Modern Day Price Check

I hope this is the right section to post this in. If not then please move this post to the appropriate location as it is not my intention to violate any policies of this site..

Dear friends,

It seems that prices and costs of living are continuously increasing (especially in the midwest), such as property taxes, employment taxes, and general state taxes, yet employers are lowering the prices and value of hard working engineers and PLC programmers.

The purpose of this thread is to do a modern price check of the worth of PLC Programmers and Controls Engineers and to make sure that we are all on the same page as to what our value is worth.

In the past few months, I have seen many jobs priced out out 65-80k per year (In the United States) which is not a very good salary for an Engineer with over 15 years of experience and College training. Many maintenance technicians make up to 80k-90k after just 5-10hrs of overtime a week.

To put things in perspetive, my last position was paid 90k/year salary with 10k bonus after cool ideas I would come up with on the factory floor to save money for the business. So how does the price instantly go down 20k-30k?

When I seek jobs, I currently ask for 120k salary minimum if travel is not required, and 140k minimum if travel is required. My skills include PLC programming and designing the machinery from the bottom up, including the tooling design, specing the PLC hardware, installing the hardware, and programming all software and finishing the Factory Acceptance Test and training of the end user.

I have a feeling that many employers feel that others are desperate for work during covid and they will push the chip to the lowest end of the bid. I recently found two new auto manufacturers that have over 30+ Controls Engineering positions (mainly production support and cleaning up code) for two large EV companies (if you're in automotive you'll have a very good idea of who they are). These positions are paying 65k-80k/year and are 6-8 month contracts, both which would require temporary relocation.

I know this is a touchy and private topic to many, so those who are interested in discussing can write here or send a private message if they wish. It would be good to communicate and see if we agree what our price is worth as a minimum in our industry because there is too much lowballing of prices for hard working people. The minimum wage is being increased but those in the middle class of workers see no benefit for all of their hard work.

I am also open to hearing about 1099 contractor jobs for PLC programmers or if anyone is willing to publicly (or privately message) a few good sources to find these positions because they allow more flexibility for those seeking work in Controls Engineering.

Thank you for reviewing my post and bless you all.

i hear you,
jobs that should be going for 80-100k are going for far less, 40-65k per year.
add to that, employers are adding 3 jobs into the controls engineer job or plc programmer. a company in my area has been posting the same job 8 months, posted it 4 different times, different requirements. i met the requirements 3 of the 4 times.
that one time, you needed to know 15 different plc languages, 6 robots, several other requirements no one can meet. they hired a kid and found out what he could really do, not much.
the only work i can find is contract work as an electrician or maintenance, at least it's paying the bills.
james

I see you are in Chicago. Have you checked with that Nabisco plant? They always seem to be looking for people.


A plant I did SI work at in Pennsylvania are desperate for controls people. They have resorted to hiring from the local college and training them. They have several guys there retiring too which doesn't help.


Being an SI my 'salary' is discretionary to say the least. Sometimes it's lean and others I'm working 80+ hours a week. So feast or famine. But because I have been doing the SI thing for 30 years now I don't think I could go back to working at a plant...they work to hard.

There are shop(s) in Detroit (at least 1 I know of) that want experienced PLC/SCADA engineers, with degrees, for $16.00/Hour. Less than $35K per year. And are wondering why they can't hire one that is any good.

James Mcquade said:

i hear you,
jobs that should be going for 80-100k are going for far less, 40-65k per year.
add to that, employers are adding 3 jobs into the controls engineer job or plc programmer. a company in my area has been posting the same job 8 months, posted it 4 different times, different requirements. i met the requirements 3 of the 4 times.
that one time, you needed to know 15 different plc languages, 6 robots, several other requirements no one can meet. they hired a kid and found out what he could really do, not much.
the only work i can find is contract work as an electrician or maintenance, at least it's paying the bills.
james

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Yeah, these companies really like to push it and see how far they can go. I love when I see the job ads thinking they'll get a sucker... Automation/Manufacturing Engineer with some tooling design and IT experience. 65k-80k It is like in the old days in maintenance, when they expect you to know welding, machine shop, electrical, hydraulics, pneumatics, PLC, and mechanical. Of course I have acquired all of those skills, and also the IT and Automation Engineering so they should pay the worth of the Engineer. A lot of these companies are just fishing, they don't really have a big need for talent and if they find someone who will work for low pay, and preferably on an off shift like 2nd or 3rd, they'll take it.

JaxGTO said:

I see you are in Chicago. Have you checked with that Nabisco plant? They always seem to be looking for people.


A plant I did SI work at in Pennsylvania are desperate for controls people. They have resorted to hiring from the local college and training them. They have several guys there retiring too which doesn't help.


Being an SI my 'salary' is discretionary to say the least. Sometimes it's lean and others I'm working 80+ hours a week. So feast or famine. But because I have been doing the SI thing for 30 years now I don't think I could go back to working at a plant...they work to hard.

Click to expand...

I think SI is the way to go. It is my dream to work in that kind of environment again (not as many SI gigs in Illinois, but more in Michigan). I had one job like that a while back for packaging and food and beverage industry. (Designing and programming the whole packaging lines).

