
Salary transparency at Stack Overflow - ocoster
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2016/07/salary-transparency/
======
tristor
At my self-assessed skill level and years of experience, they're offering
$11k/yr more for a "Developer" than a "Site Reliability Engineer". I find it
interesting that they value someone in a "Developer" position higher than
someone in a "Site Reliability Engineer" position. Having been an Ops person
for my entire career and at the same time a competent developer in numerous
languages and environments, I find this unsurprising but still a bit off-
putting.

It does seem to be an industry-wide phenomenon, but at the end of the day it
makes no sense to me why a company would value an employee less that is
expected to keep their services up, rain or shine (which presumably make them
money) vs someone who is presumably focused mostly on adding additional
features (may make them money). This is especially vexing in light of the fact
I've never met a highly qualified Ops person who wasn't also a skilled
developer. Mostly I've found the opposite, developers (skilled or otherwise)
who have next to zero understanding of systems concepts, networking, or
automation.

~~~
yen223
This is the profit centre vs cost centre problem. Companies are incentivized
to spend more on developers, since developers build features, and features
drive sales, and sales drive profit.

SysOps folks keep the site up, but once you start hitting >99% reliability,
throwing more money at sysops isn't going to increase revenue.

~~~
caminante
From a "job security" lens, the sysops crew needed to keep the site up will be
the last to go during downsizing.

~~~
Sharlin
There are plenty of managers with the "why are we paying them when everything
just works?" mentality.

~~~
Natsu
Yeah, firefighting is a more visible show of "value" to those not directly
involved than reliability is, because nobody at too many places likes to ask
why we're always fighting fires in the first place.

------
ryandrake
Before everyone inevitably piles on about how such-and-such a salary "seems
low compared to That One Guy At Google I Know That Makes $300k", keep in mind
average Bay Area salaries for software people in the Bay Area are not as large
as you think. T.O.G.A.G.I.K. makes several standard deviations above the self
reported mean of $100K-$105K [1][2] and BLS reported median [3][4] (around
~$125K or so depending on job function).

1:
[http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa...](http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa..).

2: [https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-
en...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-en..).

3:
[http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41940.htm#15-0000](http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41940.htm#15-0000)

4:
[http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000](http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000)

~~~
JasonPunyon
I'd also like to point out that...we're a largely remote company. We don't
index our salaries to the most expensive time and place to hire developers
ever. We don't have to support Bay Area rent, or duel it out with
AppAmaMicroGoog to keep our people from getting poached. We hire people
everywhere in the world and through that lens, we're competitive. I live like
a king in Buffalo, NY.

~~~
dpark
SO is based in NYC, right? Do you not have trouble retaining local devs there
on these salaries? Or do you just have no one who actually lives and works in
NYC?

~~~
JasonPunyon
We have offices in NYC, London, and Denver. If I'm remembering correctly, I
can count the number of developers who've left the company on one hand. We
currently have ~20 engineering staff in the NYC office. Retention doesn't seem
to be a huge problem.

~~~
dpark
Is there significant compensation not captured by this tool (bonus, equity,
amazing benefits)? $132K for a "2" with 10 years experience just seems really
low in NYC. $171K for a "5" seems really low, too, since that person would be
principle at Google or Microsoft.

~~~
JasonPunyon
This is the standard stuff from our company page
([http://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/stack-
overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/stack-overflow))...

20 days vacation (to start)

Flextime

No Copay Health Insurance

Whatever workstation you want (PC/MAC/Build Your Own), Monitors out the wazoo.
Seriously, I have 128GB of RAM and a GTX 1080, we don't skimp here.

$3,500 a year + 3 days conference budget

Gym Reimbursement Tuition Reimbursement

In NYC and Denver we have in house chefs

Unlimited sick time

Fully Paid Parental Leave

...but our people team is pretty empowered to make you happy.

And yeah, there's equity.

~~~
dpark
Interesting. So you have good benefits, good vacation, and some equity (of
questionable value, since it's not publicly traded), but nothing that adds
another 30k in value to the package over your competitors. If the numbers from
the calculator are accurate, I don't know how places like Google aren't
vacuuming up all your senior+ devs. A principle dev at Google in NYC must get
paid at least $200k. I'd bet the bottom end there is more like $250 with bonus
and (tangible) equity grants.

