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Ask HN: Are people lying about their salaries?

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Re: Ask HN: Are people lying about their salaries?

#11
post #5

Just for a piece of context, this year, the base salary for right out of college software engineers at Google is ~$110,000. I would be very surprised if over the course of 10 years just $60,000 was added to a salary.

amazing. 4x what I was paid out of university, and still more than I've been paid since

If you are in Silicon Valley and at uni, I guess whether you get into Google etc. or not will make a massive difference to your future. It could determine if you have enough money to but a house, have kids in the area in the future, etc. All down to a few interviews.

Re: Ask HN: Are people lying about their salaries?

#12
Looking at glassdoor.com and my personal experience, salaries are much lower than what people are claiming on HN

A major problem with Glassdoor salaries is the absence of a date range. The salaries they show is the average over the period of time starting when they started collecting salaries. So yes the salaries on Glassdoor tend to be lower than the current average.

A lot (too many) people on HN are claiming $200k base salary per year as being totally normal.

I agree. It is pretty high. My own reference for base salaries is my own website where I collect H-1B salaries. We also have an option to only show the salary distribution starting on a given year. For instance, for a software engineer at FB, the average base salary is $149k if you only include salaries reported after 2015 [1]. At Netflix however, Sr. Software Engineers make $200k on average[2].

[1] http://h1bpay.com/companies/Facebook/cities/Menlo%20Park-CA/...

[2] http://h1bpay.com/companies/Netflix/cities/Los%20Gatos-CA/jo...

Re: Ask HN: Are people lying about their salaries?

#14
Selection bias - the title of the other Ask HN was "Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?", after all.

Secondly, I think there's a difference between "totally normal" and "not outlandish". Most sentiment falls in the latter unless you're asking people in the Battery Club.

Considering most managers are making $170-180k base, a $200k base is not outlandish for someone who has specialized knowledge in high demand.

Re: Ask HN: Are people lying about their salaries?

#15
I think that generally, yes, people lie/embellish/exaggerate, especially about things like their salary and especially on the Internet.

I cannot speak to any situation in the SF bay area, but I have caught people telling this lie, and had people confess to telling this lie.

Re: Ask HN: Are people lying about their salaries?

#16
Why is "base salary" a metric that you are even paying attention to as opposed to "liquid annual compensation"? The second one is the one that puts money in your pocket. I assume that anyone talking about "base salary" is actually trying to sloppily distinguish between liquid compensation and illiquid compensation and interpret accordingly.

Average Google engineers aren't getting $200-300k in "base salary", but they are putting (before taxes) $200-300k in their bank account per year.

Re: Ask HN: Are people lying about their salaries?

#17
The data you see is biased negatively - you have recruiters fees for one sitting above the salaries you see. People complaining on glassdoor are probably not the highest paid team members.

You also have the fact that people who are paid well usually make the connection through their own personal networks over job boards. Hence the job boards have the entry level salaries.

After all of this - for the above average workers, the 'average salary' might be much higher, since they're going to be experiencing better opportunities. They don't get a true sample of the 'average'.

Re: Ask HN: Are people lying about their salaries?

#18
When asked about salary, people often assume that's a loose ask, and mention their total cash compensation i.e. including bonus. Not including equity though. Bonuses at many companies are in the range of 10-20%, so if one is making 180k, it's easy to round up to 200k in conversation. Plus there are perks and awards.

180k is not uncommon at all. Several candidates from our course have had those numbers. And even otherwise, Sr engineers with a few years of experience, make 180k at most well known tech companies. Of course, not every Sr. engineer makes that much, but those who have had an excellent interview and have negotiated well, very often do.

Re: Ask HN: Are people lying about their salaries?

#19
Yep... I'm slightly embarrassed by how little I am earning. I have a nice corporate job with nice projects with less than $12000 (after taxes). In my country that's over two times the national average. However, freelancers/outsourcers claim allegedly having over 50000 per year (with little to no taxing, black market). However those are usually unfulfilling jobs to be honest. So I kinda feel like going the wrong way sometimes. So I lie :)

Re: Ask HN: Are people lying about their salaries?

#20

They aren't lying, but you're witnessing a perfect example of selection bias: high-earners are much more likely to voluntarily share their salaries.

Even when anonymous?

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I found this (relatively) old paper[1]. It mostly deals with reporting on government forms, but there is a little bit about sensitivity of the information reported.

Singer, Von Thurn, and Miller (1995) have shown that assurances of confidentiality reduce nonresponse and/or increase the accuracy of responses to income questions and other sensitive survey topics. In addition, recent technological advances raise some possibilities for gathering income information under more anonymous conditions, without the direct involvement of an interviewer, which may substantially reduce sensitivity pressures and thus yield more complete reporting. Research is starting to show the benefits of anonymous reporting — for example, via audio computer-assisted self-interviewing (A-CASI) — on the quality of sensitive behavior reports (Turner, Lessler, and Devore 1992; Tourangeau and Smith 1996), although as yet there has been no clear demonstration that income reports would similarly benefit.

Singer, Von Thurn, and Miller (1995)[2] concludes that assurances of anonymity affect response to questions about sensitive data, but other factors may play a role (such as trust in the interviewer, etc.), and the effect "is not large".

1 - https://www.census.gov/srd/papers/pdf/sm97-05.pdf

2 - http://apps.webofknowledge.com/full_record.do?product=WOS&se...

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