Salary transparency at Stack Overflow | Hacker News Reader

Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

blog.stackoverflow.com

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At my self-assessed skill level and years of experience, they're offering $11k/yr more for a "Developer" than a "Site Reliability Engineer". I find it interesting that they value someone in a "Developer" position higher than someone in a "Site Reliability Engineer" position. Having been an Ops person for my entire career and at the same time a competent developer in numerous languages and environments, I find this unsurprising but still a bit off-putting.

It does seem to be an industry-wide phenomenon, but at the end of the day it makes no sense to me why a company would value an employee less that is expected to keep their services up, rain or shine (which presumably make them money) vs someone who is presumably focused mostly on adding additional features (may make them money). This is especially vexing in light of the fact I've never met a highly qualified Ops person who wasn't also a skilled developer. Mostly I've found the opposite, developers (skilled or otherwise) who have next to zero understanding of systems concepts, networking, or automation.

This is the profit centre vs cost centre problem. Companies are incentivized to spend more on developers, since developers build features, and features drive sales, and sales drive profit.

SysOps folks keep the site up, but once you start hitting >99% reliability, throwing more money at sysops isn't going to increase revenue.

From a "job security" lens, the sysops crew needed to keep the site up will be the last to go during downsizing.

There are plenty of managers with the "why are we paying them when everything just works?" mentality.

Yeah, firefighting is a more visible show of "value" to those not directly involved than reliability is, because nobody at too many places likes to ask why we're always fighting fires in the first place.

Not always. I was one of the only devops/linux admin at a past job and was in one of the first rounds of layoffs. It's a bit dangerous to think that just because you're critical, you're immune - on paper, you're probably also one of the most costly.

> SysOps folks keep the site up, but once you start hitting >99% reliability, throwing more money at sysops isn't going to increase revenue.

Which is why SRE evolved from ad driven sites like google -- all uptime is worth money.

Yup, it's always a good idea to figure out a way to position yourself as the profit generator, instead of overhead whose costs needs to be minimized.

Funny thing, tech is pretty unique among industry sectors in that engineers are part of the profit centre. Just about everyone else treats engineers as operational costs.

And a Product Designer is $5k less still.

It's not a question of "valuing" employees, it's about what salary you need to offer to be able to hire and retain people at the required skill level. And good SREs are apparently willing to (or plentiful enough to need to) accept slightly less money than equally good developers.

That said, the phenomenon extends well beyond our industry. It's common in all industries that the people who design (as in architecture, not graphic design) and build the product make better salaries than the people who operate the infrastructure, however critically important their role is.

> This is especially vexing in light of the fact I've never met a highly qualified Ops person who wasn't also a skilled developer

Be careful to compare like for like. A highly qualified ops person compares to a highly qualified developer, not merely a "skilled" one. For all the difficulty of objectively measuring skill, I would assume that a highly qualified ops person would make substantially more than a merely skilled developer.

> Be careful to compare like for like. A highly qualified ops person compares to a highly qualified developer, not merely a "skilled" one. For all the difficulty of objectively measuring skill, I would assume that a highly qualified ops person would make substantially more than a merely skilled developer.

I think that I failed to communicate my meaning clearly in that statement, so I will attempt to clarify. What I mean is, that in my experience a highly qualified Ops person will /also/ be a skilled developer, but a highly qualified Developer will /not/ be a skilled Ops person. E.g. based on skill-set alone, highly qualified Ops people bring more skill to the table in union than a highly qualified Developer. Whether that's the skills you value or prioritize as an organization or not is another question entirely.

For the purposes of my salary comparison above I used the same years of experience and skill rating in the calculator for the Site Reliability Engineer and Developer roles. As you say, I would expect a highly qualified Ops person to make more than a "merely skilled" developer. I wasn't really trying to state anything opposite of this.

> that in my experience a highly qualified Ops person will /also/ be a skilled developer, but a highly qualified Developer will /not/ be a skilled Ops person.

I have ~15 years of ops experience, and I'm not a skilled developer. I bill ~$200/hr for infrastructure/AWS architecture/DevOps consulting (when not at devops day job), with limited need to be proficient at software development.

Curious where you're getting that hourly without also doing coding.

I'm a terrible programmer but I have 20 years of massive scale op experience.

> Curious where you're getting that hourly without also doing coding.

Both startups and enterprises.

> Henry Ford once balked at paying $10,000 to General Electric for work done troubleshooting a generator, and asked for an itemized bill. The engineer who performed the work, Charles Steinmetz, sent this: "Making chalk mark on generator, $1. Knowing where to make mark, $9,999." Ford paid the bill.

Yes, I think the subtle distinction between highly-qualified and skilled is what matters here.

$10k is the difference between several years of experience. To switch from SRE to developer, you would have to be willing to give up a few of those years.

I recently wrote a blog post coincidentally using Stack Overflow's own data to find correlations between the self-reported skill level of developers vs. other metrics such as salary: http://minimaxir.com/2016/07/stack-overflow/

The tl;dr is that yes, there is a positive correlation between developer skill and salary (http://minimaxir.com/img/stack-overflow/so-programming-6.png) for example, but it's hard to say which-causes-which.

Your graphs look a lot like the ones I made internally :) Try comparing the `agree_` and `important_` across age ranges / genders, I was able to pull some stats out of those but since the sample sizes are so small I didn't want to release it to the world.

Typical scenario over the last few years at different companies:

I'm ask to help find DevOps SREs.

Find people and interview them

Recommend the few good ones.

They turn the offers down because not enough money is offered.

I'm asked what could be done differently to hire good DevOps/SREs, because it's impossible to get anybody!

Later, once I've moved on, I found out that devs were offered and paid significantly more.

We use various resources (public data, information from VCs) to figure out the base market rate for each position. Even though the base salary is less because our information says the market rate is less, we don't think developers are more important than SREs. The same benefits, equipment, remote work, autonomy, opportunities to speak and contribute to open source, etc are the same.

> We use various resources (public data, information from VCs) to figure out the base market rate for each position.

So you're basically paying what everyone else is paying (on aggregate) rather than figuring out yourself if SREs and developers are worth to you as a company. This seems like a lazy-ish approach to me and negates most of the positivity that salary transparency has.

I realize though that you're never going to find an approach that satisfies everyone, so maybe this one works well for you (StackOverflow is an awesome site!).

> The same benefits, equipment, remote work, autonomy, opportunities to speak and contribute to open source, etc are the same.

That is tautological, "the same benefits are the same". $11k buys a lot of extra "benefits" in the world.

as a business that has to turn a profit, of course you will not pay significantly more than you have to. Base Salaries are demand and supply driven which also means that if i can pay more, i can also get more skilled/experienced people for that money.

Supply and demand?

Even if skilled SREs aren't as common as full-stack developers, it could be that so many more full-stack developers are required industry wide that companies have to compete harder on compensation for the best ones.

In my experience as a hiring manager, it was a lot easier to find qualified developers than it was SREs or similar. Plenty of people doing ops work, but not a lot of them at the senior level. And the senior ops people we find demanded, rightfully, much higher salaries than the developers.

I've found the opposite to be true. There's lots of mid-level developers around who are capable of handling most common stacks. Even mid-level Ops people are few and far between. Truly senior Ops people are a rarity and in very high demand, even if salaries aren't matched to that demand. The difference in responsibility in those roles that you are entrusting an employee with makes the comparison a bit difficult, but generally speaking far more is expected of Ops hires than Developer hires at most companies. When you hold the keys to the kingdom you have an extraordinary ability to cause damage to the company purely through innocent mistakes, much less malicious behavior.

I think what you're explaining is actually reality (not shown on the salary graph).

There's a large donut hole in ops. The truly high demand people make way more than the salary listed there. However, developers are within the normal range.

I.E. - Developers make more on average, top end Devops pays more.

A very good friend and senior, expert, skilled developer just transitioned into a DevOps position. I was very surprised. His motivation was to have a greater impact on the success of his org. Commendable.

I guess I did something similar when I served as a QA Manager, years ago. I loved the work and felt really good about the progress that team made.

Came here to say this. At minimum, an SRE is worth at least as much as a developer - and frankly, are probably worth more.

Could this be market supply/demand? That banks in NYC are paying more for developers and less for site-ops (similar reasons mentioned elsewhere on cost vs profit center) and to hire and retain these folks, they need to pay accordingly. In this sense, it's the career interest in Siteops that lowers their pay, despite the skills.

This happens in the real world a lot. Two people major in Mathematics. One has an additional education certification and goes to teach in a school. The other gets an IT job at the same school. The guy with the IT job gets paid more. (You could insert social work, music, or any of a dozen other underpaid fields)

I'm surprised none of the other respondents have caught this error in Stack Overflow's terminology.

Stack Overflow's salary calculator is lumping two very different roles together and is therefore not useful for true SRE pay calculation. I'll explain my reasoning.

Notice that there is no entry for "System Administrator" or "DevOps Specialist". Neither of these roles call for software engineering ability. Since Google coined the term Site Reliability Engineer and wrote the book on it [1], I'll use their definition as the canonical description: "SREs are engineers. [They] apply the principles of computer science and engineering to the design and development of computing systems: generally, large distributed ones." "Google caps operational work for SREs at 50% of their time. The remaining time should be spent using their coding skills on project work."

SREs use engineering practices to develop durable architecture, automate emergency response (since human response is too slow to preserve the error budget), develop monitoring, profile, and finally, pass operations control back to the developers when this is done.

Real SREs spend at least 50% of their time architecting and coding reliability solutions and automation for their infrastructure. They are software engineers in the most real sense. At Google and other companies that hire real SREs, they are paid more than typical software engineers at the same level of experience, etc. Most companies don't have SREs. SRE is a new occupation, but if you have to give it a Bureau of Labor title, "Software Developer, Systems" is the best fit.

Stack Overflow would have been better off not using the SRE title and sticking with "Sysadmin". Sysadmin is by far the most common title for ops workers. The SRE community is still too small to be a meaningful choice in this menu.

This would be the same as lumping in "HTML programmer" with "software developer". Two very different roles, and to consider them to be the same is serious title inflation.

To approximate SRE salaries, I would choose "Software Engineer" and bump the skill level up by one. This is my experience and matches other SREs I know.

[1] Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems. J. Petoff, N. Murphy. O'Reilly. 2016.

I misread TFA and thought the calculator was based off of jobs posted in the site, not their own salary calculation. Judging by their comprehensive operations articles (DC migration, etc), it appears their ops staff are also software engineers. In that case, it appears they've misinterpreted the market. At least SREs know they should apply to Stack Overflow only for software engineering roles in order to avoid a $10k penalty for extra skills.

That was pretty much my point. An SRE or DevOps person who's any good is basically a Software Engineer + SysAdmin in one person, vs two people, so paying them $11k/yr less is kind of ridiculous.

StackOverflow is a Windows shop.

That almost entirely explains the pay gap.

and that's one problem with this "salary transparency" stuff, "my work is just as important or even more important than his, why I'm getting paid less?"

I could argue against you too, for example, you say "competent developer in numerous languages and environments", that's really just a small fraction of what computer science is really about.

I don't think it's a problem. I think it's a valuable and fair discussion that is in some way the entire point of salary transparency. Those who bring the most value to the company in theory should be the ones who are compensated the highest. It's always a difficult question on how you determine who brings what value though, which is why compensation is such a contentious subject to discuss.

I should clarify I'm not claiming that an SRE is more valuable than a Developer outright. I'm saying that most highly qualified SREs are also Developers, while highly qualified Developers are not also SREs, so the amount of skill/knowledge required to attain the salary is more burdensome for an SRE vs a Developer. If anything, my statements should be construed as a realization that its a better career progression (at least when focusing on salary) to become a Developer than it is to go into Ops because for whatever reasons society values Developers more than Ops.

Also, separately, you need to consider BATNA [1]

If 10 guys all showed up on your door with a magic box that would give your business $100k in added shareholder value, you'd be rational to pay somewhere between 0 and $100k for it. The top end is determined by how much new value is added, but what you end up paying would have to do with how each person priced it -- if there were more of them, the thing would probably cost less unless the providers of it colluded.

Just keep in mind there's a push and a pull and, even if a factor adds a lot of value, it can be cheaper than a less-value-added one, because factor prices are set by supply and demand, not their relative value-added output (which can also depend on how well they're used, which is why some companies can pay so much better for exactly the same work as others)

(Which is really a broader recipe for success in business generally: figure out how to employ factors of production -- people, capital, etc -- more profitably than they cost to purchase in the relevant markets, and BAM, you've got a profitable company)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiat...

"Who brings the most value to the company" is the most utterly loaded question ever.

Companies are complex systems with many moving parts and team dynamics. If a new feature gets released, do you attribute incremental revenue to the dev who coded it, the product manager who specified it, the sales team who sold it, the marketers who described it, the executives who hired the people who did any of the things above, etc?

Bottom line: "value creation" is a totally sociological construct having more to do with the organization's culture (who's most highly valued) than any objective metric of "value add". You need to be in a place where the people empowered to make decisions about pay perceive that the work you're doing is valuable. No more, no less.

If you asked each of those constituents how much value they/their group added and summed those values, I suspect you'd end up with a significant multiple of the total value actually created.

I've done a significant amount of hiring in my career and I've had a more than a few conversations about the "importance of my work" vs "level of my compensation". In the nicest possible way I've had to explain that 'importance' has nothing to do with it.