Good for you guys for managing high retention. Something is keeping your devs
happy and it's not the money.

~~~
JasonPunyon
Not everyone wants to work at Google. I know I don't.

~~~
dpark
Google was just a proxy for software engineering employers who pay well.
Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon all pay similarly. So do a number of other
companies. The finance corps in NYC probably do too, but I wouldn't really
want to work there either from what I've heard.

Regardless, I certainly would not encourage you or anyone else to leave a job
they love if it pays them an amount they are happy with. Going to Google or
anyone else for a 20% pay bump is a bad deal if you end up less happy overall.

~~~
ryandrake
It's good to keep in mind that "software engineering employers who pay well"
don't necessarily pay everyone that well, or even most of their employees. My
guess is that very few Googlers get that mystical $200K (although no doubt
someone will reply here with an example to "prove" me wrong). Always comparing
your salary (or as a business owner, what you offer your employees) to what
Google pays the top 0.1% of their talent is bound to leave you disappointed.

~~~
ThePawnBreak
Interns at Facebook make about $100k, and they get free luxury housing. I know
people at Google at Facebook. New grads make about 170k per year (total
compensation), next level is about 220k, and the next (which is Senior) about
300k. One level above that (ie Staff Engineer) gets into the 400-500k range.
$200k is definitely about average pay for Google engineers (maybe $150k is
more accurate for offices outside MTV/NY/SEA).

~~~
linkregister
This is mostly consistent with what is posted on Glassdoor [1] and on this
authoritative H1B website:
[http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=GOOGLE&job=SOFTWARE+ENGINEE...](http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=GOOGLE&job=SOFTWARE+ENGINEER&city=MOUNTAIN+VIEW&year=2015)

Your figures are about $15k higher than what these sources report, which I
think is close enough.

[1] [https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-
Sa...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-San-Jose-
Salaries-
EJI_IE9079.0,6_KO7,24_IL.25,33_IM761.htm?filter.experienceLevel=ONE_TO_THREE)

------
fecak
As someone in recruiting and hiring, I love the concept of salary transparency
on many levels, and I hope more companies at least make attempts like this to
provide insight.

That said, salary ranges and transparency can create two obvious issues.

1\. Negotiations - I can tell you from vast past experience that when you tell
an applicant "the salary range for this position is 80-100K", in almost every
case any offer below 100K is considered a slight regardless of the experience
of the candidate. "...but I thought you said the position paid 100K?" is a
common thing to hear. Candidates hear the top of the range, and
apply/interview with that expectation.

This is only an issue when a candidate's true market rate is at the bottom of
a range. A minimally qualified candidate doesn't typically see himself/herself
as 'minimally qualified'. So even if 80K is true fair market rate for this
candidate, and 80K is offered, the offer still has a good chance of being
rejected simply because of the emotional attachment to the higher number and
the feeling of "leaving money on the table".

2\. Internal employees - Stack Overflow said this has been available
internally for a bit, but when employees find out what others are making they
are inclined to compare their own efforts/abilities vs others. It can lead to
people either asking for raises to match their co-workers, or perhaps feeling
slighted and seeking other employers.

Being that it's not easy to truly measure productivity in most environments -
other than perhaps consulting (billable hours) this is likely to cause issues.
The next step is being prepared for how to handle those issues when they
arise.

~~~
dworin
"2\. Internal employees - Stack Overflow said this has been available
internally for a bit, but when employees find out what others are making they
are inclined to compare their own efforts/abilities vs others. It can lead to
people either asking for raises to match their co-workers, or perhaps feeling
slighted and seeking other employers."

One nice thing about being transparent and consistent with salaries is that
you can have an objective conversation with someone about the reasons that
they're making less, versus having to rely on vague, irrelevant, or harmful
explanations like "he was making more at another company," or "he negotiated
harder." If someone thinks they should be making what another developer is
being paid, they need to make the case based on clearly laid out criteria.

