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Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

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Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#121

Post by fecak »

sklivvz1971 wrote: post #108
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…

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 y…

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.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#122

Post by JamesBarney »

edwhitesell wrote: post #104
brwnll wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tou…

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

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#123

Post by tristor »

Scarbutt wrote: post #117
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 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.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#124

Post by tristor »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #58
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…

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.

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.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#125

Post by softawre »

optforfon wrote: post #109
dworin wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 yo…

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 exper…

> 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?

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#126

Post by dpark »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #55

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?

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#128

Post by softawre »

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #113
ZeroFries wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 la…

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

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#130

Post by eachro »

vonmoltke wrote: post #39
thecolorblue wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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