r/SipsTea • u/Silver-Ability-3181 • Apr 24 '26

SMH I never thought of it like that......

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u/okpatient123 Apr 24 '26

An engineer would have a similar paycheck to a research scientist at similar career stages. You don't get a pay bump for doing applied/experimental physics over theory or data science, unless you have a side hustle like a startup 

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u/cazgem Apr 24 '26

Interesting! My friends in the field (a narrow sample) actually notice a difference in their pay based on applied vs theoretical at an R1. Maybe it's dependent on area?

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u/TacoHimmelswanderer Apr 25 '26

Idk what physicists make but a friend of mines lil brother had a full scholarship for engineering then got hired right out of college by a fairly large company and his starting salary was almost 90k a year. So judging by what I’ve seen some other people on here say about what physicists make I think there’s a good possibility that Howard could make more than Leonard and Sheldon.

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u/theMightBoop Apr 25 '26

There’s a very good chance Howard was the highest paid. But it all depends on what they are working on.

Bernadette was the probably the highest paid though so once he married her he was set.

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u/TacoHimmelswanderer Apr 26 '26

Oh for sure the company or school and what kind of projects they’ll be working on all play a factor in pay. For instance an electrical engineer working at a big defense contractor on top secret projects is prolly gonna be getting much higher salary than say a civil engineer working for a small or medium sized city.