There's no compensation system that makes everyone happy, and there shouldn't
be. You want a system that leaves people knowing where they stand, what it
takes for them to make more, and management that encourages them to grow into
that amount.

~~~
optforfon
it sounds a bit too idealistic. How about if someone is hired at a hire rate
because "well we needed someone with his skill set ASAP, so we agreed to pay
him a premium" (but we can't afford to pay everyone at that rate) or "We
desperately needed someone quickly with skill set X and he was the only person
available"

And sometimes comparing people and their skill sets is really apples to
oranges. If one guy is an expert on some very specific top, and thats
important for your business (and is therefore an expensive hire) - it doesn't
mean you should create an incentive for other employees to learn his skill set
(maybe you only need one statistician or expert in COBOL or whatever)

"There's no compensation system that makes everyone happy"

Sure, pay people way above market rate and don't allow them to compare wages.
They will not feel ripped off and they don't develop a sense on inadequacy

~~~
softawre
> Sure, pay people way above market rate and don't allow them to compare wages

That sounds illegal. Can you really not allow your employees to compare wages?

~~~
Nick-Craver
In the US at least (I can't speak for elsewhere), preventing this is illegal.
Companies discourage it through various ways and it's practically an embedded
culture thing at this point throughout the country. But: you cannot legally
prevent it.

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 is what you're looking for here - it
provides employee protections for such discussions.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Yeah, it's interesting. They can't prevent it, but if you do it, you can
guarantee you'll be fired. They'll just eliminate your position for some other
reason.

~~~
phasmantistes
You don't want to work for a company that operates that way anyway, if you can
avoid it.

------
chollida1
A couple of things that stood out.

1) I'd imagine stock options are part of the job, but I don't see that
anywhere. Do new employee's get stock options? I'm guessing they keep this
hidden as it allows them a bit more flexibility on offering signing bonuses to
entice employee's they want to hire?

2) I don't see any section for bonus on the calculator. Do stackoverflow
employee's not get bonuses?

3) Why are years of experience factored in at all? Shouldn't ability matter
more? I mean you seem to get a different salary if you have 15 vs 16 years of
experience. This just seems very arbitrary. Wouldn't a more granular bucket be
better?

As to transparent salaries...

I've worked at two firms for the past 10 years and both have complete salary
transparency. The sky hasn't fallen, and I don't hear very much complaining,
though there still is some complaining, the upside of the complaining is that
its over actual salary numbers rather than guessing numbers.

We allow people to pick from a couple of buckets of salary and bonus
multipliers. You can chose a lower salary and get a bigger bump on your bonus
vs a large salary and a lower multiplier on your bonus. This lets risk adverse
people get more upfront and leave a bit of the upside on the table and people
with a higher risk tolerance to bet on themselves a bit more.

Has anyone actually gone with salary transparency and seen a downside?

~~~
Gmo
My company has transparent salaries since the beginning 14 years ago.

Funnily, in the words of one of the co-founders, it's more a mere accident
than a clear will from the beginning : "we did not really plan it that way,
but back then, it was easier to let the document listing the salaries open for
everyone than restricting its access to a few persons" and they decided to
keep it that way ever since :) We always ask a new recruit which salary he/she
wants publicly (by that I mean in front of a not insignificant part of the
company, we are 50) and show them salaries of other people in case it does not
really fit.

We are also experimenting with allowing people to choose their salary after 3
years in the company (there's a process and some caveats of course).

And we did not really see any downside so far

~~~
dimino
> We are also experimenting with allowing people to choose their salary after
> 3 years in the company (there's a process and some caveats of course).

Why wouldn't everyone ask for the maximum amount your company is willing to
give? I don't really _care_ if Mark from billing is getting paid 1/3rd of what
I'm asking for, what I care about is if you'll give it to me...

~~~
brianwawok
Hey I know who is coming in Saturday to fix the prod bug, the guy that picked
500k salary ;)

Although maybe for some people they would want the extra work for extra money
and it could be a win win.

