101–110 of 295 posts
There were enough people that you couldn't identify your peers exactly, but it gave you a very good sense of what everyone else was getting.
I would love it if more employers would do this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies that filter out candidates that prioritize money as a high criteria are potentially doing themselves a disservice by not hiring on ability. An excellent coder who wants to maximize their compensation shouldn't be penalized for that. If "fit" for an organization means not caring (as much) about money, that almost always indicates the organization is paying below market rate. I have clients that pay below mar…
I don't disagree with how things are most of the time, though I personally disagree with it in terms of how I try to operate. Regarding the second point, I guess my point was: if the argument is that employees “value” is shown by salary and Jane is unhappy based on her perception of contribution, isn’t that a fault with management for not recognizing that and fixing accordingly?
I think we're assuming Jane to be a rational actor with perfect information. Jane makes less than Joe and feels she does more than Joe. Management feels Joe does more. Theoretically, management can tell Jane that Joe is paid more because his contribution is valued more, but Jane's unhappiness only exists because she disagrees with this valuation.
Either Jane convinces management that her self-evaluation is accurate, management convinces Jane she is being paid what she's worth, or Jane updates her resume.
Before everyone inevitably piles on about how such-and-such a salary "seems low compared to That One Guy At Google I Know That Makes $300k", keep in mind average Bay Area salaries for software people in the Bay Area are not as large as you think. T.O.G.A.G.I.K. makes several standard deviations above the self reported mean of $100K-$105K [1][2] and BLS reported median [3][4] (around ~$125K or so depending on job func…
Just to add another link to the pile, the most useful database I've found of base salaries for comparison is the publicly available H1B data. You should account for the costs to the company of sponsorship in addition to the base. The data is available down to the company and title: http://www.h1bdata.info/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't mean this to sound like a negative argument against your points, but here's a positive spin on both of them: 1. This generally means it's easy to filter out candidates who aren't a fit for your organization. In my experience, most employers would love to have employees where the salary is not the first (or even top 3) factors in their decision to take a job. (Rare, I know.) 2a. That seems like a good tail int…
I don't know what employers you interact with that believe a prospective employee should take a sub-market pay in exchange for the privilege to work at their company, but it's terrible. There have been many good articles on HN about salary negotiation, setting freelance rate, and seeing through the "one day you'll be a billionaire because of these options if you work for almost-free" and the kind of nonsense your tou…
I said that most employers would love to have employees where the salary is not the first (or even top 3) factors in their decision to take a job.
In other words, employees who actually want to be there are far more valuable than those just looking for a high paycheck.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't mean this to sound like a negative argument against your points, but here's a positive spin on both of them: 1. This generally means it's easy to filter out candidates who aren't a fit for your organization. In my experience, most employers would love to have employees where the salary is not the first (or even top 3) factors in their decision to take a job. (Rare, I know.) 2a. That seems like a good tail int…
I don't know what employers you interact with that believe a prospective employee should take a sub-market pay in exchange for the privilege to work at their company, but it's terrible. There have been many good articles on HN about salary negotiation, setting freelance rate, and seeing through the "one day you'll be a billionaire because of these options if you work for almost-free" and the kind of nonsense your tou…
Non-profits are the obvious example where the business typically just can't afford to pay market, but employees accept sub-market pay because they place value on the opportunity to (hopefully) help others.
Companies that offer extraordinary benefits to the employee that may or may not have direct cash value and are often not included when applicants consider "total compensation". Training and learning opportunities are an example of this. Short term loss as investment towards long term gain.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't mean this to sound like a negative argument against your points, but here's a positive spin on both of them: 1. This generally means it's easy to filter out candidates who aren't a fit for your organization. In my experience, most employers would love to have employees where the salary is not the first (or even top 3) factors in their decision to take a job. (Rare, I know.) 2a. That seems like a good tail int…
I find it funny (and condescending) that employees are supposed to make money just a secondary factor where at the same time companies preach that it's all about the bottom line and nothing else counts. On a practical note: I definitely perform better if I know that I am paid well. Money is the ultimate indicator of respect.
Outside of transparency, this strikes me as no different from the "grade" systems at various big companies like HP, IBM, etc. If you want to pay me fairly, pay me what the market says I'm worth.
