A friend at work…

Morgan3820

Morgan3820

Ejection Handle Pulled
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El Conquistador
A friend at work is leaving his government job as a aerospace engineer to drive gasoline delivery trucks because it pays more money, better hours and a lot less BS.
 
I read an article yesterday that showed the Transportation sector growing 20% over the last year and the Government sector shrinking by 8%. Checks out.
 
A WSJ article from April 7, 2022

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CJones said:
Heh. Wait until he gets wrapped up in DOT regs and service hours math and gets pulled over by an overzealous blue shirt on a power trip. It may still be less b.s. than at his gov't gig, but it won't be care free kum-ba-ya and butterflies.
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I don’t see it being a problem, this is not over the road. He is doing two deliveries a day up to the fuel farm and back. Home every night.
 
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Morgan3820 said:
I don’t see it being a problem, this is not over the road. He is doing two deliveries a day up to the fuel farm and back. Home every night.
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How much was he making as an aerospace engineer? I kinda figured those jobs went quarter mil and up - is that what truck drivers are making these days?
 
kayoh190 said:
How much was he making as an aerospace engineer? I kinda figured those jobs went quarter mil and up - is that what truck drivers are making these days?
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A GS 13 step five engineer is around $105k depending on locality differential. There is no GS pay scale that goes up to a quarter of a mill. You have to be in the senior executive service for that kind of pay
 
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My idea for the trucker shortage... Let's clean up the homeless. Sober em up. Train them. Give em a truck with an interlock device and a sleeper. Solves 2 problems.
 
Whitney said:
Trucking is a great business to be in, and driving truck is an awesome job.
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I mean to each their own, but I'd be bored as hell driving a truck all day. Plus my ass would get sore. Seems like a big change going from engineering to truck driving. Guessing your friend just burned out on doing the same thing his whole life and wanted a change of scenery. If he wanted to stay in engineering & not have the civil service BS he could probably have joined a contracting firm and made more $$ with fewer headaches.
 
Whitney said:
Trucking is a great business to be in, and driving truck is an awesome job.
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I feel the same way about engineering, at least the kind I was in. It's not for everyone, though.

Nauga,
broadly
 
AlleyCat67 said:
I mean to each their own, but I'd be bored as hell driving a truck all day. Plus my ass would get sore. Seems like a big change going from engineering to truck driving. Guessing your friend just burned out on doing the same thing his whole life and wanted a change of scenery. If he wanted to stay in engineering & not have the civil service BS he could probably have joined a contracting firm and made more $$ with fewer headaches.
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Sitting at a desk staring at a computer or sitting in a cab starting out a window.

There is just as much BS in corporate engineering work as in government engineering work, it's just the color of the BS is different because you're fed a different diet. I'm concerned that in a few years it will be hard to find engineers and scientists at the junior and mid levels, because neither government or consulting has budgets to pay those folks what they'd make in trucking. We're also locked into multi-year fixed-price government contracts where it is very difficult to increase pay substantially across the board.
 
I come from a family of OTR truck drivers. It's a hard existence. Even if the pay has gotten better as of late.
 
kayoh190 said:
How much was he making as an aerospace engineer? I kinda figured those jobs went quarter mil and up - is that what truck drivers are making these days?
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lol. I don't know about the government side, but in industry starting salaries are typically in the $60k-80k. Mid-career is $100k-125. End of career at a large company in a very senior position (not executive) could approach $200k, but you're more likely in the $125-175k range.
 
skier said:
lol. I don't know about the government side, but in industry starting salaries are typically in the $60k-80k. Mid-career is $100k-125. End of career at a large company in a very senior position (not executive) could approach $200k, but you're more likely in the $125-175k range.
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Yeah, I was pretty ignorant to it that's for sure! I know a lot of nerds in the tech industry, but not so many engineers. :)
 
This recent spike in inflation and wages in the country has flipped the tables on private vs public wages. Traditionally government jobs were looked upon as high paying. With the rapid increases we are seeing, the fed, state, and local governments are slow and chained to their prevailing wage rates and budgets and aren't able to respond to the increases as fast as the private sector has. This is leading to private sector jobs becoming better paying. I'm sure it will eventually catch up, but even I've thought of switching careers.
 
