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Compensation Data and Trends in the USA
- slt2021 5y agoCharts tend to misinterpret, or not reveal the whole picture. I would be cautious when reading these kinda charts from non-scientific community. Who knows what kind of biases are lurking there at data collection and interpretation level
- thatfrenchguy 5y agoIt would be great if that conversation around diversify started including original social class diversity as well: if your tech companies are hiring more diverse minority candidates, but they all had lawyer/upper class parents, did you fix anything? Probably not.
- rouxfawkes 5y agoCarta releases an Annual Equity Report with similar compensation analysis across race, ethnicity gender. https://www.cartaequitysummit.com/2021-report/ https://www.cartaequitysummit.com/2021-report/
- ab_testing 5y agoLooks are women are paid less than men across the board.
- cbsmith 5y agoHonestly, it looks more like there's a lot of women with very low earnings, that perhaps skews the rest of the data.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoSuch datasets have been demonstrated to exhibit Simpson's Paradox.
- anonydsfsfs 5y agoCorrect. The first example on the Wikipedia page is a gender bias study that appears to show a bias against women in college admissions, but there was actually a bias in favor of women: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox#UC_Berkeley_gender_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox#UC_Berkele...
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- svachalek 5y agoIt's interesting to see that specifically in HR, which in my experience has a strong female majority including the leadership.
- gregdoesit 5y agoThe data points on pay gap by gender and ethnicity are ones I’ve not seen before and it’s great that this dimension is visualised. A surprising finding here - that doesn’t match what I would have expected - is how Engineering is compensated 90% in cash. I would have assumed equity is pretty heavy for software engineers, especially in senior and above positions. I do wish there were more takeaways to what seems to be data confirming these: 1. Compensation is going up, and especially software engineering compensation. 2. Startups are starting to compete stronger on cash compensation (thanks to a strong funding environment, and the market). 3. Remote work is slowly eroding regional differences in the US (and, as a note, globally, as well). Sadly, there’s no data on remote work here, nor is there anything on what % the market moved up the last year in various disciplines. At least for engineering, the past year has been a major jump upwards in compensation.
- gwright 5y agoIn most of these types of salary surveys I've seen they report a single average salary for a position. I wish they would break that down by years of experience -- probably have to pay for the "full report" to get that level of detail.
- davey48016 5y agohttps://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-salaries-in-the-netherlands-and-europe/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala... This is from Europe, but I think it's true in the US as well. Software engineers at large tech companies and venture funded startups get paid a lot, including equity. Software engineers at consultancies or doing internal development at businesses with several thousand employees are on a different salary scale.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago> A surprising finding here - that doesn’t match what I would have expected - is how Engineering is compensated 90% in cash. I would have assumed equity is pretty heavy for software engineers, especially in senior and above positions. FAANG and similar jobs are equity heavy, but standard engineering employment is often more cash-heavy. Working outside of FAANG, my base comp was significantly higher than FAANG base comp, but of course the total comp at FAANG would edge out my total non-FAANG comp.
- thesausageking 5y agoThe data is apparently from their own employee surveys and includes "a minimum participation standard of two hundred companies but can often grow to include thousands of companies." Hard to know how much you can trust the results with a small and biased sample like this.
- mattgreg 5y agoOne good thing about data from Sequoia is that they handle payroll for a lot of companies. They know exactly what companies are paying each of their employees, so it's a really good data set from that perspective. It's not self-reported by employees, for example.
- cft 5y agoThe "average salary" chart looks like the inflation chart.
- pessimizer 5y agoThat's what you would expect. Inflation also affects labor prices.
- epivosism 5y agoSequoia designers, this is beautiful but it would be great not to rewrite my scroll functionality. Why in the world would I want implied momentum in my scrollwheel? I already know how to use my mouse and am happy with it.
- thekashifmalik 5y agoI swear, I don't know why people keep doing this. Are there any benefits to highjacking scrolling behavior that I don't know about?
