At what stage does consulting become more lucrative than tech?

Does a salary in consulting ever eclipse a similarly tenured software engineer/tech employee? I've heard tech tends to offer larger salaries immediately out of undergrad, but career salary growth isn't quite what it is in consulting. Is this true?

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~Junior Partner onwards.

Very hard to get to the ~$700k+ level in top tech. That translates to a senior staff/principal level individual contributor or senior engineering manager/jr eng director on the management side.

Few people in top tech break past senior engineer/staff engineer on the IC side and team lead/eng manager on the management side. Translates to ~$250-600 comp which is around the same as an engagement manager (low end) or principal/senior manager/associate principal (high end)

Was obsessed with finance, now do product in tech
 

I am an engineer and trying to transition into consulting. I am doing my phd and been in one of the big 3 auto industries in the USA for 4 years. tech positions are not lucrative at all, it needs 10-15 years of experience to reach ~120K and a 12K bonus a year. Salary increase is no where near 3%! Bonus is based on performance and seldom that you get 100% bcz performance is always 100 ! very few tech people break into the management board and make ~250K after 20 something years of experience and usually these people are hired from outside the company after having a stellar managerial experience else where. in general an engineer/tech/software can reach the 130-150k after 10 years of experience depending on the are as well, I am in the midwest! Aside from the money, I personally hate it ! it is extremely boring, u get stuck with the same people, same supplier, same project for 3-4 years doing the same job. However time is flexible (vacation, PTO, take an hour to go run some errands during the day etc...) yet we sometimes work weekends and long hours !

 

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