

Googler Builds Site That Shows You What Top Tech Companies Pay - Bartlet
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/29/googler-builds-site-that-shows-you-what-top-tech-companies-pay/

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ecaron
The problem with all salary sites (Payscale.com, Salary.com, Glassdoor.com) is
the reliability of the data that they're pulling from. They all make such
gross exaggerations and generalizations of salaries across locales, industries
and titles that I'm sure you could reduce an entry-level statistician to
tears.

Given that this site is based on "open sources of information publicly
available to anyone on the internet," I think it is just a rehashing of the
same, polluted information that's plagued salary discussions for a decade. I
had initially hoped that, coming from a Googler, there'd be some new
intelligence brought to organizing and interpreting the data. No such luck.

The best source of accurate salary discussions still comes from sites like
<http://salaryshare.me/> (previously discussed on HN:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2441888>)

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scrame
> in the Vegas analogy I’m Hunter S. Thomson

No, you are not.

~~~
neworbit
Maybe for the drugs

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the_grind
The site is <http://techcompanypay.com/>

It is currently down.

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hagbart_celine
i could reach it right now..

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nopal
The salary listed for my position at my company is 27k less than I make. I'm
not sure if these numbers accurately reflect the true average salary of all
employees. I find it very hard to believe that my salary is that much higher
than average.

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Shengster
I wonder if these estimates are calculated using overall compensation (which
includes stock and bonuses) or base salary? Does anyone know?

~~~
sgk284
From my personal experience, it has to be base. Those numbers are way too low
to be total comp.

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icode
Im not from the USA, so I wonder what "Twitter paying $120K on average"
actually means. After Taxes etc, how much of what the company pays will end up
in the employees pocket to actually buy sutff?

~~~
roel_v
In the major urban areas (Cali, NY) about 50% (with quite a big margin - more
correct would be 'between 40 and 55%), excluding health care insurance.

(I'm not in the US but I have an academic interest in comparative tax
pressures, and that of the US comes up quite often).

~~~
kokey
Where do you think are hot spots with a good supply of tech jobs, where taxes
on the individual is low and rent is not very high?

~~~
bretthoerner
Austin, TX.

~~~
mattdeboard
Indianapolis, IN

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p4wnc6
I stopped reading this entry at "Hunter S. Thomson." [sic]

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rorrr
If it's based on H1B datasets, it's mostly incorrect. H1B salaries are
definitely lower than what US citizens get (on average).

~~~
larsberg
Possibly true, though for the same position it will be the same pay. Having
managed H1B employees, every year I was required to fill out a bunch of
paperwork confirming that I was not underpaying them for their work relative
to their peers. We were fairly rigorous about this.

That said, you're only on an H1B visa until you get your green card. By which
point, you've gone through several promotions and are finally leaving the
junior engineer position. I would also expect H1B numbers to be skewed lower
for this reason.

If people really want to know what the salaries are at other companies, they
should just make friends with their generalist. Big company HR orgs pay third
parties to do more stastically rigorous surveys of salaries by position and
use that to determine how "not to overpay."

~~~
rorrr
My relatives went through the H1B process. I know exactly how employers treat
them. They understand that you're tied to them, and even though you could
transfer, it resets your greencard process.

My father was making less money than the people under him, even though he was
the chief engineer (vs regular engineers).

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dsolomon
H1B salaries are generally higher. Perhaps they are confusing billing rate
with salary rate.