~~~
dimino
Uh, hell yes I'd come in on Saturday to fix that bug if you pay me 500k.

~~~
brianwawok
How about current salary plus 10k? 20k? Everyone has a price :)

------
hardwaresofton
Yeah so this seems great, except that's not what should be setting the price
of developers. Supply and demand (for the most part) sets the price (and
should, IMO) of developers, and that's what I want, not some rubric.

Outside of transparency, this strikes me as no different from the "grade"
systems at various big companies like HP, IBM, etc. If you want to pay me
fairly, pay me what the market says I'm worth.

Things also get super messy when you get people to try and review/make
objective assessments of their own skills and others'.

"Most of us are a 1 or a 2" \-- aiming high is great and all, but I would be
pissed if I was the most consistently good engineer in the company yet didn't
get some multiple of my salary because the "best" at the company is a 2
because of the ridiculously high bar that is set. Also I can definitely see a
system like this trampling all over developers who should be paid more but
THINK they're not that valuable, or afraid to assert themselves.

This calculator just makes me think it serves as an effective way to pay
people less than what they're worth, and convince those same people that
they're getting treated fairly. You should not be counting on your company to
pay you what you are worth, regardless of whatever rubrics or whatever they
show you.

~~~
kmontrose
There's a pretty strong connection between the numbers the tool has and market
rates - it's not like the numbers are pushed top down, they come from actually
participating in the hiring market.

The calculator normally gets a few revisions a year, one of the things that
prompts that is market rates changing (others are things like hiring for new
skills, or new roles being created).

What's nice about the calculator is, if the market rates change, everyone gets
a raise (and knows they should). It's not just the new hire (who's mostly
recently on the market), it's everybody in the same skill track.

The calculator also keeps us honesty about what matters for compensation. When
the yearly salary review comes around, you can point at things you've done in
the last year _and_ at where it says they should matter. It means fewer
surprises, less frustration, and less fear that you're being too aggressive or
too passive in salary discussions.

~~~
hardwaresofton
All of what you're saying is reasonable, but I think the premise is wrong --
what you can do doesn't determine how much you are paid, at the very least
it's not the most important factor.

You could be the greatest COBOL programmer with the best people skills, but if
there are no COBOL jobs, the rubric is 100% wrong (assuming your salary is 0
because you're unemployed). In the same vein, you could be a completely
average developer (even a bad one, however you measure that), but if the
market is absolutely starved for developers, you should (and likely will) be
paid a lot. I think SO's appraoch obscures that fact.

There's no way they can update it enough to keep up with market (and it's
arguably in the company's best interest in the short term to do this), and I'm
worried that how this is being presented is lulling developers into a false
sense of safety when they need to be on their guard.

But it's also likely that I'm being overly pessimistic/exaggerating the danger
here. SO seems like a company that has enough breathing room to truly care
about it's employees, and as such I think they will do their best to revise
the calculator to benefit their employees. However, I really do think that the
logic you're using equally applies to all the usual grade/level yearly review
based systems... That's exactly how it works in larger companies (not that
it's a bad thing) now, I don't think the rubric is a differentiator.

My point is that if you're one of the people that isn't a new hire, but aren't
thinking critically about your salary where it is in relation to the market
for people with your skills (whatever they are), please do. Don't leave it up
to any company, however well-intentioned, to pay you what you should be
making.

------
bambax
Slightly OT: it may sound like a good idea to increment browser history with
every parameter change, but in fact it's not, as after a few simulations/tests
one needs to hit the return button many times to go back to where they were.

~~~
mwsherman
Thanks! It should be doing that, if it’s not, it’s a bug. Drop me a note at
matt at stackoverflow dot com, with a repro?

~~~
nalllar
Use history.replaceState instead of pushState:
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/History_API](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/History_API)

That will still change the address in the location bar without filling up the
history so it takes many back button clicks to leave.

~~~
notyourwork
This reply would be much more comical if you linked to a stackoverflow thread
about history.replaceState. :)

------
ElijahLynn
Great to see this spreading throughout the industry!

Here is some more clickary for those in the new:

[http://buffer.com/salary](http://buffer.com/salary)
[https://youtu.be/N8u9H6JDAzo](https://youtu.be/N8u9H6JDAzo) (Travis CI, How
we replaced salary negotiations with a Sinatra app)
[http://location.rkh.im/](http://location.rkh.im/)
[http://rkh.im/move](http://rkh.im/move)

------
megadethz
The salaries generated by the calculator while transparent are not validated
by the market and are laughably low.

