
Ask HN: Are people lying about their salaries? - bsvalley
We&#x27;ve seen a lot of posts about salaries these last few months on HN and I&#x27;m wondering if people are lying about their monthly paycheck.<p>I have 10 years of experience in the field, I&#x27;m based in Silicon Valley. Worked in the city, south bay and the peninsula. I&#x27;m a full stack engineer, I switched employers 7 times in 10 years constantly getting pulled into another hot opportunity! Sometimes from ex-colleagues, most of the times from recruiters. Looking at glassdoor.com and my personal experience, salaries are much lower than what people are claiming on HN. There are exceptions out there, Google, etc. I&#x27;ve been their myself as well as another one of the big 5. Experienced engineers make a lot of money but it&#x27;s mostly coming from Stock&#x2F;RSU&#x27;s and sometimes bonuses. I&#x27;d totally believe it if you tell me &quot;my total offer was about $300-500&#x2F;k&quot;, but it&#x27;s not yearly. And the base salary is rarely $200k&#x2F;year for a &quot;simple&quot; individual contributor. Unless you&#x27;re a guru at google. It seems that a lot of guru&#x27;s at google are active on HN :) Most of it comes from RSU&#x27;s or stocks cumulated after several years (or well negotiated when hired). The vesting period is usually 4 years, not one year, so you can&#x27;t really say my package is $500k. It doesn&#x27;t mean anything. I would say, the base salary for 10 years of exp in Web&#x2F;Mobile or any related field is about $140-$170k per year on average. After tax it&#x27;s obviously way lower.<p>A lot (too many) people on HN are claiming $200k base salary per year as being totally normal. I honestly wish it would be true!!
======
Technophilis
_Looking at glassdoor.com and my personal experience, salaries are much lower
than what people are claiming on HN_

A major problem with Glassdoor salaries is the absence of a date range. The
salaries they show is the average over the period of time starting when they
started collecting salaries. So yes the salaries on Glassdoor tend to be lower
than the current average.

 _A lot (too many) people on HN are claiming $200k base salary per year as
being totally normal._

I agree. It is pretty high. My own reference for base salaries is my own
website where I collect H-1B salaries. We also have an option to only show the
salary distribution starting on a given year. For instance, for a software
engineer at FB, the average base salary is $149k if you only include salaries
reported after 2015 [1]. At Netflix however, Sr. Software Engineers make $200k
on average[2].

[1] [http://h1bpay.com/companies/Facebook/cities/Menlo%20Park-
CA/...](http://h1bpay.com/companies/Facebook/cities/Menlo%20Park-CA/job-
titles/Software%20Engineer/salaries)

[2] [http://h1bpay.com/companies/Netflix/cities/Los%20Gatos-
CA/jo...](http://h1bpay.com/companies/Netflix/cities/Los%20Gatos-CA/job-
titles/Senior%20Software%20Engineer/salaries)

~~~
closeparen
Consider also that most engineers are new grads. Glassdoor and friends should
display an "average" that's very slightly higher than the new grad base
salary, since most practitioners entered the field recently.

$200k base salary could well be totally normal for people with more than 10
years of experience, who are barely represented on Glassdoor.

~~~
user5994461
Confirm. Glassdoor is seriously biased by not having older, more experienced
worker report their salary.

It's biased tower the numerous, new joiners, and they probably won't upgrade
the information when they get promoted.

------
notacoward
Probably a few lying, mostly just _massive_ selection bias. People who come
here are already a very non-representative sample - heavily weighted toward
specific geography, specific age range, specific specialties, and more. Even
within that set, the subset of those willing to post salary info will consist
mostly of those not only above median but so far above median that they're
confident of not being outdone by the next commenter. So you're seeing a
fraction of a fraction of reality. For all its faults, a site like GlassDoor
is likely to be closer to reality than a site like Hacker News.

P.S. Whatever someone who has only ever worked at Google has to say about
salaries in the industry at large is _guaranteed_ to be wrong. Those comments
aren't worth the power cost of transmitting and displaying them.

------
PaulRobinson
Just a couple of points from the UK perspective:

In the UK it is normal to quote salaries gross, pre-tax, but you're going to
pay 40% on anything over £43k - and that's about right for a mid-level dev in
London - and 45% on anything over £150k which is mid-size CTO territory.
However, advertised rates are always pre-tax.

