

Is 80-100k salary real? there's an app for that, a weekend project - rjyo
http://geolary.com

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S_A_P
In Houston TX, 80-100k for a job is pretty much a given if you can write code.
.NET, Java and even PHP jobs easily pay that here, >5yrs experience can/will
get you above that range.(sometimes by a large margin)

Yes, this is not an entry level salary, but its easily attainable in 5 years
if you are someone that is attracted to a site like this. From the limited
experience I have seen, its not uncommon anywhere in Texas or a large part of
the US. I have seen some exceptions in Oregon(Portland had a bunch of 65-75k
"senior" developer jobs when I looked into that city and North Carolina seems
to have a strangely low market average)

I know that not everyone here is a developer or even technical but seems that
those that aren't are more entrepreneurial which could lead to far higher pay
when you get it right.

~~~
ctoneal
Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I've been looking in Houston for at least a year
now, and I'm finding virtually nothing here, let alone anything at that sort
of range. In my (admittedly limited) experience, the development jobs I've
seen around are only offering 40-60k. I'd be interested in knowing where these
cushy jobs are hiding.

~~~
mileszs
Wow. You should move to Indianapolis. There are companies here dying to give
some qualified programmer money. A salary of 80-100k is being offered to
experienced Java, .NET -- even Ruby/Rails developers. (I just came from a
Rails job at that level.) On top of that, it's a cheap place to live, and is
building an interesting little community of tech/startup-minded people.

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hikarudo
I haven't tried the app (I don't own an iPhone), but I suggest replacing
average by median. Very high salaries can significantly bring the average up,
whereas the median is more robust to outliers.

~~~
drdaeman
(Same for not owning the iPhone and not trying the app — hope the website
version's coming) A histogram (on some separate screen/page) would be nice
too.

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ecaron
It would be interesting if this could aggregate in the data from Salary.com,
PayScale.com and Glassdoor.com, to kind of generate the mean/range/etc.

Also, integration with the other-recent HN salary tool -
<http://salaryshare.me/> \- would really be a nice addition and the
complementary services could feed users to each other.

 _Insert obligatory Android app request_

~~~
rjyo
At least the web side can handle Android now. Thanks!

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jzila
What does this provide that glassdoor.com doesn't?

*edit: other than the app-ness, of course.

~~~
tmcw
Focus on a good user story & a nice design, I'd assume?

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r00
There's a website for that.. vfxwages.com. Starting with VFX /anim/gaming
industries, heading into general tech industries hopefully this year. Since
2009.

[http://www.ereleases.com/pr/industry-wages-arms-creative-
pro...](http://www.ereleases.com/pr/industry-wages-arms-creative-
professionals-salary-knowledge-17815)

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ares2012
I think this is brilliant. If you can get enough people typing in their
current salary you could have a significantly better data source for affluency
than the US census (which is what everyone uses now). That database
(completely anonymized of course) that ties location to affluency would be
worth a ton to advertisers and marketers.

Well done. Good luck!

~~~
djjose
I venture to say that even anonymously, people would exaggerate their
salaries. Perhaps this could be curved downwards though to get a good
estimate.

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mamatta
so you can actually do it online by inputting coordinates:

<http://geolary.com/salaries/139.793644,35.864778>

~~~
graywh
In longitude,latitude order.

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enko
The example shown on the web page is nonsensical. Max 260k, min 2k? Obviously
2k ($0.95/hr) is bogus. One wonders if it is bringing down averages.

Or if not can someone please introduce me to these programmers working for <
$1/hr? My startup could really use them : )

~~~
rjyo
Still using the screenshot with test data on an iPhone Simulator... Shame on
me :-p

~~~
AlexC04
There was another post earlier today with all of the US H1-B salary data for
the last 10 years.

<http://www.flcdatacenter.com/CaseH1B.aspx>

I downloaded it all the second I saw it with the thoughts that I'd just be
able to "find something to do with it somehow"

Seems you're alot further along the path of being able to do something with
it.

It's literally* a bajillion salary data points that are probably very reliable
because the companies are likely taxed on the amount they've entered in that
list (or something).

Roll it in! (maybe with a "Source" flag)

*not really literally.

~~~
rjyo
This is huge! We'll have it in! Thank you!

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eventhough
Unrelated, but did the developer of this application go to Lynbrook High
School? I recognize the map location on the home page. That would be cool.

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estel
I really don't understand why this is an app. Out of interest, what process
led you to developing it as one?

~~~
rjyo
Actually I tried to answer this: "If average salaries are 80-100k why does
everyone keep getting 40-60k offers?"
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2453174>

We used many cutting-edge things like node.js, expressjs, mongodb, mongoose,
pjax and a lot more in this project. We learned how to put these things
together and how to move it to a production box.

Even if no one use it, we learned a lot. And if people really love it, another
great PLUS!!