Given the elasticity of supply and demand the salary mush be constantly
evaluated against the market. This seems like just another trick to suppress
wages for a qualified engineer.

In today's market, a person with multiple offers would command at least twice
the listed compensation at any of the software majors.

~~~
vonmoltke
> In today's market, a person with multiple offers would command at least
> twice the listed compensation at any of the software majors.

StackOverflow is probably OK with missing out on these comparatively rare
beasts. For me, their formula would give me almost a 20% raise (if I could
stay in Dallas), and that is not counting my six years of non-software
engineering experience.

~~~
serge2k
I'm in Seattle, and to match my base I would need to be a few levels above
where I am (4 years, probably about a 1).

------
pyrrhotech
TIL I'm very glad I don't work for Stack Overflow and feel very bad for the
underpaid devs who do. Apparently, with only 5 years experience, my salary has
eclipsed a maxed out 25 year veteran of "5" skill. Not to mention my salary is
only about half of my total compensation. I don't say this to brag, but to
help raise awareness to the underpaid devs out there. You have to stand up for
yourself, realize your value and fight with these companies to pay you what
you are really worth.

~~~
metaphorm
where do you live and where do you work?

~~~
SmellTheGlove
Notice this question has been asked 3x and not answered. 150k remote gets you
a lot further than 300k in SV unless you want to live with 10 of your best
friends.

~~~
metaphorm
I did notice. People lie about this stuff for their own ego boosting. Which is
weird because, you know, its the internet and its anonymous. They're only
lying to themselves really.

~~~
SmellTheGlove
He doesn't even need to be lying. He could have a huge salary offset by a
massive cost of living, so we only discuss the first number for appearances.

It's sometimes envy-inducing for me to look at what other data-oriented
directors make and compare it to my own comp. But I also live in Maine, and
somehow, in walking distance to the beach and "only" 90 minutes to Boston.
Cost of living matters massively, especially once you have a family, kids and
want to own instead of rent. Even if I ditch the coastal part, I'm not sure I
even want to look at what a comparable 3 bedroom, 2000 sq ft home would cost
anywhere near SF or Silicon Valley. Screw it, I'm gonna look:

[http://move2siliconvalley.com/tag/real-
estate/](http://move2siliconvalley.com/tag/real-estate/)

Let's pick Campbell because it's somewhere in the middle, I like Rancid and
Lars Frederiksen. $648/sqft, and generally under a quarter acre lot. You got
1.3M I could borrow? That's like 5 of my houses. Roughly $6500 a month (78k a
year) factoring in property taxes. Suddenly 300k a year doesn't seem like a
whole lot once you pay your taxes and put a roof over your family's head.

------
alain94040
If I try to max out everything (engineering manager, 25 years of experience,
max expertise), I still only end up with $210k. Are there stock options on top
of the salary to provide a larger upside?

That being said, thanks for the transparency. It helps all of us.

------
p4wnc6
With 4 years of experience, even if I rate myself as a 5 on self-assessed
skill (I'm certainly not), the salary offered for New York is far, far below
anything I'd consider, and significantly below even what other start-ups offer
(not including equity) in New York.

I do not understand how they are able to hire experienced workers who agree to
face the cost of living of New York at these salary levels. It is simply too
low to be worthwhile.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Just for fun I put in a developer with skill level 5 and 20 years of
experience living in the San Francisco area.

[http://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/calculator?p=1&e=20&...](http://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/calculator?p=1&e=20&s=5&c=1)

It calculated $198,220

I would guess that type of developer in the San Francisco area could earn a
double or triple that amount (included bonuses and stocks) at one of other
companies.

~~~
cyberpanther
What is ridiculous is not necessarily the salary but the portion of it that is
for "Location Adjustment", $18,020. $20k extra to live in the Bay Area or New
York is pretty ridiculous. For me in Houston TX I can live half as cheap, so
20k is nothing.

------
dmackerman
Very cool. Salaries seem on the low-end of the industry standards from what
I've seen. $120k for 5 years of experience in the Bay-Area is pretty
insulting.

