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Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

• ckastner 10y ago
  The mere act of an employer being so open and transparent about this would make them a more interesting option to me than any competing slightly better offers.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• chollida1 10y ago
  A couple of things that stood out. 1) I'd imagine stock options are part of the job, but I don't see that anywhere. Do new employee's get stock options? I'm guessing they keep this hidden as it allows them a bit more flexibility on offering signing bonuses to entice employee's they want to hire? 2) I don't see any section for bonus on the calculator. Do stackoverflow employee's not get bonuses? 3) Why are years of experience factored in at all? Shouldn't ability matter more? I mean you seem to get a different salary if you have 15 vs 16 years of experience. This just seems very arbitrary. Wouldn't a more granular bucket be better? As to transparent salaries... I've worked at two firms for the past 10 years and both have complete salary transparency. The sky hasn't fallen, and I don't hear very much complaining, though there still is some complaining, the upside of the complaining is that its over actual salary numbers rather than guessing numbers. We allow people to pick from a couple of buckets of salary and bonus multipliers. You can chose a lower salary and get a bigger bump on your bonus vs a large salary and a lower multiplier on your bonus. This lets risk adverse people get more upfront and leave a bit of the upside on the table and people with a higher risk tolerance to bet on themselves a bit more. Has anyone actually gone with salary transparency and seen a downside?
  • mathattack 10y ago
    On 3: I suspect that it's hard to get too precise on the A+++ to B grading scale. It's an imperfect measure and there's already plenty of disagreement between 4, let alone going to 10. You can fix some of the bias by using other measures that may correlate to the grade, but also provide some other guidance. Years of experience is one of them. You'll see that grade has a much higher impact than years of experience, so it's just modifying the total on the margin. I haven't worked at a company with total transparency, at least not at the worker bee level. I have worked at partnerships where all the partners knew what each other made, and it was generally heavily weighted towards seniority. The system seemed to work better than I would have expected. My experience in "secret" systems is any time two people compare salary, one gets very pissed off. This is why I keep my comp private.
  • benjaminhodgson 10y ago
    I saw a documentary a few years ago about Pimlico Plumbers, a large plumbing firm near where I live in London, who went transparent and revealed all the employees' salaries to their colleagues. It was interesting because salary transparency was not part of the company culture all along; it was an experiment in changing the status quo of an already-large workforce. It did not go entirely smoothly: there was significant anger and resentment in the workforce at first, but eventually things smoothed over and (as I recall) everyone ended up more-or-less happy. I dug out a review of the doc, if you're interested: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9393303/Show-Me-Your-Money-Channel-4-review.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9393303/Show-M...
  • Gmo 10y ago
    My company has transparent salaries since the beginning 14 years ago. Funnily, in the words of one of the co-founders, it's more a mere accident than a clear will from the beginning : "we did not really plan it that way, but back then, it was easier to let the document listing the salaries open for everyone than restricting its access to a few persons" and they decided to keep it that way ever since :) We always ask a new recruit which salary he/she wants publicly (by that I mean in front of a not insignificant part of the company, we are 50) and show them salaries of other people in case it does not really fit. We are also experimenting with allowing people to choose their salary after 3 years in the company (there's a process and some caveats of course). And we did not really see any downside so far
    • zaroth 10y ago
      Truly an interesting approach, thanks for sharing. I think the "choose your own salary" in particular is fascinating because with the right culture and the right people, in theory it works exactly as you would hope -- those that are highly driven and want to work epically hard will set their salary and their expectations accordingly. Someone who is looking for more work-life balance might set the bar somewhat lower. As long as there's a feedback cycle which takes salary level as an significant input, it might actually work for a small company. Yadda yadda, plus or minus the Dunning–Kruger effect.
    • dimino 10y ago
      > We are also experimenting with allowing people to choose their salary after 3 years in the company (there's a process and some caveats of course). Why wouldn't everyone ask for the maximum amount your company is willing to give? I don't really care if Mark from billing is getting paid 1/3rd of what I'm asking for, what I care about is if you'll give it to me...
      • brianwawok 10y ago
        Hey I know who is coming in Saturday to fix the prod bug, the guy that picked 500k salary ;) Although maybe for some people they would want the extra work for extra money and it could be a win win.
