Show HN: Let's end the Programmer Salary Taboo • Hacker News Board

IgorPartola wrote: post #41

pstack wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a company with well over 100,000 employees, but if I gave my salary, title, and years experience (and as someone else noted, especially if I added my location), I wouldn't be anonymous. To my employer, at least. It would be trivial for them to narrow down the information to being provided by a very small number of people - if not the exact person. I don't see this flying, where I work though. Even among th…

Just one correction: your employer will also know exactly who you are by just your salary alone. Chances are not everyone is making the same amount and if you say you make 100,760,000 rubles, it's easy enough to just look it up. Your co-workers of course don't have this info. I personally liked the other trick better: the one that gives you the average salary. Or maybe median is more appropriate. The point is that it…

I agree that there is too much information here to stay anonymous from your boss.

Instead, you could generate the histogram of the entire sample set, perhaps curve fit, so it's not obvious for small sample sizes, how many people contributed. Then you put a little red "You are here" dot on the histogram so they see how they compare. This robs the employer of any data they can use to see who partook in the experiment, while still giving the same information back to the employee.

Re: Show HN: Let's end the Programmer Salary Taboo

#76

Post by kevinpet » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 3:35 PM UTC

timrobinson wrote: post #37

markdennehy wrote: post #33

How's this different from Glassdoor.com?

Glassdoor.com's free trial is limited. Click through a few pages, and you start getting this: > This salary is available to members

Last time I tried to look at Glassdoor it just required you to provide information to get information. Once you provided a salary, you could access salaries for a year.

Re: Show HN: Let's end the Programmer Salary Taboo

#77

Post by Cushman » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 3:38 PM UTC

Sukotto wrote: post #65

Cushman wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of those $0s is mine. I'm an unemployed college student; it should probably be more like -$20,000. Just sayin'.

If you are unemployed or self-employed then the question isn't really for you (though the answers certainly are). You're not acting in your own best interest. If you accept that the site's trying to give you ammunition in the form of more accurate information. Then you hurt yourself (and everyone else) by putting in an absurdly high or low number you skew the results away from the actual market value. If it skews hig…

As I understand it it's a salary pool for HN users. I'm an HN user, and I put in my salary. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

I'm not really expecting that anyone is seriously going to try to use the average salary of HN users for negotiation purposes. But even assuming they were, it appears there are at least a few others who are in my boat. That's relevant information, yes?

Re: Show HN: Let's end the Programmer Salary Taboo

#78

Post by Sukotto » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 3:41 PM UTC

This looks great.

Ideas for the future...

  - improve formatting of the list (right justify numbers 
    for example)
  - slider to allow us to cut off low and high outliers
    when looking at averages/charts/etc
  - display mean/mode/median/stdev [1] (which take into 
    account above filtering)
  - chart results
  - ability to add a timeout for entries (only accept new 
    salaries for X days before locking)
  - countdown timer on entry page
  - ability to send semi-anonymous invites from within the 
    app
  - allow tags or something for the user starting the 
    survey to add things like industry, general location,
    etc
  - allow OP to write a brief blurb about what to include. 
    for example, "base salary only", "salary plus expected
    bonus",)

This kind of data can be extremely valuable if you can convince your users their privacy is secure and likewise convince your clients (job boards and the like) that it's accurate.

[edit]... I see you're a job posting company so I guess you already know how valuable this sort of info is[/edit]

[1] Nice article on averages (if you're not already familiar with the pros and cons of the different types: http://betterexplained.com/articles/how-to-analyze-data-usin...

Re: Show HN: Let's end the Programmer Salary Taboo

#79

Post by jhamburger » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 3:49 PM UTC

Sukotto wrote: post #22

mbowcock wrote: post #12

HN Salary Pool http://salaryshare.me/230acd5ff2df1bf8cb03f403aabd45be If any ones interested.

It's so sad that some trolling assholes will try to poison cool projects like this by entering extremely high or low numbers. $33million? $123? $0 ... sheesh. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

The $0 don't really hurt anything. Someone who makes 60K and puts in 100K does a lot more damage.

Re: Show HN: Let's end the Programmer Salary Taboo

#80

Post by ad80 » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 3:49 PM UTC

Nice idea. Topic will always bring hot debates, but glassdoor is doing a pretty good job.

Apologies for a bit off topic, but I built a bit different site in Poland, where you can actually vote on salaries for job offers based on the location / job content / role / company name (if known) for job offers from various websites, where in salary field it says "atractive" or "high" etc. Have a look http://www.jakapensja.pl (in Polish)