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Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

blog.stackoverflow.com

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Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#191

Post by sklivvz1971 »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #136
sklivvz1971 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack Overflow employee here, here's some answers (or at least, my take). 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 y…

> 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. I don't understand the rationality behind this. Why have (nearly) impossible to reach ratings? I mean, by this logic, the most talented people will only ever be a 4, yes? So make 4 the limit. You j…

> So make 4 the limit

You are confusing 2 things. The salary is (effectively) determined by the average skill rating of a person. The single skills can and do go up to AAA+++, and this raises the average and thus the salary.

While having an average of 5 is very difficult, having a super high maximum is actually meaningful. Some people are special in some area and we recognize that.

EDIT: clarified terms (see https://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/skills/web-develope... for the formulas)

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#192

Post by mahyarm »

JasonPunyon wrote: post #40
ryandrake wrote: post #32

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…

I'd also like to point out that...we're a largely remote company. We don't index our salaries to the most expensive time and place to hire developers ever. We don't have to support Bay Area rent, or duel it out with AppAmaMicroGoog to keep our people from getting poached. We hire people everywhere in the world and through that lens, we're competitive. I live like a king in Buffalo, NY.

If you move to somewhere mostly tax free $104k USD is like $160k pre-tax in california.

They also have private offices, which can be a special perk for a bunch of people.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#193

Post by metaphorm »

sulam wrote: post #188
metaphorm wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in addition to that, I think it should be pointed out that self-reported salaries on anonymous internet forums are highly susceptible to ego-driven inflation. I mean, it should be obvious, but people just lie all the time. even if they don't even make that salary they still want to say that they do because they have some notion that it will boost their status or something.

I can say as a hiring manager, engineer, and friend of recruiters -- these salaries are a little low compared to top tier tech companies at every level, at least for developers. By top tier here I mean Google, Facebook, etc. They're not horribly low, and they're probably in range for 2nd-tier companies that you'd recognize but that I don't want to name because I don't have recent salary data for them. Honestly I thin…

I believe you 100%. You're comparing top tier companies to 2nd tier companies though. Stack Overflow is a second tier company. I mean that in terms of size and wealth level, not in terms of quality, obviously.

Google et al pays WAY above market compared to smaller tech companies. whenever these threads come up there's a lot of cognitive dissonance that goes on. a lot of Googlers or Facebookers will come in and say "WTF this is waaaaay too low" and they don't even realize how inflated their own salaries are compared to most of the rest of the world. they should be thankful for the largesse of their employer and get some perspective.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#194

Post by JasonPunyon »

dpark wrote: post #190
JasonPunyon wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the standard stuff from our company page ( http://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/stack-overflow )... 20 days vacation (to start) Flextime No Copay Health Insurance Whatever workstation you want (PC/MAC/Build Your Own), Monitors out the wazoo. Seriously, I have 128GB of RAM and a GTX 1080, we don't skimp here. $3,500 a year + 3 days conference budget Gym Reimbursement Tuition Reimbursement In NYC and Denver…

Interesting. So you have good benefits, good vacation, and some equity (of questionable value, since it's not publicly traded), but nothing that adds another 30k in value to the package over your competitors. If the numbers from the calculator are accurate, I don't know how places like Google aren't vacuuming up all your senior+ devs. A principle dev at Google in NYC must get paid at least $200k. I'd bet the bottom e…

Not everyone wants to work at Google. I know I don't.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#195

Post by dpark »

JasonPunyon wrote: post #194
dpark wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. So you have good benefits, good vacation, and some equity (of questionable value, since it's not publicly traded), but nothing that adds another 30k in value to the package over your competitors. If the numbers from the calculator are accurate, I don't know how places like Google aren't vacuuming up all your senior+ devs. A principle dev at Google in NYC must get paid at least $200k. I'd bet the bottom e…

Not everyone wants to work at Google. I know I don't.

Google was just a proxy for software engineering employers who pay well. Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon all pay similarly. So do a number of other companies. The finance corps in NYC probably do too, but I wouldn't really want to work there either from what I've heard.