  • mpermar 10y ago
    As per the experience, I think it makes sense, both for real life and role playing games :)
  • overcast 10y ago
    You should never calculate stock options, or bonuses into your base salary, ever. I don't care what anyone says. Bonuses, and stocks are exactly that. Bonuses and stocks. They are great when they are way up, and shitty when they are way down. For the first time in fifteen years, I didn't get a bonus, and the stock price is way down. Never, ever, let someone hiring you convince you otherwise. They tried this when I got hired, and I held out, until my base pay was something reasonable.
    • _nalply 10y ago
      I disagree. While it might be difficult to calculate the value of stock options and bonuses, they are part of your compensation for working at the company. If the company gives you a car for free use, it's also a compensation. At least the tax office in the country I live taxes the car as a part of an income.
      • overcast 10y ago
        Well I don't agree with you. A car is a bit different story, since it has an immediate impact on your compensation. You no longer are paying for a car/gas the entire time you're employed. Granted, that could also disappear one day. Stocks and bonuses need to vest, and there is no guarantee they will ever show up.
      • jsmeaton 10y ago
        What is your bonus going to be next year? How much are you going to spend operating a car next year?
    • dpark 10y ago
      I would agree about stock options. They're so risky as to generally be almost worthless. I don't agree about bonuses. Bonuses aren't guaranteed, but at well-established companies with healthy rewards cultures, there will be a target amount you can expect if you do your job. You should still discount bonus somewhat when comparing offers, but I would not discount it to zero.
      • 10y ago
  • ryanSrich 10y ago
    This is a salary calculator, not a compensation calculator. Bonuses and options are not part of an employees salary. I imagine years of experience is measured as some value beyond skill. Knowing when to do and not do certain things seems like it would fall under experience, and not necessarily skill.
  • sklivvz1971 10y ago
    Stack employee here: 1) yes we have stock options, and no, they are not documented. 2) we have no bonus 3) years of experience are factored in because they bring value which is not expressed elsewhere and because they reflect market value.
  • jaegerpicker 10y ago
    I'd argue that experience should be a prime factor in salary. Ability is also a key component but not a substitute for hard won experience. Of course not all experience is equal but four things to be gained with experience that ability can not sub for: 1. Pattern matching on ways and processes to solve problems, otherwise known as the "been there, done that" effect. Seeing something that is the same or very similar to something that you have already done allows you numerous ways to improve upon it. 2. Greater depth of tools in the toolbag. May not be true of all experience but for a lot of people, the longer you have worked in the industry the more likely it is that you have stored process and approaches that you know work. This always more time to focus on the truly new and novel parts of the problem at hand. 3. Higher levels of respect from other team members. Again depends on the person in question but it's easier to speak authoritively on a subject when you have experience in that subject. 4. Record of dedication. If you have been the industry for 18 years it's pretty clear that this is your passion and you are likely in it for the long haul.
• dmackerman 10y ago
  Very cool. Salaries seem on the low-end of the industry standards from what I've seen. $120k for 5 years of experience in the Bay-Area is pretty insulting.
  • CoachRufus87 10y ago
    What would be a more competitive number in the bay area for 5 years of experience?
    • megadethz 10y ago
      I can concur with the OP. I recently interviewed at Bay Area companies which included late stage startups and big companies. Have about 5 years of experience. Total liquid compensation was in the range of $200k to $300k annualized.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  • thecolorblue 10y ago
    It looks to me that it incentivizes working outside of SF, or NY. $110k for a developer with 5 years experience in Cleveland is just about right, if not on the higher end.
    • vonmoltke 10y ago
      Whaa... I must be doing something wrong, because I'm in Dallas with 14 years of total engineering experience and 8 years of software engineering experience but have yet to break $93k.
      • eachro 10y ago
        Yeah, it's time to ask for a raise or look for a new job that pays you your market rate.
• alain94040 10y ago
  If I try to max out everything (engineering manager, 25 years of experience, max expertise), I still only end up with $210k. Are there stock options on top of the salary to provide a larger upside? That being said, thanks for the transparency. It helps all of us.
• megadethz 10y ago
  The salaries generated by the calculator while transparent are not validated by the market and are laughably low. Given the elasticity of supply and demand the salary mush be constantly evaluated against the market. This seems like just another trick to suppress wages for a qualified engineer. In today's market, a person with multiple offers would command at least twice the listed compensation at any of the software majors.