~~~
NKCSS
Location, location, location; I live in .nl and with about €55k, I'm at the
upper end of the job market here (14 years experience).

~~~
8draco8
You are right but you have to also consider US working hours. Apparently it's
not unusual to work 60 hours a week while here in Europe we have ~40 hours
working weeks. If I have to choose I would definately stay on my UK salary
that is about half what this calculator is showing for my experience and keep
40hr working week.

~~~
walshemj
I used to work with a CTO who had worked in the Valley and in the UK and he
said he got no more work out of people in the US than the UK.

And bear in mind in the UK this was British Telecom with civil service type
holidays and perks - working there did remind me of the Laundry Files :-)

------
coredog64
A long time ago, I was a software engineer at Boeing. The local SPEEA rep had
a chart posted outside his cubicle with the salary (grouped by years of
experience) for all the DS-9s in the office.

There were enough people that you couldn't identify your peers exactly, but it
gave you a very good sense of what everyone else was getting.

I would love it if more employers would do this.

------
dexwiz
Either I am vastly underpaid or the numbers are very high for newer
developers. Even with 0 experience and 0 skill, it quotes $86k.

~~~
jnevill
If you are a developer worth your salt and not even registering on that scale,
then I'm going to go with "Underpaid". Unless you live in like Bumstump, TX
where you can buy a 4 bedroom 3 bath home on 2 acres of land for 60k.

~~~
Someone1234
I think you hinted at the real reason: Location.

Stackoverflow is largely based out of NYC, so their salaries are going to be
based on that starting point.

The average developer salary in the US is $80K but when you start going state
by state you can see that NYC/California/et al are throwing that figure WAY
off.

~~~
overcast
This is correct. Outside of the big two hotbed areas, developers are
definitely NOT being paid in the hundreds of thousands. When you factor in the
NYC/California cost of living tax, you're not actually coming out that far
ahead. The experience gained is obviously the big benefit however.

~~~
akgerber
Depends— if you're a single adult in NYC, a decent bedroom in a share can be
had for $1000 with heat and gas included (and that's also a normal way of
living for successful adults), and one doesn't need a car, so bills needn't be
that high. Transport is either an unlimited Metrocard paid pre-tax or provided
free by your employer, or a bicycle— so that's around $70/month, plus whatever
you want to pay for cabs (but rarely need to). The upper limit on
entertainment costs is extremely high— but there's also way more awesome
cheap/free stuff happening than one could possibly do.

Of course, if you're trying to raise a big family, the math works out a little
differently.

~~~
overcast
Sure, but who wants to live in that $1000 apartment, shared with other four
other people? When you start making those big six figures, no one wants to
deal with that crap. You want more luxury. That's the point of moving up
right?

------
gtrubetskoy
There is something not right with both having a salary system like this and
having it available to the public. I know I personally would not like to work
at SO just because of this.

It seems demoralizing, because it reduces your relationship with the company
down to rules, shifting responsibility away from people. It may seem
attractive on the surface, but in the long run I don't think it will serve the
employees or the company well. People are so much more than just
skill+experience+cost_of_living.

~~~
ZeroFries
The 1-5 rating system is where personal judgement/responsibility come into
play. If I were a very good developer but poor at negotiations, I would find
this system to be the opposite of demoralizing.

~~~
gtrubetskoy
Consider the other possibility, where you are the best, period (which is how
you should really think of yourself IMHO).

You get two offers, one from a company like SO, based on a system of rules,
and another one based on personal judgement (it might still be based on a
system of rules, but that aspect will not be advertised to you, which is key).
And if the two offers are about the same, you will likely choose the latter,
simply for the slight difference between " _our system_ values you at $$$" vs
" _we_ value you at $$$".

~~~
softawre
Everybody should think they are the best? Isn't that how we got into this into
the first place?

------
chrisferry
These salaries seem SUPER low. Engineering manager with 15 years experience <
150k? Try 200+k here in NYC.

~~~
darklajid
These salaries seem SUPER high. Developer with 10 years experience at 120k?
I'm making less than half of that and don't feel particularly ripped off.

(I guess both of our comments don't help a lot in general, except to show that
you personally don't seem to consider an application at SO while I'd love to
do just that)

~~~
borplk
but where though?

~~~
ddorian43
Probably Germany.

