<story><title>James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test</title><url>https://phys.org/news/2019-05-james-webb-space-telescope-emerges.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>skizm</author><text>Anyone know if there are any well paying jobs in space programs of any kind? I&amp;#x27;ve been seeing a growing number of reputable universities offering a wider range of space &amp;#x2F; aerospace &amp;#x2F; engineering offerings* and I&amp;#x27;ve been getting curious what&amp;#x27;s out there. Only issue is, a lot of places I looked pay well below market rates :&amp;#x2F; (at least for software engineers). I&amp;#x27;ll admit my expectations might be off considering I&amp;#x27;ve been in the NYC area for a while now, and am used to seeing NYC salaries, but the pay is well below half of what I would make now and the cut seems too drastic even in a LCOL area.&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;m mostly talking about masters programs here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jcadam</author><text>Just a bit of warning: Software Engineering in Aerospace is NOT fun.  You&amp;#x27;re basically in a supporting role to the hardware and system engineers designing the spacecraft.  It&amp;#x27;s pure drudgery... process to the point of absurdity, specs and tasks being spoon fed to you with little room for creativity and&amp;#x2F;or problem solving, etc.&lt;p&gt;The pay, benefits, and level of respect on the job reflect all of that.&lt;p&gt;If you really want to work in space, I&amp;#x27;d go and get a MS (or higher) in aerospace engineering or space systems engineering and work at the systems level.&lt;p&gt;I got out of aerospace and am much happier for it.</text></comment>
<story><title>James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test</title><url>https://phys.org/news/2019-05-james-webb-space-telescope-emerges.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>skizm</author><text>Anyone know if there are any well paying jobs in space programs of any kind? I&amp;#x27;ve been seeing a growing number of reputable universities offering a wider range of space &amp;#x2F; aerospace &amp;#x2F; engineering offerings* and I&amp;#x27;ve been getting curious what&amp;#x27;s out there. Only issue is, a lot of places I looked pay well below market rates :&amp;#x2F; (at least for software engineers). I&amp;#x27;ll admit my expectations might be off considering I&amp;#x27;ve been in the NYC area for a while now, and am used to seeing NYC salaries, but the pay is well below half of what I would make now and the cut seems too drastic even in a LCOL area.&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;m mostly talking about masters programs here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jvanderbot</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m betting that in 5-10 years, there will be an explosion of aero startups. But fast and loose don&amp;#x27;t work as well in space, where everything ends up going 11,000 meters per second at least. The culture will necessarily be a bit more conservative, and as others have mentioned, software is usually a supporting element at best, a necessary evil at worst.</text></comment>