Hiring is supply and demand. There are more competent accountants vying for the same jobs than there are developers. More developers than there are SRE's.

The rarer the skill set, the more expensive it is to hire.

Before everyone inevitably piles on about how such-and-such a salary "seems low compared to That One Guy At Google I Know That Makes $300k", keep in mind average Bay Area salaries for software people in the Bay Area are not as large as you think. T.O.G.A.G.I.K. makes several standard deviations above the self reported mean of $100K-$105K [1][2] and BLS reported median [3][4] (around ~$125K or so depending on job function).

1: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa....

2: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-en....

3: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41940.htm#15-0000

4: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000

I'd also like to point out that...we're a largely remote company. We don't index our salaries to the most expensive time and place to hire developers ever. We don't have to support Bay Area rent, or duel it out with AppAmaMicroGoog to keep our people from getting poached. We hire people everywhere in the world and through that lens, we're competitive. I live like a king in Buffalo, NY.

What Punyon said. fwiw I live like a true Necromancer in the backwoods of Indiana.

> Necromancer

I misread that as "Neuromancer" and pictured you as Case-on-hiatus, jacking into your deck up in amongst the trees.

If you move to somewhere mostly tax free $104k USD is like $160k pre-tax in california.

They also have private offices, which can be a special perk for a bunch of people.

SO is based in NYC, right? Do you not have trouble retaining local devs there on these salaries? Or do you just have no one who actually lives and works in NYC?

We have offices in NYC, London, and Denver. If I'm remembering correctly, I can count the number of developers who've left the company on one hand. We currently have ~20 engineering staff in the NYC office. Retention doesn't seem to be a huge problem.

Is there significant compensation not captured by this tool (bonus, equity, amazing benefits)? $132K for a "2" with 10 years experience just seems really low in NYC. $171K for a "5" seems really low, too, since that person would be principle at Google or Microsoft.

This is the standard stuff from our company page (http://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/stack-overflow)...

20 days vacation (to start)

Flextime

No Copay Health Insurance

Whatever workstation you want (PC/MAC/Build Your Own), Monitors out the wazoo. Seriously, I have 128GB of RAM and a GTX 1080, we don't skimp here.

$3,500 a year + 3 days conference budget

Gym Reimbursement Tuition Reimbursement

In NYC and Denver we have in house chefs

Unlimited sick time

Fully Paid Parental Leave

...but our people team is pretty empowered to make you happy.

And yeah, there's equity.

Interesting. So you have good benefits, good vacation, and some equity (of questionable value, since it's not publicly traded), but nothing that adds another 30k in value to the package over your competitors. If the numbers from the calculator are accurate, I don't know how places like Google aren't vacuuming up all your senior+ devs. A principle dev at Google in NYC must get paid at least $200k. I'd bet the bottom end there is more like $250 with bonus and (tangible) equity grants.

Good for you guys for managing high retention. Something is keeping your devs happy and it's not the money.

Not everyone wants to work at Google. I know I don't.

Google was just a proxy for software engineering employers who pay well. Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon all pay similarly. So do a number of other companies. The finance corps in NYC probably do too, but I wouldn't really want to work there either from what I've heard.

Regardless, I certainly would not encourage you or anyone else to leave a job they love if it pays them an amount they are happy with. Going to Google or anyone else for a 20% pay bump is a bad deal if you end up less happy overall.

It's good to keep in mind that "software engineering employers who pay well" don't necessarily pay everyone that well, or even most of their employees. My guess is that very few Googlers get that mystical $200K (although no doubt someone will reply here with an example to "prove" me wrong). Always comparing your salary (or as a business owner, what you offer your employees) to what Google pays the top 0.1% of their talent is bound to leave you disappointed.

The $200K level is really, really not mythical in NY. Many software jobs at all kinds of companies, ranging from start-ups to pure tech firms to food service organizations to finance companies to advertising firms will pay a software developer around $200K/yr in base pay, and usually there is some opportunity for bonus and equity as well. You probably also only need 3-4 years of experience to get your name in the hat for these positions too; I'm not talking about only developers with like 10 years of experience.

To put it in perspective, I earned a base salary in the very high $100K's when working for a large education company in Boston, having only 3.5 years of experience at the time.

The cost of living in New York is something like 30% higher than Boston, so before I would even consider any job in New York at all, even just to keep my wage at the same level relative to cost of living, you're talking about a salary certainly above $200k. Sure, places are free to dupe youngsters who just think it's cool to live in NY and are happy to take a discounted salary in order to get that personally-valued benefit. But a lot of thoughtful people who would make great employees for you won't do that -- won't even consider your job at all or do any of the hiring process unless they know it at minimum offers them a pay level that keeps their quality of life consistent. Otherwise they'll just stay where they are, or they'll work in some different geographic area where the pay isn't so distorted from the true cost of living as in New York.

I do love all the work that Stack Exchange does to keep using fully private offices though. Despite disagreeing with the salary levels, I would still say Stack Exchange is one of the best organizations around purely because it's like the last bastion of hope that we might move away from the demonstrably unhealthy dystopia of open-plan office madness, and further because they're in Manhattan, they help eliminate the demonstrably incorrect claim that a lot of places make, which is the excuse that they need open-plan offices because of real estate costs.

Interns at Facebook make about $100k, and they get free luxury housing. I know people at Google at Facebook. New grads make about 170k per year (total compensation), next level is about 220k, and the next (which is Senior) about 300k. One level above that (ie Staff Engineer) gets into the 400-500k range. $200k is definitely about average pay for Google engineers (maybe $150k is more accurate for offices outside MTV/NY/SEA).

This is mostly consistent with what is posted on Glassdoor [1] and on this authoritative H1B website: http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=GOOGLE&job=SOFTWARE+ENGINEE...

Your figures are about $15k higher than what these sources report, which I think is close enough.

[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-Sa...

No doubt. I'm would not expect that most devs at Google are getting paid $200k. I would expect that the top-of-the-top (i.e. the '5s' here) are getting paid $200k and more, though. Basically, I feel like the entry-level pay here looks reasonably competitive, but the senior pay looks low relative to my experience and what I know of others' salaries and salary ranges. This is of course largely anecdotal, so maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.

A majority of our technical team (around ⅔) are remote, so the HQ in NYC is not the center of gravity that one might assume. Also the NYC office has chefs, so. ;)

Do you explain the dollar value of the food prepared by the chefs to new hires, and offer to make up their compensation by that dollar value if the chef services are ever terminated in the future?

I've worked at and interviewed with companies that had fringe benefits like this before and always found it off-putting. I'm a grown human mammal -- getting food for myself is my job, not your job as my employer. If you want to be nice enough to do that because you think it makes me happy, or it is kind, or it boosts productivity, or it subtly manipulates me into staying at the office later or something, that's all fine -- but then it should have no bearing on what compensation I'm paid, and should not function as either an incentive nor a disincentive to work for you.

But it tends to always be presented like this. It's asymmetric. The employee is asked to essentially forsake income they would have otherwise gotten for a short-term benefit that has no guarantee of continuing in the future nor converting into cash if it's discontinued. It just strikes me as paternalistic (good ol' papa company is taking care of you, heh heh heh) and a little inconsiderate -- masked with some veneer that actually it's supposed to be considerate.

Totally as an aside to my points above, as a vegan whose primary hobby is cooking, I never much enjoy chef-prepared company food anyway, even when vegan options are available. I strongly prefer to cook everything I eat for myself, and so I would simply be paid less than other employees who are paid their salary and are paid via the food benefit that does work with their dietary choices.

Of course, because of the low-status nature of being vegan and the one-sidedness of job interviews (e.g. you can't raise an ethical question like this with HR thinking uh oh this guy's some kind of ethical hard ass who won't be pliable, abort, abort), I unfortunately have to stay quiet about my true feelings about this kind of thing, even though it matters to me a lot.

Tangentially: Google also hasn't upped their compensation to compensate for the quality and variety of their meals and snacks going off a cliff over the last few years. Their vegan options in particular have become abysmal. They pressure employees to work on the periphery of Mountain View where there are no other options within a reasonable distance, so if you're vegan you really need to prepare your own food at this point. The value of this benefit is approaching zero.

>I unfortunately have to stay quiet about my true feelings about this kind of thing, even though it matters to me a lot.

"That's not a perk that I value because I prefer to make my own food."

You don't have to go into detail, explain that you think it's an ethical problem, tell them you are a vegan, or anything else. Just tell them you don't value it and won't use it.

Even just what you suggest is going to raise a red flag for anyone in HR, without a doubt. A "team player" would eat the company-provided food (... or would just shut up about it ... <-- this really is how HR and managers tend to think).

They might be fine if you merely said you'll probably bring your own food due to a special diet. But any inkling that you don't personally love the fact that they provide food means you're not on board with their culture.

And, if you go any further at all and suggest that maybe they should not factor in the monetary value of the food benefit when they consider your base salary offer or something, they will have a huge problem with it.

This is sadly not hyperbole, although I'm sure it's not this bad at every company. But I can say from firsthand experience of being treated quite poorly for being a vegan (and having to sit through many lunch meetings at which I was told there would be a vegan option and then there wasn't, stomach gurgling ten PowerPoint slides in), that you can never tell, and a non-trivial number of companies will simply not like you if you ever express a preference.

I think you're assuming far too much. No one cares if you don't want to eat company-provided food. Not HR, not managers. On the off chance that you're interviewing somewhere that actually thinks poorly of you for not wanting the company food, you're probably better off not working for such a terribly dysfunctional place.

But really, I think you're far too concerned about what other people think of your eating habits. Pretty much no one cares what you (or anyone else) eats. They might find your food choices weird. Depending on your relationship, they might even tease you about it occasionally. But by and large people really do not care about other peoples' food choices.

This hasn't been my experience, but I also don't think you're seeing everything I'm trying to say.

For example, how should you handle it if the company tells you there will be vegan options at a lunch meeting and then there aren't any? You plan your lunch around that happening and it doesn't happen.

The first four or five times it happened, I was very congenial, just told one of the assistants what had happened, and suggested some menu items from the common lunch catering place that would work for me. Still nothing. One time after that they even ordered pizza for lunch ... what's a vegan to do?

Finally in my year-end review I brought it up as a really small, totally quick and "no big deal" aside that I'd really appreciate it if they ensured there were vegan choices at any company meal events, like lunches or gatherings.

My boss literally rolled his eyes at me and let out a big sigh and started writing it down on his evaluation form, like it was some big to-do that I wouldn't drop it. And after that they basically started only having low-quality salad options for vegans.

A few months later when there was a company gathering with light dinner and snack items, I actually brought my own food and when I went over to get some of the alcohol that was available and sat down with some people and started opening up the food I brought from home, they started making fun of me over it. One or two comments and I was like, OK, whatever, and shrugged it off, but they kept going and it was really upsetting. But after the big eye roll ordeal at my performance review, I didn't feel comfortable telling anyone that it upset me.

That company was a great company. Good pay, lots of vacation, good tech stack. I left there after a few years thinking I'd made a good switch and then in the first week at my new job the director of marketing wanted to take me out to a pulled pork restaurant for lunch. Here we go again. I explained that I was vegan and he seemed personally offended. Basically he decided, in front of me, that no places he would ever consider eating at would ever serve vegan choices, because vegan choices, to him, were inherently low-quality. Literally, having-meat-in-it was a mark of quality for him. So then he had to figure out where I could eat (this was a city I'd never been to before) and he drove me there to get something, then drove 20 minutes back the other way to go to the pulled pork place he wanted to go to. It was beyond insane. By the time we sat down to eat, we had very little time, and my food had gotten cold. Of course I said nothing but constant thank-yous and apologies for being such an inconvenient vegan.

I think if you're not vegan (or have some similar dietary choice that's difficult to satisfy and rarely shown respect by peers) it's just very hard to relate to how problematic this is, and how often you are put in a situation in which you're made to feel bad about it. It's not the worst kind of discrimination or anything, but it really does make you feel bad and feel like the workplace is hostile and inconsiderate towards you.

On top of all of this, the overall topic I was mentioning earlier was basically something that happens in salary negotiations and you do have to bring it up. If a company tells you to consider the financial value of their catered meal benefits, well, you've got to tell them that that doesn't work for you and give them specifics about why the catered meal service doesn't function as a benefit for you.

Since they have usually already planned how to pitch a salary offer, how to tie in the value of their fringe benefits, etc., they usually are not happy to be met with what they see as a contrarian and annoying difference. They don't want to raise someone's salary just because that person chooses not to eat the company provided food -- but I don't want to work for, say $5000 less per year than what I ought to be paid if I happen to be unable to benefit from the food offering.

There's no way around that discussion. The HR and manager types absolutely do form opinions about you when you bring this up. It absolutely does get talked about. It's not that they are personally so interested in someone's food choice. I'm sure they find the entire topic of food choices thoroughly boring. It's about the way they perceive any kind of non-conformity as a red flag that you won't sublimate away your personal needs to make their lives easier ... that you might actually require them to provide accommodations for your needs, which is a red flag to them.

> For example, how should you handle it if the company tells you there will be vegan options at a lunch meeting and then there aren't any? You plan your lunch around that happening and it doesn't happen.