  • poopsintub 10y ago
    New York seems in the range I thought it would. Bonuses and stock aren't factored in, as someone mentioned. I imagine they might not over that type of thing, though.
  • r_smart 10y ago
    I'm wondering if there's a (perhaps unintentional) effect of anchoring people's expectations low prior to getting to negotiations. That coupled with SOs reputation in the industry, which might motivate people to join anyway, could be giving them a major cost cutting edge in salaries. As soon as a person sees this transparency I suspect they are going to base their expectations around that as well as perceive the salary negotiations as less elastic than if it was kept secret.
  • vonmoltke 10y ago
    > In today's market, a person with multiple offers would command at least twice the listed compensation at any of the software majors. StackOverflow is probably OK with missing out on these comparatively rare beasts. For me, their formula would give me almost a 20% raise (if I could stay in Dallas), and that is not counting my six years of non-software engineering experience.
    • serge2k 10y ago
      I'm in Seattle, and to match my base I would need to be a few levels above where I am (4 years, probably about a 1).
  • rhc2104 10y ago
• dexwiz 10y ago
  Either I am vastly underpaid or the numbers are very high for newer developers. Even with 0 experience and 0 skill, it quotes $86k.
  • jnevill 10y ago
    If you are a developer worth your salt and not even registering on that scale, then I'm going to go with "Underpaid". Unless you live in like Bumstump, TX where you can buy a 4 bedroom 3 bath home on 2 acres of land for 60k.
    • Someone1234 10y ago
      I think you hinted at the real reason: Location. Stackoverflow is largely based out of NYC, so their salaries are going to be based on that starting point. The average developer salary in the US is $80K but when you start going state by state you can see that NYC/California/et al are throwing that figure WAY off.
      • overcast 10y ago
        This is correct. Outside of the big two hotbed areas, developers are definitely NOT being paid in the hundreds of thousands. When you factor in the NYC/California cost of living tax, you're not actually coming out that far ahead. The experience gained is obviously the big benefit however.
        • akgerber 10y ago
          Depends— if you're a single adult in NYC, a decent bedroom in a share can be had for $1000 with heat and gas included (and that's also a normal way of living for successful adults), and one doesn't need a car, so bills needn't be that high. Transport is either an unlimited Metrocard paid pre-tax or provided free by your employer, or a bicycle— so that's around $70/month, plus whatever you want to pay for cabs (but rarely need to). The upper limit on entertainment costs is extremely high— but there's also way more awesome cheap/free stuff happening than one could possibly do. Of course, if you're trying to raise a big family, the math works out a little differently.
• chrisferry 10y ago
  These salaries seem SUPER low. Engineering manager with 15 years experience < 150k? Try 200+k here in NYC.
  • darklajid 10y ago
    These salaries seem SUPER high. Developer with 10 years experience at 120k? I'm making less than half of that and don't feel particularly ripped off. (I guess both of our comments don't help a lot in general, except to show that you personally don't seem to consider an application at SO while I'd love to do just that)
    • zaroth 10y ago
      A competent developer with 10 years experience at less than $60k gross?! I imagine any sized company in any location in the US would hire that person in a heartbeat. If you are a productive developer in a common programming language with 10 years experience, you have decent communication skills, and are able to work in a team, earning less than $60k -- then you are significantly underpaid.
    • lloyd-christmas 10y ago
      My starting salary was higher than your 10 year experience salary. You are WAY off the grid, even with quality-of-life arguments factored in. Unless you work less than 30 hours a week, you ARE getting ripped off. I don't know anyone who started with less than 60k other than my brother who was 3rd man in at a bootstrapped startup. If you enjoy your job, awesome. However, you're very easily in the bottom half of starting salaries if not lower.
      • meggar 10y ago
        I'm being ripped off too. graduated during the recession after the dotcom bubble, took the first dead-end dev job I could find, not exactly marketable experience.
