Hi, Blind Community Please vote and comment. My goal is to have a sustainable high TC. My background is ME PhD +8 YOE in automotive industry for opto-electro-mechanical product development/design with extensive experiences in manufacturing,process, and quality for mass production. Currently, I am working on battery system for EV in a start up in SoCa. TC<=200K As EV is the future, battery as core attracts lots of hot money. however, in the domain, Tesla is undisputed king. The traditional big 3 and other Japanese/Germany car makers are investing lots of money, but most jobs are in cold and boring Midwest, where I do not want to move back (remote TC will be penut for living in California). All the EV start-ups seem unstable. I can not see the future. I already lost lots of TC due to stock depreciation this year.I do not know which one will stand out in the competition in the future. the TC might not be worth risking. Should I go to Tech such as #apple #amazon #google #meta hardware design or operation team to chase high TC? My background should match lots of their consumer electronics devices positions, Can my background get 300K TC in tech consumer electronics? should I chase Tesla battery design/operation or cell operation instead? Or stay in start-up such as #rivian #lucid # EV batteries (please comment which start up have better future and potential high TC)? What TC should I expect?
Most of the EV jobs will indeed be with established automakers (esp. union-based) and the comp will thus be normal engineer comp (i.e., just a fraction of Big Tech TC - lol at $300k). I also have doubts on EV success in general. Big Tech does little in consumer electronics, save for Apple. Next up would be Meta - their Oculus expansion in WA is huge. The others dabble so the spots are few and far between relative to SW, but they do exist. Coming from automotive it's hard to say how much your skills/experience will translate. As to comp, HW generally pays WAY less than SW these days. As an IC engineer $300k+ comp will be sorta rare - maybe top 10-20% (but just a guess). Operations is further away from the core value proposition, and will pay less. Chance you can splash into a $300k TC HW role I'm guessing is rare. You'll probably have to play a longer game by starting with ANY job in Big Tech that you can land. Plus, be prepared to move to Bay Area or maybe Seattle. I was HW at Google, and was killing it for HW TC ($530k) but quit last summer. Google had literally only 3 positions in the entire company for what I did. Google is not a HW company and I couldn't take it. Now self-employed.
Great insights. I agreed that it is just normal average JOB/salary for EV in the future, but not worried about to lose job. The compensation for battery will be just slightly higher than other areas but not dramatically higher as IC unless climbing management ladder. My background were in automotive tier one making electronic modules: optics/lens, PCB board assembly, plastic or metal housing, sensors, software. Thermal management, flexible circuit, film technology, coating, adhesive, lamination, dispensing, sputtering, mass production, six sigma black belt, fmea, design validation, reliability, process development. My own concept: I can be in a design role for all consumer electronics and also be in an operation roles for TPM and process development. Lots of company are working AR/VR including Google? I worked on lots of optic components , and its assembly/manufacturing, and also understand ray tracing and optical simulations.
Welp, start applying! Lots!
Thank you, will. Seems need focus on Faang!
consumer electronics - risk reward too lopsided for EV
Totally agreed! Is it easy and common to get 300K TC in consumer electronics?
If Meta/Apple/Goog then yes. Tesla 300k easily possible but given the meteoric rise of their stonk from 2020-2022, not sure if it’d be a good move for the same TC