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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?

#51

Post by tomaha »

toephu2 wrote: post #35
literallycancer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even when anonymous? --- 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 technologic…

Yes. It makes them feel good about themselves showing they have a higher salary than others. Even anonymously, would you want to report your under average salary? I mean you could, but would you take the effort to create a throwaway account just to do that? Probably not.

I think it's also good if salaries are more transparent. I see too many people selling themselves short and thus getting lower salaries because they just don't know. If you're lucky you still get a nice salary but it's so much better to have an idea what you can ask for/should expect.

Glassdoor etc is nice but at least for SV most of the time just not accurate and in my experience on the lower limit. I'm not sure why but it could be that people just share more often when they start a job and not when they just don't care anymore after a few years while making a lot more at the same/next company.

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

#52

Post by closeparen »

bbcbasic wrote: post #11
aleeds wrote: 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.

>. It could determine if you have enough money to but a house

You should always read salaries as a fraction of the median home price within a ~30 minute radius of where the salary is being paid.

Where $110,000 base salary is offered to new grads (matches my experience at a unicorn, it isn't just Google), it's about 1/12th of a reasonable home.

Where $50,000 is offered to mid-career folks, it's often 1/3rd to 1/4th of a reasonable home.

All politics is local. All salaries are local.

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

#53

Post by toephu2 »

et-al wrote: post #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 hi…

What's the Battery Club?

Google said "The Battery was a unique sort of social destination."

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

#54

Post by dragonzooord »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #27

Just a couple of points from the UK perspective: In the UK it is normal to quote salaries gross, pre-tax, but you're going to pay 40% on anything over £43k - and that's about right for a mid-level dev in London - and 45% on anything over £150k which is mid-size CTO territory. However, advertised rates are always pre-tax. As to how to get a better idea of rates, genuinely, self-reporting is BS. Looking at advertised r…

Salaries are pre-tax in the US as well. People do earn $200k - it is just much much more rare in the UK than in the Bay Area - especially with the pound as weak as it is nowadays.

However, glassdoor does put the total comp of a Senior Software Engineer at google at £181k - https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salary/Google-Senior-Software-En...

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

#55

Post by photoJ »

cavisne wrote: post #22

This data is a good place to start, as it cant really be faked. http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=GOOGLE&job=SOFTWARE+ENGINEE... I would think the median salary there is below the actual median base salary, as americans and those on green cards would on average be getting better salaries. This figure excludes bonuses and stock compensation also.

Do you know if this is the amount of money for the first day of the contract? ie. First day of work at Google or if this could be reflective of working at Google for several years with raises? I'm not clear when the paper work is filed.

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

#56

Post by closeparen »

Technophilis wrote: post #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…

Consider also that most engineers are new grads. Glassdoor and friends should display an "average" that's very slightly higher than the new grad base salary, since most practitioners entered the field recently.

$200k base salary could well be totally normal for people with more than 10 years of experience, who are barely represented on Glassdoor.

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

#57

Post by photoJ »

Technophilis wrote: post #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…

Do you know when the paperwork is filed? ie are the listed H1b salaries based on first day of work at the company, or pay after multiple years? I'm trying to figure out if this is the money the company used to get the talent or if its reflective of their own internal raises as well?

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

#58

Post by tomaha »

bhouston wrote: post #48

The high end firms in Silicon Valley (Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Linkedin, Netflix) do make this, in part because the cost of living is brutal there and the competition is fierce. But you need to factor in the cost of living in comparison to the offered salary to compare with other cities. Some friends who went to work in Silicon Valley are making +$200K (some well above) but have had problems finding houses…

The median house price for Palo Alto is $2.6M. For SV it's much lower (~$1M). You can't just count the top location to get the median. But you'll likely get much nicer (bigger,better structure,etc) median houses in other areas.

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

#59

Post by user5994461 »

aidanhs wrote: post #44
PaulRobinson wrote: post #27

Just a couple of points from the UK perspective: In the UK it is normal to quote salaries gross, pre-tax, but you're going to pay 40% on anything over £43k - and that's about right for a mid-level dev in London - and 45% on anything over £150k which is mid-size CTO territory. However, advertised rates are always pre-tax. As to how to get a better idea of rates, genuinely, self-reporting is BS. Looking at advertised r…

> £43k - and that's about right for a mid-level dev in London - and 45% on anything over £150k which is mid-size CTO territory Clearly this depends significantly on role, but looking at your link indicates that £43k is a bit below-par (as I'd expect) for any of the more in-demand areas. For example, if you can interview well (regardless of skill) then you can probably get a mid-level DevOps job for ~£60k if you shop…

All companies I've been at were hiring grads at >= 40k in London.

It's not credible to me to say that £43k is mid level. That's a junior salary for any tech position.

Regarding DevOps, it is so bad in demand right now, you'll get 60-70k easy without lifting a finger if you can handle any interview. There is noone to take these jobs anyway, all people who are interested in money have long gone contractors at > 500 £ a day anyway.

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

#60

Post by user5994461 »

Here, take a look at open H1B data: Pick your favorite location, your favorite company, select the year 2016.

http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=GOOGLE+INC&job=&city=MOUNTA...

That's only base salary of course, they don't publish "package" data. Add 10% because all H1B workers are underpaid and exploited.

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