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Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if the lag is from the HN rush, but this app needs more caching (the about page took 30+ seconds to run).

Speaking of the About page, it should list where the data came from.

Another helpful feature: a generated list of the companies for which you have the most data for, so that seeing the list is just a click away rather than having to type it in.

edit: the source information is mentioned on the front page: Salarly does not rely on self-reported salary data but uses the salary data of foreign workers in the US. This salary data must be reported to the Department of Labor and is available on their website.

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That seems like a significant-bias for salary.

It is, but so are self-reported industry salaries. This isn't perfect data, but it is (fairly) reliable data that all comes from one place.

Is this prevailing wage data, or actual wage data? Because they can be very different. I'd be interested to see the data source, if anyone has it.

It's the actual wage data. Actually it's the maximum number of the range that an employer can report to the DoL.

Source: I am one of the two people behind the site and for my two H-1B visas the maximum salary that was reported for my visa was what I got paid.

The last time I looked at DOL data they also reported the actual wage.

Do they still do that? I'm guessing no since you didn't use it.

They do report the actual wage. Except that's the employer can choose to specify it as a range between a minimum and a maximum. This is optional, it's also possible to specify just one number.

The range can be huge though.

http://www.h1bwage.com/item.php?q=3277027

In this example, the wage rate is $106,600, while your site report, I believe, the max rate of $193,400. I was shocked for a moment to see a data scientist making almost $200K!

200k would be reasonable for a senior guy in one of the best data science teams. Actually 106k seems low.

Employers can do that? I guess it makes sense as long as the bottom of the range is higher than the prevailing wage.

I'd say it might be useful as a lower bound.

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