The Engineer’s Salary That Never Changed

When I started university, I remember hearing that a newly graduated engineer earned around 1,500 lira.

It sounded like a reasonable number at the time.

University was still ahead of me.

There were courses to pass, projects to finish, exams to survive and a profession to learn.

Four or five years felt like a very long time.

Surely, by the time I graduated, everything would be different.

Then I graduated.

The salary for a newly graduated engineer was still around 1,500 lira.

That was interesting.

Maybe salaries moved more slowly than I thought.

Maybe the market was temporarily weak.

Maybe I simply had unrealistic expectations.

Then another four years passed.

New graduates were still being offered around 1,500 lira.

At some point it stopped looking like a salary and started looking like a physical constant.

The speed of light.

The gravitational constant.

The starting salary of an engineer in Ankara.

Some numbers apparently did not change.

Of course, the joke was that everything else did.

Rent changed.

Food prices changed.

Fuel changed.

Transportation changed.

The price of going out changed.

The cost of almost every ordinary part of life moved upward.

But that one number seemed strangely comfortable where it was.

1,500.

There is something educational about discovering that finishing university does not automatically make the world reorganize itself around you.

As a student, graduation looks like a finish line.

You imagine that once you cross it, professional life begins in a clean and orderly way.

You studied engineering.

Therefore you become an engineer.

You become an engineer.

Therefore companies want you.

Companies want you.

Therefore you earn a good salary.

It is a very neat chain of logic.

Real life is less interested in neat chains.

A diploma proves that you completed a degree.

It does not prove that the market needs exactly what you learned.

It does not prove that a company will value your skills the way you expect.

It does not prove that the first offer you receive will feel fair.

And it certainly does not guarantee that four years of education will be reflected in a number large enough to impress you.

This can be disappointing.

It can also be useful.

The first salary teaches something university rarely does:

Your value and your price are not the same thing.

You may know a lot.

You may have worked hard.

You may have passed difficult courses.

The market can still offer you a number that makes you wonder whether anybody noticed.

That does not mean education was worthless.

It means education and employment are different systems.

University teaches knowledge.

Work rewards some combination of knowledge, experience, scarcity, negotiation, timing, communication and sometimes luck.

A new graduate usually has only part of that package.

Experience is the obvious missing piece.

This creates one of the oldest jokes in employment:

Companies want young people with experience.

Graduates need jobs to get experience.

Everybody understands the contradiction.

It continues anyway.

I think many engineering students imagine that technical ability will solve this problem automatically.

If I become very good, people will notice.

Sometimes they do.

But technical ability is only one part of a career.

You also have to explain what you can do.

Find the right place.

Choose what to specialize in.

Recognize when a job is teaching you something useful and when it is simply consuming your time.

Learn when to stay.

Learn when to leave.

These are not engineering problems.

Unfortunately, engineers still have to solve them.

Looking back, the funny part of that old 1,500-lira observation is not really the number.

It is the expectation behind it.

When you are young, four years feels long enough for the whole world to change.

Then four years pass.

You discover that some things changed completely.

Some barely moved.

And you changed in ways you did not predict.

The student asking, “How much do engineers earn?” usually wants a number.

But the better answer is probably another question:

Which engineer?

Doing what?

With what skills?

At which company?

In which city?

With how much experience?

A profession does not have one salary.

It has thousands of different paths.

You do not see that clearly at the beginning.

You see the title.

Engineer.

Then you enter the profession and discover all the branches hidden underneath it.

Some people become specialists.

Some become managers.

Some move into completely different fields.

Some leave engineering.

Some build companies.

Some continue doing exactly what they enjoyed at university.

Some discover that what they enjoyed at university has almost nothing to do with the job they were hired to do.

A starting salary is only the first number in a much longer story.

Still, I like the old joke.

When I started university, newly graduated engineers earned 1,500 lira.

When I graduated, newly graduated engineers earned 1,500 lira.

Four years after graduation, newly graduated engineers still earned 1,500 lira.

Maybe time was moving.

Maybe Ankara was moving.

Maybe I was moving.

The salary had apparently decided to stay where it was.