- EvRev 5y agoIf I had a lot of legal text that I wanted people to scroll by then this would be a good dark pattern.
- thekashifmalik 5y agoThat's at least one use-case I hadn't thought of haha. I wonder if there are any legitimate non-dark pattern use-cases.
- lelandfe 5y agoWayyyy back in the day, people thought they could make smooth scrolling "better," e.g. nicer easing, more responsive, etc. There is, however, no actual benefit to this, no.
- resonious 5y agoIn this case it's crazy choppy for me. My firefox updates my scroll position on this page at like 10FPS on a recent ultrabook. So definitely not a success story for "better smooth scrolling".
- ahmed_ds 5y agoScroll based UI stuff is one of the most frustrating thing of the web. Leave my scrolling mechanism alone! Web designers should realize the difference between landing page design vs article design. People clicking on your article link means that, they want to mostly skim the article and see the graphs. Why would you want to bother them with stupid design choices?
- superyesh 5y agoDefinitely interesting to look at the Pay Gap charts. But it might be interesting to see what the pay gap is after looking at hourly wage. I often hear this argument that men work longer hours. Given how much data they have presented, will definitely be worth looking at that dimension too. Edit: In S/W that might not matter at all, but some business functions hours might matter. More data the merrier.
- jsnk 5y ago"With a broad stroke, male and White/Caucasian workers simply earn more than their counterparts. " Why does this sentence leave out Asian workers, when the Asian workers' bell curve actually skews towards even more pay than White/Caucasian workers'?
- renewiltord 5y agoKindest interpretation is that the 'and' there is a restrictive and subsets to the male and White. Alternative is that Asians are a minority in the US, being 6% of Americans, while White people are 60%, and so it is more interesting for talking about this larger group.
- nxm 5y agoSeems a narrative needs to be communicated, so Asian Americans who are doing better than whites are excluded.
- bradleyjg 5y agoIt’s an inconvenient fact.
- fleddr 5y agoBecause it invalidates the anti-white narrative.
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- thekashifmalik 5y agoInteresting to see the pay gap charts. > our gender gap data shows that companies are still struggling to offer their female and BIPOC workers equal pay for equal work Does this data account for levels or years of experience? For example, if there are more junior-level women in the industry than senior-and-above level women, then of course you'd expect women to earn less, percentage-wise. If it's not accounted for, then the quoted statement seems false. Similarly, how come asian workers are left out in the following statement: > With a broad stroke, male and White/Caucasian workers simply earn more than their counterparts. It seems asian workers earn even more so it's weird how only white/caucasian is called out.
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- CardenB 5y agoIt seems that they have a chart for pay gap by tenure, which is by years of experience.
- thekashifmalik 5y agoI saw that section. It's weird to me to use tenure here instead of industry experience or level since tenure specifically means how long you've been at the same job. In my experience in tech, staying at the same company (long-tenured) is the best way to ensure you are underpaid. They seem to allude to that with: > The “Great Resignation” may present an opportunity for long-tenured, underpaid workers to find competitive pay elsewhere. If my understanding is correct then that doesn't account for what I'm calling experience or level.
- autarch 5y ago> It seems that they have a chart for pay gap by tenure, which is by years of experience. Tenure just refers to how long someone has been with a specific company, not how long they've been in the industry. So it's suggestive of _something_ bad that the pay gap increases with tenure for many categories of job, but it's not at all conclusive.
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- renewiltord 5y agoI was surprised by gender pay gap that follows tenure. Very interesting. Would have expected that total pay gap exist since proportion of women in junior engineers is higher than in senior engineers. Interesting stuff for future perhaps: foreign vs. domestic; and breaking out Chinese + Indian at least for Asian.
- throwawaysea 5y agoIt’s unclear what tenure means. Usually it means time at a company not time in industry. But performance ratings also matter and the type of company matters. It would be best to see this normalized by years in industry, company size (revenue or market cap), and ideally with performance ratings accounted for in some way.
