salary calculator

[bee cubed]

been lurking here for a while. thought that i would come out with a question for everyone...

http://swz-businessweek.salary.com/salarywizard/layoutscripts/swzl_newsearch.asp

has anyone else looked at this? did you find it to be accurate? they claim that all their info comes from corporate HR departments, not from individuals.

i'm especially interested in salary accuracy for tech jobs, considering the recent decline. the salary wizard reports my expected salary at substantially more than i'm making, so i'm wondering if my company is totally fucking its employees, or whether the salary reports are inflated. also, i work for a huge corporation, so i'm sure that makes a difference.

thanks for the feedback.

[Bullhajj]

Those stats are provided by salary.com. I have always thought their numbers were a little high.

[Lunch of Kong]

i'm wondering if my company is totally fucking its employees, or whether the salary reports are inflated. also, i work for a huge corporation, so i'm sure that makes a difference.


It's accurate as far as I'm concerned. I'm a sr. tech writer, and that salary report page pegged my salary right at the $65k median for my geographic location. I'm a bit ahead of the curve actually, because the chart doesn't take into account length of service.

If more people had less hang-ups about discussing their compensation, I believe more people would be fairly compensated. For some reason, many people consider talking about money to be "impolite", and thus the mass-screwings continue.

[Bullhajj]

If more people had less hang-ups about discussing their compensation, I believe more people would be fairly compensated. For some reason, many people consider talking about money to be "impolite", and thus the mass-screwings continue.

Good point Rogher. I believe you're right.

I actually went the whole way through the lookup for my area (Bellevue, WA) and it came out at $72k for a median. That does seem about right for this area.

The last time I used their data I compared it to the figures I got from the local chapter of the STC (http://www.stc-psc.org/). I gave more weight to the STC numbers because they just focus on technical writing. This was in late 2001. I can't remember what the actual numbers were any more, but I talked to others who agreed the salary.com figures seemed too high.

My last contract was ~20% higher than the median, but it was through an agency, which type jobs typically pay more because the benefits are flimsy, so that's about right. That said, I am told the contract I am hoping to get a call on next week probably will be ~18% lower; nevertheless, I will probably take it. Lucky for us, my wife gets excellent benefits with the UW.

Roger, maybe it's just a little worse here in the PNW, but I would be interested in knowing if new hires in your area are getting that kind of money.

[Sparky]

Seemed accurate for my last salaried position (marketing/web designer, in the Protodotcommian Period). I don't think salaries have dropped much (the SF Bay Area cost of living is still just as high) but there are far less of those kind of jobs available. Which there should be, since thankfully no one's pouring VC into portals for ferret enthusiasts and online cantaloupe stores anymore.

[Desslock]

The IT numbers seem high -- salaries have significantly dropped in the past three years, for most IT positions, other than senior architects.

[bee cubed]

at our company, it is actually against policy to discuss your compensation with other employees.

[Jason McCullough]

Lots of companies do that. Funny stuff.

[HaveFun (Bill Huffman)]

It was pretty accurate in my case, i.e., software engineering

Companies generally don't like emplyees discussing their salaries simply because it frequently leads to employee unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

It is true that the average salary has probably gone down over the past three years. I think that this has probably hurt people worse that have the fewer years of experience.

[sellthekids]

i just came out of a 2 month job search. here's what i see from this site:

the title Software Engineer II (which was my previous title) is pretty much dead on, for highs, lows and median.

i am now called an Application Developer and my salary is almost the exact same as what i earned as a SEII. i don't see AD in the dropdown so no telling how to judge that.

that said, if the offer that you get it is less than 10% from the median salary of the title (using the Salary.com numbers) then you should negotiate. the position i just accepted was a negotiated salary; their first offer was pretty much crazy/insane and i think was a ploy to see how desperate i was and an attempt to judge the market and the buzz about how hard jobs are to find in IT. also, i was fortunate to have two offers at once, so i was able to tell each company what i was considering and make them at least play ball.

i am not saying to lie to a company and act like you have two offers if you don't but, i pretty much showed one company the other company's salary figures and benefit costs, b/c my goal was to work at this place (i liked the people and the environment better.) be honest, but play hardball.

in that same vein: the 'soft skills' company (Drake Beam Morin) that my last employer sent us to when they sacked us gave us this figure: 80% of HR people expect to negotiate from the company's first offer. 80%.

hope that helps!

ps - yeah, my last company pretty much forbade us to talk to each other about salary. and of course the severance package included fun things like an NDA (which covered the package itself) and a pretty strict non-compete (including helping my buddies who are still there find jobs.) corporations are run by lawyers...so they pretty much suck! corporations know knowledge is power and keeping the masses from knowing what one another earns is one way to keep everyone in their place. :evil:

[Lunch of Kong]

Roger, maybe it's just a little worse here in the PNW, but I would be interested in knowing if new hires in your area are getting that kind of money.

