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Compare Tech Salaries Instantly: Introducing the VanHack Tech Salary Calculator

26 points by mayyvan 5y ago

mtmail 5y ago
direct link to the calculator https://vanhack.com/tech-salary-calculator https://vanhack.com/tech-salary-calculator
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
kevinsky 5y ago
Salary data is hard to get. Those who are contractors, employees of a firm that outsources like Calian or CGI or whose primary skill sets do not include programming languages (project management, security, database) won't find much on this site.
kadomony 5y ago
Is Asia on the roadmap? I noticed it seems very focused on just US/Europe right now.
- mayyvan 5y ago
  The data is based on real data from our platform, and we currently serve mostly companies in North America and Europe. When we do expand to Asia, sure!
JavaBatman 5y ago
There should be a legal requirement for companies to publicly post the salary band for every role. Otherwise, how do employees know where to start negotiations? This opaqueness only helps the employer, who already has much more leverage. Price assymetry goes against free market principles. The price of labor is like any other price of a good or service. People should know how much something costs before buying.
- bushbaba 5y ago
  Ideally the total compensation band. For most tech jobs salary can be only 50% of total compensation.
  - itake 5y ago
    It should be both. Base is important for home purchases and 401k matching. TC is complicated b/c of all the strings.
- mtmail 5y ago
  The EU created a proposal "EU to mandate public salary information for all job postings [pdf]" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30440211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30440211 so one day it may be required.
- itake 5y ago
  I fully support this, but it needs to be beyond base salary. they should state base and total comp with all of the strings clearly attached. A previous employer would pat themselves on the back for keeping tight comp bands and paying everyone fairly, but they didn't disclose how new highers received very different signup bonuses and RSU packages. So yes, looking by ethnicity/gender/age/etc, everyone had the same base, but they were definitely not paid equally.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  Public institutions do this in a lot of places. Apply for a job at a state University or other state-run institution and depending on where you live you might be able to look up the exact salaries of everyone who works there, including your future boss and coworkers. Sounds great, but it doesn't really work out in favor of higher salaries. It becomes too easy for hiring managers to say "that's the salary band, can't go any higher". A lot of people hate negotiating and accept it as-is. Compensation at these institutions tends to be lower than what you get elsewhere, not higher. The real negotiation just gets moved to a different discussion: If you say you need $150K but the salary band for the job listing is $100-120K, you can try to get them to create a separate, new opening at the higher salary band. Or they might already have multiple job openings at different salary bands and they'll quickly switch you to the other opening in the system, which doesn't actually change much at all from the hiring perspective.
iratewizard 5y ago
Why is blog spam like this consistently getting close to the top of HN? It's a brand new account pushing an email harvester "marketing" page with a flimsy excuse for interesting content.
- nrki 5y ago
  I agree. It's not the link to the tool. And the tool doesn't even work.
capableweb 5y ago
Not sure how accurate this is? Clicking on the "Compare All" next to "Skills" shows $165k (per year?) for "Customer Service" and $200k for "Blockchain Technologies" which sounds like huge outliers, even though Blockchain jobs usually do pay a lot right now. https://vanhack.com/tech-salary-calculator?contract=&role=&location=&yearOfExperience=0,7&skills=&magnitude=5&baseLine=3/1/2021 https://vanhack.com/tech-salary-calculator?contract=&role=&l...
ehutch79 5y ago
Apparently I should be making $0CAd....
hungryforcodes 5y ago
https://vanhack.com/tech-salary-calculator?contract=&role=33&location=&yearOfExperience=0,7&skills=&magnitude=2&baseLine=3/1/2021 https://vanhack.com/tech-salary-calculator?contract=&role=33... Really though? A Project Manager in Toronto only $50K -- I'm sure you can only barely live on that there for that much. At least in downtown.
- rmellow 5y ago
  This is not a reliable dataset. Yes, with a 50k salary, after renting a tiny apartment in Toronto, they would be left with just over $1200. Which is pretty much just enough to feed yourself.
  - thatfrenchguy 5y ago
    $1200 to feed one person is $40 a day, what do you do, eat out every meal?
    - hungryforcodes 5y ago
      Have you lived in Toronto? Don't forget after taxes that's around $39k. $3250 / month. Subtract $1500 for an apartment. Left with $1750. Hydro, internet, cable (?), a car, license, insurance, etc. Left with $1000 a month for food. $33/ day. Really not so much. You want to be saving too...
      - rmellow 5y ago
        For the uninitiated: Auto insurance in Ontario frequently costs more than the car lease itself. At the low end, it costs CAD 250/month, more if you're a male driver with few years of experience (or an immigrant with many years of experience abroad that don't count).
        iratewizard 5y ago
        It's probably that much from all the morons in Toronto who cause accidents by their selfish negligence. Every time I have the misfortune of being in Toronto, people park on the side of a two lane road, flocks of bikers take up one and a half lanes, people carelessly walk into the road like they're looking to get hit and never once will you hit two green lights in a row.
rmellow 5y ago
This has very little data, to the point it's unreliable. "Data Scientists in the USA" gives: No data available. "Data Scientists in Canada" has: - Sample size = 1 - Not in a major city (Saskatoon) - That single data point is not representative either, it's on the very low end of the distribution. This calculator is doing Canadian data scientists a disservice by misinforming companies on salary ranges. It's not the only one that publishes lowball estimates for Data Scientists either, Glassdoor does the same, and I suspect others do as well. My personal guess at what happens is that at higher ranges, individuals are not willing to publish their data. If you need to estimate salaries for Canadian Data Scientists, Levels.fyi has much more sensible data (and a larger sample): https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Data-Scientist/Canada/ https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Data-Scientist/Canada/
adamsmith143 5y ago
Most Salaries in US are denominated in CAD, that intentional?
blhack 5y ago
This looks like blatant spam. There's almost no data behind the "calculator", and the values seem almost made up.
slg 5y ago
These things are only as good as their dataset. I selected remote, full stack, and 7+ years of experience and got zero results. Opened that up to 6+ years and there are two results. That isn't exactly a rare profile today and doesn't speak well to the size of their dataset. The funny thing is that this calculator was most likely created as a promotional tool to drive people to VanHack's job board. However the current version is actually working against that goal. I have no interest in using their site once I see that not a single senior full stack engineer has been hired on their site for a remote position in the last year.
scottiebarnes 5y ago
Why are the salary ranges not mutually exclusive? https://vanhack.com/tech-salary-calculator?contract=&role=6&location=&yearOfExperience=0,7&skills=&magnitude=2&baseLine=3/1/2021 https://vanhack.com/tech-salary-calculator?contract=&role=6&... Ie. $110k to $129k = 7 people $115k to $134k = 1 person

