Deck V Engine pay

I am a deck student at a maritime college but am leaning towards switching to engine for the more benefits it offers. One of the concerns I have if I stay with deck is the supposedly less money than make compared to their 3ae counterparts. I don’t want to sound like I’m only doing this for the money, but it bothers me to know that my engine counterparts will be making substantially more money doing a comparable job. Is this a true assessment of what the pay is aboard deep sea ships?

[B][U]IMHO[/U][/B]…have worked vessels where the the engineer made more than the captain…no for long…ultimate responsibility should be compensated with ultimate pay!!

I don’t think there is that much difference in pay for that to be your deciding factor. It’s more like greater availability of jobs at sea and ashore for the engineeering side. And at least for now less BS involved with moving up.

Forget about the $ aspect and do what you enjoy most, just my 2cents

[QUOTE=rshrew;47663]Forget about the $ aspect and do what you enjoy most, just my 2cents[/QUOTE]

Agreed. If you choose your living soley based on how much you think that you will make, you will always be working, and your work will be a job and all that goes with it. If you choose your living doing what you want, well everything changes.

As far as which position pays more? I know that when I worked for Crowley, I often made more as the Engineer than the Captain did. His base salary was slightly more than mine, but Crowley only carried (and may only still carry) one engineer on most of their boats. The Captain and I both stood the 8-12, but I got overtime any time that I was turned out for alarms, last minute repairs, maneuvering, etc. To try and save money, Crowley often worked to schedule arrivals and departures between the hours of 8 and 12. There were many times when I had three of four sheets of OT compared to the Captian’s one or two lines. Of course back in those days, I was often the youngest on the boat, too. That is where I learned diplomacy and to always by the Captain a cold one.

[QUOTE=rshrew;47663]Forget about the $ aspect and do what you enjoy most, just my 2cents[/QUOTE]

Oh how true. That is why I had decided early on to be a gynecologist. Had nothing to do with money, but my love for…

[U][I][B]Oh how true. That is why I had decided early on to be a gynecologist. Had nothing to do with money, but my love for…
[/B][/I][/U]
Did not know you had a second job, are you practicing in singapore on your time off???

[QUOTE=rshrew;47663]Forget about the $ aspect and do what you enjoy most, just my 2cents[/QUOTE]

Totally agree, I spent my time during High school working in Machine shop 30 hours a week, and taking College machine tool classes as part of my highschool classes in the morning, after graduating and going to college and getting a AAS in automtive service, I spent 5 years doing industrial maintenance in a factory, working on boilers, all kinds of PLC and electrical troubleshooting and building control systems for new machinery, machining and welding, plumbing, pneumatics, hydraulics, lots of laboratory testing chemicals for our plating tanks and a ton of other stuff… I would have made a great engineer but It came down to I wanted to be in the pilothouse. I spent last 5 years sailing my 32 foot sailboat all over lake michigan. I knew I wanted to be in charge of navigating when going to back to school. I finally pulled the trigger and decided to go back to school after spending all of 2009 working 16-24 hours a week in that hot factory making just enough to cover my minimal bills.

Another thing I noticed is a lot of the engineers are making more because they are working a lot of overtime fixing stuff. I would much rather do what I enjoy, make a good living and not be working required overtime day after day after day.

Just my opinion on the matter.

[QUOTE=Mr 100-ton;47672][U][I][B]Oh how true. That is why I had decided early on to be a gynecologist. Had nothing to do with money, but my love for…
[/B][/I][/U]
Did not know you had a second job, are you practicing in singapore on your time off???[/QUOTE]

My second job is working on a rig.

[QUOTE=Capt. Lee;47671]Oh how true. That is why I had decided early on to be a gynecologist. Had nothing to do with money, but my love for…[/QUOTE]

I can say that my seagoing career did not hamper my aspirations in that field, either. Well,except for the timing, maybe. . .

Make the switch, go engineer, that way you can spend more time drinking ashore. As a mate I had to give up my drinking career and that saddened me.

Go engineer, if you get tired of going to sea you will have more job oppertunities on land than a deck guy would have. Im finding that out now.