Bring your own lunch. Also this whole thing is irrelevant to the original topic of how to tell a recruiter that their free lunches are not relevant to how you perceive their compensation. If telling HR that you don't want their free meals gets your offer dropped, then good, now you know you don't want to work there.

> My boss literally rolled his eyes at me and let out a big sigh and started writing it down on his evaluation form, like it was some big to-do that I wouldn't drop it. And after that they basically started only having low-quality salad options for vegans.

So your boss sucks I guess. Look for a new job. It sounds like you work in a shitty place.

> they started making fun of me over it. One or two comments and I was like, OK, whatever, and shrugged it off, but they kept going and it was really upsetting. But after the big eye roll ordeal at my performance review, I didn't feel comfortable telling anyone that it upset me.

I don't know if you're over-sensitive or if you work with assholes. I've teased co-workers about their eating habits before. Always mildly and always in jest. I've been teased about stuff as well. e.g. A loud floral shirt I wear sometimes. I fully expect to be teased later today because I dumped coffee in my lap this morning and don't have a change of clothes here. I don't consider this kind of teasing to be inappropriate or mean-spirited, but certainly teasing could become inappropriate or be mean-spirited.

> I explained that I was vegan and he seemed personally offended.

Where do you live that adult human beings care so much about your eating habits?

> Basically he decided, in front of me, that no places he would ever consider eating at would ever serve vegan choices, because vegan choices, to him, were inherently low-quality.

Eh, I am generally dismissive of vegan restaurants because my experiences with vegan foods has mostly been negative. I have no problem eating somewhere that has vegan options, though, because why would I?

> I think if you're not vegan (or have some similar dietary choice that's difficult to satisfy and rarely shown respect by peers) it's just very hard to relate to how problematic this is, and how often you are put in a situation in which you're made to feel bad about it. It's not the worst kind of discrimination or anything, but it really does make you feel bad and feel like the workplace is hostile and inconsiderate towards you.

Realistically, the workplace is probably inconsiderate toward you, because in general most people don't care about others' eating habits so they neglect to think about your special food needs. If you had Celiac disease and legitimately needed to be gluten free, the same thing would probably happen. People would forget to order gluten-free pizza or whatever. That's not hostile though, just inconsiderate and forgetful. Now, if the boss is rolling his eyes at you, that's perhaps hostile.

The best fix for you is probably to work somewhere that has more vegans. I work with a decent number of people who are vegan or vegetarian (largely for religious reasons), so managers generally think about their needs because it's not just one person.

> On top of all of this, the overall topic I was mentioning earlier was basically something that happens in salary negotiations and you do have to bring it up. If a company tells you to consider the financial value of their catered meal benefits, well, you've got to tell them that that doesn't work for you and give them specifics about why the catered meal service doesn't function as a benefit for you.

Again, no you don't have to tell them any of this. Tell them that you make your own food. If they ask why, you could go into great detail about your vegan dietary needs, or you could just tell them it's what you prefer to do and leave it at that. You are not obligated to go into any detail and if they ask again, you can say the same thing again. They'll catch on rapidly that you aren't interested in discussing it.

> They don't want to raise someone's salary just because that person chooses not to eat the company provided food -- but I don't want to work for, say $5000 less per year than what I ought to be paid if I happen to be unable to benefit from the food offering.

Well, they aren't obligated to raise your pay, either. You can tell them that you don't care about that perk and that it is not a factor for you. That doesn't mean they have any obligation to make a higher offer. Your choice to not eat the food probably doesn't save them much if anything measurable. If you want $5k more, ask for it. And sure, tell them you don't care about the lunch, because it may help frame your total comp lower in their minds, but declining the free lunches, or declining to use a paid gym membership, or whatever else, does not obligate them to raise the offer.

Also, I cannot imagine that anyone would consider free lunch to be worth $5k/year. That's $14.50/day. Catered/cafeteria food absolutely does not cost that much per person.

> There's no way around that discussion.

Yes there is. Just don't talk to them about it. Tell them you don't care about free lunch. Or don't tell them about your thoughts on free lunch. Either way, don't get into some weird conversation about your personal eating choices. You don't have to do that.

> The HR and manager types

Whenever I see someone say something like this it makes me want to be dismissive of everything else they say. "Management and HR types" are just people. They don't have some dehumanizing agenda.

> It's about the way they perceive any kind of non-conformity as a red flag that you won't sublimate away your personal needs to make their lives easier ... that you might actually require them to provide accommodations for your needs, which is a red flag to them.

Then you are apparently interviewing exclusively at terrible places. Are you a software engineer? If so you can and should look elsewhere.

It's unfortunate to see that you rage-replied item by item, not bothering to read the overall context before firing off irrelevant commentary that was addressed later.

Manager types definitely do systematically have a dehumanizing agenda, as was well-researched in e.g. Moral Mazes, among other places.

I read your post before I responded. Most of the stuff is completely irrelevant to the original topic and you're creating a problem with salary negotiation that does not exist. You do not have to have deep conversations about your eating habits as part of a salary negotiation. And you should not. If you delve into some deep discussion about your vegan beliefs every time someone asks why you don't want a free ham sandwich, you are creating weird social tension. For bringing your own lunch to meetings when they keep forgetting vegan options, that's still my advice. You're an adult. You can bring your lunch. You can also handle it if someone asks why you don't eat the provided food. You're an adult.

"Manager types" are just people. They are generally people who were doing your job a few years ago. You don't help yourself by pretending that your managers are amoral and unsympathetic. But frankly, if you want to imagine that as reality, then do so, and you know exactly how to handle it: take care of yourself and stop expecting your manager to.

You continue saying a lot of stuff that's just not relevant. No one's talking about diving into deep conversations about eating habits in salary discussions. I'm saying bringing up eating habits at all -- even just the slightest bit -- to say that the suggested benefits-based compensation they are offering is not actually something you are able to extract value from -- merely that causes lots of problems with lots of HR/recruiting/hiring folks.

And when companies tell you they will accommodate your diet -- and you make plans based on that promise -- then when they fail to keep up their end of the bargain, you do need to talk to them about it, and it usually does bother them that you won't just be quiet and accept worse treatment, much the same way it bothers them if you won't just let someone else's questionable jokes slide and you instead feel it's proper to raise a formal complaint or something.

> "Manager types" are just people. They are generally people who were doing your job a few years ago. You don't help yourself by pretending that your managers are amoral and unsympathetic. But frankly, if you want to imagine that as reality, then do so, and you know exactly how to handle it: take care of yourself and stop expecting your manager to.

This again is such a bizarre kind of reply and just doesn't seem connected to what I'm saying. It's not really true that most managers were doing the same job as me a few years ago. I've never been managed by a person who was ever a software engineer. I've only been managed by people who started out doing other things and eventually came to managing software engineers through other routes.

There's also zero pretending going on. Moral Mazes is a sociological research book based on years of collected data. These are not my opinions. It's simply an established fact about the way status hierarchies work within bureaucracy. There's no disagreeing with it. Whether "manager types" are 'good people' outside of work is just not relevant. What's relevant is the way they perform the social construction of value within the context of management hierarchy -- and this has been well-studied and it's well understood that this does lead to dehumanizing behavior, even from well-meaning people. Management and HR exist to protect the company, even if it means acting in dehumanizing ways to subordinates (and it often does).

The only pretending I'm seeing is that you're pretending your responses are somehow connected to what I'm saying.

> I'm saying bringing up eating habits at all -- even just the slightest bit -- to say that the suggested benefits-based compensation they are offering is not actually something you are able to extract value from -- merely that causes lots of problems with lots of HR/recruiting/hiring folks.

I'm saying you are wrong. The reality is that recruiters and HR do not care about you. They don't care if you eat the free lunch. They don't care if you're a "team player". They don't really care if you're qualified except to the extent that it will reflect on them. They're just doing their jobs. The idea that most recruiters will be offended because you don't want the free lunch is kind of ridiculous given that the recruiter will never see you again after you sign the offer letter. To the extent that a recruiter asks why you don't want the free lunch, it's either personal curiosity or more likely an attempt to find a way to make you consider it a valuable perk.

If you're being argumentative and demanding an extra $5k/year because you aren't going to eat the free lunch, I'm pretty sure you're the one causing the problems. If you want a higher salary, tell them you want a higher salary. If you don't care about the free lunch, tell them so, so that they stop trying to pitch it as a valuable perk. But don't argue that you deserve a higher salary specifically because you aren't going to eat the lunch.

> And when companies tell you they will accommodate your diet -- and you make plans based on that promise -- then when they fail to keep up their end of the bargain, you do need to talk to them about it, and it usually does bother them that you won't just be quiet and accept worse treatment, much the same way it bothers them if you won't just let someone else's questionable jokes slide and you instead feel it's proper to raise a formal complaint or something.

You need to decide what you care about. Do you want the company to accommodate your diet or not? If you don't want them to, then stop asking them to, and don't make plans assuming that they will. You don't "need to talk to them about it" if it's something you don't actually care about. And if you really do care, then you should be prepared that it will likely make your manager uncomfortable because you're delivering criticism and while people should welcome constructive criticism, a lot of them are really bad at accepting it.

I don't know what kind of "questionable jokes" you're referring to here. Joking needs to be pretty inappropriate before a formal complaint is justified. Not, "I'm slightly uncomfortable and annoyed", but "This is sexually inappropriate or truly harassing".

> This again is such a bizarre kind of reply and just doesn't seem connected to what I'm saying.

It is a direct reply to your repeated comments about "manager types". I really don't think it was hard to connect "'Manager types' are just people." to "Manager types definitely do systematically have a dehumanizing agenda".

> It's not really true that most managers were doing the same job as me a few years ago. I've never been managed by a person who was ever a software engineer. I've only been managed by people who started out doing other things and eventually came to managing software engineers through other routes.

So you have only worked places where the first-level managers had no engineering knowledge. Bleh. If you're working at small companies with no more than, say, 5 software engineers, I could see how this might make sense, though I can't personally imagine being happy in a job like that. If you're working at medium or large companies that have a significant number of software engineers and they are not putting engineers in as at least first-level managers, then it's almost certainly managed poorly. I would expect software engineers to be managed by people who understand engineering, just as I'd expect nurses to be managed by people who understand healthcare, or lawyers to be managed by people who understand law.

Regardless, your idea that "manager types" are a thing just hurts you. You're creating this false split between managers and non-managers. You would be better off learning to empathize with your manager rather than assuming your manager is by definition a sociopath. Most people don't start their careers as managers, and there's no magical "amoral, dehumanizing" switch that turns on when someone adds "manager" to your title.

> There's also zero pretending going on. Moral Mazes is a sociological research book based on years of collected data. These are not my opinions. It's simply an established fact about the way status hierarchies work within bureaucracy. There's no disagreeing with it. Whether "manager types" are 'good people' outside of work is just not relevant. What's relevant is the way they perform the social construction of value within the context of management hierarchy -- and this has been well-studied and it's well understood that this does lead to dehumanizing behavior, even from well-meaning people. Management and HR exist to protect the company, even if it means acting in dehumanizing ways to subordinates (and it often does).

Somehow you've made the leap from bureaucrats being bureaucratic and managers acting to protect the company to managers considering it a problem that you don't want to eat a free lunch. How do you not see that this is nonsense?

Yes, managers protect the company. Yes, sometimes bureaucracies create actions that do not appear logical. Yes, managers may sometimes engage in behavior that their subordinates don't like. No, this doesn't mean that every manager will consider it a problem if you're a vegan. Most will not care, for the same reason they won't care if you drive a Honda or if you like to wear Gingham shirts.

> The only pretending I'm seeing is that you're pretending your responses are somehow connected to what I'm saying.

Yawn.

Yawn indeed.

I read through this and you sound like a really high maintenance employee. Sorry Im on your side and sympathize with people having different dietary needs or choices but you are making far too big of a deal about food.

The way it plays out with dietary issues is just one topic. I happen to be sensitive about it because I've experienced several companies treat me (and other non-meat-eating employees) pretty inconsiderately over it, and fail to address the problems at all even when asked politely.

But in a bigger sense the problem is that anytime an employee sticks up for herself or himself because they feel the company is treating them badly, they are labeled "high maintenance" as you say, or "not a team player", or in the most egregious cases, the mythical "toxic employee" -- all just code words for "why won't this person just be quiet and accept the shitty treatment like everyone else does?"

It's not high maintenance at all to stick up for yourself and be pedantic about things that really affect you and matter to you. But we're so conditioned that we have to be good little workers, displaying fealty to paternalistic companies, to whom we should be soo grateful to be so lucky as to be employed at all, that anytime someone talks plainly about the dehumanizing way the HR and managerial apparatuses are designed and made to interface with employees, then that person is treated like some kind of conspiracy theory wacko who can't just lighten up and deal with the company's bad behavior like everyone else.

If a company factors the value of a food benefit into your dollar value of total compensation (and they absolutely do and will often try to tell you that directly in negotiations when talking about salary), then you absolutely should counter them if you have a dietary preference that changes the picture.

There is nothing "high maintenance" about that whatsoever. It's simply called sticking up for yourself so you're paid fairly.

But here we are, having to argue even about whether an employee can raise the issue that that kind of benefit fails to count as actual compensation without thereby being a nutcase who is high maintenance.

