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 Since the 1970s, EE Times has scientifically polled its readers to generate feedback "from the trenches." Until the past couple of years, we mailed our surveys to readers. This year, we sent e-mails to a random selection of readers in North America and Europe and received their responses via the Internet.
The 2003 EE Times "Salary & Opinion Survey" detailed in the pages that follow is based upon 842 responses obtained online from EE Times subscribers in North America and 414 European readers from June 18 through June 30 of this year. Most of the report is based on the American responses, except where noted. The responses allow us to say that the data you find here is valid to within 2.7 percent, plus or minus.
For more than a decade now, design and development engineers and managers have ridden a pay surge that's taken them from $59,800 in 1994 to a high of $89,100, on average, in 2002. But the wave crested in 2003, dipping slightly to $88,900, $200 under last year's mean.
In a year that has seen continued economic squalls, it comes as no surprise that our survey respondents feel a bit like survivors of a shipwreck. Companies like Enron and Worldcom are struggling to right themselves, contractors such as Boeing continue to toss engineers and workers overboard, and in Silicon Valley, it's no longer a given that if you're laid off, you simply walk down the street to a new job-for some, it's more like walking the plank.
Don't break out the champagne yet, but the report from the engineering trenches in Austin, San Jose and Chicago is that more new product development projects are getting the green light these days. One-quarter of our 842 respondents saw an increase in new R&D projects in the past year.
Outsourcing to overseas locations is nothing new. Many software development teams and chip fabs are based in Asia, where engineers and high-tech workers earn salaries considerably below those of Americans.
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