Production support jobs don't allow someone to utilize all of their skills, and once you know the plant and equipment nothing is really a challenge and you are just taking a phone call to walk half a mile on the floor only to get there and hear them say "nevermind, we got it" or "maintenance showed up to do their job". ��

PLCstarter1884 said:

I think SI is the way to go.

Click to expand...

What is SI?

gbradley said:

What is SI?

Click to expand...

Systems Integrator

North of the border reporting in: I'm an industrial electrician by training since 2007, the last few years I have been doing a lot of PLC and controls work. I'm not salary, my annual gross wages is around $72K (Canadian) with a reasonable amount of overtime. Most industrial electricians earn this much or more. Construction (residential, commercial) electricians are likely to make $65k or so. I don't know what a strictly controls engineer makes, but I suspect it isn't much more than me, if at all. There might be some non-financial perks though: project bonuses, better vacation, etc.

Robb B said:

North of the border reporting in: I'm an industrial electrician by training since 2007, the last few years I have been doing a lot of PLC and controls work. I'm not salary, my annual gross wages is around $72K (Canadian) with a reasonable amount of overtime. Most industrial electricians earn this much or more. Construction (residential, commercial) electricians are likely to make $65k or so. I don't know what a strictly controls engineer makes, but I suspect it isn't much more than me, if at all. There might be some non-financial perks though: project bonuses, better vacation, etc.

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I'm also in Canada, paid hourly, making around $66k before overtime. Just for reference, that's around $52k USD. I believe that the controls guys I work with often (dual ticket instrument tech/electricians) get paid around $45/hour, plus overtime. That's a union environment, so a lot of guys wouldn't be so lucky, and obviously the dual ticket is a lot of time and effort, but they definitely are rewarded for it in my opinion.

Here in metro detroit i feel like companies are just fishing for cheapest, don't know what they are hiring for or telling you they are hiring for the position you want to get you in the door.

I did not plan on moving companies, but i always watch the market and network.
It seems like here you could get the 90-100K+, only if you want to manage multiple people, be on call and possibly travel 50%.
Heck of a deal huh, lol.

I spoke with one company a few months back that said they needed exactly my skills, that i could move their department forward and they had difficult jobs lined up. I didn't like the culture of this place or the wage so i passed, and also wasn't really looking they contacted me.

Later to find out they hired someone i have worked with before for the same position. This person has about 1/2 a year plc experience and no controls design experience. Pretty much an apprentice status, if controls had that status.

And yes the pay for this job was under average. 62K. Just like them all it seems.

In my opinion if your a controls engineer/programmer with broad experience and 5-10 years minimum, should be making 75-90K easy. But that seems pretty darn hard to find.

Those salaries in the states are crazy high. But I’m not so au fait with the cost of living.

Over here starting salary is around £30k for entry level, up to £50k plus.

For comparison, mine is £46k plus a nice car, been with my current employer for 6 years now with 12+ years experience.

It’s a 100% controls job, 80% bespoke and 20% twiddling with old ****.

I agree with Janner, those are the salary ranges, however, I believe the cost of living in the UK is higher than the US, only a guess based on what I experienced a few years ago in the US & heard of recently.
Just as a comparison I think the average for a SI is probably between 35-50k here, however, the cost of living is high take property probably one of the biggest outlay, here a moderate 3 bed detached house is around £280,000 but in London & surrounding areas you could double that plus add a bit, that is with small rooms (generally the smallest bedroom if often called a box room because that's all you can get in it), a garden you could not swing a cat in & neighbours walls within 1 metre of yours.
In context, in the 80's you could borrow 3 times the annual income of the household, now that would mean you would as a couple need to earn 94,000 but there are schemes to overcome this.

This is an interesting thread that is somewhat revealing to me, I didn't realize that salary ranges for Controls Engineers were this wide geographically. I often search for Controls Engineer salaries in DuckDuckGo or the almighty Google just to see what people are submitting on websites like Indeed, Glassdoor, Monster, etc.

I am from northern Wisconsin, USA and I need to wear all kinds of different hats at our plant. My title is PLC Technician, but I am often lending a hand to the Maintenance Mechanics when SHTF. I get paid an hourly rate of $36 an hour, but have yet to see a raise after a full year of hard work at this plant. There isn't a single factory in our immediate area that pays PLC Tech's more than this one (I have a lot of programmer friends and have worked at two other plants in the area over the last 10 years).

Not sure what your inflation rate is like over there, but when it's low here then pay rates rarely go up, unless demand forces it. We've had annual increases to minimum wage each year for a few years now, but little growth for the skilled people.

Covid will present a new challenge to employers this year - since we are currently covid free in the community here in NZ, our economy excluding the tourism and travel sectors is growing. We've historically had to import a lot of skilled migrants because many kiwis with skills head off shore for better pay in aussie, the UAE etc. That isn't possible at the moment, except in rare cases like Healthcare workers etc as they ramp up for vaccine deployment this year.

So, between returning kiwis with high salary expectations, and limited supply of good automation people, i expect to see salaries increase this year over here.

Well i hope so anyway, since I'll be looking for a new job in a few months when my current contract ends!

Here you're looking at between $60 - 80k USD per year salary for an automation guy with reasonable experience of 10+ years. Some industries pay better than others. I'm on about $74k USD plus full personal use of the work vehicle (still some value even though it's a busted *** hunk of junk).