This, by the way, is exactly the "red flag" kind of thing I mentioned, that the other commenter went on and on about how people won't care enough to actually think or act on it. But I mean if even just another casual observer on an HN thread is conditioned to think it's "high maintenance" then how much more will HR think so? Of course HR will think so.

Which brings me full circle back to my original comment, which is that I don't bring this stuff up in interviews even though I believe, ethically, I absolutely should -- because I try to conform and look like the no-weird-stuff "team player" just like everyone else.

> about your special food needs

special food choice. This is a choice not a need.

It is an ethical conviction for me, based on animal rights. I do not consider it a "choice" any more than a religion is a choice. In a sense they both are, but when making the choice you absolutely do have a reasonable expectation that others will reasonably accommodate it. Though they do not literally have to, as they do with some aspects of religion, it's still a significant moral failing of the company if they don't automatically do it.

You should probably add that the company cannot let you opt-out of getting free food in exchange for more salary. Free food, in order for it to be tax exempt as a fringe benefit, must be offered to all employees. I agree, I'd rather be paid more money. All these goodies serve to make comparisons between employers more difficult.

Greeting from Rochester! I equally enjoy living like a king with the cost of living in Western,NY Looking at your CV, we may have partied at some point, I went to RIT and dated a Geneseo girl around your timeframe :)

Just to add another link to the pile, the most useful database I've found of base salaries for comparison is the publicly available H1B data. You should account for the costs to the company of sponsorship in addition to the base.

The data is available down to the company and title: http://www.h1bdata.info/

That's a good source, but last time that link was posted on HN, someone pointed out that there's a downward bias in that data, because on top of the costs of sponsorship, companies may still end up paying the employee more than what they state in the initial application.

Yes - they also miss bonuses, equity, and "I think we can pay less to get someone from overseas".

Seems low? Seems ridiculously high and I'm in Denmark, a country with extremely high salaries.

I make almost half of what Stack Overflow would pay, that seems wrong. It wouldn't make sense that Stack Overflow could move the developers to a more expensive country and pay less.

Depends on who you see as their competition. If their competition consists of 'average' tech companies, their salaries are probably fine. If their competition is Google, Facebook, et al. then yeah they're probably low. A new grad at Google can make 160-170k USD between salary+bonus+stock.

Stack Overflow employee here. This is just my view, but: I wouldn't want to work for Google r Facebook over Stack Overflow. Happiness is part of the compensation and is has real value in choosing where to work.

Would I make more dollars working for Google? Sure. But I couldn't work remote. And I can't make an impact like I can here. Right now I can rapidly push out changes to help millions of people and interact with them directly, every day. That's a really rare thing and something that you just can't do or do on the same level once you're part of a much more massive machine.

Does Google make an impact? Of course, you'd be crazy to argue they don't make a massive one. But I'd argue employees 1-50 were able to do a lot more to change the world with their hours in a week than employees 60,000-60,050 are able to. I want to improve people's lives, every day. I just can't do that or be as close to the result if I did it working somewhere like Google or Microsoft. There's value in these things, to me.

I make almost half of what Stack Overflow would pay, that seems wrong.

It probably is wrong (1). This website in my experience gives a good estimation of how much you should earn:

https://www.jobindex.dk/tjek-din-loen

Just do not put "Software developer", use "Softwareudvikler" :). I am personally quite happy with my compensation, it is a bit higher than what Stack Overflow could offer.

(1) Depending on your education, experience ...

in addition to that, I think it should be pointed out that self-reported salaries on anonymous internet forums are highly susceptible to ego-driven inflation.

I mean, it should be obvious, but people just lie all the time. even if they don't even make that salary they still want to say that they do because they have some notion that it will boost their status or something.

I can say as a hiring manager, engineer, and friend of recruiters -- these salaries are a little low compared to top tier tech companies at every level, at least for developers. By top tier here I mean Google, Facebook, etc.

They're not horribly low, and they're probably in range for 2nd-tier companies that you'd recognize but that I don't want to name because I don't have recent salary data for them.

Honestly I think they're fair, although I personally would end up having to ask what counts as living in SF, because if you tell me I don't live in SF because I'm 20 minutes outside the city, I would agree until I found out it lowered my salary by 15% (or w/e the percentage is). :)

I believe you 100%. You're comparing top tier companies to 2nd tier companies though. Stack Overflow is a second tier company. I mean that in terms of size and wealth level, not in terms of quality, obviously.

Google et al pays WAY above market compared to smaller tech companies. whenever these threads come up there's a lot of cognitive dissonance that goes on. a lot of Googlers or Facebookers will come in and say "WTF this is waaaaay too low" and they don't even realize how inflated their own salaries are compared to most of the rest of the world. they should be thankful for the largesse of their employer and get some perspective.

Its not that they don't realize. It is that they don't want to accept they would be paid less at some other companies.

Your URLs 1 and 2 seem broken. This a bug somewhere? Could you repost them please? Also on 3 and 4 the mean wage for Software Developer, Applications and Systems seem quite a bit higher than the other category you've highlighted (though Web dev is not so much).

On another note, I'm going to make myself sick reading about this stuff. I find that the reality is a bit of info is helpful for guidance, and too much is like tabloid journalism or sickly sweet candy.

Oops! You're right:

1: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-en...

2: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa...

As someone in recruiting and hiring, I love the concept of salary transparency on many levels, and I hope more companies at least make attempts like this to provide insight.

That said, salary ranges and transparency can create two obvious issues.

1. Negotiations - I can tell you from vast past experience that when you tell an applicant "the salary range for this position is 80-100K", in almost every case any offer below 100K is considered a slight regardless of the experience of the candidate. "...but I thought you said the position paid 100K?" is a common thing to hear. Candidates hear the top of the range, and apply/interview with that expectation.

This is only an issue when a candidate's true market rate is at the bottom of a range. A minimally qualified candidate doesn't typically see himself/herself as 'minimally qualified'. So even if 80K is true fair market rate for this candidate, and 80K is offered, the offer still has a good chance of being rejected simply because of the emotional attachment to the higher number and the feeling of "leaving money on the table".

2. Internal employees - Stack Overflow said this has been available internally for a bit, but when employees find out what others are making they are inclined to compare their own efforts/abilities vs others. It can lead to people either asking for raises to match their co-workers, or perhaps feeling slighted and seeking other employers.

Being that it's not easy to truly measure productivity in most environments - other than perhaps consulting (billable hours) this is likely to cause issues. The next step is being prepared for how to handle those issues when they arise.

Stack Overflow employee here, here's some answers (or at least, my take).

Regarding point 1, remember that there are no salary negotiations at Stack Overflow. No one gets a raise because they ask. People get raises because they demonstrate skills, increase experience, etc... A candidate will have an initial skill evaluation they might not like, but they are pretty much guaranteed to have a much better one after one year, and if it is a big positive correction, then be it! There are no negative corrections btw - previous years salaries are at least maintained.

Secondly, I sincerely doubt we'd make an offer to a candidate that assumes their skills are all at the top of the range. "Fives" are extraordinarily rare, most employees have no fives, and the ones that do have one five.

Regarding point 2, as an employee I am not concerned with the salary of others per se. I know that they have the salary which corresponds to their perceived skills. It's likely that I would object to some evaluations of skills if I saw them, but that's an order of magnitude healthier than having salary envy. In fact, keeping evaluations fair and in check is a very good thing for the company.

> Secondly, I sincerely doubt we'd make an offer to a candidate that assumes their skills are all at the top of the range. "Fives" are extraordinarily rare, most employees have no fives, and the ones that do have one five.

I don't understand the rationality behind this. Why have (nearly) impossible to reach ratings? I mean, by this logic, the most talented people will only ever be a 4, yes? So make 4 the limit. You just came off of saying you'd never make an offer to an 80K candidate who thinks they're worth 100K[0]. Yet, you're telling your very best that they'll never be _the_ very best because basically nobody is a "five".

[0] It's what you were basically responding to.

Edit: for clarification.

I also work at Stack Overflow.

I don't think anyone can be _the_ very best and I think that's not a reasonable or attainable goal.

We value T shaped developers, and our salary matrix values both spreading breadth (e.g. as a mobile dev if I up my skills in sysadmin or data science) or depth (which is a bit harder to do if you're already experienced) which fits into that nicely.

I don't know how to _not_ come off sounding argumentative here, so don't take this harshly, but:

> I don't think anyone can be _the_ very best and I think that's not a reasonable or attainable goal.

... kinda proves my point of not needing a "five" rating.

But then 4 is the best, and you can't be the best, so now you only need 3, but then 3 is the best...

The problem w/ ranking people (in general) is that it embodies this idea of "the best". At SO, it appears this ranking system is internalized by the employees who are consistently ranked below "the best" (5). So why bother trying to be "the best", when it's made to seem so impossible by the ranking system? Ranking is demoralizing.

But if someone happens to be the best and being the best is valuable then why not reward them?

> So make 4 the limit

You are confusing 2 things. The salary is (effectively) determined by the average skill rating of a person. The single skills can and do go up to AAA+++, and this raises the average and thus the salary.

While having an average of 5 is very difficult, having a super high maximum is actually meaningful. Some people are special in some area and we recognize that.

EDIT: clarified terms (see https://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/skills/web-develope... for the formulas)

Thanks for sharing, and I hope employees keep us updated on this experiment (because transparency).

My reference to negotiations was mostly for a negotiation upon hire. A job is advertised at a certain range, and the applicant expects the top of that range. I know that Stack Overflow's process might be a bit more evolved, but most companies that advertise a range probably leave a little wiggle room at the top and don't expect to be negotiating with candidates asking the minimum.

>Secondly, I sincerely doubt we'd make an offer to a candidate that assumes their skills are all at the top of the range.

This comes across more like assessing candidates for hire based on ego or confidence rather than actual skills. Of course, companies don't want to hire people with inflated beliefs about their own abilities - those who "don't know what they don't know".

If you would object to the skills evaluations, and if we assume some of those people are earning more than you, how is that different than "salary envy"? I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just not sure I understand the thought process.

> This comes across more like assessing candidates for hire based on ego or confidence rather than actual skills.

Our hire/no-hire policy is only based on competence, however true competence includes the capacity for realistic self-assessment. Keep in mind that our skill scale, especially for core skills, goes from "I could be better" to "I am world famous for this skill", so it's fairly easy to prove or disprove whether someone is at the top of the ladder.

> If you would object to the skills evaluations, and if we assume some of those people are earning more than you, how is that different than "salary envy"?

Big caveat: this works for us, but of course each company is different.

Our skills are based on measurable stuff and generally do not represent a "career achievement". An employee can't say "I'm better than Marco, so I should be paid more". An employee might say "This year I've done better than Marco at SQL, but Marco has a better score in it, can you review mine?". In most cases, we simply look at the evidence: has the employee actually been better than Marco in the last year in doing SQL?

Also keep in mind that there's a huge gap between categories. We've four, B, A, A+, A+++. They start at "B" which means that someone did not do much on that skill in the past year. For example, I've got a B in sysadmin stuff which I never need to do. In order to get an "A" one needs to be completely proficient in the skill, no obvious gaps, so for example I've (IIRC) an A in SQL, which means I can do SQL as well as anyone else in the team. In order to be "A+" one needs to be really good at the skill, someone that is recognized in the team for it, if I were to get it for SQL I'd need to go above and beyond the average. Patrol SQL for misbehaving query plans. Perform DBA tasks. Et cetera. An A+++ means that one is actually famous for the skill, for example a Microsoft MVP, or a famous blogger, etc. A guru level of skill is needed in SQL. Probably something which would take me 10 years to achieve.

Don't people find it very demotivating to look at their work and go "yeah, I think I did pretty good" then look at some scale and go "huh. 0-1 across the board."

"2. Internal employees - Stack Overflow said this has been available internally for a bit, but when employees find out what others are making they are inclined to compare their own efforts/abilities vs others. It can lead to people either asking for raises to match their co-workers, or perhaps feeling slighted and seeking other employers."

One nice thing about being transparent and consistent with salaries is that you can have an objective conversation with someone about the reasons that they're making less, versus having to rely on vague, irrelevant, or harmful explanations like "he was making more at another company," or "he negotiated harder." If someone thinks they should be making what another developer is being paid, they need to make the case based on clearly laid out criteria.

There's no compensation system that makes everyone happy, and there shouldn't be. You want a system that leaves people knowing where they stand, what it takes for them to make more, and management that encourages them to grow into that amount.

>One nice thing about being transparent and consistent with salaries is that you can have an objective conversation with someone about the reasons that they're making less, versus having to rely on vague, irrelevant, or harmful explanations...

Those objective conversations are a great benefit to salary transparency in theory, and I can't imagine you can open up your numbers without being at least somewhat prepared for those conversations to take place. I would be curious if companies that provide salary transparency wouldn't be scurrying to make some salary adjustments in the days before the data becomes public.

The issue lies in the fact that developer contribution is more than just commits and LOC stats, and it's tough to measure objectively. You're likely to get into some rather vague explanations, even if they aren't as nefarious as negotiating ability or salary history.

