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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am an aerospace engineer from up thread working at a govt contracting body shop working with NASA. Make about $120k but would like to ramp that salary up so my DW can SAH. We have friends who were govt lawyers who want private and tripled salary. Don't know of any engineering routes that would be similar? Maybe starting own contracting company but seems very risky?[/quote]

For technical people, it is much harder to get the big bucks.  (I am 615 from upthread).   The problem is there is not significant demand for our skills outside of gov't, and gov't sets the rates.  In your case, there are other companies (e.g., orbital, spacex, etc.)  Starting your own company is very risky; most fail.  But the way to make real money is to start a company, and get people working for you.  If you have people earning about 100K working for you, you should be able to get 10-15K/person profit.  If you can grow to 100 people, figure you are clearing 1 mil/year.  But, you have to find the work.  And that is hard.    [/quote]

I have talked to a few of the aerospace startups and mid size firms like orbital and salaries were only about $20k more, though stocks options may yield a big bump of $500k or so down the road IF rosy projections hold true. Bit of a gamble and doesn't help in current hope for SAH.

What about other technical industries like data operations at google or something? Would pay be much higher or really it's business owner or nothing?

What are top technical salaries at a NG or Lockheed going to be? [/quote]

Better salaries are from the small sub contractors.  NG and Lockheed have huge overhead and their salaries reflect it.[/quote]

Lockheed mostly promotes internally for the principal engineer positions, which earn around 150-170k. However, those positions are very difficult to get without the networking and engineering performance. Every project, presentation, etc... is a competition where your peers will always try to discredit your work. It's how the game is played. Most engineers stay senior level... 1 out of 100probably make it to principle. Better chances of earning 150-200k going back to school at a top university for computer science to work at Microsoft, google, Facebook. [/quote]

This is only true if you are only on a project with Lockheed.  Its not for the big gov't contracts where there are lots of primes and subs.  [/quote]

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