        • jayzalowitz 10y ago
• fecak 10y ago
  As someone in recruiting and hiring, I love the concept of salary transparency on many levels, and I hope more companies at least make attempts like this to provide insight. That said, salary ranges and transparency can create two obvious issues. 1. Negotiations - I can tell you from vast past experience that when you tell an applicant "the salary range for this position is 80-100K", in almost every case any offer below 100K is considered a slight regardless of the experience of the candidate. "...but I thought you said the position paid 100K?" is a common thing to hear. Candidates hear the top of the range, and apply/interview with that expectation. This is only an issue when a candidate's true market rate is at the bottom of a range. A minimally qualified candidate doesn't typically see himself/herself as 'minimally qualified'. So even if 80K is true fair market rate for this candidate, and 80K is offered, the offer still has a good chance of being rejected simply because of the emotional attachment to the higher number and the feeling of "leaving money on the table". 2. Internal employees - Stack Overflow said this has been available internally for a bit, but when employees find out what others are making they are inclined to compare their own efforts/abilities vs others. It can lead to people either asking for raises to match their co-workers, or perhaps feeling slighted and seeking other employers. Being that it's not easy to truly measure productivity in most environments - other than perhaps consulting (billable hours) this is likely to cause issues. The next step is being prepared for how to handle those issues when they arise.
  • edwhitesell 10y ago
    I don't mean this to sound like a negative argument against your points, but here's a positive spin on both of them: 1. This generally means it's easy to filter out candidates who aren't a fit for your organization. In my experience, most employers would love to have employees where the salary is not the first (or even top 3) factors in their decision to take a job. (Rare, I know.) 2a. That seems like a good tail into #1. The employees who aren't in it for the team/company/career filter themselves out. 2b. Or, it's used as a comparison for employees to better themselves. "I want Job xyz because I can make an additional $20k/year. How do I improve myself to get it?"
    • fecak 10y ago
• sabujp 10y ago
  these salaries are really low for the bay area for someone who performs at their equivalent of level 5 (which is near impossible according to the doc)
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• ryandrake 10y ago
  Before everyone inevitably piles on about how such-and-such a salary "seems low compared to That One Guy At Google I Know That Makes $300k", keep in mind average Bay Area salaries for software people in the Bay Area are not as large as you think. T.O.G.A.G.I.K. makes several standard deviations above the self reported mean of $100K-$105K [1][2] and BLS reported median [3][4] (around ~$125K or so depending on job function). 1: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa.. http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa.... 2: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-en.. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-en.... 3: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41940.htm#15-0000 http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41940.htm#15-0000 4: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000 http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000
  • JasonPunyon 10y ago
    I'd also like to point out that...we're a largely remote company. We don't index our salaries to the most expensive time and place to hire developers ever. We don't have to support Bay Area rent, or duel it out with AppAmaMicroGoog to keep our people from getting poached. We hire people everywhere in the world and through that lens, we're competitive. I live like a king in Buffalo, NY.
    • POWERSTOMP 10y ago
      What Punyon said. fwiw I live like a true Necromancer in the backwoods of Indiana.
      • jachee 10y ago
        > Necromancer I misread that as "Neuromancer" and pictured you as Case-on-hiatus, jacking into your deck up in amongst the trees.
    • dpark 10y ago
      SO is based in NYC, right? Do you not have trouble retaining local devs there on these salaries? Or do you just have no one who actually lives and works in NYC?
• tristor 10y ago
  At my self-assessed skill level and years of experience, they're offering $11k/yr more for a "Developer" than a "Site Reliability Engineer". I find it interesting that they value someone in a "Developer" position higher than someone in a "Site Reliability Engineer" position. Having been an Ops person for my entire career and at the same time a competent developer in numerous languages and environments, I find this unsurprising but still a bit off-putting. It does seem to be an industry-wide phenomenon, but at the end of the day it makes no sense to me why a company would value an employee less that is expected to keep their services up, rain or shine (which presumably make them money) vs someone who is presumably focused mostly on adding additional features (may make them money). This is especially vexing in light of the fact I've never met a highly qualified Ops person who wasn't also a skilled developer. Mostly I've found the opposite, developers (skilled or otherwise) who have next to zero understanding of systems concepts, networking, or automation.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • acjohnson55 10y ago
    Supply and demand? Even if skilled SREs aren't as common as full-stack developers, it could be that so many more full-stack developers are required industry wide that companies have to compete harder on compensation for the best ones.
    • eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago
      In my experience as a hiring manager, it was a lot easier to find qualified developers than it was SREs or similar. Plenty of people doing ops work, but not a lot of them at the senior level. And the senior ops people we find demanded, rightfully, much higher salaries than the developers.