It's a step in the right direction, though until we have clear and widely accepted methods of measuring contribution we'll still have disagreements on individual employee value.

it sounds a bit too idealistic. How about if someone is hired at a hire rate because "well we needed someone with his skill set ASAP, so we agreed to pay him a premium" (but we can't afford to pay everyone at that rate) or "We desperately needed someone quickly with skill set X and he was the only person available"

And sometimes comparing people and their skill sets is really apples to oranges. If one guy is an expert on some very specific top, and thats important for your business (and is therefore an expensive hire) - it doesn't mean you should create an incentive for other employees to learn his skill set (maybe you only need one statistician or expert in COBOL or whatever)

"There's no compensation system that makes everyone happy"

Sure, pay people way above market rate and don't allow them to compare wages. They will not feel ripped off and they don't develop a sense on inadequacy

> Sure, pay people way above market rate and don't allow them to compare wages

That sounds illegal. Can you really not allow your employees to compare wages?

In the US at least (I can't speak for elsewhere), preventing this is illegal. Companies discourage it through various ways and it's practically an embedded culture thing at this point throughout the country. But: you cannot legally prevent it.

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 is what you're looking for here - it provides employee protections for such discussions.

Yeah, it's interesting. They can't prevent it, but if you do it, you can guarantee you'll be fired. They'll just eliminate your position for some other reason.

You don't want to work for a company that operates that way anyway, if you can avoid it.

No, you cannot.

I don't know about the comparing bit, but paying way above market rate doesn't even seem to work. I read some Netflix reviews on Glassdoor, saying that people increase their standard of living to their high income and become dependent on it. The anxiety and stress this causes has a negative impact on the culture. Totally ridiculous that people screw themselves over like this, IMHO. :-(

Money doesn't buy you happiness, but at some point you prolly stop blaming it on your employer haha

What sucks about this is that the people who can't handle the high salary ruin it for everyone.

"He's more skilled than you" sounds far more toxic than either of those "bad" reasons you gave as examples.

> 2. Internal employees - Stack Overflow said this has been available internally for a bit, but when employees find out what others are making they are inclined to compare their own efforts/abilities vs others. It can lead to people either asking for raises to match their co-workers, or perhaps feeling slighted and seeking other employers.

Why is this wrong? The labor market should strive to be efficient, no?

I didn't say it was "wrong" - it could be a good thing for the labor market, as you say. I said it may cause some issues for the employer.

Some of those issues will be related to things like confidence, willingness to speak out, and the ability to honestly recognize your ability.

When asked in this context (as it relates to pay), most people may think they are at least above average. Obviously that can't be true. It's not easy to determine contributions in most cases, so value (and relative worth) can be ambiguous.

Lack of confidence and willingness to speak out are usually used by the employer to get more out of their employees, even if it's slightly worse for the employer it seems like straightforwardly positive for society.

As for people being unable to judge and compare the price value of their contribution, because of the lack of public salary data, they've had no practice at the exercise. After a short adjustment period I'm sure people would develop the tools and attitudes to navigate a marketplace where they have way more information available.

I agree there are lots of positives. But with increased transparency, what we won't likely see is someone saying "Joe is a better employee than me and I unfairly make more than him. Please reduce my salary." The adjustment requests are only going to go in one direction, and be requested by those who feel (wrongly or not) that they are contributing more than others.

I wasn't referring to the inability to compare price value of contribution as related to public salary data, but rather for internal comparisons. Not market rate across the entire market, but value compared directly with a co-worker. These should be related, but transparency within one organization is easier to assess.

If we have two programmers working on the same code base building the same product, how easy or difficult is it to determine who is contributing more and therefore worth more to the company? There are several factors at play, not to mention intangibles (catalysts, morale, leadership), and it's incredibly complex to say EMPLOYEE1 is 'more valuable' than EMPLOYEE2.

This is all a red-herring. The real value people need to be able to compare is not co-worker vs. co-worker, but worker vs. manager.

And then, requests for reducing salary will be weighed against the sacrifices the superiors are making, not about whether the kid brought in to fix the issue is getting paid more or less.

I don't mean this to sound like a negative argument against your points, but here's a positive spin on both of them:

1. This generally means it's easy to filter out candidates who aren't a fit for your organization. In my experience, most employers would love to have employees where the salary is not the first (or even top 3) factors in their decision to take a job. (Rare, I know.)

2a. That seems like a good tail into #1. The employees who aren't in it for the team/company/career filter themselves out. 2b. Or, it's used as a comparison for employees to better themselves. "I want Job xyz because I can make an additional $20k/year. How do I improve myself to get it?"

Companies that filter out candidates that prioritize money as a high criteria are potentially doing themselves a disservice by not hiring on ability. An excellent coder who wants to maximize their compensation shouldn't be penalized for that.

If "fit" for an organization means not caring (as much) about money, that almost always indicates the organization is paying below market rate. I have clients that pay below market rate, and candidates who value money above other things will filter themselves out when they discover the ranges being paid.

Not sure I follow the second point. My example would be if Jane sees herself as a top contributor and earns 100K and she learns that Joe (who she feels is not a top contributor) earns 120K, Jane won't be happy. I don't think Jane will think "what can I do to earn what Joe does?", because she already feels she's doing more than Joe.

I might have misunderstood your point, but wanted to clarify my post.

I don't disagree with how things are most of the time, though I personally disagree with it in terms of how I try to operate.

Regarding the second point, I guess my point was: if the argument is that employees “value” is shown by salary and Jane is unhappy based on her perception of contribution, isn’t that a fault with management for not recognizing that and fixing accordingly?

>if the argument is that employees “value” is shown by salary and Jane is unhappy based on her perception of contribution, isn’t that a fault with management for not recognizing that and fixing accordingly?

I think we're assuming Jane to be a rational actor with perfect information. Jane makes less than Joe and feels she does more than Joe. Management feels Joe does more. Theoretically, management can tell Jane that Joe is paid more because his contribution is valued more, but Jane's unhappiness only exists because she disagrees with this valuation.

Either Jane convinces management that her self-evaluation is accurate, management convinces Jane she is being paid what she's worth, or Jane updates her resume.

I find it funny (and condescending) that employees are supposed to make money just a secondary factor where at the same time companies preach that it's all about the bottom line and nothing else counts.

On a practical note: I definitely perform better if I know that I am paid well. Money is the ultimate indicator of respect.

If you work for a company that preaches it's all about the bottom line and nothing else counts then I'd suggest you work for a shitty company. I would and have left companies with that attitude. For several reasons but a big one is that it's simply short sighted and ineffective. It leads to thinking like let's out source all our devs because it will save us short term money and the proves the fact that companies don't value employees as contributors but view them as cogs to output shitty products. If you are a talented engineer you don't have to put up with that.

There's more shitty companies than unicorn companies out there, by a landslide.

Sure but those aren't your only two choices.

I don't know what employers you interact with that believe a prospective employee should take a sub-market pay in exchange for the privilege to work at their company, but it's terrible.

There have been many good articles on HN about salary negotiation, setting freelance rate, and seeing through the "one day you'll be a billionaire because of these options if you work for almost-free" and the kind of nonsense your touting does nothing but set the conversation back.

There are more than a few cases where working for below market rate can be something other than "terrible" on the part of the employer.

Non-profits are the obvious example where the business typically just can't afford to pay market, but employees accept sub-market pay because they place value on the opportunity to (hopefully) help others.

Companies that offer extraordinary benefits to the employee that may or may not have direct cash value and are often not included when applicants consider "total compensation". Training and learning opportunities are an example of this. Short term loss as investment towards long term gain.

I didn't say anything about options. I also didn't say anything about taking sub-market pay in exchange for a privilege.

I said that most employers would love to have employees where the salary is not the first (or even top 3) factors in their decision to take a job.

In other words, employees who actually want to be there are far more valuable than those just looking for a high paycheck.

> I said that most employers would love to have employees where the salary is not the first (or even top 3) factors in their decision to take a job.

Sure, and most employees would love to have an employer who isn't trying to pay them the minimum possible. The idea that it's a bad sign for employees to try to maximize their salaries while it's okay for employers to try to minimize them is an absurd double-standard.

I think the only reason employers value employees who do not value salary is because they are cheaper.

> I said that most employers would love to have employees where the salary is not the first (or even top 3) factors in their decision to take a job.

In any publicly traded company, this is an unacceptable viewpoint.

How is it in any way reasonable for an employer (who has a fiduciary responsibility to return maximum value for its shareholders) to take this stance and then admonish their at-will employees for it?

A couple of things that stood out.

1) I'd imagine stock options are part of the job, but I don't see that anywhere. Do new employee's get stock options? I'm guessing they keep this hidden as it allows them a bit more flexibility on offering signing bonuses to entice employee's they want to hire?

2) I don't see any section for bonus on the calculator. Do stackoverflow employee's not get bonuses?

3) Why are years of experience factored in at all? Shouldn't ability matter more? I mean you seem to get a different salary if you have 15 vs 16 years of experience. This just seems very arbitrary. Wouldn't a more granular bucket be better?

As to transparent salaries...

I've worked at two firms for the past 10 years and both have complete salary transparency. The sky hasn't fallen, and I don't hear very much complaining, though there still is some complaining, the upside of the complaining is that its over actual salary numbers rather than guessing numbers.

We allow people to pick from a couple of buckets of salary and bonus multipliers. You can chose a lower salary and get a bigger bump on your bonus vs a large salary and a lower multiplier on your bonus. This lets risk adverse people get more upfront and leave a bit of the upside on the table and people with a higher risk tolerance to bet on themselves a bit more.

Has anyone actually gone with salary transparency and seen a downside?

My company has transparent salaries since the beginning 14 years ago.

Funnily, in the words of one of the co-founders, it's more a mere accident than a clear will from the beginning : "we did not really plan it that way, but back then, it was easier to let the document listing the salaries open for everyone than restricting its access to a few persons" and they decided to keep it that way ever since :) We always ask a new recruit which salary he/she wants publicly (by that I mean in front of a not insignificant part of the company, we are 50) and show them salaries of other people in case it does not really fit.

We are also experimenting with allowing people to choose their salary after 3 years in the company (there's a process and some caveats of course).

And we did not really see any downside so far

>We always ask a new recruit which salary he/she wants publicly (by that I mean in front of a not insignificant part of the company, we are 50) and show them salaries of other people in case it does not really fit

This smells the subtle management trick. As far as I can see you create a peer pressure. These people shouldn't come into play in the salary discussion, the salary discussion should be solely based on : what do I deserve to earn based on what I will bring to the company. Putting these people in the room - even if they don't speak - is a very sophisticated mecanism subtly repositioning the whole thing.

I would personally smell it and would filter myself out as I dislike companies using subtle management tactics very much. And I think many other people would.

Just by seeing this, I can also derive that this company is full of politics and change happens slowly there.

You can smell whatever you want, but that's not at all what is happening.

Is there politics within the company ? Yes, of course, like in any assembly of human beings.

This is not a management trick at all. Not everybody does have the same salary, some are better than others at negociating. But if there is a too big difference of people with the same level, then that is what creates problem.

By the way, it happened more than one time that we told a candidate he should up his salary, because it was too low compared to what we are paying similar employees. So, it goes both ways. And that's exactly about "what someone deserved to earn based on what he brings".

People are not "put into the room". Simply, the final step of a recruitment is an oral presentation on the topic of the choice of the candidate. Anybody can join. And whoever is in the room has a right to say something while the candidate is here, and once he's gone and we decide if he's hired or not.

This is a ritual of the company, everybody had to go through this (except trainees who were later hired).

Truly an interesting approach, thanks for sharing. I think the "choose your own salary" in particular is fascinating because with the right culture and the right people, in theory it works exactly as you would hope -- those that are highly driven and want to work epically hard will set their salary and their expectations accordingly. Someone who is looking for more work-life balance might set the bar somewhat lower. As long as there's a feedback cycle which takes salary level as an significant input, it might actually work for a small company. Yadda yadda, plus or minus the Dunning–Kruger effect.

> We are also experimenting with allowing people to choose their salary after 3 years in the company (there's a process and some caveats of course).

Why wouldn't everyone ask for the maximum amount your company is willing to give? I don't really care if Mark from billing is getting paid 1/3rd of what I'm asking for, what I care about is if you'll give it to me...

Well, I can't answer this question for 2 reasons : 1. This is the first year this has been done (well, apparently, it was like that also in the past when there were only 6/7 people but that's a different dynamic I guess). 2. I will myself be part of this process only from next January on, so I was not in the room so to say.

Everyone is free to ask what they want. They are assessed by the others though. The process is the following (again, I'm not part of it yet, so it's only what I remember being told) : - You give your number in front of everybody else (here it means people in the "choose your salary category"). - People can make remarks directly or later if they choose to do so - 1 week later, people meet again, and give a possibly updated number based on the feedback they got. They can also justify this number (be it because it's too "low" or it's too "high". For instance, you have the right to say "I had a hard year last year, I prefer to take it a bit more easy this year, therefore I put a lower number").

If there is a very big mismatch, then it can be decided there is no agreement and we should probably stop working together. Anyway, with a "normal" system, an employee would not have had the salary he/she asked for and would probably have looked elsewhere for a new job. Here at least it's pretty clear. It can also be decided that the salary is granted but he/she has a year to prove he/she's worth it.

The goal is to have transparency, so all those decisions are clear from the beginning and throughout the process. Otherwise, it's useless.

Hey I know who is coming in Saturday to fix the prod bug, the guy that picked 500k salary ;)

Although maybe for some people they would want the extra work for extra money and it could be a win win.

