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Hey All, Zaheer from Levels.fyi here. We've had this offering for a while. What does this mean for jobseekers? Nothing. We answer this in fact in the FAQ on the
by Zaheer 5y ago
Hey All, Zaheer from Levels.fyi here. We've had this offering for a while. What does this mean for jobseekers? Nothing. We answer this in fact in the FAQ on the page.
> Our data offerings provide employers with the same data you see on our site but in the format they need to make compensation decisions. All data points remain anonymous. Our paid offerings allow us to invest in maintaining Levels.fyi and further our mission: Helping people make better career decisions.
The main difference is that we provide data in a spreadsheet type format for employers with additional filtering criteria like metro codes, etc. It's a win-win-win all around. We get some revenue to help maintain the site. Companies get realtime compensation data to pay people fairly. Professionals continue to benefit from the site to get paid more and have data to negotiate better against companies.
We've have dozens of calls with companies this past year. The #1 reason why they purchase our data is because existing salary surveys (ex. Radford, Mercer, etc.) are stale and are too broad. Top tier tech talent which our site mainly attracts often get paid more than rest of the market. This is the bi/tri-modal nature of pay that others have written about. HR / Eng Managers / Comp analysts often buy our data to justify internally that they should be paying more.
- b20000 5y agowhat exactly are you giving those companies that you are not giving the potential candidate using your site? you should not hide information or knowhow from candidates and not give employers an edge.
- wclausen 5y agoThe strange thing about the offering is that it seems to be at odds with the original justification of Levels existing, at least for the folks who freely contributed the data being sold. The entire problem before was that employers had access to information about comp that employees did not. This put the employees at a significant disadvantage in negotiations, and was certainly not a win for everyone involved. The concern is that Levels is heading towards a repeat of that situation. I’d also add that it seems a little hard to square the circle here around how this feature is aligned with the stated mission. Does this product help people make better career decisions? It’s also fine if this particular move is about making money. We all need to make money. Levels has done a lot of great work, and I hope there’s a way for y’all to be compensated for all the effort you’ve put in. Have the costs of the site gone up significantly? I remember reading an Indiehackers post about how you were able to provide the site to users for something like the cost of a cup of coffee a month. If the cost structure has changed, it would be awesome to explore alternative funding approaches. I’d gladly pay y’all $10/month to maintain the site.
- Zaheer 5y agoI think another commentator already addressed this above. Employers already have access to this information via the main site. They're paying us to get the data in a spreadsheet they can plug into their internal compensation tools. They have access to the same data you have. It's an easy revenue opportunity for us and costs have certainly gone up as we've hired more folks. Our focus remains on serving professionals and majority of our revenue comes from professionals directly. Happy to discuss all this over a call as well if you're interested. Feel free to email me at: my HN username at levels.fyi. I'd also reiterate that HR / Eng Managers / Comp analysts often buy our data to justify internally that they should be paying more. An official way to provide the data allows us to be a data source to justify internal change. Otherwise employers are left to use stale data and remain unknowingly uncompetitive.