    • tristor 10y ago
      I've found the opposite to be true. There's lots of mid-level developers around who are capable of handling most common stacks. Even mid-level Ops people are few and far between. Truly senior Ops people are a rarity and in very high demand, even if salaries aren't matched to that demand. The difference in responsibility in those roles that you are entrusting an employee with makes the comparison a bit difficult, but generally speaking far more is expected of Ops hires than Developer hires at most companies. When you hold the keys to the kingdom you have an extraordinary ability to cause damage to the company purely through innocent mistakes, much less malicious behavior.
• hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago
  Does anyone have an opinion self reported salary websites like glass door? Do they skew high or low? What about other online salary websites?
  • enraged_camel 10y ago
    Considering the sheer number of fake reviews on Glassdoor, I'm not inclined to trust them with anything, including salary numbers.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • lloyd-christmas 10y ago
    I live in NY, so grains of salt. While I worked in finance, the numbers skewed very low: 20%+. I'm sure it's industry dependent though, especially since (I assume) finance has a higher standard deviation of income, slower career growth, but a higher glass ceiling.
  • phamilton 10y ago
    Usually don't represent total comp. Most big tech companies include a lot of stock. If it's a publicly traded company it is liquid and therefore can be considered a variable cash compensation amount, but that isn't captured on Glassdoor.
  • speruser78 10y ago
    I feel like https://www.comparably.com/ https://www.comparably.com/ has better figures.
• mesozoic 10y ago
  Seems like they pay very poorly for experience and skills
• bambax 10y ago
  Slightly OT: it may sound like a good idea to increment browser history with every parameter change, but in fact it's not, as after a few simulations/tests one needs to hit the return button many times to go back to where they were.
  • mwsherman 10y ago
    Thanks! It should be doing that, if it’s not, it’s a bug. Drop me a note at matt at stackoverflow dot com, with a repro?
    • nalllar 10y ago
      Use history.replaceState instead of pushState: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History_API That will still change the address in the location bar without filling up the history so it takes many back button clicks to leave.
      • notyourwork 10y ago
        This reply would be much more comical if you linked to a stackoverflow thread about history.replaceState. :)
    • SmellTheGlove 10y ago
      Matt, you have been downgraded to a 1. :)
      • mwsherman 10y ago
        +1 not just for the comment but for the Spinal Tap reference.
    • mwsherman 10y ago
      Actually I read this wrong. We decided on pushState deliberately, since it’s essentially a form submission, and so a history entry. That said, one of our folks suggested same so I think from a UX perspective, we could go either way. It doesn’t _feel_ like a form submission, one could argue.
• easymovet 10y ago
  This is marketing, not transparency. Show me the books and I'll believe you.
• ElijahLynn 10y ago
  Great to see this spreading throughout the industry! Here is some more clickary for those in the new: http://buffer.com/salary http://buffer.com/salary https://youtu.be/N8u9H6JDAzo https://youtu.be/N8u9H6JDAzo (Travis CI, How we replaced salary negotiations with a Sinatra app) http://location.rkh.im/ http://location.rkh.im/ http://rkh.im/move http://rkh.im/move
• andruby 10y ago
  The url shows a "Couldn't find blog.stackoverflow.com" error and a, albeit cute, picture of a panda. Did they take it offline because it was causing a controversy?
• gtrubetskoy 10y ago
  There is something not right with both having a salary system like this and having it available to the public. I know I personally would not like to work at SO just because of this. It seems demoralizing, because it reduces your relationship with the company down to rules, shifting responsibility away from people. It may seem attractive on the surface, but in the long run I don't think it will serve the employees or the company well. People are so much more than just skill+experience+cost_of_living.
  • ZeroFries 10y ago
    The 1-5 rating system is where personal judgement/responsibility come into play. If I were a very good developer but poor at negotiations, I would find this system to be the opposite of demoralizing.
    • gtrubetskoy 10y ago
      Consider the other possibility, where you are the best, period (which is how you should really think of yourself IMHO). You get two offers, one from a company like SO, based on a system of rules, and another one based on personal judgement (it might still be based on a system of rules, but that aspect will not be advertised to you, which is key). And if the two offers are about the same, you will likely choose the latter, simply for the slight difference between "our system values you at $$$" vs "we value you at $$$".
      • softawre 10y ago
        Everybody should think they are the best? Isn't that how we got into this into the first place?
    • blakeyrat 10y ago
      If you were poor at negotiations, you'd probably also be poor at the skills required to get a "5" rating (selling your own accomplishments, etc.) I mean I don't know anything about you, but devil's advocate.
