Either I am vastly underpaid or the numbers are very high for newer developers. Even with 0 experience and 0 skill, it quotes $86k.
MM yes it give me £120k for a London role - where do I sign up :-)
Salary transparency at Stack Overflow
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Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow
#22Either 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.
Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow
#23As 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.
Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow
#24The 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…
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.
Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow
#25Either I am vastly underpaid or the numbers are very high for newer developers. Even with 0 experience and 0 skill, it quotes $86k.
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.
Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow
#26Very 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.
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).
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.
Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow
#27These 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)
Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow
#28A 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 ex…
As per the experience, I think it makes sense, both for real life and role playing games :)
Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow
#30these 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)