New hires probably start in the mid-40s. I was really getting screwed when I started five years ago at 36k. I was desperate and didn't negotiate. I'd been in Austin for seven months, and only had a couple thousand left in the nest egg I had brought with me.

My history is probably atypical, but to get my salary to where it is now, it took:

a) a friend at work who knew how much everyone was making and who told me I was really getting screwed
b) a new base-salary offer that came with the buy-out of our company
c) a new manager who loved me because I made him look so damn good, and who was scared to death I would jump ship unless I was more fairly compensated
d) doing work-related favors that seem above and beyond, so that the engineering managers rank me in the top 10% during the year-end popularity contest^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hemployee ranking sessions.

[Skies]

In Arizona, Phoenix in particular, the numbers seem a bit high. I've seen jobs, for senior web application developers,coming in at 40K. Are they serious? I've yet to see any position offering more than 55K.

Pretty grim out here.

[Bullhajj]

New hires probably start in the mid-40s.

Hummm. If newly hired senior tech writer is getting mid 40s than that's ~30% below the quoted average. Hard to make the argument that salary.com isn't a little high. I guess you could say the same for me and just rack up last year's wage as an anomolie. I mean, it's not like anyone has offered me the mid-range numbers recently. I'm sure I could negotiate a little, but without much leverage ~20% seems like a lot to ask.

[Desslock]

The decline in salaries is directly related to demand -- cripes, for an unexciting programmer position we were recently advertising, we got 1,200 applications. There's a lot of IT people looking for jobs.

[Bernie_Dy]

I was all over the map on that chart, because there were several categories I could have selected. My new job is paying a bit less than my old job, but it's still a healthy salary, especially with the cost of living in Houston.

Using the Programmer and Client/Server Analyst categories, I came out ahead or about average. The kicker is that my new job's official title is Project Manager/Product Manager. Using that title on the chart, there's ah, let's call it, "lots of room for growth." I didn't have two offers to bounce against, so I didn't negotiate, and the salary they offered was in the range I told the recruiter I wanted. But the recruiter could have helped out a bit more by telling me it was a PM position. I was under the impression, based on what she said, and what I got from the interview, that it was more of a technical lead position. Probably, the recruiter could have made a bit more of a negotiations effort...it might have benefitted both of us.

That said, we're in a recession and I feel happy for what I have. The company's benefits and working environment are pretty good. And having looked at other jobs this company has offered, it does looks like they tend to pay modest salaries, so I don't think they were trying to screw me because of the recession, I think this is just how they pay. If things go well, they're a profitable company and I don't forsee problems in getting compensation improvements in the future. But I'm more experienced than I was ten years ago too...if I start catching EDS-style penny pinching and leadership-not-by-example, I can certainly reactivate my accounts on the job sites. Um, after the recession, that is! In general, the contracting market I left was getting so bad that full-time just seemed the way to go.

Re: discussion of salaries. I don't think it's wrong to share salary information on aggregate research sites like salary.com. Or to disclose it in a professional capacity, for example if you're giving a speech or assisting at a job fair for students and such. But casual discussion of salaries isn't just a corporate policy (although their reasons for it are certainly evil). I've always been under the impression that personal finances are private information. I'd feel uncomfortable in a party running from one person to the next asking, "Gee, what do you make? Oh, you're overpaid," or, "Wow, everyone here makes more than you," or "Oh, you invested in the stock market the last three years? You must be one poor sorry fuck!" :wink: I understand Roger's sentiments, and certainly open salary knowledge can help define general targets for job hunters. But looking at a flat salary doesn't take into account the job benefits, the seniority of the individual, the working environment, the economy, the company size and profitability, and other intangibles.

[bee cubed]

the reason that i'm somewhat pissed is that i work for a large, profitable corporation. we've stayed very profitable, despite the downturn. it has recently come down from management that raises will average 3% this year and that bonuses will be substantially smaller than last year. the executive raise info won't come out until july, but last year the CEO made something like 9 million and got a 25% raise (including bonuses). i would hazard that he'll be getting more than a 3% raise this year. pardon my french, but that bullshit.

[Chris Nahr]

I refer you back to a previous discussion on this very board, as well as another recent discussion on Joel on Software, both of which surmised that ruthless capitalism is only for the rank-and-file employees below the upper management level...

[Lunch of Kong]

I understand Roger's sentiments

Respectfully, I think I may have conveyed the wrong sentiments.

The reason I think people should open up more isn't because I'm on a crusade to equalize compensation. It's because I don't believe that the amount of money you make determines your worth as a person. Your net worth has as much bearing on my interactions with you as the pattern on your socks, although it might make for interesting discussion.

[Bullhajj]

Respectfully, I think I may have conveyed the wrong sentiments. The reason I think people should open up more isn't because I'm on a crusade to equalize compensation.

From what you originally said, I never would have guessed. From here on out, I stick with my hang ups about discussing compensation. There are just tons of other interesting things we can discuss that don't require anything but converstation from me.