Uh, hell yes I'd come in on Saturday to fix that bug if you pay me 500k.

How about current salary plus 10k? 20k? Everyone has a price :)

> Why wouldn't everyone ask for the maximum amount your company is willing to give?

Is there really a problem with that? Shouldn't everybody be getting this already?

I bet the GP's company can retain good people, and can afford to train them, so they can retain even better people.

> always ask a new recruit which salary he/she wants publicly (by that I mean in front of a not insignificant part of the company, we are 50) and show them salaries of other people in case it does not really fit.

That sounds absolutely awful.

I saw a documentary a few years ago about Pimlico Plumbers, a large plumbing firm near where I live in London, who went transparent and revealed all the employees' salaries to their colleagues. It was interesting because salary transparency was not part of the company culture all along; it was an experiment in changing the status quo of an already-large workforce.

It did not go entirely smoothly: there was significant anger and resentment in the workforce at first, but eventually things smoothed over and (as I recall) everyone ended up more-or-less happy.

I dug out a review of the doc, if you're interested: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9393303/Show-M...

You should never calculate stock options, or bonuses into your base salary, ever. I don't care what anyone says. Bonuses, and stocks are exactly that. Bonuses and stocks. They are great when they are way up, and shitty when they are way down. For the first time in fifteen years, I didn't get a bonus, and the stock price is way down. Never, ever, let someone hiring you convince you otherwise. They tried this when I got hired, and I held out, until my base pay was something reasonable.

I would agree about stock options. They're so risky as to generally be almost worthless.

I don't agree about bonuses. Bonuses aren't guaranteed, but at well-established companies with healthy rewards cultures, there will be a target amount you can expect if you do your job. You should still discount bonus somewhat when comparing offers, but I would not discount it to zero.

It's not always dependent on your job. We work our ass off, travel around the world maintaining systems. However the company on a whole is hurting, because the oil and gas industry is hurting. I have nothing to do with that. Is that fair? Absolutely not. But it's not based on individual performance.

Bonuses cut because the company is suffering is always a possibility. But then so are layoffs and salary cuts. I would not discount bonuses entirely just because they are not 100% guaranteed.

I disagree. While it might be difficult to calculate the value of stock options and bonuses, they are part of your compensation for working at the company. If the company gives you a car for free use, it's also a compensation. At least the tax office in the country I live taxes the car as a part of an income.

Well I don't agree with you. A car is a bit different story, since it has an immediate impact on your compensation. You no longer are paying for a car/gas the entire time you're employed. Granted, that could also disappear one day. Stocks and bonuses need to vest, and there is no guarantee they will ever show up.

What is your bonus going to be next year? How much are you going to spend operating a car next year?

On 3: I suspect that it's hard to get too precise on the A+++ to B grading scale. It's an imperfect measure and there's already plenty of disagreement between 4, let alone going to 10. You can fix some of the bias by using other measures that may correlate to the grade, but also provide some other guidance. Years of experience is one of them. You'll see that grade has a much higher impact than years of experience, so it's just modifying the total on the margin.

I haven't worked at a company with total transparency, at least not at the worker bee level. I have worked at partnerships where all the partners knew what each other made, and it was generally heavily weighted towards seniority. The system seemed to work better than I would have expected. My experience in "secret" systems is any time two people compare salary, one gets very pissed off. This is why I keep my comp private.

Stack employee here:

1) yes we have stock options, and no, they are not documented.

2) we have no bonus

3) years of experience are factored in because they bring value which is not expressed elsewhere and because they reflect market value.

I'd argue that experience should be a prime factor in salary. Ability is also a key component but not a substitute for hard won experience. Of course not all experience is equal but four things to be gained with experience that ability can not sub for:

1. Pattern matching on ways and processes to solve problems, otherwise known as the "been there, done that" effect. Seeing something that is the same or very similar to something that you have already done allows you numerous ways to improve upon it.

2. Greater depth of tools in the toolbag. May not be true of all experience but for a lot of people, the longer you have worked in the industry the more likely it is that you have stored process and approaches that you know work. This always more time to focus on the truly new and novel parts of the problem at hand.

3. Higher levels of respect from other team members. Again depends on the person in question but it's easier to speak authoritively on a subject when you have experience in that subject.

4. Record of dedication. If you have been the industry for 18 years it's pretty clear that this is your passion and you are likely in it for the long haul.

This is a salary calculator, not a compensation calculator. Bonuses and options are not part of an employees salary. I imagine years of experience is measured as some value beyond skill. Knowing when to do and not do certain things seems like it would fall under experience, and not necessarily skill.

As per the experience, I think it makes sense, both for real life and role playing games :)

Yeah so this seems great, except that's not what should be setting the price of developers. Supply and demand (for the most part) sets the price (and should, IMO) of developers, and that's what I want, not some rubric.

Outside of transparency, this strikes me as no different from the "grade" systems at various big companies like HP, IBM, etc. If you want to pay me fairly, pay me what the market says I'm worth.

Things also get super messy when you get people to try and review/make objective assessments of their own skills and others'.

"Most of us are a 1 or a 2" -- aiming high is great and all, but I would be pissed if I was the most consistently good engineer in the company yet didn't get some multiple of my salary because the "best" at the company is a 2 because of the ridiculously high bar that is set. Also I can definitely see a system like this trampling all over developers who should be paid more but THINK they're not that valuable, or afraid to assert themselves.

This calculator just makes me think it serves as an effective way to pay people less than what they're worth, and convince those same people that they're getting treated fairly. You should not be counting on your company to pay you what you are worth, regardless of whatever rubrics or whatever they show you.

There's a pretty strong connection between the numbers the tool has and market rates - it's not like the numbers are pushed top down, they come from actually participating in the hiring market.

The calculator normally gets a few revisions a year, one of the things that prompts that is market rates changing (others are things like hiring for new skills, or new roles being created).

What's nice about the calculator is, if the market rates change, everyone gets a raise (and knows they should). It's not just the new hire (who's mostly recently on the market), it's everybody in the same skill track.

The calculator also keeps us honesty about what matters for compensation. When the yearly salary review comes around, you can point at things you've done in the last year _and_ at where it says they should matter. It means fewer surprises, less frustration, and less fear that you're being too aggressive or too passive in salary discussions.

All of what you're saying is reasonable, but I think the premise is wrong -- what you can do doesn't determine how much you are paid, at the very least it's not the most important factor.

You could be the greatest COBOL programmer with the best people skills, but if there are no COBOL jobs, the rubric is 100% wrong (assuming your salary is 0 because you're unemployed). In the same vein, you could be a completely average developer (even a bad one, however you measure that), but if the market is absolutely starved for developers, you should (and likely will) be paid a lot. I think SO's appraoch obscures that fact.

There's no way they can update it enough to keep up with market (and it's arguably in the company's best interest in the short term to do this), and I'm worried that how this is being presented is lulling developers into a false sense of safety when they need to be on their guard.

But it's also likely that I'm being overly pessimistic/exaggerating the danger here. SO seems like a company that has enough breathing room to truly care about it's employees, and as such I think they will do their best to revise the calculator to benefit their employees. However, I really do think that the logic you're using equally applies to all the usual grade/level yearly review based systems... That's exactly how it works in larger companies (not that it's a bad thing) now, I don't think the rubric is a differentiator.

My point is that if you're one of the people that isn't a new hire, but aren't thinking critically about your salary where it is in relation to the market for people with your skills (whatever they are), please do. Don't leave it up to any company, however well-intentioned, to pay you what you should be making.

Slightly OT: it may sound like a good idea to increment browser history with every parameter change, but in fact it's not, as after a few simulations/tests one needs to hit the return button many times to go back to where they were.

Thanks! It should be doing that, if it’s not, it’s a bug. Drop me a note at matt at stackoverflow dot com, with a repro?

Use history.replaceState instead of pushState: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History_API

That will still change the address in the location bar without filling up the history so it takes many back button clicks to leave.

This reply would be much more comical if you linked to a stackoverflow thread about history.replaceState. :)

Matt, you have been downgraded to a 1. :)

+1 not just for the comment but for the Spinal Tap reference.

Actually I read this wrong. We decided on pushState deliberately, since it’s essentially a form submission, and so a history entry.

That said, one of our folks suggested same so I think from a UX perspective, we could go either way. It doesn’t _feel_ like a form submission, one could argue.

Great to see this spreading throughout the industry!

Here is some more clickary for those in the new:

http://buffer.com/salary https://youtu.be/N8u9H6JDAzo (Travis CI, How we replaced salary negotiations with a Sinatra app) http://location.rkh.im/ http://rkh.im/move

The salaries generated by the calculator while transparent are not validated by the market and are laughably low.

Given the elasticity of supply and demand the salary mush be constantly evaluated against the market. This seems like just another trick to suppress wages for a qualified engineer.

In today's market, a person with multiple offers would command at least twice the listed compensation at any of the software majors.

> In today's market, a person with multiple offers would command at least twice the listed compensation at any of the software majors.

StackOverflow is probably OK with missing out on these comparatively rare beasts. For me, their formula would give me almost a 20% raise (if I could stay in Dallas), and that is not counting my six years of non-software engineering experience.

I'm in Seattle, and to match my base I would need to be a few levels above where I am (4 years, probably about a 1).

I'm wondering if there's a (perhaps unintentional) effect of anchoring people's expectations low prior to getting to negotiations. That coupled with SOs reputation in the industry, which might motivate people to join anyway, could be giving them a major cost cutting edge in salaries. As soon as a person sees this transparency I suspect they are going to base their expectations around that as well as perceive the salary negotiations as less elastic than if it was kept secret.

stack overflow is a relatively small company and not a "software major". Google pays 50% more than small companies.

this is also base salary. I hope you're considering that and not just adding in bonus and stock grants thinking you're doing a fair comparison.

To be fair, Stack Exchange hires remotely. The "software majors" do not. (That said, if I wanted to work in Oklahoma and get a remote software engineering job, this lets me know I could probably get more at a place like GitHub)

> The "software majors" do not.

Not really true. Most or all of them do for the right candidate. They're not super vocal about it, though.

New York seems in the range I thought it would. Bonuses and stock aren't factored in, as someone mentioned. I imagine they might not over that type of thing, though.

TIL I'm very glad I don't work for Stack Overflow and feel very bad for the underpaid devs who do. Apparently, with only 5 years experience, my salary has eclipsed a maxed out 25 year veteran of "5" skill. Not to mention my salary is only about half of my total compensation. I don't say this to brag, but to help raise awareness to the underpaid devs out there. You have to stand up for yourself, realize your value and fight with these companies to pay you what you are really worth.

People in software generally suck at negotiation. And, salary transparency just reduces overall salaries and increases profit for the company.

Why? because a software developer will say, 'Wow, I can get paid that much for doing something that I love? Sure!', and they'll take whatever they're given.

But, ask yourself, do you think the person in sales does the same thing? The person in finance or marketing?

Look, you don't need to be a world-class developer to make $200k / year. You just have to be 1% better than the developer making $190k / year.

As a baseline, a typical services / contracting company will bill a senior developer at $190 / hour. The math is straight-forward.

This works for product companies, as well. You and your 20-person engineering team build a product that ends up being worth $100M? (completely realistic, btw) Yeah, even at paying $200k / year, the company and investors are making out.

It's funny, actually. For all of the software people that I know who are self-described libertarians, when it comes to their salary they are willing to lean socialist.

Do you have to work in the SF or other expensive area, or can you be totally remote like Stack Overflow?

I'd be really interested to hear your examples of companies that pay significantly more and allow you live in a low cost/high quality city.

Are you living around SV? Are you also working at one of the top tier companies? From my experience and from some others here the tool is reporting decent salaries. It seems most of those disagreeing are from companies in the valley.

where do you live and where do you work?

Notice this question has been asked 3x and not answered. 150k remote gets you a lot further than 300k in SV unless you want to live with 10 of your best friends.

I did notice. People lie about this stuff for their own ego boosting. Which is weird because, you know, its the internet and its anonymous. They're only lying to themselves really.

He doesn't even need to be lying. He could have a huge salary offset by a massive cost of living, so we only discuss the first number for appearances.

It's sometimes envy-inducing for me to look at what other data-oriented directors make and compare it to my own comp. But I also live in Maine, and somehow, in walking distance to the beach and "only" 90 minutes to Boston. Cost of living matters massively, especially once you have a family, kids and want to own instead of rent. Even if I ditch the coastal part, I'm not sure I even want to look at what a comparable 3 bedroom, 2000 sq ft home would cost anywhere near SF or Silicon Valley. Screw it, I'm gonna look:

http://move2siliconvalley.com/tag/real-estate/

Let's pick Campbell because it's somewhere in the middle, I like Rancid and Lars Frederiksen. $648/sqft, and generally under a quarter acre lot. You got 1.3M I could borrow? That's like 5 of my houses. Roughly $6500 a month (78k a year) factoring in property taxes. Suddenly 300k a year doesn't seem like a whole lot once you pay your taxes and put a roof over your family's head.

If I try to max out everything (engineering manager, 25 years of experience, max expertise), I still only end up with $210k. Are there stock options on top of the salary to provide a larger upside?

That being said, thanks for the transparency. It helps all of us.

With 4 years of experience, even if I rate myself as a 5 on self-assessed skill (I'm certainly not), the salary offered for New York is far, far below anything I'd consider, and significantly below even what other start-ups offer (not including equity) in New York.

