Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours

blog.step.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 229 posts

Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours

#5

Post by smeyer »

overcast wrote: post #3

Is it a case of only people making the most money are more apt to report their earnings?

There's obviously going to be a bias of some sort, but it would probably be worth looking at the distribution of the reported salaries to get a better sense of that. (The author may have already looked at the spread of salaries, I haven't read through the whole thing yet).

You could also try comparing with visadoor.com or another source of H1B data for the same companies to try to see where they fit in. There may be a systematic difference between H1B salaries and the larger employee base at these companies, but at least you're not limited by self-reporting.

Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours

#6

Post by cookiecaper »

brainary wrote: post #2

US only?

I'm pretty sure the data is coming from the self-reported salary spreadsheet that was posted on here about a month ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331223). There's a lot of valuable information in it and there were no geographical restrictions on participation. However, it's all self-reported and unverified, and there are some values that are obvious fakes.

Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours

#8

Post by stepny »

cookiecaper wrote: post #6
brainary wrote: post #2

US only?

I'm pretty sure the data is coming from the self-reported salary spreadsheet that was posted on here about a month ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331223 ). There's a lot of valuable information in it and there were no geographical restrictions on participation. However, it's all self-reported and unverified, and there are some values that are obvious fakes.

It's possible that some of the data came from that spreadsheet. The sources of the data are cited at the bottom of the post. You're right that it is all self-reported and unverified. We tried to clean and standardize the data as best we could. The biggest source of error for us in the process might have been the level, particularly because some of the reported bonuses and stock compensation seemed out of line with the stated level. But we took the Level as it was in almost all cases. It may very well be that companies overpay in certain circumstances.

Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours

#10

Post by stepny »

overcast wrote: post #3

Is it a case of only people making the most money are more apt to report their earnings?

We actually suspect that people who are paid less or are underpaid are more likely to report their salaries. For example, it seems like Glassdoor data skews low.
Post reply on HN