26 points by mayyvan 5y ago

mtmail 5y ago

direct link to the calculator https://vanhack.com/tech-salary-calculator https://vanhack.com/tech-salary-calculator

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

kevinsky 5y ago

Salary data is hard to get. Those who are contractors, employees of a firm that outsources like Calian or CGI or whose primary skill sets do not include programming languages (project management, security, database) won't find much on this site.

kadomony 5y ago

Is Asia on the roadmap? I noticed it seems very focused on just US/Europe right now.

mayyvan 5y ago
The data is based on real data from our platform, and we currently serve mostly companies in North America and Europe. When we do expand to Asia, sure!

JavaBatman 5y ago

There should be a legal requirement for companies to publicly post the salary band for every role. Otherwise, how do employees know where to start negotiations? This opaqueness only helps the employer, who already has much more leverage. Price assymetry goes against free market principles. The price of labor is like any other price of a good or service. People should know how much something costs before buying.

bushbaba 5y ago
Ideally the total compensation band. For most tech jobs salary can be only 50% of total compensation.
- itake 5y ago
  It should be both. Base is important for home purchases and 401k matching. TC is complicated b/c of all the strings.
mtmail 5y ago
The EU created a proposal "EU to mandate public salary information for all job postings [pdf]" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30440211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30440211 so one day it may be required.
itake 5y ago
I fully support this, but it needs to be beyond base salary. they should state base and total comp with all of the strings clearly attached. A previous employer would pat themselves on the back for keeping tight comp bands and paying everyone fairly, but they didn't disclose how new highers received very different signup bonuses and RSU packages. So yes, looking by ethnicity/gender/age/etc, everyone had the same base, but they were definitely not paid equally.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Public institutions do this in a lot of places. Apply for a job at a state University or other state-run institution and depending on where you live you might be able to look up the exact salaries of everyone who works there, including your future boss and coworkers. Sounds great, but it doesn't really work out in favor of higher salaries. It becomes too easy for hiring managers to say "that's the salary band, can't go any higher". A lot of people hate negotiating and accept it as-is. Compensation at these institutions tends to be lower than what you get elsewhere, not higher. The real negotiation just gets moved to a different discussion: If you say you need $150K but the salary band for the job listing is $100-120K, you can try to get them to create a separate, new opening at the higher salary band. Or they might already have multiple job openings at different salary bands and they'll quickly switch you to the other opening in the system, which doesn't actually change much at all from the hiring perspective.

