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# The problem: I have always felt certain anxiety when thinking about my salary and only guessing what my colleagues might be earning. This issue is especially

# The problem: I have always felt certain anxiety when thinking about my salary and only guessing what my colleagues might be earning. This issue is especially problematic in cultures and countries in which talking about wage numbers is an unspoken taboo among the employees. Quite often, the questions like “Should I ask for a raise?, or am I already earning maximum that my employer can handle?” “Am I earning too much for the work that I do?, or am I underpaid?” “Who should I look up to and learn what they are doing to get a higher salary?” have plagued my mind. # Existing solutions: Of course, there are services where you can look at salary levels or statistical distributions of wages. The problem with them is that they don’t give you specific (albeit anonymized) numbers of what individuals earn, and they don’t satisfy nagging feelings of fear and anxiety that I have mentioned above. Also, it’s hard to tell whether the numbers are up-to-date or not. # The solution: I designed this product to be privacy-first so that many more users feel comfortable sharing their wage information and keeping it up-to-date. It allows users to see all salary entries in their current company, search for other companies in preparation for negotiations. Here is the full list of features: - I verify the data with LinkedIn profiles - I nudge users to update their info twice a year - I keep information quality high - You keep your data anonymous - You can see your and other companies data - You can subscribe for updates for particular job titles/companies # Plans for the next version: I plan to allow users to share their non-anonymized information in an encrypted peer-to-peer fashion with each other if they want to. This answers the question like, “Oh, somebody earns twice as much as me… And has the same job title… Who is that?” Tell me what you think about it! Is there something missing from your perspective?

polytronic 7y ago
I have trouble registering to your website. More specifically I opted for linkedin based registration but the process stops with a message that the password is weak although I use a couple of special characters, numbers and text in both lower and capital characters
- waterlink 7y ago
  Please use a stronger password. In fact, the requirements are quite relaxed already. I wanted to make it even more strict, but my partner insisted on relaxing them. The age of simple passwords are long gone, as they are really easy to crack with enough budget. Have you considered a password manager that can generate random unique and strong passwords for each website (and store them securely) for you?
  - aaronm67 7y ago
    Passwords are a terrible form of authentication anyway -- if it's something that actually matters, use some form of 2-factor auth. Requiring a long password on a site where the impact of a breach is minimal is not a good policy, you're just going to get people who can't ever login.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
aripickar 7y ago
Check out what levels.fyi is doing. They do specific numbers broken down by comp type for all different kinds of job levels.
s5ma6n 7y ago
While this sounds quite good on paper, I have a few questions: - What kind of data are you storing about a user? You mention verification with LinkedIn but what happens if your database is compromised 6 months later and all data is accessed by a malicious 3rd party? - When checking salaries, I prefer to search a job title and look at the average salary of a country, city, region or a company. Do you provide these features? - I looked at the demo application and only thing I see is a table with some entries. Unfortunately, this is not very user friendly. - I would want to see the average salary of a position - Count of salary entries of a position - Variance for the salary of a position (min, max, average, median) - The way to success is to have a lot of salary entries in your database. As a newly established service owner, how do you plan to keep users with your service and providing updates rather than using glassdoor etc. competitors? - How do you plan to monetize this service? Please do not see my comments as offensive, I mean to ask honest questions and give criticism.
- waterlink 7y ago
  These are all great questions! Thank you for asking! - For the data question, you can find all the information on our privacy policy in details (https://www.fellowage.io/privacy https://www.fellowage.io/privacy): what is stored, how it’s processed and for what reason, lawful basis, etc. Please read this about how I disassociate account information (and protect it) from raw pseudo-anonymized wage entries (that are already "public"—available to all users of the system via search): https://dev.to/foundsiders/how-have-i-ensured-the-privacy-and-anonymity-of-my-website-users-5fgb https://dev.to/foundsiders/how-have-i-ensured-the-privacy-an... - I don’t provide these features right now. Currently, product solves slightly different problem, and I think it’s possible to expand its feature set to cover for search by job title/location, or company. You can already search by company/location though. (It’s a search bar at the top of the webapp’s UI). - These are all features that show you statistical distributions, and while they are useful, there are plenty of tools that solve for that problem already. I set out to solve slightly different problem: “Who should I look up to in my company to earn more?” or “How up-to-date are specific salary entries?” - I plan to notify my users to update their entries every half a year. Also, there are features that allow users to set up alerts for certain companies/locations/job-titles when there are new entries, or updates. These alerts are aggregated in a weekly report (if it’s not empty, of course). - The current plan for monetization: there are two types of accounts: free and paid. Free account can view their own company/location without limitations, and for viewing of other companies/locations there are 3 monthly free views, that can be substantially and permanently boosted with referrals (similar to what Dropbox did with their referrals). Paid account has no limitations, of course. Please tell me what you think about these replies! :)
maxaf 7y ago
> I verify the data with LinkedIn profiles Lost me right there. Good luck with that. LinkedIn is notoriously a garbage dump of spam, recruiters and fake profiles. That’s on top of the fact that most people (myself included) don’t have a LinkedIn profile to begin with in order to curb spam.
- waterlink 7y ago
  What do you think would be an alternative tool to verify that people enter real job titles, company names and location?
AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
I have always felt certain anxiety when thinking about my salary and only guessing what my colleagues might be earning. As another option, talk to a recruiter.
- LandR 7y ago
  Or talk to your colleagues. We talk about salary, bonus, raises etc.
A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
>>I have always felt certain anxiety when thinking about my salary and only guessing what my colleagues might be earning.<< I can tell you that anxiety of not knowing is better than the anger/disappointment/a whole host of other destructive emotions after you do know. Companies don't want to deal with this. It can easily get ugly. In my case, my boss'boss actually had the balls to tell me that he will not be terrorized by me suggesting there are greener pastures out there. Looking back it was a big mistake. Should have waited for an offer and then use this information. Moral of the story. Be careful what you wish for.
friendlybus 7y ago
>I plan to allow users to share their non-anonymized information in an encrypted peer-to-peer fashion with each other if they want to. This answers the question like, “Oh, somebody earns twice as much as me… And has the same job title… Who is that?” Couldn't you find a bunch of people who are in that job title in your org? I'm sure with some detective work you could connect the dots on individuals you care to track down, depending on the size of the company.

