The starting salary for field engineers is around 4K USD not including location coefficient and allowances/bonuses. Coefficients vary from country to country depending on the 'hardships' you will encounter while working in your assigned country. So the more 'middle of fricking nowhere' your location is, the higher your coefficient is going to be. For example my buddies working in Canada do not get the extra coefficient as it is not a 'hard' country (not saying that job there is going to be easier, it's just means that you have no problem getting access to the usual creature comforts). People working in Sudan however get a 0.75 coefficient, so on top of the basic 4K USD, they will get an additional 75% of that amount added to their basic monthly pay.

Job bonuses depend on the contract, how much of the project targets you achieve/exceed and the client final assessment of your work. This is where the serious money is especially for our flagship segments such as wireline (although D&M and LWD can command insane amounts of bonuses as well). Typically trainees are not qualified to receive this bonus until the 'break out' to a Grade 9 FE (trainees start out as Grade 8 in the fixed step training program).

Working environment also varies from place to place and also from segment to segment. As SLB is a huge company I cannot speak for the other segments. My segment is Western Geco which does seismic exploration offshore for SLB. I work on a vessel owned by SLB and since this is the case my working conditions are quite comfortable. Basically my time is spent 50% on office based technical work and the rest involves some physical work for equipment deployment/maintenance (although this does involve having to go out on a small boat to fix the in-sea equipment). I am fortunate to have a crew that consists of multiple nationalities from all 6 continents and everybody work well as a team. There is just no place for drama out here as we all have to deal with each other 14 hrs out of the day, so being out here has really taught me a lot about being tolerant and patient of people who are completely different from you. Another big plus with the work I do right now is the amount of travelling I have had to opportunity to do since I started the job. =D

Pheww.. Ok I think I will stop there. If anybody else here has a question about working for SLB feel free to ask. I will try my best to answer you question if I know the answer and if I have time after work (am online from offshore South Africa =D)

i'll tell you about the FE's (IM) rotation( well mostly FEs will be given field breaks and FSs will get rotation).. it depends on your assigned country, your position, your status, business needs..etc..etc...even some countries has few operation bases but there are a lot of differences in few things for each respective base, except the basic salary which will be the same...here are some cases:

1. fixed rotation---> some get 6 weeks x 3 weeks, some 6x2..depends
2. field break----> some get 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 field breaks in a year and plus with 1 month annual vacation. For each field break(+/- 2 weeks), they will pay you USD 400 and USD 2K ++(nice if you have family coz u will get more) for your annual vacation.
3. Annual vacation only---> 1 month annual vacation only.

For the case 2 n 3, you can divide and arrange your allotted vacation accordingly every year. if you didn't take any field break for whatever reason within this year for example, company will automatically burn it but on the other hand your annual vacation still can be  carry forward to the next year if it is unused.

But as i said just now, it depends on your assigned country, your position, your status, business needs..etc..etc...even because of the economic turndown, it will ruin your field break or rotation.

Just my 2 cents.