5 ms·

Despite what the article says, Glassdoor still hasn't solved the fake review problem. The pay data is also woefully inaccurate. It works best only with a combin

Despite what the article says, Glassdoor still hasn't solved the fake review problem. The pay data is also woefully inaccurate. It works best only with a combination of other sources. The biggest impact to my career has been the semi-anonymous mobile app Blind. I realized I was getting underpaid and I quickly fixed it. I thought I negotiated hard in previous jobs but maybr it was all a ruse to make me feel like I was getting the best salary. Glassdoor and Paysa had lower total compensation numbers for my position.

sjg007 9y ago
I concur.. but talking about pay is no longer illegal (until Trump figures that out). So what we should do is talk with each other.
tdumitrescu 9y ago
Don't feel too bad about this - salaries (at least in engineering) really have been rising and offers that would have seemed great a few years ago are no longer competitive. It's hard to keep your expectations adjusted to a shifting market.
- nappadbz 9y ago
  Keep interview-ready and interview every year/two if compensation is significant to your happiness.
aok1425 9y ago
Best source of pay data I've seen is H1B pay info: h1bdata.info
- aluminussoma 9y ago
  I used to think so but I think that is incorrect for the following two reasons: - Stock compensation is not included. This is significant now. - I believe the salary numbers are purposely underreported. The numbers are given to show they are paying a professional wage. I heard (not confirmed) that someone getting paid $200k/year in base salary can be reported as $150k/year, since 150k clears the threshold. I saw salaries in my company that did not reflect what I understand to be the market rate.
  - sjg007 9y ago
    This is a function of how many H1Bs you work with + your stock compensation. Adjust accordingly.
  - Judgmentality 9y ago
    Even if you could underreport wages, why would you want to?
  - fencepost 9y ago
    I thought the conventional wisdom these days was to treat stock compensation as nonexistent unless the company already IPOd because in so many cases you end up paying to exercise and pay taxes on options that end up worthless.
- williamsmj 9y ago
  This data is better than nothing, but it should be taken with a pinch of salt. The _sample_ is flawed because H-1B visa holders are atypical. In some situations they are hired precisely because they have lower salary expectations than US residents (paying them less than the prevailing rate violates the terms of their Labor Condition Application, but it happens). In other situations the employer puts up the with expense and delay of the visa application because they have unique skills that also make them more valuable. The _data_ itself is flawed because the salary information is only recorded at the time the offer was made, since which it has presumably increased, and it does not include bonuses or non-cash compensation.
- praneshp 9y ago
  I just looked up my info there (lookup company, by title and sort through to the date my application was filed). They just have my base salary listed there, which is a super-inaccurate way to compare salaries, in my opinion. RSUs and bonus are almost 50% of my comp. They also have my starting salary there, no increases, etc since then.
djsumdog 9y ago
The western world needs to somehow get rid of our taboo on income. In a lot of eastern European countries, paychecks are just laid out on tables. Everyone knows what everyone makes. There have been countless articles that talk about how there isn't a huge pay disparity between men and women in skilled jobs, and articles like The Confidence Gap (Salon) that show that when disparity does occur, it's simply of women not being confident enough to ask for what they deserve. (On a side note, I hypothesize if you could objectively measure confidence and then compared incomes to confident vs non-confident people in their field, the pay distribution would be low to high among them, regardless of gender. That's difficult theory to prove though). At larger companies, you have pay grades listed and everyone in Active Directory has a pay grad associated with them (BlueCross orgs are like this). So you can actually look up, within a $8k range, what everyone around you makes, and it pretty much stays accurate until you get up to the VP/board positions. I wish more companies had transparency on this, but I feel like income transparency is going to stay limited to the public sector.
- lovich 9y ago
  You could try to break the taboo yourself. It doesn't always go well for me but at least two companies I've worked at I've managed to get the whole group of engineers comfortable with knowing each other's salaries. The people who are least likely to join in on that have been the older devs but I think the taboo was much more ingrained back when they first started their careers and younger folk are following more out of tradition than an actual strong belief
- mathewsanders 9y ago
  The best job I’ve ever had (most satisfying and interesting, and also good compensation) was a company where everyone in the digital department (a mix of about 150 engineers, QA, designers) were given the same fixed salary. Additionally, people were pretty much free to set their own work hours (I worked with a great designer who typically left at 4pm, but was never an issue because he always did what was needed - and often went above). The only possible downside I can think of is that we didn’t really hire a lot of young people (no graduates) so potential for stagnation of ideas (??) however I never saw that have a noticeable effect, and actually at the time the company was quite progressive in its approach to technology. Our highest ‘executive’ was an interesting mix of someone who could understand and communicate to business, technology and design people. I’ve often wondered what the secret sauce to this culture was, and how to replicate it...

