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Asked by pipandmill to Aaron, Abbey, Keith, Natalie, Pete on 9 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by beyonce, Jamie, Henri.
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Aaron Boardley answered on 9 Nov 2015:
The job of communicating engineering doesn’t pay as well as engineering itself (unless you become a huge television personality like Brian Cox) – so ‘is it worth it’ is a good question. Why didn’t I just become a scientist or engineer?
The creativity of writing and communicating is fun, and really rewarding. What I love about writing is that anyone can just take to a keyboard and start. Although training and practice helps, you don’t need any specialist equipment besides a computer or pen and paper. So I think I’d gotten really into communicating science before I thought too hard about career options and what paid the best. I get a real satisfaction from my job, so it is definitely worth it!
I won’t answer exactly how much I’m paid, but I’ll say it’s similar to a newly qualified teacher. I am happy with what I earn. I could make more money in some other industries but job satisfaction and enjoying the environment you work in counts for a lot, so I think my pay is worth it 🙂 Plus, I’m always learning new things. Who knows, in a few years time that might mean my career goes in a different direction!
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Keith Franklin answered on 10 Nov 2015:
It’s worth it – I have enough money to do the things I want to do, and I enjoy the things I do at work!
It’s funny, most people don’t want to tell you how much they earn, but that doesn’t help you if you are trying to work out what is a normal wage.
Scientists in general tend to earn between £20k-£50k a year, sometime lower, sometime higher, but that gives you a rough idea I hope. (divide it to find out how much that is a week!)
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Natalie Garrett answered on 10 Nov 2015:
I’ll be honest with you: scientists don’t get into their work because they’re motivated by money. I work at a university and the pay isn’t as good as if I went to work in finance, for instance.
You can look up typical pay scales at my University here to give you an idea of the salaries that academics can expect to earn: https://www.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/humanresources/documents/payroll/Pay_Scales.pdf
To give you an idea of what the different pay grades mean, when you have just finished your PhD you could be appointed at grade E.
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Peter Burgess answered on 11 Nov 2015:
I’m not going into massive detail but I make more than the national median income.
There are salary estimators and salary surveys available online that give you a feel for how much different careers earn.
If you compare my current job to similar jobs in the same general energy and construction industries, I am probably underpaid by about a third. Some of this is what I call a ‘hippy discount’. Because people who work in the renewable energy industry are usually deeply committed and passionate, our employers can pay us below-market rates because it turns out you can put a price on happiness.
The difference between my salary and the market-rate for someone like me takes into account all the factors which feed into a salary like where I work, how old I am, my education, how long I’ve been working and so on.
I used a calculator which is hosted by my trade union to find this out but it’s in the members’ area so requires a login.
There is a salary survey run every two years by the Energy Institute which is the organisation for energy professionals. If you want to get an idea of how much you could expect to earn from a career in the energy industry, that would be a good place to start.
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