midwestpa24 said:
This recent spike in inflation and wages in the country has flipped the tables on private vs public wages. Traditionally government jobs were looked upon as high paying. With the rapid increases we are seeing, the fed, state, and local governments are slow and chained to their prevailing wage rates and budgets and aren't able to respond to the increases as fast as the private sector has. This is leading to private sector jobs becoming better paying. I'm sure it will eventually catch up, but even I've thought of switching careers.
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Doesn't seem that recent. The entirety of my life government wages have lagged the private sector. It's just becoming a larger gap now.
 
As a recently retired scum sucking government contractor, at least in my field (systems and software for simulation and training) the government engineers don’t get to build things. They write specifications and monitor contracts. Most good technical folks want to build stuff. So they may try government for a bit but often leave to actually get their hands on stuff. At least in my experience.
 
Morgan3820 said:
A GS 13 step five engineer is around $105k depending on locality differential. There is no GS pay scale that goes up to a quarter of a mill. You have to be in the senior executive service for that kind of pay
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You guys should have gone to work on the contractor side.
 
Mtns2Skies said:
Engineers don't get paid anywhere close to that. Have to be in management to see those numbers.
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1) It’s possible to be both an engineer and a manager. I did both for most of my career. The two are not mutually exclusive.

2) Top engineers can indeed make that sort of money without being managers, if they’re among the best in a niche skill area. If you know how to design low-observable conformal MMW radar antennas for hypersonic missiles, you’ll make 250k plus bonuses and stock.
 
Racerx said:
My idea for the trucker shortage... Let's clean up the homeless. Sober em up. Train them. Give em a truck with an interlock device and a sleeper. Solves 2 problems.
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Why risk giving truckers a bad name?

Buy them suits and send them to work as legislative interns in Washington.
 
Any GS or public sector engineer isn't going to be 'engineering' anything. They are going to be project and program managers. There are exceptions in the public works side by they are few and far between, and are generally limited to simple things requiring little time.
 
I quit driving a gas truck to fly airplanes for a living. Lot less BS. I gave up my class A cdl with haz-mat and tank endorsments.

CJones said:
Heh. Wait until he gets wrapped up in DOT regs and service hours math and gets pulled over by an overzealous blue shirt on a power trip. It may still be less b.s. than at his gov't gig, but it won't be care free kum-ba-ya and butterflies.
Click to expand...

Very true. I got pulled over and ticketed because the deputy sheriff decided that the numbers for the phone number were not 2 inches tall as required by regulation to be on a truck carrying haz-mat. He never measured them, and a phone call to the judge got the ticket dismissed without questions.

Morgan3820 said:
I don’t see it being a problem, this is not over the road. He is doing two deliveries a day up to the fuel farm and back. Home every night.
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If one inch of travel is on a public road, there will be someone waiting.

However, when I was driving, I knew a former FBI agent that quit to drive truck. He was really good at arguing with troopers...
 
jsstevens said:
As a recently retired scum sucking government contractor, at least in my field (systems and software for simulation and training) the government engineers don’t get to build things. They write specifications and monitor contracts. Most good technical folks want to build stuff. So they may try government for a bit but often leave to actually get their hands on stuff. At least in my experience.
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Exactly!

With a few exceptions (that I could count on 3 fingers), this means that the brightest and best work for private industry tech companies, and the USG typically gets mediocre engineers.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Any GS or public sector engineer isn't going to be 'engineering' anything. They are going to be project and program managers. There are exceptions in the public works side by they are few and far between, and are generally limited to simple things requiring little time.
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The problem with generalizing GS engineers (NPI) is it depends on what type of engineering and where they are doing it. Gov't engineers in my field/role were very much 'engineering' things. They were also project and program managers but the role was very much hands-on. We tended to gain experience and accountability much faster than our contractor counterparts, for much lower pay, but that tended to work in our favor when making the jump from GS to contractor.

