

Ask HN: What is market rate salary? - ltcoleman

I am a senior developer. I work with Mule, java, web-services, objective-C, javascript, HTML, jQuery, javascript MVC, SQL, blah, blah, blah. Needless to say, I am a generalist who works in many different technologies.  The company I work for is trying to learn how to hire good talent.  We are based in Arkansas so cost of living is low, but it is also harder to get talent to come here.  My main question is around salary.  What is market rate salary? Every job listing on here says they pay market rate? I am just wondering what that is, to find out if I am being compensated correctly. Also, at the company I work for, there are no project bonuses or equity allocations. My salary is all that I get.  I will appreciate any useful comments or advice.
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steverb
To be frank, market rate is however little your employer thinks they can get
away with paying you, or someone comparable to you.

Look at indeed.com and salary.com and aim for 75th percentile and higher.
Unfortunately the only way to really know is to put yourself out there and see
what offers you get.

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megamark16
I don't know how accurate or relevant it is, but Indeed.com's salary
comparison tool can sometimes be helpful. Here's an example:

[http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=senior+java+developer&l1...](http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=senior+java+developer&l1=san+francisco%2C+ca&q2=senior+java+developer&l2=kansas+city%2C+mo&q3=senior+java+developer&l3=new+york+city%2C+ny&q4=senior+java+developer&l4=little+rock%2C+ak)

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ltcoleman
This tool is very nice but it is still hard to gauge since salary is my only
form of compensation.

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wavephorm
"Market rate" literally means "average salary". So you can use the salary
sites and take the 50th percentile, and compare that against cost of living
values.

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parasitius
woah cant believe little rock is more than DOUBLE what we get in ohio, must be
a bigger town than i knew!

