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2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

mdjasper.github.io

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Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#2

Post by mdjasper »

For the last couple years, I've conducted a survey of software engineers in my region about their pay, education, and other career related things. I believe strongly that opening up discussions about pay will help everyone overcome some of that information asymmetry especially early in their careers. 2017 Survey info for comparison https://mdjasper.github.io/utah-js-pay-data/

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#4

Post by imglorp »

mdjasper wrote: post #2

For the last couple years, I've conducted a survey of software engineers in my region about their pay, education, and other career related things. I believe strongly that opening up discussions about pay will help everyone overcome some of that information asymmetry especially early in their careers. 2017 Survey info for comparison https://mdjasper.github.io/utah-js-pay-data/

It's interesting to speak directly to someone taking a survey, thank you for posting.

My question isn't about your surveys themselves, but rather if you have observed any bias in other surveys compared to your results.

A pessimist might believe that most compensation surveys are used by peer HR departments to set compensation bands and, naturally, they have incentive to systematically report those surveys low. Then they can point to these as "Market Rate" to cover their asses if challenged.

So is that intentional under-reporting happening, or do independent surveys mostly agree?

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#5

Post by cglee »

This is great and more salary transparency is important. I'm wondering if these numbers jive with your hunch about the local market? I'm asking because I've noticed that when asking for salary numbers, those who make "decent" wages tend to reply more often and this can lead to sampling bias.

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#8

Post by mdjasper »

imglorp wrote: post #4
mdjasper wrote: post #2

For the last couple years, I've conducted a survey of software engineers in my region about their pay, education, and other career related things. I believe strongly that opening up discussions about pay will help everyone overcome some of that information asymmetry especially early in their careers. 2017 Survey info for comparison https://mdjasper.github.io/utah-js-pay-data/

It's interesting to speak directly to someone taking a survey, thank you for posting. My question isn't about your surveys themselves, but rather if you have observed any bias in other surveys compared to your results. A pessimist might believe that most compensation surveys are used by peer HR departments to set compensation bands and, naturally, they have incentive to systematically report those surveys low. Then t…

That's a great question. I haven't directly seen any other surveys performed by "the other side" so to speak. But in looking at comparative data online (https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/utah-computer-programmer-... for example), our dataset seems to show a more broad range of pay (both lower and higher).

Anecdotally, I have been told by a couple former managers something along the lines of "the highest payed engineers in Utah are in the 120k range," which this survey shows is not the case.

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#9

Post by mdjasper »

cglee wrote: post #5

This is great and more salary transparency is important. I'm wondering if these numbers jive with your hunch about the local market? I'm asking because I've noticed that when asking for salary numbers, those who make "decent" wages tend to reply more often and this can lead to sampling bias.

That's a good point about potential bias (those making more are more likely to respond). It's my intuition from living and working in this area for a long time that the responses are pretty representative. The surveyed group (UtahJS slack channel) I think skews more toward the less experienced (which shows in the years of experience chart), so if anything the data may be skewed that direction.
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