Regardless, I certainly would not encourage you or anyone else to leave a job they love if it pays them an amount they are happy with. Going to Google or anyone else for a 20% pay bump is a bad deal if you end up less happy overall.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#196

Post by AndyNemmity »

tristor wrote: post #124
acjohnson55 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply and demand? Even if skilled SREs aren't as common as full-stack developers, it could be that so many more full-stack developers are required industry wide that companies have to compete harder on compensation for the best ones.

I've found the opposite to be true. There's lots of mid-level developers around who are capable of handling most common stacks. Even mid-level Ops people are few and far between. Truly senior Ops people are a rarity and in very high demand, even if salaries aren't matched to that demand. The difference in responsibility in those roles that you are entrusting an employee with makes the comparison a bit difficult, but…

I think what you're explaining is actually reality (not shown on the salary graph).

There's a large donut hole in ops. The truly high demand people make way more than the salary listed there. However, developers are within the normal range.

I.E. - Developers make more on average, top end Devops pays more.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#197

Post by nchelluri »

ryandrake wrote: post #32

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…

Your URLs 1 and 2 seem broken. This a bug somewhere? Could you repost them please? Also on 3 and 4 the mean wage for Software Developer, Applications and Systems seem quite a bit higher than the other category you've highlighted (though Web dev is not so much).

On another note, I'm going to make myself sick reading about this stuff. I find that the reality is a bit of info is helpful for guidance, and too much is like tabloid journalism or sickly sweet candy.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#198

Post by jayzalowitz »

meggar wrote: post #160
lloyd-christmas wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My starting salary was higher than your 10 year experience salary. You are WAY off the grid, even with quality-of-life arguments factored in. Unless you work less than 30 hours a week, you ARE getting ripped off. I don't know anyone who started with less than 60k other than my brother who was 3rd man in at a bootstrapped startup. If you enjoy your job, awesome. However, you're very easily in the bottom half of starti…

I'm being ripped off too. graduated during the recession after the dotcom bubble, took the first dead-end dev job I could find, not exactly marketable experience.

email me your resume.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#199

Post by overcast »

JasonPunyon wrote: post #40
ryandrake wrote: post #32

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…

I'd also like to point out that...we're a largely remote company. We don't index our salaries to the most expensive time and place to hire developers ever. We don't have to support Bay Area rent, or duel it out with AppAmaMicroGoog to keep our people from getting poached. We hire people everywhere in the world and through that lens, we're competitive. I live like a king in Buffalo, NY.

Greeting from Rochester! I equally enjoy living like a king with the cost of living in Western,NY Looking at your CV, we may have partied at some point, I went to RIT and dated a Geneseo girl around your timeframe :)

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#200

Post by r2dnb »

Gmo wrote: post #19
chollida1 wrote: post #4

A couple of things that stood out. 1) I'd imagine stock options are part of the job, but I don't see that anywhere. Do new employee's get stock options? I'm guessing they keep this hidden as it allows them a bit more flexibility on offering signing bonuses to entice employee's they want to hire? 2) I don't see any section for bonus on the calculator. Do stackoverflow employee's not get bonuses? 3) Why are years of ex…

My company has transparent salaries since the beginning 14 years ago. Funnily, in the words of one of the co-founders, it's more a mere accident than a clear will from the beginning : "we did not really plan it that way, but back then, it was easier to let the document listing the salaries open for everyone than restricting its access to a few persons" and they decided to keep it that way ever since :) We always ask…

>We always ask a new recruit which salary he/she wants publicly (by that I mean in front of a not insignificant part of the company, we are 50) and show them salaries of other people in case it does not really fit

This smells the subtle management trick. As far as I can see you create a peer pressure. These people shouldn't come into play in the salary discussion, the salary discussion should be solely based on : what do I deserve to earn based on what I will bring to the company. Putting these people in the room - even if they don't speak - is a very sophisticated mecanism subtly repositioning the whole thing.

I would personally smell it and would filter myself out as I dislike companies using subtle management tactics very much. And I think many other people would.

Just by seeing this, I can also derive that this company is full of politics and change happens slowly there.

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