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Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

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Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#91

Post by jc4p »

minimaxir wrote: post #73
tristor wrote: post #33

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 un…

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 whi…

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.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#92

Post by notyourwork »

nalllar wrote: post #87
mwsherman wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :)

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#93

Post by xigency »

mseebach wrote: post #70
tristor wrote: post #33

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 un…

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 th…

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.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#94

Post by edwhitesell »

fecak wrote: post #69
edwhitesell wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 int…

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 mar…

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?

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#95

Post by dworin »

fecak wrote: post #23

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 be…

"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.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#96

Post by [deleted] »

tristor wrote: post #33

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 un…

[deleted]

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#97

Post by maxxxxx »

edwhitesell wrote: post #57
fecak wrote: post #23

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 be…

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 int…

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.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#98

Post by brianwawok »

dimino wrote: post #76
Gmo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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...

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.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#99

Post by brwnll »

edwhitesell wrote: post #57
fecak wrote: post #23

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 be…

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 int…

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.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#100

Post by fecak »

RodericDay wrote: post #82
fecak wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

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…

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.

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