Know Your Worth
To know your worth, you’re going to have to do a little research. First ask the internet what’s what. Then ask other humans for their take. And finish with asking yourself what you have to offer.
Ask the internet
Plenty of sites online can give you estimates of salaries specific to your general location. If you google something along the lines of “civil engineer New York salary,” you’re bound to get results from sites like Glassdoor, LinkedIn, PayScale, etc. While you are likely to get better data if you’re searching in a major city, you should take whatever information you get from this search with a grain of salt. These sites don't necessarily provide context to the data they provide. For example, the salary estimate you find may be more representative of a fresh graduate, while you may have been in the industry for a few years or vice versa.
Beyond the google search, you can also search professional societies within your industry to see if they have better data. For civil engineers, you can check the ASCE salary survey. If you’re a member, you can check out the latest data. If you’re cheap like me, you can find the pdf of the 2013 survey for free online! (Just remember to adjust for inflation if you use the 2013 version.) The survey organizes salary data against metrics such as location, level of education, certifications, and years of experience. This can be more valuable at providing you with a good picture of where you stand than the numbers that come up in a quick google search.
Ask other humans
Now it’s time to ask others. Asking people about money can be awkward. And if it’s too anxiety-inducing for you, you can avoid this step. But asking others provides greater insight than your online search. When you ask someone you know, you have greater context on the qualifications and capabilities of the individual.
If you’re a little nervous about it, you can start by asking your family or good friends to give yourself a bit of a practice run. Then you’ll need to reach out to some people you know in your industry, such as ex-coworkers or friends from college. These numbers should never make you feel jealous or defeated, but should help motivate you in your own career path.
I would advise against discussing salaries amongst your coworkers, unless you’re close friends. Finding out that the douchebag next to you gets paid twice as much as you might cause some bad blood.
Ask yourself
Now you need to look inward and be brutally honest with yourself. How does your level of education, caliber of experience, and overall abilities compare to the data you collected? How does your productivity compare to others? How much more are you able to offer? Are you winning jobs for the company and finishing projects under budget? Decide where you fall on the scale of talent and adjust the numbers you collected accordingly.
The goal here is to develop a ballpark figure of what you think you deserve as your salary. However, feel free to go for it and push some boundaries. There are plenty of people who make much more money than they deserve. You can be one of these people. Reach for the stars!