sjg007 9y ago

I concur.. but talking about pay is no longer illegal (until Trump figures that out). So what we should do is talk with each other.

tdumitrescu 9y ago

Don't feel too bad about this - salaries (at least in engineering) really have been rising and offers that would have seemed great a few years ago are no longer competitive. It's hard to keep your expectations adjusted to a shifting market.

nappadbz 9y ago
Keep interview-ready and interview every year/two if compensation is significant to your happiness.

aok1425 9y ago

Best source of pay data I've seen is H1B pay info: h1bdata.info

aluminussoma 9y ago
I used to think so but I think that is incorrect for the following two reasons: - Stock compensation is not included. This is significant now. - I believe the salary numbers are purposely underreported. The numbers are given to show they are paying a professional wage. I heard (not confirmed) that someone getting paid $200k/year in base salary can be reported as $150k/year, since 150k clears the threshold. I saw salaries in my company that did not reflect what I understand to be the market rate.
- sjg007 9y ago
  This is a function of how many H1Bs you work with + your stock compensation. Adjust accordingly.
- Judgmentality 9y ago
  Even if you could underreport wages, why would you want to?
- fencepost 9y ago
  I thought the conventional wisdom these days was to treat stock compensation as nonexistent unless the company already IPOd because in so many cases you end up paying to exercise and pay taxes on options that end up worthless.
williamsmj 9y ago
This data is better than nothing, but it should be taken with a pinch of salt. The _sample_ is flawed because H-1B visa holders are atypical. In some situations they are hired precisely because they have lower salary expectations than US residents (paying them less than the prevailing rate violates the terms of their Labor Condition Application, but it happens). In other situations the employer puts up the with expense and delay of the visa application because they have unique skills that also make them more valuable. The _data_ itself is flawed because the salary information is only recorded at the time the offer was made, since which it has presumably increased, and it does not include bonuses or non-cash compensation.
praneshp 9y ago
I just looked up my info there (lookup company, by title and sort through to the date my application was filed). They just have my base salary listed there, which is a super-inaccurate way to compare salaries, in my opinion. RSUs and bonus are almost 50% of my comp. They also have my starting salary there, no increases, etc since then.

djsumdog 9y ago

The western world needs to somehow get rid of our taboo on income. In a lot of eastern European countries, paychecks are just laid out on tables. Everyone knows what everyone makes. There have been countless articles that talk about how there isn't a huge pay disparity between men and women in skilled jobs, and articles like The Confidence Gap (Salon) that show that when disparity does occur, it's simply of women not being confident enough to ask for what they deserve. (On a side note, I hypothesize if you could objectively measure confidence and then compared incomes to confident vs non-confident people in their field, the pay distribution would be low to high among them, regardless of gender. That's difficult theory to prove though). At larger companies, you have pay grades listed and everyone in Active Directory has a pay grad associated with them (BlueCross orgs are like this). So you can actually look up, within a $8k range, what everyone around you makes, and it pretty much stays accurate until you get up to the VP/board positions. I wish more companies had transparency on this, but I feel like income transparency is going to stay limited to the public sector.

lovich 9y ago
You could try to break the taboo yourself. It doesn't always go well for me but at least two companies I've worked at I've managed to get the whole group of engineers comfortable with knowing each other's salaries. The people who are least likely to join in on that have been the older devs but I think the taboo was much more ingrained back when they first started their careers and younger folk are following more out of tradition than an actual strong belief
mathewsanders 9y ago
The best job I’ve ever had (most satisfying and interesting, and also good compensation) was a company where everyone in the digital department (a mix of about 150 engineers, QA, designers) were given the same fixed salary. Additionally, people were pretty much free to set their own work hours (I worked with a great designer who typically left at 4pm, but was never an issue because he always did what was needed - and often went above). The only possible downside I can think of is that we didn’t really hire a lot of young people (no graduates) so potential for stagnation of ideas (??) however I never saw that have a noticeable effect, and actually at the time the company was quite progressive in its approach to technology. Our highest ‘executive’ was an interesting mix of someone who could understand and communicate to business, technology and design people. I’ve often wondered what the secret sauce to this culture was, and how to replicate it...