As to how to get a better idea of rates, genuinely, self-reporting is BS.
Looking at advertised rates is the best way to get a sense of trends.
[http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk](http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk) is used by
everybody I know. Note that salaries in the North/Scotland are much lower than
in London. A mid-level dev salary in London is potentially high-end startup
CTO/Head of Engineering in Manchester or Leeds.

Not discussing/disclosing salaries is common in the UK, and when people do,
they often low-ball it, IME.

I have always considered people's reports of earning $200k as being a little…
optimistic.

~~~
aidanhs
> £43k - and that's about right for a mid-level dev in London - and 45% on
> anything over £150k which is mid-size CTO territory

Clearly this depends significantly on role, but looking at your link indicates
that £43k is a bit below-par (as I'd expect) for any of the more in-demand
areas.

For example, if you can interview well (regardless of skill) then you can
probably get a mid-level DevOps job for ~£60k if you shop around a little (or
just put 'DevOps' on your linkedin profile and wait - I have multiple messages
from recruiters suggesting £55k+ despite DevOps not really being what I do any
more, and I suspect these aren't the top payers).

~~~
user5994461
All companies I've been at were hiring grads at >= 40k in London.

It's not credible to me to say that £43k is mid level. That's a junior salary
for any tech position.

Regarding DevOps, it is so bad in demand right now, you'll get 60-70k easy
without lifting a finger if you can handle any interview. There is noone to
take these jobs anyway, all people who are interested in money have long gone
contractors at > 500 £ a day anyway.

~~~
ldn_throwaway
Where are these £40k junior jobs? I've been in a junior position in London for
2 years earning mid £20k's and have been interviewing at other places for
months, but the best offer I can find is £32k.

Everyone I've talked to about it is in a similar ballpark.

~~~
user5994461
£2Xk in London is outrageous. It's less than the living wage.

I expect ALL companies to pay better than what you have now:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13541679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13541679)

Do they ask how much you're currently paid and you reply 20k ? They will
definitely use that information against you. You're so low that you might have
to jump to 3X, then leave again in 6 months to go higher.

What's you linkedin? Link to you resume? What's your degree? Can you handle
the usual 3 hours whiteboard marathon?

~~~
hd4
The single BEST advice, bar none, I have ever got from reading HN is to never
disclose your current salary to recruiters under any circumstances, the only
possible motive they have in asking is to lowball you. You should always ask
for what you feel entitled to, and you should always punch upwards. UK here,
btw. To describe the hiring market for programmers here as toxic would be a
huge understatement.

------
ta_googler
No they are not lying. A senior software engineer at Google easily makes >200K
in cash compensation (salary + bonus), not counting RSU. And around half the
Google engineering workforce is at that level or higher.

I won't be surprised to see similar or even higher numbers at FB / Linkedin /
Netflix.

source: been a googler for >8 years

~~~
cdavid
I suspect this is only in the bay (or maybe other "high value" areas) ? I
never heard such figures in the UK for example in those companies (well, for
FB/Google anyway, never heard of Linkedin/netflix).

~~~
beisner
For Google and Facebook at least, those salaries hold throughout the US (I
know for sure in SF, Seattle, Boston, Boulder, and NYC), and potentially all
of North America.

------
enraged_camel
They aren't lying, but you're witnessing a perfect example of selection bias:
high-earners are much more likely to voluntarily share their salaries.

~~~
literallycancer
Even when anonymous?

\---

I found this (relatively) old paper[1]. It mostly deals with reporting on
government forms, but there is a little bit about sensitivity of the
information reported.

 _Singer, Von Thurn, and Miller (1995) have shown that assurances of
confidentiality reduce nonresponse and /or increase the accuracy of responses
to income questions and other sensitive survey topics. In addition, recent
technological advances raise some possibilities for gathering income
information under more anonymous conditions, without the direct involvement of
an interviewer, which may substantially reduce sensitivity pressures and thus
yield more complete reporting. Research is starting to show the benefits of
anonymous reporting — for example, via audio computer-assisted self-
interviewing (A-CASI) — on the quality of sensitive behavior reports (Turner,
Lessler, and Devore 1992; Tourangeau and Smith 1996), although as yet there
has been no clear demonstration that income reports would similarly benefit._

Singer, Von Thurn, and Miller (1995)[2] concludes that assurances of anonymity
affect response to questions about sensitive data, but other factors may play
a role (such as trust in the interviewer, etc.), and the effect "is not
large".