• djb_hackernews 10y ago
  Similar feedback, starting salaries seem about right, but beyond that seem low, the rating system isn't science and the CoL adjustment only for SF, NYC and London misses other expensive cities. For instance, like for like (new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods), Boston housing is just as expensive as SF and in general your money goes further in SF.
  • dpark 10y ago
    > For instance, like for like (new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods), Boston housing is just as expensive as SF No it's not. It's not even close. The median home in Boston is less than $500k. That's a gut/teardown in SF, where the median is $1.1MM. If you pick brand new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods in Boston, I'm sure you could easily spend north of a million. If you pick comparable new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods in SF, I imagine you're looking at multiple millions. http://www.zillow.com/boston-ma/home-values/ http://www.zillow.com/boston-ma/home-values/ http://www.zillow.com/sanfrancisco-ca/home-values/ http://www.zillow.com/sanfrancisco-ca/home-values/ > in general your money goes further in SF. In what way?
    • seattle_spring 10y ago
      Every time SF housing prices come up, someone comes out of the woodwork to say how (Boston | Seattle | Austin) is just as expensive or even worse. They then compare some 1500 sq ft penthouse in the nicest, newest tower in their city to some slightly less expensive 19th century shithole of the same price in SF and say, "LOOK! Look! It's more expensive in my city! And MILK is 50% more here too, so it's way more expensive to live here obviously." Every. Time.
      • dpark 10y ago
        I did enjoy the fact that "like for like" somehow explicitly means the best of the best in Boston.
        • 10y ago
• graffitici 10y ago
  I wish they also shared the salary of their managers. That's way more interesting..
  • dpark 10y ago
    It's there. Change the "position" drop-down to engineering manager. There's a small bump in pay.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• closed 10y ago
  These types of calculators were incredibly helpful while looking for developer / quantitative positions out of grad school, especially since I'm wrapping up a phd in psychology. I was so clueless in terms of what kind of salary I should expect when I started looking--like, at 65% of what ended up seeming reasonable. The calculator is basically a window into the prospective-employee calculus a company is doing. You can also invert things, and use whatever someone offers you to think about what level of skill they may think you have (from SO's perspective).
• coredog64 10y ago
  A long time ago, I was a software engineer at Boeing. The local SPEEA rep had a chart posted outside his cubicle with the salary (grouped by years of experience) for all the DS-9s in the office. There were enough people that you couldn't identify your peers exactly, but it gave you a very good sense of what everyone else was getting. I would love it if more employers would do this.
• hardwaresofton 10y ago
  Yeah so this seems great, except that's not what should be setting the price of developers. Supply and demand (for the most part) sets the price (and should, IMO) of developers, and that's what I want, not some rubric. Outside of transparency, this strikes me as no different from the "grade" systems at various big companies like HP, IBM, etc. If you want to pay me fairly, pay me what the market says I'm worth. Things also get super messy when you get people to try and review/make objective assessments of their own skills and others'. "Most of us are a 1 or a 2" -- aiming high is great and all, but I would be pissed if I was the most consistently good engineer in the company yet didn't get some multiple of my salary because the "best" at the company is a 2 because of the ridiculously high bar that is set. Also I can definitely see a system like this trampling all over developers who should be paid more but THINK they're not that valuable, or afraid to assert themselves. This calculator just makes me think it serves as an effective way to pay people less than what they're worth, and convince those same people that they're getting treated fairly. You should not be counting on your company to pay you what you are worth, regardless of whatever rubrics or whatever they show you.
  • kmontrose 10y ago
    There's a pretty strong connection between the numbers the tool has and market rates - it's not like the numbers are pushed top down, they come from actually participating in the hiring market. The calculator normally gets a few revisions a year, one of the things that prompts that is market rates changing (others are things like hiring for new skills, or new roles being created). What's nice about the calculator is, if the market rates change, everyone gets a raise (and knows they should). It's not just the new hire (who's mostly recently on the market), it's everybody in the same skill track. The calculator also keeps us honesty about what matters for compensation. When the yearly salary review comes around, you can point at things you've done in the last year _and_ at where it says they should matter. It means fewer surprises, less frustration, and less fear that you're being too aggressive or too passive in salary discussions.
