Engineers make 260k to 520k a year? Where?

YES!! WHERE, and what kind of engineers? And what part of the country, or the world, for that matter. Or are you talking about MANAGERS, those accounting folks with the MBA?

 

And don't forget equipment. Between the PC, software licenses and maintenance costs you could be looking at many more $k/yr. At my last job just one of the applications I used, Altium Designer, was almost $5k for the license and $1800/yr maintenance, per seat. From what I understand the mechanical engineering tools are much more expensive than that. It all adds up.