Things also get super messy when you get people to try and review/make objective assessments of their own skills and others'.
"Most of us are a 1 or a 2" -- aiming high is great and all, but I would be pissed if I was the most consistently good engineer in the company yet didn't get some multiple of my salary because the "best" at the company is a 2 because of the ridiculously high bar that is set. Also I can definitely see a system like this trampling all over developers who should be paid more but THINK they're not that valuable, or afraid to assert themselves.
This calculator just makes me think it serves as an effective way to pay people less than what they're worth, and convince those same people that they're getting treated fairly. You should not be counting on your company to pay you what you are worth, regardless of whatever rubrics or whatever they show you.
As someone in recruiting and hiring, I love the concept of salary transparency on many levels, and I hope more companies at least make attempts like this to provide insight. That said, salary ranges and transparency can create two obvious issues. 1. Negotiations - I can tell you from vast past experience that when you tell an applicant "the salary range for this position is 80-100K", in almost every case any offer be…
Regarding point 1, remember that there are no salary negotiations at Stack Overflow. No one gets a raise because they ask. People get raises because they demonstrate skills, increase experience, etc... A candidate will have an initial skill evaluation they might not like, but they are pretty much guaranteed to have a much better one after one year, and if it is a big positive correction, then be it! There are no negative corrections btw - previous years salaries are at least maintained.
Secondly, I sincerely doubt we'd make an offer to a candidate that assumes their skills are all at the top of the range. "Fives" are extraordinarily rare, most employees have no fives, and the ones that do have one five.
Regarding point 2, as an employee I am not concerned with the salary of others per se. I know that they have the salary which corresponds to their perceived skills. It's likely that I would object to some evaluations of skills if I saw them, but that's an order of magnitude healthier than having salary envy. In fact, keeping evaluations fair and in check is a very good thing for the company.
As someone in recruiting and hiring, I love the concept of salary transparency on many levels, and I hope more companies at least make attempts like this to provide insight. That said, salary ranges and transparency can create two obvious issues. 1. Negotiations - I can tell you from vast past experience that when you tell an applicant "the salary range for this position is 80-100K", in almost every case any offer be…
"2. Internal employees - Stack Overflow said this has been available internally for a bit, but when employees find out what others are making they are inclined to compare their own efforts/abilities vs others. It can lead to people either asking for raises to match their co-workers, or perhaps feeling slighted and seeking other employers." One nice thing about being transparent and consistent with salaries is that yo…
And sometimes comparing people and their skill sets is really apples to oranges. If one guy is an expert on some very specific top, and thats important for your business (and is therefore an expensive hire) - it doesn't mean you should create an incentive for other employees to learn his skill set (maybe you only need one statistician or expert in COBOL or whatever)
"There's no compensation system that makes everyone happy"
Sure, pay people way above market rate and don't allow them to compare wages. They will not feel ripped off and they don't develop a sense on inadequacy
As someone in recruiting and hiring, I love the concept of salary transparency on many levels, and I hope more companies at least make attempts like this to provide insight. That said, salary ranges and transparency can create two obvious issues. 1. Negotiations - I can tell you from vast past experience that when you tell an applicant "the salary range for this position is 80-100K", in almost every case any offer be…
"2. Internal employees - Stack Overflow said this has been available internally for a bit, but when employees find out what others are making they are inclined to compare their own efforts/abilities vs others. It can lead to people either asking for raises to match their co-workers, or perhaps feeling slighted and seeking other employers." One nice thing about being transparent and consistent with salaries is that yo…
Those objective conversations are a great benefit to salary transparency in theory, and I can't imagine you can open up your numbers without being at least somewhat prepared for those conversations to take place. I would be curious if companies that provide salary transparency wouldn't be scurrying to make some salary adjustments in the days before the data becomes public.
The issue lies in the fact that developer contribution is more than just commits and LOC stats, and it's tough to measure objectively. You're likely to get into some rather vague explanations, even if they aren't as nefarious as negotiating ability or salary history.
It's a step in the right direction, though until we have clear and widely accepted methods of measuring contribution we'll still have disagreements on individual employee value.