    • hardwaresofton 10y ago
      All of what you're saying is reasonable, but I think the premise is wrong -- what you can do doesn't determine how much you are paid, at the very least it's not the most important factor. You could be the greatest COBOL programmer with the best people skills, but if there are no COBOL jobs, the rubric is 100% wrong (assuming your salary is 0 because you're unemployed). In the same vein, you could be a completely average developer (even a bad one, however you measure that), but if the market is absolutely starved for developers, you should (and likely will) be paid a lot. I think SO's appraoch obscures that fact. There's no way they can update it enough to keep up with market (and it's arguably in the company's best interest in the short term to do this), and I'm worried that how this is being presented is lulling developers into a false sense of safety when they need to be on their guard. But it's also likely that I'm being overly pessimistic/exaggerating the danger here. SO seems like a company that has enough breathing room to truly care about it's employees, and as such I think they will do their best to revise the calculator to benefit their employees. However, I really do think that the logic you're using equally applies to all the usual grade/level yearly review based systems... That's exactly how it works in larger companies (not that it's a bad thing) now, I don't think the rubric is a differentiator. My point is that if you're one of the people that isn't a new hire, but aren't thinking critically about your salary where it is in relation to the market for people with your skills (whatever they are), please do. Don't leave it up to any company, however well-intentioned, to pay you what you should be making.
• rdiddly 10y ago
  Link is dead... Taken down? Did transparency throw feces at the impeller?
• jordache 10y ago
  Are these closely aligned with their actual salaries? Less than $10K of cost of living adjustment for Bay Area positions?
  • jc4p 10y ago
    Yes. The calculator is almost exactly what my current salary is.
• exolymph 10y ago
  Link is down: > Couldn't find blog.stackoverflow.com > The Q&A site blog.stackoverflow.com doesn't seem to exist…yet.
• speruser78 10y ago
  I'd say these are low for NYC. I have no experience, came from a bootcamp and live in NYC. I'm starting at $85K. With a year of experience I'm looking for $110K. In 5 years I'd be looking for $150K on the low end based on talking with others.
• p4wnc6 10y ago
  With 4 years of experience, even if I rate myself as a 5 on self-assessed skill (I'm certainly not), the salary offered for New York is far, far below anything I'd consider, and significantly below even what other start-ups offer (not including equity) in New York. I do not understand how they are able to hire experienced workers who agree to face the cost of living of New York at these salary levels. It is simply too low to be worthwhile.
• cuddlybacon 10y ago
  > For our experiment, we redesigned the Stack Overflow Jobs ads to display salary ranges. We were curious: just how much effect does this information have? [...] We expected to see an improvement, but we were surprised by the size: a 75% average increase in clickthrough rate (CTR) when we showed a job's salary range. I'm surprised they're surprised :P. I'm not actively looking for a job, so when I search I am mostly searching to get a feel for what skills are in demand and what salaries are like. For someone like me, seeing a wage in an ad would get me to click it so I can see what is expected of that wage in that region.
• crispyambulance 10y ago
  Salaries, job-titles, and all things related to hiring are _INTRINSICALLY_ subjective and that's the way it should be (and really the only way it can be). Even though the stackoverflow folks are using "a formula", there's still a lot of subjective judgment in scoring the skill-levels and stuff like years of experience (5 years at company-X isn't necessarily the same thing as five years at company-Y). As far as I can tell, stackoverflow is successful at their mission, has a good reputation and doesn't have retention problems. That's great for stackoverflow and the folks that work there. And while it is better than most places, other companies are doing just as well and don't have transparency in their salaries. Is transparency _really_ that important? I don't think so.
• antar 10y ago
  The calculator is fun to use but it doesn't - and can't - take into account many factors. For example, the level of competency, productivity, brainpower, personality, and so on.
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y ago
  Just for fun I put in a developer with skill level 5 and 20 years of experience living in the San Francisco area. http://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/calculator?p=1&e=20&s=5&c=1 http://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/calculator?p=1&e=20&... It calculated $198,220 I would guess that type of developer in the San Francisco area could earn a double or triple that amount (included bonuses and stocks) at one of other companies.
  • TulliusCicero 10y ago
    They said the calculation doesn't include equity, so it's difficult to say whether the salary is competitive (since really it's total comp that people are concerned about).
  • cyberpanther 10y ago
    What is ridiculous is not necessarily the salary but the portion of it that is for "Location Adjustment", $18,020. $20k extra to live in the Bay Area or New York is pretty ridiculous. For me in Houston TX I can live half as cheap, so 20k is nothing.