~~~
insulanian
Yes, Germany.

------
djb_hackernews
Similar feedback, starting salaries seem about right, but beyond that seem
low, the rating system isn't science and the CoL adjustment only for SF, NYC
and London misses other expensive cities.

For instance, like for like (new construction in the most desirable
neighborhoods), Boston housing is just as expensive as SF and in general your
money goes further in SF.

~~~
dpark
> _For instance, like for like (new construction in the most desirable
> neighborhoods), Boston housing is just as expensive as SF_

No it's not. It's not even close. The median home in Boston is less than
$500k. That's a gut/teardown in SF, where the median is $1.1MM.

If you pick brand new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods in
Boston, I'm sure you could easily spend north of a million. If you pick
comparable new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods in SF, I
imagine you're looking at multiple millions.

[http://www.zillow.com/boston-ma/home-values/](http://www.zillow.com/boston-
ma/home-values/)

[http://www.zillow.com/sanfrancisco-ca/home-
values/](http://www.zillow.com/sanfrancisco-ca/home-values/)

> _in general your money goes further in SF._

In what way?

~~~
djb_hackernews
Notice that I said like for like. If you compare new construction in the most
desirable neighborhoods _in both cities_ [0][1] SF comes out cheaper and/or
your money goes further. ie, SF might be slightly more expensive but your
building has 24/7 security, roof top pool, common outdoor space, etc.

EDIT: A further comparison of the age of the housing stock, looking at
properties currently listed within both city limits, ~33% of them in Boston
were built before 1900, 8% of them in SF were built before 1900. To me this
means overall the housing stock is more modern in SF which likely benefits the
homeowner in energy costs, modern systems, safety, total square footage, etc.

[0] [https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/293571/MA/Boston/Back-
Ba...](https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/293571/MA/Boston/Back-
Bay/filter/sort=hi-dollarsqft,min-year-built=2005)

[1] [https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/11212/CA/San-
Francisco/S...](https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/11212/CA/San-
Francisco/SoMa/filter/sort=hi-dollarsqft,min-year-built=2005)

~~~
dpark
SoMA is not the most desireable area in SF. Many areas in SF are considerably
more expensive. Presidio Heights is one of the top neighborhoods, and has a
home price index on Zillow of nearly $5MM. You can't even compare new
construction because there is none for sale.

[https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/2197/CA/San-
Francisco/Pr...](https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/2197/CA/San-
Francisco/Presidio-Heights-San-Francisco-CA/filter/sort=hi-dollarsqft)

For the record, doing the "most expensive" or "most desirable" comparison is
pointless anyway. The most expensive neighborhood is not representative of the
typical home price, or even the typical desirable home price.

------
crispyambulance
Salaries, job-titles, and all things related to hiring are _INTRINSICALLY_
subjective and that's the way it should be (and really the only way it can
be).

Even though the stackoverflow folks are using "a formula", there's still a lot
of subjective judgment in scoring the skill-levels and stuff like years of
experience (5 years at company-X isn't necessarily the same thing as five
years at company-Y).

As far as I can tell, stackoverflow is successful at their mission, has a good
reputation and doesn't have retention problems. That's great for stackoverflow
and the folks that work there. And while it is better than most places, other
companies are doing just as well and don't have transparency in their
salaries. Is transparency _really_ that important? I don't think so.

------
ckastner
The mere act of an employer being so open and transparent about this would
make them a more interesting option to me than any competing slightly better
offers.

------
nythrowaway
This data actually has the impact of me not applying for a job. I'm thinking
of looking around - been at my current gig as a senior engineer for years and
I have about 15 years experience. But at my current comp at a major Corp in
nyc, I'd need to make about $225k minimum before stock options (including
perks mentioned in a comment here ) to switch. I'm not a manager just a senior
dev.

Maybe I'm the type of candidate they are trying to weed out, but I'm not
looking for like 300k or something. Just market rate for my skills. I've got a
family and it's expensive to live in the nyc area

~~~
p4wnc6
Not only that, but to me that entire rubric for the self-assessment of skill
is extremely off-putting. It's also baffling to me that the salaries they peg
against are salaries of start-ups and certain VC-backed companies.