1 -
[https://www.census.gov/srd/papers/pdf/sm97-05.pdf](https://www.census.gov/srd/papers/pdf/sm97-05.pdf)

2 -
[http://apps.webofknowledge.com/full_record.do?product=WOS&se...](http://apps.webofknowledge.com/full_record.do?product=WOS&search_mode=AdvancedSearch&qid=3&SID=3DgeNpCyAtKsc1gkW7W&page=1&doc=1)

~~~
toephu2
Yes. It makes them feel good about themselves showing they have a higher
salary than others. Even anonymously, would you want to report your under
average salary? I mean you could, but would you take the effort to create a
throwaway account just to do that? Probably not.

~~~
literallycancer
As long as I knew it wouldn't make identifying me easier, I'd report the true
value, since I think it's a good way to improve the awareness of software
engineers as a whole (especially if most of us do it). Better informed actors
can negotiate better.

The only scenario where it's better to not disclose it is a one where I think
I'm already making more than my worth (than I should, according to the
market).

Companies look down on sharing this information, because they have nothing to
gain from it (or at least nothing easily measurable, and presentable as a gain
to shareholders).

Or am I missing something?

------
transparentlabs
I run a company that collects compensation data. We do have a lot of people
making well over $200K, though its much rarer in pure salary form. The
difference with our platform is you can actually curate by people with degrees
from top programs or working at top companies. We can also break it out
between salary, bonus, RSUs, etc.

Most of the people in our database with masters degrees and a few years of
top-tier experience make in the $120K-$160K salary range, but including stock
options and bonuses, a lot of people are easily passing $300K at top companies
in mid-level engineering and product roles.

I'd be happy to do some custom data pulls for anyone if anyone has any
specific questions. If you want to explore more of the data yourself, check
out [https://www.transparentcareer.com](https://www.transparentcareer.com)

------
mquander
Why is "base salary" a metric that you are even paying attention to as opposed
to "liquid annual compensation"? The second one is the one that puts money in
your pocket. I assume that anyone talking about "base salary" is actually
trying to sloppily distinguish between liquid compensation and illiquid
compensation and interpret accordingly.

Average Google engineers aren't getting $200-300k in "base salary", but they
are putting (before taxes) $200-300k in their bank account per year.

~~~
bsvalley
The base salary is your true buying power. Financial institutes look at your
gross base salary in order to calculate the income/debt ration. Stocks and
bonuses are not included unless they ask for you W2 instead of your paychecks.
Also, it's your minimum guaranteed income every month that you can use to pay
your monthly bills.

~~~
toephu2
just fyi- when you apply for a mortgage, you are asked to provide the most
recent 2 years of W2s. So total comp does help in securing a loan.

~~~
bsvalley
Yes and No. From my experience they do include W2s in your mortgage
application in order to see your total assets in case you go bankrupt. They
get as much info as they can, which is why they need your w2s ;) The rule for
mortgage applications is still based on your monthly gross income. In the
background, the actual decision is made off of your gross monthly income/debt
ration. Otherwise if your employer's stock crashes tomorrow or if your annual
performance is crap, they're pretty much screwed. Trust me they don't take any
risks anymore since 2008. It's just as you said "a security", it doesn't
impact the approval of your mortgage application.

------
soham
When asked about salary, people often assume that's a loose ask, and mention
their total cash compensation i.e. including bonus. Not including equity
though. Bonuses at many companies are in the range of 10-20%, so if one is
making 180k, it's easy to round up to 200k in conversation. Plus there are
perks and awards.

180k is not uncommon at all. Several candidates from our course have had those
numbers. And even otherwise, Sr engineers with a few years of experience, make
180k at most well known tech companies. Of course, not every Sr. engineer
makes that much, but those who have had an excellent interview and have
negotiated well, very often do.

------
aleeds
Just for a piece of context, this year, the base salary for right out of
college software engineers at Google is ~$110,000. I would be very surprised
if over the course of 10 years just $60,000 was added to a salary.