Nauga,
onward and upward
 
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Half Fast said:
With a few exceptions (that I could count on 3 fingers), this means that the brightest and best work for private industry tech companies, and the USG typically gets mediocre engineers.
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I know at least one (very well, you might say) who has done all 3 ("USG", large A&D defense contractor, and "private industry tech company") and I've known excellent and mediocre engineers in all three organizations.

Nauga,
weeding and feeding
 
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Mtns2Skies said:
Doesn't seem that recent. The entirety of my life government wages have lagged the private sector.
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That matches my experience over a 37 year career. Not recent at all.

Nauga,
in the outfield
 
A friend of mine, who had just retired from the Army, drove a cement truck for two years and paid off his mortgage.

I would encourage anyone from leaving a government job.
 
midwestpa24 said:
This recent spike in inflation and wages in the country has flipped the tables on private vs public wages. Traditionally government jobs were looked upon as high paying. With the rapid increases we are seeing, the fed, state, and local governments are slow and chained to their prevailing wage rates and budgets and aren't able to respond to the increases as fast as the private sector has. This is leading to private sector jobs becoming better paying. I'm sure it will eventually catch up, but even I've thought of switching careers.
Click to expand...

Huh? Government wages have generally been lower than private sector since just about the beginning of time. The attraction to public sector jobs (and especially federal jobs) is job stability (hard to get fired or forced to move), generous retirement plans, and gold plated medical benefits.
 
The government GS-13 job I left took me years too get to the point where I could survive on the wages.

After I became a government contractor, a New regime in Washington began increasing the pay for those positions and when I checked, they had increased the GS-13 pay by a huge percentage and even my filthy contractor job eventually paid less.

Yes, people are leaving contract jobs for Civil Service jobs because of the pay and that is just wrong...
 
Zeldman said:
Very true. I got pulled over and ticketed because the deputy sheriff decided that the numbers for the phone number were not 2 inches tall as required by regulation to be on a truck carrying haz-mat. He never measured them, and a phone call to the judge got the ticket dismissed without questions.
Click to expand...

When I was operating heavy ag equipment (fertilizer spreaders, etc.) nearly 20 years ago, one of the guys I worked with got pulled over by a newly minted blue shirt (Commercial Vehicle Enforcement) on a 4-lane highway. The guy said that he couldn't be on that road because it was controlled access (i.e. interstate). The road was not a controlled access highway and the coworker said as much. After some back and forth the 'officer' (I use that term loosely) went back to his car and called his supervisor. Supervisor shows up and basically says "Well, we can't get him on controlled access, but I bet we can get him on weight." Coworker said this was an implement of husbandry (a la the hundreds of tractors that use that same road every year) and was not licensed as a commercial vehicle. It turned into a whole 'thing' - trying to find scales to weigh him, yadda yadda yadda. They ended up giving him a ticket which he turned in to our boss which got escalated to the owner of the company and it went to court and turned into a bigger 'thing'.

They can always find something if they want...
 
TCABM said:
Huh? Government wages have generally been lower than private sector since just about the beginning of time. The attraction to public sector jobs (and especially federal jobs) is job stability (hard to get fired or forced to move), generous retirement plans, and gold plated medical benefits.
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Agreed.

The highest GS rating, GS-15, tops out around $150k. https://www.federalpay.org/gs/2022/GS-15 A GS-15 is roughly equivalent to my old company's salary grade 6, and a salary grade 6 employee (engineer or manager) could easily earn well over $200k base salary, with bonus and stock awards on top, after a few years in grade. Reaching over a quarter million a year, not counting benefits, wasn't unusual. I had many people at that grade reporting to me so I know for a fact what they were earning.
 
AlleyCat67 said:
I mean to each their own, but I'd be bored as hell driving a truck all day. Plus my ass would get sore. Seems like a big change going from engineering to truck driving. Guessing your friend just burned out on doing the same thing his whole life and wanted a change of scenery. If he wanted to stay in engineering & not have the civil service BS he could probably have joined a contracting firm and made more $$ with fewer headaches.
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More money fewer headaches until…laid off in recession. If you are in commercial construction once current projects are completed…good luck for the next few years. Commercial office is dead. Retail dead. So everyone fights over med / biotech / retirement homes/data centers and Amazon warehouses
 
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