Why isn't it the case that you base your salaries against _every other place
in the world trying to hire the same people you are_? It's not defensible to
say, well we pay $130k for that kind of developer because AZ companies also
pay in that range, and so does Blue Apron, ENSO Financial, and Spotify (or
whomever). That's silly. Because DE Shaw, Google, Coatue, Two Sigma, Comcast,
Capital One, Amazon, Facebook, or a host of others might be willing to hire
_that same developer for that same type of role with similar benefits_ and
they are certainly paying more than this.

You're always competing for talent against anyone else trying to hire the same
people. Not against one particular niche set of companies who are similar to
you in some superficial on-paper ways. That just seems like a very unfortunate
way of determining what their idea of a "market rate" is.

------
mesozoic
Seems like they pay very poorly for experience and skills

------
andruby
The url shows a "Couldn't find blog.stackoverflow.com" error and a, albeit
cute, picture of a panda.

Did they take it offline because it was causing a controversy?

------
hellogoodbyeeee
Does anyone have an opinion self reported salary websites like glass door? Do
they skew high or low? What about other online salary websites?

~~~
enraged_camel
Considering the sheer number of fake reviews on Glassdoor, I'm not inclined to
trust them with anything, including salary numbers.

------
sabujp
these salaries are really low for the bay area for someone who performs at
their equivalent of level 5 (which is near impossible according to the doc)

------
speruser78
I'd say these are low for NYC. I have no experience, came from a bootcamp and
live in NYC. I'm starting at $85K. With a year of experience I'm looking for
$110K. In 5 years I'd be looking for $150K on the low end based on talking
with others.

------
cuddlybacon
> For our experiment, we redesigned the Stack Overflow Jobs ads to display
> salary ranges. We were curious: just how much effect does this information
> have? [...] We expected to see an improvement, but we were surprised by the
> size: a 75% average increase in clickthrough rate (CTR) when we showed a
> job's salary range.

I'm surprised they're surprised :P. I'm not actively looking for a job, so
when I search I am mostly searching to get a feel for what skills are in
demand and what salaries are like. For someone like me, seeing a wage in an ad
would get me to click it so I can see what is expected of that wage in that
region.

------
callesgg
The salaries in the US seams very high compared to here in Sweden, seams like
i am missing something from the equation. Possibly something our insanely high
taxes.

I have to divide the number i get in that calculator with 2.5 to get to my
salary.

------
closed
These types of calculators were incredibly helpful while looking for developer
/ quantitative positions out of grad school, especially since I'm wrapping up
a phd in psychology. I was so clueless in terms of what kind of salary I
should expect when I started looking--like, at 65% of what ended up seeming
reasonable.

The calculator is basically a window into the prospective-employee calculus a
company is doing. You can also invert things, and use whatever someone offers
you to think about what level of skill they may think you have (from SO's
perspective).

------
jordache
Are these closely aligned with their actual salaries? Less than $10K of cost
of living adjustment for Bay Area positions?

~~~
jc4p
Yes. The calculator is almost exactly what my current salary is.

------
polskibus
I wonder if data provided in the calculator is later used to serve you ads.

------
antar
The calculator is fun to use but it doesn't - and can't - take into account
many factors. For example, the level of competency, productivity, brainpower,
personality, and so on.

------
graffitici
I wish they also shared the salary of their managers. That's way more
interesting..

~~~
dpark
It's there. Change the "position" drop-down to engineering manager. There's a
small bump in pay.

------
jlarocco
Having a boolean check box for location is not very fair.

If it's going to be taken into consideration at all, cost of living
adjustments should apply to everybody and should be looked up by zip code or
postal code.

------
gohrt
Love the skills grading scale, totally Ivy League material:

A+++

A+

A

B

(There are no A++ players)

------
exolymph
Link is down:

> Couldn't find blog.stackoverflow.com

> The Q&A site blog.stackoverflow.com doesn't seem to exist…yet.

------
rdiddly
Link is dead... Taken down? Did transparency throw feces at the impeller?

------
easymovet
This is marketing, not transparency. Show me the books and I'll believe you.