iratewizard 5y ago

Why is blog spam like this consistently getting close to the top of HN? It's a brand new account pushing an email harvester "marketing" page with a flimsy excuse for interesting content.

nrki 5y ago
I agree. It's not the link to the tool. And the tool doesn't even work.

capableweb 5y ago

Not sure how accurate this is? Clicking on the "Compare All" next to "Skills" shows $165k (per year?) for "Customer Service" and $200k for "Blockchain Technologies" which sounds like huge outliers, even though Blockchain jobs usually do pay a lot right now. https://vanhack.com/tech-salary-calculator?contract=&role=&location=&yearOfExperience=0,7&skills=&magnitude=5&baseLine=3/1/2021 https://vanhack.com/tech-salary-calculator?contract=&role=&l...

ehutch79 5y ago

Apparently I should be making $0CAd....

hungryforcodes 5y ago

https://vanhack.com/tech-salary-calculator?contract=&role=33&location=&yearOfExperience=0,7&skills=&magnitude=2&baseLine=3/1/2021 https://vanhack.com/tech-salary-calculator?contract=&role=33... Really though? A Project Manager in Toronto only $50K -- I'm sure you can only barely live on that there for that much. At least in downtown.

rmellow 5y ago
This is not a reliable dataset. Yes, with a 50k salary, after renting a tiny apartment in Toronto, they would be left with just over $1200. Which is pretty much just enough to feed yourself.
- thatfrenchguy 5y ago
  $1200 to feed one person is $40 a day, what do you do, eat out every meal?
  - hungryforcodes 5y ago
    Have you lived in Toronto? Don't forget after taxes that's around $39k. $3250 / month. Subtract $1500 for an apartment. Left with $1750. Hydro, internet, cable (?), a car, license, insurance, etc. Left with $1000 a month for food. $33/ day. Really not so much. You want to be saving too...
    - rmellow 5y ago
      For the uninitiated: Auto insurance in Ontario frequently costs more than the car lease itself. At the low end, it costs CAD 250/month, more if you're a male driver with few years of experience (or an immigrant with many years of experience abroad that don't count).
      - iratewizard 5y ago
        It's probably that much from all the morons in Toronto who cause accidents by their selfish negligence. Every time I have the misfortune of being in Toronto, people park on the side of a two lane road, flocks of bikers take up one and a half lanes, people carelessly walk into the road like they're looking to get hit and never once will you hit two green lights in a row.

rmellow 5y ago

This has very little data, to the point it's unreliable. "Data Scientists in the USA" gives: No data available. "Data Scientists in Canada" has: - Sample size = 1 - Not in a major city (Saskatoon) - That single data point is not representative either, it's on the very low end of the distribution. This calculator is doing Canadian data scientists a disservice by misinforming companies on salary ranges. It's not the only one that publishes lowball estimates for Data Scientists either, Glassdoor does the same, and I suspect others do as well. My personal guess at what happens is that at higher ranges, individuals are not willing to publish their data. If you need to estimate salaries for Canadian Data Scientists, Levels.fyi has much more sensible data (and a larger sample): https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Data-Scientist/Canada/ https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Data-Scientist/Canada/

adamsmith143 5y ago

Most Salaries in US are denominated in CAD, that intentional?

blhack 5y ago

This looks like blatant spam. There's almost no data behind the "calculator", and the values seem almost made up.

slg 5y ago

These things are only as good as their dataset. I selected remote, full stack, and 7+ years of experience and got zero results. Opened that up to 6+ years and there are two results. That isn't exactly a rare profile today and doesn't speak well to the size of their dataset. The funny thing is that this calculator was most likely created as a promotional tool to drive people to VanHack's job board. However the current version is actually working against that goal. I have no interest in using their site once I see that not a single senior full stack engineer has been hired on their site for a remote position in the last year.

scottiebarnes 5y ago

Why are the salary ranges not mutually exclusive? https://vanhack.com/tech-salary-calculator?contract=&role=6&location=&yearOfExperience=0,7&skills=&magnitude=2&baseLine=3/1/2021 https://vanhack.com/tech-salary-calculator?contract=&role=6&... Ie. $110k to $129k = 7 people $115k to $134k = 1 person