I do not understand how they are able to hire experienced workers who agree to face the cost of living of New York at these salary levels. It is simply too low to be worthwhile.

Just for fun I put in a developer with skill level 5 and 20 years of experience living in the San Francisco area.

http://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/calculator?p=1&e=20&...

It calculated $198,220

I would guess that type of developer in the San Francisco area could earn a double or triple that amount (included bonuses and stocks) at one of other companies.

What is ridiculous is not necessarily the salary but the portion of it that is for "Location Adjustment", $18,020. $20k extra to live in the Bay Area or New York is pretty ridiculous. For me in Houston TX I can live half as cheap, so 20k is nothing.

They said the calculation doesn't include equity, so it's difficult to say whether the salary is competitive (since really it's total comp that people are concerned about).

Very cool. Salaries seem on the low-end of the industry standards from what I've seen. $120k for 5 years of experience in the Bay-Area is pretty insulting.

I think SF is a bubble and very unhealthy to the whole IT industry. It basically raises the costs for everyone.

It makes no sense to hire a person in SF for much more (and he will not really benefit from it) just because you compete with multi billions dollar businesses that can cut costs somewhere else.

At some point people do not want to change the world with next Instagram. They just want to live nicely.

The counter point is that companies are profitable despite high salaries. That suggests an engineers contributions exceed even the bloated salary and therefore they are undercompensated.

I know a few guys making $300K+ at Apple.

I think a lot of people paid that much are reaping the benefits of strategic and tactical decisions made over decades -- they just happen to be there when it's all paying off and things are going well.

Not sure what to make of this other than that if, as a developer, you want to be paid well, go to a company that's "winning" and has mountains of cash. Shocker, I know.

(Though, as someone who's worked at a few places early, it does irritate me more than a little that these people take so little risk and yet are so highly compensated, relative to the guys who were there at the beginning getting things set up from scratch. Being an early employee at a startup is really such a shit deal - you take most of the risk, get a fraction of the equity of a founder, work hard, and don't get paid nearly as much as the people who come in 10-20 years after the strong groundwork has been laid)

That's literally true of every profitable company then.

Seems like great advocacy for communism if I've ever seen one.

Location, location, location; I live in .nl and with about €55k, I'm at the upper end of the job market here (14 years experience).

Unfortunately comparing European and US salaries is comparing apples to oranges.

Not only there's vacation as other people mention, but most importantly and often ignored : tax rates and retirement.

In those 55k, you also probably have a bigger tax bill, so it would be more fair to compare money that ends up in your pocket.

Retirement: you probably have a national system, with a formula that tells: if you worked X years at salary Y, your retirement income will be Z. You might also have extra retirement plans if you want to save more. In the US, retirement pensions is not a thing (except maybe public servants etc?), So you're responsible of saving by yourself. The employer will sometime help (like for every dollar you put in your retirement plan, they'd match 50 cents, up to ~20k per year), and that money you put in the retirement plan is tax free, but the point is that it's money you theoritically should not access until retirement.

With those 2 factors, the money you actually get to use is different, and then the cost of life is different: raising kids in the US until college, would be a different price than a kid in the Netherlands until the end of university.

Income tax for a California resident is quite a bit higher than Dutch income tax for most income brackets.

Dutch income tax more closely resembles the tax bracket in midwest America.

My income tax percent in Holland is slightly lower than it was in the U.S. and my pay is a bit higher than it was in the U.S.

Are we looking at the same Netherlands? A quick search tells me California's highest bracket is 13%. In NL you're lucky to get ~25% effective rate as a knowledge migrant, going steeply up to 52%.

13% for the state tax is huge, now add that to the U.S. Federal income tax as well, and see what your actual tax percentage is.

13% would be the state income tax.

On top of that you need to pay the federal income tax, as well as social security and Medicare tax!

You are right but you have to also consider US working hours. Apparently it's not unusual to work 60 hours a week while here in Europe we have ~40 hours working weeks. If I have to choose I would definately stay on my UK salary that is about half what this calculator is showing for my experience and keep 40hr working week.

I used to work with a CTO who had worked in the Valley and in the UK and he said he got no more work out of people in the US than the UK.

And bear in mind in the UK this was British Telecom with civil service type holidays and perks - working there did remind me of the Laundry Files :-)

> Apparently it's not unusual to work 60 hours a week

That's unusual.

Don't forget having more than 2 weeks of holiday a year.

I could cope with 50-60 hours a week. I could not cope with only one proper holiday a year.

It looks to me that it incentivizes working outside of SF, or NY. $110k for a developer with 5 years experience in Cleveland is just about right, if not on the higher end.

Whaa... I must be doing something wrong, because I'm in Dallas with 14 years of total engineering experience and 8 years of software engineering experience but have yet to break $93k.

You should definitely ask for raise and explore other opportunities etc but bear in mind that stories and discussions about salaries on HN is mostly about high end of S/w industry. For lot of us salaries are quite a bit lower than what is discussed here. Also cracking interviews and showing above ordinary skills to get job at top end firms is beyond capabilities of most of generic software developers.

See, that has been by problem with trying to figure out my true worth. The StackOverflow calculator seems about right to me, but that is a totally unfounded gut feeling. $110k after five years in Cleveland seems like a high-end outlier, but I don't really know. Obviously $250k total comp at Google is a major outlier (for the industry, not necessarily for Google).

Yeah, it's time to ask for a raise or look for a new job that pays you your market rate.

Just want confirm that while eachro's response here may sound flippant, I feel it's actually the plain truth and good advice.

What would be a more competitive number in the bay area for 5 years of experience?

I can concur with the OP. I recently interviewed at Bay Area companies which included late stage startups and big companies. Have about 5 years of experience. Total liquid compensation was in the range of $200k to $300k annualized.

A long time ago, I was a software engineer at Boeing. The local SPEEA rep had a chart posted outside his cubicle with the salary (grouped by years of experience) for all the DS-9s in the office.

There were enough people that you couldn't identify your peers exactly, but it gave you a very good sense of what everyone else was getting.

I would love it if more employers would do this.

Either I am vastly underpaid or the numbers are very high for newer developers. Even with 0 experience and 0 skill, it quotes $86k.

Yes, but the increase for 0 years vs 20 years is very low, as is the difference between 1 and 5 on the skill levels.

They appear to have a decent entry pay but not scale very well as you go up from there. As an example: it shows for an SRE with 10 years experience and a 5 for skill, a salary of $145,400.

If you are a developer worth your salt and not even registering on that scale, then I'm going to go with "Underpaid". Unless you live in like Bumstump, TX where you can buy a 4 bedroom 3 bath home on 2 acres of land for 60k.

I think you hinted at the real reason: Location.

Stackoverflow is largely based out of NYC, so their salaries are going to be based on that starting point.

The average developer salary in the US is $80K but when you start going state by state you can see that NYC/California/et al are throwing that figure WAY off.

This is correct. Outside of the big two hotbed areas, developers are definitely NOT being paid in the hundreds of thousands. When you factor in the NYC/California cost of living tax, you're not actually coming out that far ahead. The experience gained is obviously the big benefit however.

Depends— if you're a single adult in NYC, a decent bedroom in a share can be had for $1000 with heat and gas included (and that's also a normal way of living for successful adults), and one doesn't need a car, so bills needn't be that high. Transport is either an unlimited Metrocard paid pre-tax or provided free by your employer, or a bicycle— so that's around $70/month, plus whatever you want to pay for cabs (but rarely need to). The upper limit on entertainment costs is extremely high— but there's also way more awesome cheap/free stuff happening than one could possibly do.

Of course, if you're trying to raise a big family, the math works out a little differently.

Sure, but who wants to live in that $1000 apartment, shared with other four other people? When you start making those big six figures, no one wants to deal with that crap. You want more luxury. That's the point of moving up right?

MM yes it give me £120k for a London role - where do I sign up :-)

It gives ~£65K for a non-London developer, with zero experience and skill.

Looking at the average for that around here being £20K, I'd suggest it's really well off the mark unless you're in Silicon Valley.

£65 would be a good wage for an experienced developer in the UK (London)

There is something not right with both having a salary system like this and having it available to the public. I know I personally would not like to work at SO just because of this.

It seems demoralizing, because it reduces your relationship with the company down to rules, shifting responsibility away from people. It may seem attractive on the surface, but in the long run I don't think it will serve the employees or the company well. People are so much more than just skill+experience+cost_of_living.

The 1-5 rating system is where personal judgement/responsibility come into play. If I were a very good developer but poor at negotiations, I would find this system to be the opposite of demoralizing.

Consider the other possibility, where you are the best, period (which is how you should really think of yourself IMHO).

You get two offers, one from a company like SO, based on a system of rules, and another one based on personal judgement (it might still be based on a system of rules, but that aspect will not be advertised to you, which is key). And if the two offers are about the same, you will likely choose the latter, simply for the slight difference between "our system values you at $$$" vs "we value you at $$$".

Everybody should think they are the best? Isn't that how we got into this into the first place?

If you were poor at negotiations, you'd probably also be poor at the skills required to get a "5" rating (selling your own accomplishments, etc.) I mean I don't know anything about you, but devil's advocate.

Not necessarily. Being good at negotiations requires the ability to handle potential disagreement and conflict. Demonstrating coding ability, on the other hand, usually doesn't lead to anything resembling conflict. There's definitely overlap on skill sets there, though, I'll give you that.

These salaries seem SUPER low. Engineering manager with 15 years experience < 150k? Try 200+k here in NYC.

These salaries seem SUPER high. Developer with 10 years experience at 120k? I'm making less than half of that and don't feel particularly ripped off.

(I guess both of our comments don't help a lot in general, except to show that you personally don't seem to consider an application at SO while I'd love to do just that)

A competent developer with 10 years experience at less than $60k gross?! I imagine any sized company in any location in the US would hire that person in a heartbeat. If you are a productive developer in a common programming language with 10 years experience, you have decent communication skills, and are able to work in a team, earning less than $60k -- then you are significantly underpaid.

My starting salary was higher than your 10 year experience salary. You are WAY off the grid, even with quality-of-life arguments factored in. Unless you work less than 30 hours a week, you ARE getting ripped off. I don't know anyone who started with less than 60k other than my brother who was 3rd man in at a bootstrapped startup. If you enjoy your job, awesome. However, you're very easily in the bottom half of starting salaries if not lower.

I'm being ripped off too. graduated during the recession after the dotcom bubble, took the first dead-end dev job I could find, not exactly marketable experience.

email me your resume.

Will do, which email?

I'm a developer with 10 years of experience living in the midwest and I'm making over 120k. Based on their calculator I'd actually take a reasonable pay cut if I wanted to go there.

I graduated 1999 and made $38k; Now make $190k (and I'm definitely not a top 1% candidate).

Based on your assessment, I should expect to make a lot less in the future. But, yet people are contacting me weekly saying they can't fill positions at my salary level.

It seems like you're doing something wrong.

but where though?

Correct, as others noted: I'm from Germany.

Probably Germany.

Yes, Germany.

They wouldn't dare list actual salaries because then they would have to pay everyone higher, just see what happened with lawyers: http://www.wsj.com/articles/law-firm-cravath-raising-startin...

Unless they don't actually pay much which might be the case: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Stack-Exchange-Salaries-E73...

I'm a developer at Stack Overflow, my salary is $2,000 a year more than what the calculator spits out with Developer / 5 years experience / 3 skill (I was a 2.7 last compensation review, I believe)

Take that manager salary and switch to 'Developer' and the salary drops by a few grand, at most. Maybe in some companies - but I'm the lead of a project, responsible for multiple devs, projects, etc, and I'm only getting a few grand more than a dev who's only responsible for their own work...?

Are you being serious here?

Similar feedback, starting salaries seem about right, but beyond that seem low, the rating system isn't science and the CoL adjustment only for SF, NYC and London misses other expensive cities.

For instance, like for like (new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods), Boston housing is just as expensive as SF and in general your money goes further in SF.

> For instance, like for like (new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods), Boston housing is just as expensive as SF

No it's not. It's not even close. The median home in Boston is less than $500k. That's a gut/teardown in SF, where the median is $1.1MM.

If you pick brand new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods in Boston, I'm sure you could easily spend north of a million. If you pick comparable new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods in SF, I imagine you're looking at multiple millions.

http://www.zillow.com/boston-ma/home-values/

http://www.zillow.com/sanfrancisco-ca/home-values/

> in general your money goes further in SF.

In what way?

Notice that I said like for like. If you compare new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods in both cities[0][1] SF comes out cheaper and/or your money goes further. ie, SF might be slightly more expensive but your building has 24/7 security, roof top pool, common outdoor space, etc.

EDIT: A further comparison of the age of the housing stock, looking at properties currently listed within both city limits, ~33% of them in Boston were built before 1900, 8% of them in SF were built before 1900. To me this means overall the housing stock is more modern in SF which likely benefits the homeowner in energy costs, modern systems, safety, total square footage, etc.

[0] https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/293571/MA/Boston/Back-Ba...

[1] https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/11212/CA/San-Francisco/S...

SoMA is not the most desireable area in SF. Many areas in SF are considerably more expensive. Presidio Heights is one of the top neighborhoods, and has a home price index on Zillow of nearly $5MM. You can't even compare new construction because there is none for sale.

https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/2197/CA/San-Francisco/Pr...