• callesgg 10y ago
  The salaries in the US seams very high compared to here in Sweden, seams like i am missing something from the equation. Possibly something our insanely high taxes. I have to divide the number i get in that calculator with 2.5 to get to my salary.
• aghll0ihph2bbe8 10y ago
  I don't know how to feel with this. According to this calculator I [1] get exactly half of the salary of a developer with zero experience and zero skills, and I have working for an American company for a considerable amount of time. At first I thought my salary was based on the country where I live, but now I am not so sure about it. Saying that I am being under-paid with these numbers is actually a joke, under paid to me is getting $2-3k less than the average, but these numbers tell me that I get 50% less than a kid with absolutely zero experience. [1] South American software engineer, with +6 years experience, and ~3 in skills.
• polskibus 10y ago
  I wonder if data provided in the calculator is later used to serve you ads.
• pyrrhotech 10y ago
  TIL I'm very glad I don't work for Stack Overflow and feel very bad for the underpaid devs who do. Apparently, with only 5 years experience, my salary has eclipsed a maxed out 25 year veteran of "5" skill. Not to mention my salary is only about half of my total compensation. I don't say this to brag, but to help raise awareness to the underpaid devs out there. You have to stand up for yourself, realize your value and fight with these companies to pay you what you are really worth.
  • jsmeaton 10y ago
    Are you living around SV? Are you also working at one of the top tier companies? From my experience and from some others here the tool is reporting decent salaries. It seems most of those disagreeing are from companies in the valley.
  • WhitneyLand 10y ago
    Do you have to work in the SF or other expensive area, or can you be totally remote like Stack Overflow? I'd be really interested to hear your examples of companies that pay significantly more and allow you live in a low cost/high quality city.
  • ap22213 10y ago
    People in software generally suck at negotiation. And, salary transparency just reduces overall salaries and increases profit for the company. Why? because a software developer will say, 'Wow, I can get paid that much for doing something that I love? Sure!', and they'll take whatever they're given. But, ask yourself, do you think the person in sales does the same thing? The person in finance or marketing? Look, you don't need to be a world-class developer to make $200k / year. You just have to be 1% better than the developer making $190k / year. As a baseline, a typical services / contracting company will bill a senior developer at $190 / hour. The math is straight-forward. This works for product companies, as well. You and your 20-person engineering team build a product that ends up being worth $100M? (completely realistic, btw) Yeah, even at paying $200k / year, the company and investors are making out. It's funny, actually. For all of the software people that I know who are self-described libertarians, when it comes to their salary they are willing to lean socialist.
• gohrt 10y ago
  Love the skills grading scale, totally Ivy League material: A+++ A+ A B (There are no A++ players)
• nythrowaway 10y ago
  This data actually has the impact of me not applying for a job. I'm thinking of looking around - been at my current gig as a senior engineer for years and I have about 15 years experience. But at my current comp at a major Corp in nyc, I'd need to make about $225k minimum before stock options (including perks mentioned in a comment here ) to switch. I'm not a manager just a senior dev. Maybe I'm the type of candidate they are trying to weed out, but I'm not looking for like 300k or something. Just market rate for my skills. I've got a family and it's expensive to live in the nyc area
  • p4wnc6 10y ago
    Not only that, but to me that entire rubric for the self-assessment of skill is extremely off-putting. It's also baffling to me that the salaries they peg against are salaries of start-ups and certain VC-backed companies. Why isn't it the case that you base your salaries against every other place in the world trying to hire the same people you are? It's not defensible to say, well we pay $130k for that kind of developer because AZ companies also pay in that range, and so does Blue Apron, ENSO Financial, and Spotify (or whomever). That's silly. Because DE Shaw, Google, Coatue, Two Sigma, Comcast, Capital One, Amazon, Facebook, or a host of others might be willing to hire that same developer for that same type of role with similar benefits and they are certainly paying more than this. You're always competing for talent against anyone else trying to hire the same people. Not against one particular niche set of companies who are similar to you in some superficial on-paper ways. That just seems like a very unfortunate way of determining what their idea of a "market rate" is.
• jlarocco 10y ago
  Having a boolean check box for location is not very fair. If it's going to be taken into consideration at all, cost of living adjustments should apply to everybody and should be looked up by zip code or postal code.