structures, and professional organizations.

But you gotta make your own way. What I do only works for me, because it fits with my personality and style. I'm sure what works for you will not be the same. Enjoy life. Keep your eye out for the "New New (i love that term) Thing"

Wes C.

 

[ivymike]

hmm... I'd be disatisfied with $20/hr. My first job out of college (BSME), with essentially no CAD experience (they trained), paid about $23/hr. My greatest qualifications were that I paid attention in school (they tested) and I liked taking apart and/or breaking cars. The pay has gone up since then, of course. My wife recently left a job as a secretary (no degree) making $17/hr, because I accepted (after much agonizing) a job that paid about as much as we made together last year. The above experiences were all in the midwest, where salaries are supposed to be lower than on the coasts.

I've heard of IDEO before - a coworker at my last job asked whether I'd ever considered interviewing with them. I hadn't (I'd never heard of them before he asked). I wonder if he'd read that book - he was the sort who would get very excited about things he read in such books. I have always been one to wonder whether someone was trying to get rid of me with a suggestion such as that...

A different coworker always called me "status quo boy," as in "can't resist challenging the." That was partly because he heard about the way I got (just about) thrown out on my ear at the first job, and some conversations we shared, and some that he overheard, at our mutual employer.

I tried being a contractor for almost a year - I was always worried about getting fired. Then I was a consultant for a while - same concern. Now I'm trying to follow the rules a little more closely, and I seem to sleep a bit better at night.

What were we talking about again? Oh yeah, $20/hr bad. More better.

 

[razzy]

Keep in mind that though I make 20 an hour, I dont have a degree and am not an engineer. I am just a Civil Designer, albeit one with over 10 years experience, and I am located in an area where the average wage for ALL jobs is about 13 bucks an hour. I agree that 20 an hour for an engineer is pretty shoddy at any location.

That said, I still wonder if I can make more in other parts of the country, or on a contract basis as opposed to being an employee. Realistically, I wont leave the US anytime soon, but the Pacific Northwest is a potential destination for us.

 

[GregLocock]

Unqual dragger? Figure on 50-80% as much as a degreed engineer.

Sorry, it is a closed shop, we don't just go to uni for drugs and chicks (well OK, I did mostly, but picked up some o' that heavy math on the way).


Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.