I played around a bit and didn't find it too useful. The folks at step.com (previously posted on HN) produce something that is much more useful for me:
https://blog.step.com/2016/06/16/more-salaries-twitter-linke...
LinkedIn launches Salary to chart what we earn
11–20 of 175 posts
Re: LinkedIn launches Salary to chart what we earn
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
What incentive do people have to lie about their salary (assuming it's anonymous)?
There are massive incentives to lie about how much you make. It's not hard to imagine this tool will be used by HR compensation experts to determine wage parity. With that in mind, the higher the average, the better positioned you will be to negotiate a higher salary, therefore everyone who reports how much they make is ultimately incentivized to state more than they make in hopes of driving up the wage index for the…
And who is to stop a software company from doing the opposite? If they want lower wages, they could spam a region with fake workers with lower wages.
Re: LinkedIn launches Salary to chart what we earn
#13Self reported salaries are just never going to be a good data source. I was hoping since this was LinkedIn and they have tons of resources they'd be doing something different, but they don't seem to have made any progress on the many attempts people make each year to do salary analysis in this way. Anyone have any good ideas for actually gathering accurate salary data?
IT Jobs Watch surveys recruiters for permanent roles data and contractors quotes for rates.
Re: LinkedIn launches Salary to chart what we earn
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are massive incentives to lie about how much you make. It's not hard to imagine this tool will be used by HR compensation experts to determine wage parity. With that in mind, the higher the average, the better positioned you will be to negotiate a higher salary, therefore everyone who reports how much they make is ultimately incentivized to state more than they make in hopes of driving up the wage index for the…
And who is to stop a software company from doing the opposite? If they want lower wages, they could spam a region with fake workers with lower wages.
Thus to the original point: self reported data is questionable.
Re: LinkedIn launches Salary to chart what we earn
#15So when will LinkedIn release a plugin that hacks into your HR system to fetch (and upload to them) the salaries of you and all your peers?
Re: LinkedIn launches Salary to chart what we earn
#16Self reported salaries are just never going to be a good data source. I was hoping since this was LinkedIn and they have tons of resources they'd be doing something different, but they don't seem to have made any progress on the many attempts people make each year to do salary analysis in this way. Anyone have any good ideas for actually gathering accurate salary data?
The Federal Statistical Office of Switzerland sends compulsory salary surveys to the enterprises itself. The collected data is then published in the Salarium [1].
It is based on more than 750'000 salaries from the private sector and runs since 1994. You can read more about the methodology in the PDF [2]
I worked as a Software Developer for a company that used the data as base for their salary negotiations and it worked quite well.
[1] https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/work-income/...
[2] https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfsstatic/dam/assets/6937/master
Re: LinkedIn launches Salary to chart what we earn
#17I built a (free) chrome extension that will estimate salaries of LinkedIn profiles you view (along with other data) https://recap.work
It's not perfect, but it is helpful when trying to get an idea of what someone is making. The upgraded version has salary conversion support for different currencies for other countries.
Re: LinkedIn launches Salary to chart what we earn
#18Self reported salaries are just never going to be a good data source. I was hoping since this was LinkedIn and they have tons of resources they'd be doing something different, but they don't seem to have made any progress on the many attempts people make each year to do salary analysis in this way. Anyone have any good ideas for actually gathering accurate salary data?
What incentive do people have to lie about their salary (assuming it's anonymous)?
Well, if everybody else thinks that programmers make $200K/year, there's a chance that somebody might consider paying $200K/year. That seems like an incentive to me.
Re: LinkedIn launches Salary to chart what we earn
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
And who is to stop a software company from doing the opposite? If they want lower wages, they could spam a region with fake workers with lower wages.
Thus to the original point: self reported data is questionable.
It would be neat if the IRS / CRA / national tax body would publish summaries based on people's actual tax returns. Although you don't specify things like industry, and other career specific quirks on your tax returns. (i.e. Ruby on Rails developer vs Dynamics CRM developer)
Re: LinkedIn launches Salary to chart what we earn
#20well, comparab.ly better step up fast.