polytronic 7y ago

I have trouble registering to your website. More specifically I opted for linkedin based registration but the process stops with a message that the password is weak although I use a couple of special characters, numbers and text in both lower and capital characters

waterlink 7y ago
Please use a stronger password. In fact, the requirements are quite relaxed already. I wanted to make it even more strict, but my partner insisted on relaxing them. The age of simple passwords are long gone, as they are really easy to crack with enough budget. Have you considered a password manager that can generate random unique and strong passwords for each website (and store them securely) for you?
- aaronm67 7y ago
  Passwords are a terrible form of authentication anyway -- if it's something that actually matters, use some form of 2-factor auth. Requiring a long password on a site where the impact of a breach is minimal is not a good policy, you're just going to get people who can't ever login.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

aripickar 7y ago

Check out what levels.fyi is doing. They do specific numbers broken down by comp type for all different kinds of job levels.

s5ma6n 7y ago

While this sounds quite good on paper, I have a few questions: - What kind of data are you storing about a user? You mention verification with LinkedIn but what happens if your database is compromised 6 months later and all data is accessed by a malicious 3rd party? - When checking salaries, I prefer to search a job title and look at the average salary of a country, city, region or a company. Do you provide these features? - I looked at the demo application and only thing I see is a table with some entries. Unfortunately, this is not very user friendly. - I would want to see the average salary of a position - Count of salary entries of a position - Variance for the salary of a position (min, max, average, median) - The way to success is to have a lot of salary entries in your database. As a newly established service owner, how do you plan to keep users with your service and providing updates rather than using glassdoor etc. competitors? - How do you plan to monetize this service? Please do not see my comments as offensive, I mean to ask honest questions and give criticism.

waterlink 7y ago
These are all great questions! Thank you for asking! - For the data question, you can find all the information on our privacy policy in details (https://www.fellowage.io/privacy https://www.fellowage.io/privacy): what is stored, how it’s processed and for what reason, lawful basis, etc. Please read this about how I disassociate account information (and protect it) from raw pseudo-anonymized wage entries (that are already "public"—available to all users of the system via search): https://dev.to/foundsiders/how-have-i-ensured-the-privacy-and-anonymity-of-my-website-users-5fgb https://dev.to/foundsiders/how-have-i-ensured-the-privacy-an... - I don’t provide these features right now. Currently, product solves slightly different problem, and I think it’s possible to expand its feature set to cover for search by job title/location, or company. You can already search by company/location though. (It’s a search bar at the top of the webapp’s UI). - These are all features that show you statistical distributions, and while they are useful, there are plenty of tools that solve for that problem already. I set out to solve slightly different problem: “Who should I look up to in my company to earn more?” or “How up-to-date are specific salary entries?” - I plan to notify my users to update their entries every half a year. Also, there are features that allow users to set up alerts for certain companies/locations/job-titles when there are new entries, or updates. These alerts are aggregated in a weekly report (if it’s not empty, of course). - The current plan for monetization: there are two types of accounts: free and paid. Free account can view their own company/location without limitations, and for viewing of other companies/locations there are 3 monthly free views, that can be substantially and permanently boosted with referrals (similar to what Dropbox did with their referrals). Paid account has no limitations, of course. Please tell me what you think about these replies! :)

maxaf 7y ago

> I verify the data with LinkedIn profiles Lost me right there. Good luck with that. LinkedIn is notoriously a garbage dump of spam, recruiters and fake profiles. That’s on top of the fact that most people (myself included) don’t have a LinkedIn profile to begin with in order to curb spam.

waterlink 7y ago
What do you think would be an alternative tool to verify that people enter real job titles, company names and location?

AlexTWithBeard 7y ago

I have always felt certain anxiety when thinking about my salary and only guessing what my colleagues might be earning. As another option, talk to a recruiter.

LandR 7y ago
Or talk to your colleagues. We talk about salary, bonus, raises etc.

A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago

>>I have always felt certain anxiety when thinking about my salary and only guessing what my colleagues might be earning.<< I can tell you that anxiety of not knowing is better than the anger/disappointment/a whole host of other destructive emotions after you do know. Companies don't want to deal with this. It can easily get ugly. In my case, my boss'boss actually had the balls to tell me that he will not be terrorized by me suggesting there are greener pastures out there. Looking back it was a big mistake. Should have waited for an offer and then use this information. Moral of the story. Be careful what you wish for.

friendlybus 7y ago

>I plan to allow users to share their non-anonymized information in an encrypted peer-to-peer fashion with each other if they want to. This answers the question like, “Oh, somebody earns twice as much as me… And has the same job title… Who is that?” Couldn't you find a bunch of people who are in that job title in your org? I'm sure with some detective work you could connect the dots on individuals you care to track down, depending on the size of the company.