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Question
Hi,i m still in my high school.And I would like to know that what is the maximum salary an aeronautical engineer can earn? I mean can I ever become rich in this field-a millionare -probably-should I be the best in Physics? And,is the job reliable?I mean, would I be having my own freedom in work?
Please can you answer me accurately nad soon if possible?
Hello Ahmed,
one answer is fairly straightforward: Physics does NOT lead to being a millionaire. Not in a real sense. If you are moderately successful, you can become a permanent professor or researcher with a monthly salary from US$100k to US$200k. You can save up to have a million or a few before retirement, but that is not what a millionaire means - one wants to be millionaire at a young age, before turning 40 and even better before 30 years of age. You can acquire a significantly better salary, if you win a Nobel Prize or a few "lesser" prizes, but a true millionaire? With physics this cannot happen. For that you better study finance or law.
For a maximal salary of an aeronautical engineer you need to ask an engineer - I am not qualified to answer that, I am an experimental physicist.
Is the job reliable? Which job, engineer or physicist? It is in fact not too different: once you work in the industry (private company, not governmental and not a university), your job always is a subject to the market waves of prosperity and depressions. As long as you are good, you shouldn't have to worry about loosing the job. And you earn much more than in government-funded or university institutions.
On the other hand in most companies engineers are supposed to solve problems of the company R&D, you are not free to choose, what you want to work on. If you want freedom, go to academia or government labs. Your salary will suffer by comparison, but you will still earn enough to live comfortably and you will be fairly free to choose, what you want to work on.
I answered as accurately as possible, and I apologize for the lateness caused by my vacations.
Good luck.
Daniel
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Daniel Mazur
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Questions anyone (teenager, undergrad, graduate, professional) may ask on physics, mathematics or inorganic chemistry. Questions may concern subjects themselves or a possible future career in them, if you need advice on a school or hobby project, or you just came across a question that is beyond your current curriculum. I answer bare textbook problems sometimes, but I reserve the the right to redirect you to Physics-Physics section. The kind of questions I like to answer: I just started having science classes at school and they seem difficult, but I enjoy them. Where do I find more information on this, which is not in textbooks but still comprehensible to me? Just leaving high school, and I feel science is really the thing for me. Can you recommend a school and an undergrad program suitable to my inclinations? I am in my second undergraduate year in Physics. We learned the basics of universe expanding this year, the Hubble constant and all that, but invited speakers that gave talks on astrophysics in our department seemed not to agree with this model at all. Is it of any use at all? I am building a [materials research] experimental device for my masters/doctorate thesis and I have the following problem:... I have tried ..., but it still doesn't work. Where might the problem be?
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