Originally Posted by
piggybank
I am in permanent employment. One month on and one month off flown home. However this is risking thread creep. My argument is how can aviation attract and retain bright graduates when a glance at the jobs needing less knowledge and level of responsibility pay more.
A fair point, and I think it's struggling. When people less well trained and less capable are routinely making much more money in parasitic occupations such as banking or the media, aviation gets the people who love aviation (good) but perhaps is losing many able people who also are very motivated by money.
Licenced engineers, as you say, do get fairly well paid (albeit also treated quite badly) as do pilots, but the very necessary graduate professions in aerospace don't do so well, and we do need them.
It took me longer to qualify as a Chartered Engineer than it would have done as a GP (and I was fast!), and vastly longer than a banker yet I'm unlikely to ever be on the same sort of money as a physician with the same number of years in the job, let alone somebody who is "something in the city". I live with it, and love my job - but we should be somewhere similar financially if we're to attract all the best young brains into areas such as aircraft design, safety research...
I have a friend who is a first class brain with a degree in aerospace engineering. He is a business banker who scratches the aviation itch by running a couple of old aeroplane syndicates - all very well, but couldn't somebody like that have really done a lot of good working full time in aviation?
G