For the record, doing the "most expensive" or "most desirable" comparison is pointless anyway. The most expensive neighborhood is not representative of the typical home price, or even the typical desirable home price.

Every time SF housing prices come up, someone comes out of the woodwork to say how (Boston | Seattle | Austin) is just as expensive or even worse. They then compare some 1500 sq ft penthouse in the nicest, newest tower in their city to some slightly less expensive 19th century shithole of the same price in SF and say, "LOOK! Look! It's more expensive in my city! And MILK is 50% more here too, so it's way more expensive to live here obviously."

Every. Time.

I did enjoy the fact that "like for like" somehow explicitly means the best of the best in Boston.

FWIW I was comparing like for like in both cities. I compared Back Bay new construction to SoMA new construction. Fact is, your money does go further in SF. It isn't intuitive because most of the housing stock in Boston is old, cramped, or needs significant repair...or all 3. But that doesn't come across when you compare aggregate sqft prices, it just looks like Boston is cheaper.

> FWIW I was comparing like for like in both cities. I compared Back Bay new construction to SoMA new construction.

Back Bay is the most expensive neighborhood in Boston. If you want to compare to SF, then SoMA is probably not the appropriate neighborhood. There are several neighborhoods in SF that cost multiples of Back Bay.

* Back Bay: $863,200

* Pacific Heights: $1,877,500

* Noe Valley: $1,652,100

* Russian Hill: $1,593,600

If you actually want to compare "like for like", let's look at a really expensive SF neighborhood.

* Presidio Heights: $4,911,300

> Fact is, your money does go further in SF. It isn't intuitive because most of the housing stock in Boston is old, cramped, or needs significant repair...or all 3. But that doesn't come across when you compare aggregate sqft prices, it just looks like Boston is cheaper.

Isn't most of the housing in every major city old, cramped, and in need of repair? SF has plenty of old, cramped housing that costs a million dollars.

You can't cherry-pick the absolute top-end of the Boston market and compare it to an average neighborhood in SF. With that logic, Seattle is more expensive than SF, too. Windermere price index is $1,239,600 vs $945,000 in SoMA.

* http://www.zillow.com/back-bay-boston-ma/home-values/

* http://www.zillow.com/pacific-heights-san-francisco-ca/home-...

* http://www.zillow.com/noe-valley-san-francisco-ca/home-value...

* http://www.zillow.com/russian-hill-san-francisco-ca/home-val...

* http://www.zillow.com/presidio-heights-san-francisco-ca/home...

* http://www.zillow.com/windermere-seattle-wa/home-values/

* http://www.zillow.com/south-of-market-san-francisco-ca/home-...

I think at this point it is fair to say you are being uncharitable in your interpretation of my point.

I'll point out to things I take issue with your analysis:

1) The neighborhoods you are using to illustrate your point are tiny

2) I'll entertain this though. Looking at all properties currently for sale on redfin in Presidio Heights and comparing the per square foot price to Back Bay, they are about the same. In fact, the outliers are way more expensive in Boston. The most expensive in BB is $8.7M and gets you 2700 sqft. The most expensive in Presidio Heights is $11M and gets you 7000 sqft! For 25% more money you get 160% more living space in a private home with private outdoor space. This isn't a phenomenon isolated to the most expensive neighborhoods either. I used Back Bay and SoMA because I think they are comparable in that they are the most desirable neighborhoods for people that want to live in the city. I haven't spent much time in Presidio Heights but it feels more like Brookline, which is great but people don't live there if they want to be able to have 50 restaurants within stones throw and easy access to public transportation and even then Brookline is a difficult comparison for many reasons.

I hope that you can understand that my argument isn't that Boston is more expensive than SF on purchase price terms but that your money actually goes further in SF on a per square foot and amenities basis. I know it's not intuitive when Zillow is telling you that SF is more expensive than Boston in pure dollar terms but they don't answer the question of what does that extra money buy you and the answer is extremely tangible benefits.

> 1) The neighborhoods you are using to illustrate your point are tiny

Back Bay is also a tiny neighborhood. I don't know how much area each of these neighborhoods really covers, but Back Bay looks similar in size to Pacific Heights.

> 2) I'll entertain this though. Looking at all properties currently for sale on redfin in Presidio Heights and comparing the per square foot price to Back Bay, they are about the same.

As I mentioned in response to your other comment, comparing the most expensive areas is not actually very illuminating. Back Bay is not representative of Boston, just as Presidio is not actually representative of SF. Outliers are by definition not representative.

Back Bay is also an absurdly small sample. There are only 7 properties listed. Multiple units in the same brand new buildings are effectively the same sample. As I noted, Presidio actually has no new construction properties for sale. This isn't an accurate picture of SF, though. It's not really even an accurate picture of Prisidio, because the sampling is not reliable (zero samples for new construction, and only 6 samples for all construction).

> I hope that you can understand that my argument isn't that Boston is more expensive than SF on purchase price terms but that your money actually goes further in SF on a per square foot and amenities basis. I know it's not intuitive when Zillow is telling you that SF is more expensive than Boston in pure dollar terms but they don't answer the question of what does that extra money buy you and the answer is extremely tangible benefits.

I understand you're trying to make that point, but you're wrong. You don't have to live in Back Bay to have city living and a nice place in Boston. You can buy a nice place and have have 50 restaurants nearby in many neighborhoods in Boston.

Yes, Boston is expensive. No one is disputing that. It's not more expensive than SF. You are cherry-picking the most expensive neighborhood in all of Boston and comparing with an average neighborhood in SF. This is not like for like.

Average for 2005+ construction in SoMA is $783,000. The average for 2005+ in SF as a whole is $1,199,000. So you're actually not even comparing with an average for SF. You're comparing with a cheaper neighborhood. (Mostly it's cheaper because the sample size is too small. If you drop the 2005+ filter, the pricing for SoMA is basically the same as SF as a whole. Again, evidence that tiny samples of small neighborhoods is not a fair way to compare.)

https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/11212/CA/San-Francisco/S... https://www.redfin.com/city/17151/CA/San-Francisco/filter/so...

> Back Bay is also a tiny neighborhood. I don't know how much area each of these neighborhoods really covers, but Back Bay looks similar in size to Pacific Heights.

Back Bay is 340 acres, Presidio Heights is 140 acres...

> As I mentioned in response to your other comment, comparing the most expensive areas is not actually very illuminating. Back Bay is not representative of Boston, just as Presidio is not actually representative of SF. Outliers are by definition not representative.

I was using it to illustrate a point because some people insist on comparing entire cities average prices to determine what city has more expensive housing...

> Average for 2005+ construction in SoMA is $783,000. The average for 2005+ in SF as a whole is $1,199,000. So you're actually not even comparing with an average for SF. You're comparing with a cheaper neighborhood. (Mostly it's cheaper because the sample size is too small. If you drop the 2005+ filter, the pricing for SoMA is basically the same as SF as a whole. Again, evidence that tiny samples of small neighborhoods is not a fair way to compare.)

Again, you are making the mistake of comparing aggregate prices. You can't say SF is more expensive than Boston even if average(SF) > average(Boston) because it doesn't tell the whole story.

- The housing stock is older than in SF

- Boston land area is twice the size as SF

I'm not sure what would satisfy your notion of like for like, but from my time in SF and Boston I feel pretty comfortable comparing Back Bay and SoMA purely in terms of relative location, public transportation, crime, housing density, "culture", etc.

> Back Bay is also an absurdly small sample. There are only 7 properties listed. Multiple units in the same brand new buildings are effectively the same sample. As I noted, Presidio actually has no new construction properties for sale. This isn't an accurate picture of SF, though. It's not really even an accurate picture of Prisidio, because the sampling is not reliable (zero samples for new construction, and only 6 samples for all construction).

I just checked Redfin and I see there are 21 homes built since 2005 and 89 overall. If you are using Zillow that may explain why you aren't seeing all properties, I highly recommend switching to Redfin because it'll have more up to date information simply due it being an agent itself and not an aggregator.

Salaries, job-titles, and all things related to hiring are _INTRINSICALLY_ subjective and that's the way it should be (and really the only way it can be).

Even though the stackoverflow folks are using "a formula", there's still a lot of subjective judgment in scoring the skill-levels and stuff like years of experience (5 years at company-X isn't necessarily the same thing as five years at company-Y).

As far as I can tell, stackoverflow is successful at their mission, has a good reputation and doesn't have retention problems. That's great for stackoverflow and the folks that work there. And while it is better than most places, other companies are doing just as well and don't have transparency in their salaries. Is transparency _really_ that important? I don't think so.

The mere act of an employer being so open and transparent about this would make them a more interesting option to me than any competing slightly better offers.

This data actually has the impact of me not applying for a job. I'm thinking of looking around - been at my current gig as a senior engineer for years and I have about 15 years experience. But at my current comp at a major Corp in nyc, I'd need to make about $225k minimum before stock options (including perks mentioned in a comment here ) to switch. I'm not a manager just a senior dev.

Maybe I'm the type of candidate they are trying to weed out, but I'm not looking for like 300k or something. Just market rate for my skills. I've got a family and it's expensive to live in the nyc area

Not only that, but to me that entire rubric for the self-assessment of skill is extremely off-putting. It's also baffling to me that the salaries they peg against are salaries of start-ups and certain VC-backed companies.

Why isn't it the case that you base your salaries against every other place in the world trying to hire the same people you are? It's not defensible to say, well we pay $130k for that kind of developer because AZ companies also pay in that range, and so does Blue Apron, ENSO Financial, and Spotify (or whomever). That's silly. Because DE Shaw, Google, Coatue, Two Sigma, Comcast, Capital One, Amazon, Facebook, or a host of others might be willing to hire that same developer for that same type of role with similar benefits and they are certainly paying more than this.

You're always competing for talent against anyone else trying to hire the same people. Not against one particular niche set of companies who are similar to you in some superficial on-paper ways. That just seems like a very unfortunate way of determining what their idea of a "market rate" is.

Seems like they pay very poorly for experience and skills

The url shows a "Couldn't find blog.stackoverflow.com" error and a, albeit cute, picture of a panda.

Did they take it offline because it was causing a controversy?

Does anyone have an opinion self reported salary websites like glass door? Do they skew high or low? What about other online salary websites?

I live in NY, so grains of salt. While I worked in finance, the numbers skewed very low: 20%+. I'm sure it's industry dependent though, especially since (I assume) finance has a higher standard deviation of income, slower career growth, but a higher glass ceiling.

Usually don't represent total comp. Most big tech companies include a lot of stock. If it's a publicly traded company it is liquid and therefore can be considered a variable cash compensation amount, but that isn't captured on Glassdoor.

I feel like https://www.comparably.com/ has better figures.

Considering the sheer number of fake reviews on Glassdoor, I'm not inclined to trust them with anything, including salary numbers.

these salaries are really low for the bay area for someone who performs at their equivalent of level 5 (which is near impossible according to the doc)

I'd say these are low for NYC. I have no experience, came from a bootcamp and live in NYC. I'm starting at $85K. With a year of experience I'm looking for $110K. In 5 years I'd be looking for $150K on the low end based on talking with others.

> For our experiment, we redesigned the Stack Overflow Jobs ads to display salary ranges. We were curious: just how much effect does this information have? [...] We expected to see an improvement, but we were surprised by the size: a 75% average increase in clickthrough rate (CTR) when we showed a job's salary range.

I'm surprised they're surprised :P. I'm not actively looking for a job, so when I search I am mostly searching to get a feel for what skills are in demand and what salaries are like. For someone like me, seeing a wage in an ad would get me to click it so I can see what is expected of that wage in that region.

The salaries in the US seams very high compared to here in Sweden, seams like i am missing something from the equation. Possibly something our insanely high taxes.

I have to divide the number i get in that calculator with 2.5 to get to my salary.

These types of calculators were incredibly helpful while looking for developer / quantitative positions out of grad school, especially since I'm wrapping up a phd in psychology. I was so clueless in terms of what kind of salary I should expect when I started looking--like, at 65% of what ended up seeming reasonable.

The calculator is basically a window into the prospective-employee calculus a company is doing. You can also invert things, and use whatever someone offers you to think about what level of skill they may think you have (from SO's perspective).

Are these closely aligned with their actual salaries? Less than $10K of cost of living adjustment for Bay Area positions?

Yes. The calculator is almost exactly what my current salary is.

I wonder if data provided in the calculator is later used to serve you ads.

The calculator is fun to use but it doesn't - and can't - take into account many factors. For example, the level of competency, productivity, brainpower, personality, and so on.

I wish they also shared the salary of their managers. That's way more interesting..

It's there. Change the "position" drop-down to engineering manager. There's a small bump in pay.

Having a boolean check box for location is not very fair.

If it's going to be taken into consideration at all, cost of living adjustments should apply to everybody and should be looked up by zip code or postal code.

Love the skills grading scale, totally Ivy League material:

A+++

A+

(There are no A++ players)

Link is down:

> Couldn't find blog.stackoverflow.com

> The Q&A site blog.stackoverflow.com doesn't seem to exist…yet.

Link is dead... Taken down? Did transparency throw feces at the impeller?

This is marketing, not transparency. Show me the books and I'll believe you.

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