- shmerl 5y agoThe site has some weird scrolling issues. There is some noticeable lag for scrolling which is very annoying.
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- SamvitJ 5y agoNote: this data is from https://www.sequoia.com/ https://www.sequoia.com/, which is a company unrelated to Sequoia Capital.
- thekashifmalik 5y agoYou know, I didn't realize that till I read your comment. Thank you.
- narenkeshav 5y agoSame here.
- ahthat 5y agoWhere is this data coming from? What is the dataset? Just curious
- TigeriusKirk 5y agoA dataset that has the average salary in the Western US at $150,000.
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- zenithd 5y ago
- sequoia 5y agoI'm having trouble understanding what companies or industry these data reflect. https://dataforest.sequoia.com/about/#methodology https://dataforest.sequoia.com/about/#methodology Is this startups? All companies? Are food processors and cement producers and machine shops included here?
- corey_moncure 5y agoThe average salary distribution is surprising to me. I find myself right in the middle of the distribution (~50th percentile), and yet I know for a fact that I have the highest salary out of everyone in my social circle, which includes several competent workers in the same field. I also believe other data suggests that my household income puts me at least in the top 10% of earners. How can these both be true at the same time? Do these data really represent the state of the general labor market?
- yellowstuff 5y agoMean personal income in the US is $54k. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MAPAINUSA646N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MAPAINUSA646N This post shows an average in every region more than double that. It's not a representative sample. The charts are pretty but I don't think this analysis has any value.
- eigen 5y ago> Mean personal income in the US is $54k. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MAPAINUSA646N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MAPAINUSA646N says "People 15 years old and over beginning with March 1980, and people 14 years old and over as of March of the following year for previous years." seems it would be reduced by full-time students, retired people earning Social Security, etc. > This post shows an average in every region more than double that. says "this report reveals some of the rapidly changing dynamics in how companies of all sizes are compensating their employees." seems it only includes employees and thus would not include students, retired, etc.
- yellowstuff 5y agoThat can't possibly explain all the difference. Mean family income is $115k, still lower than what they have for average salary in any region. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MAFAINUSA646N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MAFAINUSA646N If this is meant to be a representative sample of the US, the data doesn't pass the sniff test. They don't provide enough context to understand how else we should understand it.
- xeromal 5y agoIs this site messing up anyone's scrollwheel?
- socialist_coder 5y agoYes, I think they probably hijacked the scrolling because they thought they could do it better. It's pretty awful IMO.
- ergocoder 5y agoMy female colleague used to hypothesize why men earned more in general. She said that, if we take an average male and female that have no skills whatsoever, male can still be a coal miner or do a construction job or be a mover better. This means male inherently has higher earning potential. It makes sense that male earns higher. As a side note, I appreciate she talked about this at work openly. As a male, I am scared to discuss such a thing at work.
- WaxProlix 5y agoNot sure where this is coming from, or if it relates to the article at all really, but do you think it squares well with the section titled "Does the gender pay gap decrease among long tenured employees?" I agree that it's often been awkward to talk about my compensation at work, though I continue to try if only to make such disparities more clear.
- ergocoder 5y ago> Not sure where this is coming from, or if it relates to the article at all really The article shows pay gap, and I offered one of the possible reasons that contributed to pay gap. How is it not related?
- Thorrez 5y agoThis would explain a difference in average or median pay across all jobs. But it doesn't explain the difference in industries and jobs unrelated to physical labor.
- csee 5y agoIt's an interesting speculation but the main reasons are child birth (women out of work for longer) and personality differences (agreeableness is known to negatively predict income irrespective of gender) explaining the within-occupation delta and different career interests (more nurses less engineers) explaining the broader delta.
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- MichaelRazum 5y agoFor a company in the west, it would be nearly suicide, to discriminate women. So based on this assumption, I think there are other reasons for the 'pay gap'. Actually to really measure it, you should create a sample of companies and go from company to company analyzing any 'pay gaps' including all the factors, like reduced work time. Would not wonder if the graph flips after analyzing it this way.