Hello,
I might get an offer at the design firm i intern and i want to enter the office prepared. I have been researching annual salaries for a Product Designers in California for a couple weeks but i’m not too confident of the results i found. There seems to be a big margin from one source to another (40k-70k for Junior designers). I don’t want to enter the office shooting numbers at random, but i don’t want to get less than the going rate for someone in my position.
So here’s a little bit about the situation:
To skim through this, just read the bold parts.
-Bachelors of Sci. in Product Design & Development. from SF State finished Fall 2012.
-Working as a non-payed intern at a product design firm for the past 3 months (ends soon). Have been putting in between 30-40 hours a week.
-I’m pretty experienced in Solidworks, which is what this firm uses for all its product designs.
-No previous design related jobs. However i’m tool savvy and very mechanically inclined. I was able to show this with at least two of the projects i worked on.
-In the 3 months i gained a lot of experience. Things like designing parts for specific manufacturing processes (like molds), tool safe changes, 3d printing and 3d printer maintenance, create BOM files, and my favorite: figuring out mechanical issues in product testing.
-I’ve been involved with many of the products currently in progress. Updating Cad drawings; figure out mechanical failures in prototypes, make tool-friendly (and some non-friendly) changes to designs; in one case i redesigned a product from the ground up in order to make it work.
-Had positive feedback throughout the 3 months.
-The boss had informed me half-way through the internship that “we’re considering making you an offer at the end of the internship”
There’s more, but do you really want to read all this crap???
I like working there, and i’m pretty sure they like me (well…for now!).
What should i be expecting, and can a counter-offer backfire (as in, they’ll retract their offer and send you packing)?