~~~
bbcbasic
amazing. 4x what I was paid out of university, and still more than I've been
paid since

If you are in Silicon Valley and at uni, I guess whether you get into Google
etc. or not will make a massive difference to your future. It could determine
if you have enough money to but a house, have kids in the area in the future,
etc. All down to a few interviews.

~~~
closeparen
>. It could determine if you have enough money to but a house

You should always read salaries as a fraction of the median home price within
a ~30 minute radius of where the salary is being paid.

Where $110,000 base salary is offered to new grads (matches my experience at a
unicorn, it isn't just Google), it's about 1/12th of a reasonable home.

Where $50,000 is offered to mid-career folks, it's often 1/3rd to 1/4th of a
reasonable home.

All politics is local. All salaries are local.

~~~
bbcbasic
> All salaries are local.

1\. Except the economy is global. And people do remote work.

2\. The 110k salary person will come out ahead of the 50k salary person in net
worth, assuming both manage their money well, despite the cost of living
difference. This is due to the value of their house, ability to invest in
stock, etc.

------
jamez1
The data you see is biased negatively - you have recruiters fees for one
sitting above the salaries you see. People complaining on glassdoor are
probably not the highest paid team members.

You also have the fact that people who are paid well usually make the
connection through their own personal networks over job boards. Hence the job
boards have the entry level salaries.

After all of this - for the above average workers, the 'average salary' might
be much higher, since they're going to be experiencing better opportunities.
They don't get a true sample of the 'average'.

------
et-al
Selection bias - the title of the other Ask HN was "Do you make more than
$200K? What did you have to do?", after all.

Secondly, I think there's a difference between "totally normal" and "not
outlandish". Most sentiment falls in the latter unless you're asking people in
the Battery Club.

Considering most managers are making $170-180k base, a $200k base is not
outlandish for someone who has specialized knowledge in high demand.

~~~
toephu2
What's the Battery Club?

Google said "The Battery was a unique sort of social destination."

~~~
literallycancer
A fancy place to meet people, apparently.[1] Reminds me of salons.[2]

1 - [http://www.businessinsider.com/battery-
club-2014-7](http://www.businessinsider.com/battery-club-2014-7)

2 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_(gathering)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_\(gathering\))

------
rb2k_
At least with the 'big' valley companies, as a "senior engineer" (level 5) the
usual numbers are around $170k base + a bonus that is 10%-20% of your base
salary.

That's about $200k cash without RSUs.

So I'd say people are not lying.

I guess if you switched 7 times in 10 years, it's hard to get RSU refreshers /
salary bumps and companies tend to, if in doubt, hire BELOW your actual level.

~~~
bsvalley
Did you read my message? I'm actually talking about $200k/year base salary. A
bonus is by definition not part of the base salary...

~~~
kasey_junk
I spent a fair bit of time in finance and it was not uncommon there to have a
bonus that was a multiple of your salary.

If you quoted just the salary numbers than finance would look like it
underpaid where as the opposite is true.

In many places _bonus_ isn't even the correct term as a substantial portion of
it was guaranteed.

------
bhouston
The high end firms in Silicon Valley (Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft,
Linkedin, Netflix) do make this, in part because the cost of living is brutal
there and the competition is fierce.

But you need to factor in the cost of living in comparison to the offered
salary to compare with other cities.

Some friends who went to work in Silicon Valley are making +$200K (some well
above) but have had problems finding houses in good neighborhoods to raise
families.

Basically it isn't affordable to live around there, even if you make +$200K
USD. In part this is because the medium house price in Silicon Valley is
apparently $2.6M [http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-palo-
alto-2016...](http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-palo-alto-2016-9)

In Ottawa, Canada a great house (better than average) in a new suburb would be
in the $350K USD range.

~~~
tomaha
The median house price for Palo Alto is $2.6M. For SV it's much lower (~$1M).
You can't just count the top location to get the median. But you'll likely get
much nicer (bigger,better structure,etc) median houses in other areas.

------
37
I think that generally, yes, people lie/embellish/exaggerate, especially about
things like their salary and especially on the Internet.

I cannot speak to any situation in the SF bay area, but I have caught people
telling this lie, and had people confess to telling this lie.