~~~
iamjustlooking
I think he was asking why it is a phone app and not a more appropriate website
format.

~~~
rjyo
Oops! AppStore can be a good traction for getting people to use it, which is a
chicken/egg problem for this app. I'll try to make it work on the web ASAP.
Thanks!

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patorjk
Where does the data come from?

edit: It appears one source is from the app users.

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colonelxc
I think that using the median instead of mean might be more meaningful. If you
have someone put in a really high salary, the mean will be skewed to a point
potentially above most of the population.

Given a mostly normal distribution with only a few extreme outliers, the
median will be a more realistic number.

~~~
rjyo
Thanks for the advice! We are using median now, although it shows avg in the
app.

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akulbe
I think it's an excellent idea. However, the app never worked for me. I've got
an iPhone 4 with the latest firmware, and just after opening all it does is
crash.

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ryanpetrich
This app uses a number of private (or at the very least, semi-private) APIs.
I'm surprised Apple approved it.

~~~
rjyo
errr. for example?

Pretty sure we didn't used any ourselves. And for the libs, we actually used:
ShareKit/asi-http-request/Admob/regexkitlite/JSONKit

All great open-source projects used by tons of apps.

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rjyo
Has anyone found the easter egg?

~~~
heri0n
Can you give us a clue? :P

Anyway pretty good UI, a few suggestions: Perhaps you could add a graph of the
normal distribution and where you lie on it. Choosing the location of your
workplace is a little confusing at first, it might be more intuitive to make
it similar to the Facebook checkin sections, show a list of places nearby.
Just curious if you are making any ad revenue yet? :P

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lian
I will never use an application that makes me tell it my salary on the first
page.

~~~
yzhengyu
Well, considering the fact they need more data points to make it more accurate
and meaningful...

Now I can understand why employers want to keep them a secret, I have never
understood why individual employees want to keep their salaries a secret.

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lhnn
Why not make a website that could take my zip, or use smartphone location
services? you've reduced your potential user count, espectially since it's a
free app.

~~~
rjyo
Cool! we'll make it happen. A website is much more agile than the app. Thanks
a lot!

~~~
leif
This seems like an instance of putting the solution before the problem. I
imagine you went in knowing you wanted to write an app and came up with one,
not that you wanted to help people find out salaries, and then decided the app
was the way to go. You are not alone.

~~~
danilocampos
It's a weekend project and he hasn't charged anyone for it, cut some slack
here.

On my weekend projects, the thinking is usually "What's the most fun I can
have building something?" and then I go build it. We don't need to apply deep
level strategy to everything, sometimes it's enough to just build fun things.
If it ends up being useful, damn, what a great weekend. Either way, your
skills and experience by Sunday have grown relative to Friday. Any benefit
derived by others is just a bonus.

OP, keep on jammin' on the weekends doing whatever makes you happiest. :D

~~~
quinndupont
I wish I had those kind of skills to bust out something like this in a
weekend.

~~~
danilocampos
The beauty of weekend projects is that if you do enough of them that are _fun
for you_ (and not freighted with intense strategy) one day, you will have
those skills.

I started off with a kinda boring job, mediocre graphics skills and the
tiniest grasp of C syntax. Now I get paid to design and build iPhone apps.
It's awesome. But it all started with little side projects to sharpen me up.
Start practicing, you can do it if you commit.

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phlux
You know what I am waiting for, and maybe with the Linkedin API this could be
easily accomplished with your app:

I install the app, and I tell you my linkedin profile, zip code and current
salary.

I want to know people in my area with similar skills in their linkedin are
paid XXX, how many there are and the high-low range.

I would like to see comparison of what skills I lack to those who make more
money than me.

~~~
nitrogen
_I would like to see comparison of what skills I lack to those who make more
money than me._

That would be fantastic. How cool would it be to have an app/site that tells
you where you are, and where to go for the best return? "If you add an open
source Ruby project to your profile you may gain $10k/yr on your next job."

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jsavimbi
Aside from confining it to zip code and metro area vs. address, I think there
more data points that need to be added in order to get a more accurate picture
of the job market. Just a suggestion, but:

1\. Industry 2\. Specific job title/function 3\. Education level 3a.
College(s) attended 4\. Years experience 5\. # of jobs held a different
employers within the same industry 6\. As a bonus, what type of discipline
within the job function: enterprise, startup, consulting, freelance 7\.
Benefit level to include bonuses, healthcare, equipment/education
reimbursement, travel

then sell job ads based on what the user inputs, because after all, isn't that
we're looking for? Those admob things do nothing for me.

~~~
mendicant
I agree. Especially concerning industry. You can have all things equal (Title,
Education, experience, etc) and one industry will still pay way more than
another.

Besides, does it really make sense to be downtown and have your salary being
compared to the guy working at the McDonalds in the food court of your
building?

I like the idea, and with a few tweaks it could really be a big thing. There
are some companies who pay a very large sum to see how they compare against
others in terms of pay/benefits/long term incentives.