~~~
bluebknight
I fail to see what someone would gain from doing so. A few lies? Sure... But
so many?

~~~
1123581321
I can only speculate, of course, but I've met a developer who runs around
inflating salary reports in hopes that he will set the expectation that
employers at tech networking events will think they should pay him that much.
It's strange to observe.

But mostly I'd just say that people like to have something impressive and
interesting to say, and making up numbers is a quick way to do that.

------
jeandejean
Glad you shared your experience here. I totally believe you're right. People
are getting mad with numbers, taking the best salary they've heard of for the
average, which is so inacurrate..

------
donovanm
Selection bias is a thing. Also like others are mentioning glassdoors data is
not always accurate. Especially for people with lots of experience. But I
don't think 200k base salary is that abnormal in Silicon Valley to be honest.
Also everything I've heard about google suggests their stocks have a 4 year
vesting period at 1/4 a year. It is not a four year cliff so I think you're
way off there. Talking about compensation only in base salary doesn't make
sense to me.

~~~
bsvalley
This posts has nothing to do with total comp or whatsoever. I'm talking about
too many people claiming $200k/year as their base salary which seems very
suspicious. Or they simply don't understand the break down of their total
comp.

------
cavisne
This data is a good place to start, as it cant really be faked.

[http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=GOOGLE&job=SOFTWARE+ENGINEE...](http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=GOOGLE&job=SOFTWARE+ENGINEER&city=MOUNTAIN+VIEW&year=2016)

I would think the median salary there is below the actual median base salary,
as americans and those on green cards would on average be getting better
salaries.

This figure excludes bonuses and stock compensation also.

~~~
photoJ
Do you know if this is the amount of money for the first day of the contract?
ie. First day of work at Google or if this could be reflective of working at
Google for several years with raises? I'm not clear when the paper work is
filed.

------
salex89
Yep... I'm slightly embarrassed by how little I am earning. I have a nice
corporate job with nice projects with less than $12000 (after taxes). In my
country that's over two times the national average. However,
freelancers/outsourcers claim allegedly having over 50000 per year (with
little to no taxing, black market). However those are usually unfulfilling
jobs to be honest. So I kinda feel like going the wrong way sometimes. So I
lie :)

------
user5994461
Here, take a look at open H1B data: Pick your favorite location, your favorite
company, select the year 2016.

[http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=GOOGLE+INC&job=&city=MOUNTA...](http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=GOOGLE+INC&job=&city=MOUNTAIN+VIEW&year=2016)

That's only base salary of course, they don't publish "package" data. Add 10%
because all H1B workers are underpaid and exploited.

------
tomaha
Most salaries I see look accurate. E.g. at Google your stock vests over 4
years but at the same time you get refreshers every year. So after starting
and getting each successive year refreshers you start having all the amounts
of 4 years vest in one year every year.

Also very often if you switch these days companies offer you to buy your
stocks out so you don't even loose the value when you switch companies.

~~~
bsvalley
I'm talking about the base salary not the total comp. If you don't make $200k
in total comp per year in the Valley with 10 years of experience, you have a
serious problem.

------
justonepost
I've noticed the disconnect on glassdoor and real world as well. I don't think
people are lying, but there may be bias in that people with large salaries
want to boast here.

In general, I find public stats useful for relative information (this job pays
more than that, this company pays more than that company) but not useful for
my own negotiations.

------
bogomipz
>"A lot (too many) people on HN are claiming $200k base salary per year as
being totally normal."

Where have you seen this? Can you provide example of this? I don't recall
seeing this as a regular base number. Not with any kind of regularity any way.

------
lj3
I see the same thing on /r/cscareerquestions and /r/programming. Who benefits
the most from pushing the image that the average silicon valley programmer
makes this much?

------
kelukelugames
Yes, a lot of people do. I often discuss salaries with my co workers and
friends and eventually when they show me their pay stubs there is a mismatch.
It's always a pissing contest.

------
BadassFractal
HN is infamous for posters who claim to be making half a mil easily 5 years
out of school. I don't know what universe they live in, it's not the reality
anywhere in the Bay Area. I know of people who come close to that but they're
an absolute anomaly, they're the 1% of the already rather selective % of
people who make it into a SV unicorn out of the general population.

It feels like the Facebook / Instagram effect where you start thinking that
all of your friends are constantly living on yachts bathing in Dom Perignon,
and you're the one loser out of your entire social circle who sits in an
office all day.

~~~
masonic

      HN is infamous for posters who claim to be making half a mil easily
    

... in one conversation, while complaining about having 3 roommates in a two-
bedroom apartment in another.

~~~
notacoward
Those are not mutually exclusive, especially in the more expensive parts of
Silicon Valley. Still, point taken.

------
geobmx540
I make about 500K _

~~~
geobmx540
Over about 5 years

------
n0us
Yes.

