I love these things. Transparency in salary information gives the employees more power. I know the site is down at the moment but it's worth it to bookmark and come back later. Make sure you set the search fields to 2013 or 2012 to 2013 to remove stale salaries. You don't want to negotiate using data from 2009. ;)
Here is comparing google to microsoft to amazon in Seattle. The gaps are pretty wide even for college hire SDE salaries. Go demand a pay raise today!
You are expected to leave the company. Raises are kept far, far below the rate at which employees actually accrue value in order to ensure that employees do not stay at a company for longer than 4 or 5 years. After 4 or 5 years, the gap between what you would make anywhere else and what you can make where you already are is enormous.
There is a quote from hundreds of years ago which applies. "Make game of that which makes as much of thee." They fully intend to game you and exploit your desire for stability and predictability in your life. Play them back.
It sounds like you've had some terrible experiences with employers gaming your salary, for which I'm sorry.
As a manager, I value my long-tenured employees _very_ highly and work hard to ensure they get significant raises year after year. I learned to do that by working as an engineer at several other companies that did the same.
So, if your employer doesn't work to make their best, most experienced engineers feel valued and well-compensated, by all means look for another job. But don't assume that all companies will try to force you out as soon as your salary is higher than a new grad's.
Because high salaries are expensiver. Or at least they look that way on paper. Companies don't like paying an experienced employee 2-3x in salary what they would have to pay a new hire to do the same tasks. The training cost and quality dropoff are less visible and more externalizeable costs, but you see the salary savings the very next pay cycle.
I believe this to be true. However, in some cases you can get a competing offer and have your current employer match it. My experience is that suggesting you are underpaid without a competing offer doesn't get you very far. Most employers will pay you as little as possible given the market and in the tech market you can jump ship.
I strongly disagree with this. It may be true at many companies, but not anywhere I would ever work (esp. as a manager).
Requiring people to have a competitive offer in-hand basically says, "if you want a raise, go interview somewhere else." That's toxic and only effective for the people who game the system.
Responsible employers owe their employees a fair (according to market, their peers, and their contributions) wage, not the minimum they can possibly get away with paying. It might save you a few bucks in the near term to play stupid games with people's comp, but the attrition will kill you in the long run.
"Requiring people to have a competitive offer in-hand basically says, "if you want a raise, go interview somewhere else." That's toxic and only effective for the people who game the system."
I agree with you on this. However, that's just how it works at all of the places I have worked for. Except for one. The startup I was at before we were acquired by a large tech company. However, being a startup we were already strapped for cash and were not being paid market rates but had some equity. That turned out to be decent when we cashed in but not enough for most of us to cover the salary difference.
I fully agree that employers should be proactive to ensure that good employees are happy and want to stay with the company. It should be mutually beneficial but I have yet to find a place like that. In the mega corps this just can't happen because of red tape. If you don't ask you will just get the standard 2% or whatever it is each year. Many times if you do ask the manager can't do anything about it anyway. I've brought it up that my hourly rate is 1/8 the rate I bill out at and am told that's just how it works.
If you are looking for a counter offer, you're pretty much burning your bridge. Nothing but resentment can come from that. Additionally it makes you look weak if you take the offer.
In any negotiation it doesn't hurt to have some leverage. Especially when the company already has most of the leverage in employment situations. In my experience not burning bridges is entirely overrated. I also fail to see how asking for a counter offer is "burning a bridge" but I don't ask for counters. I turn in my two weeks and tell them why I am leaving. If the company offers me a better offer (money, benefits, vacation, flexibility, etc) I may take it but I go in with the full understanding that I am leaving. There are a lot of cases where the money itself won't matter if your current employer matches because there are other things you just don't like about the situation.
I've used this tactic twice with the same employer. It's just business and any professional manager will not foster resentment. If it does cause resentment then you can solve it by simply leaving. I have no concerns over "looking weak". I'm only in this for me. It's bad enough that I trade my precious time for money. I'm going to take as much as the market will offer me. It probably sounds selfish but that's how it is. I work only to provide a decent life for my family. If I had 5 million today I would not continue to do what I do. I would find something to occupy that time but it wouldn't be trading hours for dollars.
What do you expect people to do? Work for the same company for 30 years and be happy to get maybe a 2% raise year over year?
There are compensation consultants that many companies use to benchmark salaries. The same thing happened at my company, salaries went up quickly so they adjusted everyone. Before that new hires were getting higher salaries than people with more experience who had been there many years.
The rate required to stop experienced developers from leaving. That's quite easy to measure. Enough of the people will leave will tell you what offer they got, and you adjust up until the rate of turnover is acceptably low.
From my experience, there's always a company willing to pay you more. If they see some company paying you X, they think your skills are worth at least X.
So your explanation doesn't really answer the question.
Raise an issue with them that you feel you're being underpaid. I've done this in 1-on-1 meetings with managers in the past. If they think you're worth keeping, they will do what they can to give you a raise when the time comes. But keep in mind that other people on their team maybe be underpaid more than you, so they might try to correct those people's salaries first.
At least from what I've seen, managers at some level (your direct manager, or their manager) are given some numbers of dollars to increase the salary of the employees. They have to choose how to distribute that between their people.
Depending on the company, it may take you moving to a different company to get what you're worth. Most companies know that transitioning jobs is difficult and a lot of people won't go through the effort. Because of this they will underpay people that they don't think are going to leave. If you want to try, apply around, interview, and get a job offer at another company. Present it to your manager and see what they say. Some companies will counter-offer, while others have policies where they will not counter-offer.
Story: a friend was offered a contracting position with the same company he already worked for (from the contracting firm, the company didn't know yet), that would be paying far more than he was making. He didn't take it and his manager didn't do anything to correct his salary. But it was pretty funny to see.
Worth noting that what you proposed with regards to presenting a competing offer to your current employer is typically a card you only play once. More than that and you tend to be viewed as a mercenary who causes problems. Plus, the people you are presenting this to will quite likely feel like they've had a gun put to their heads in a situation they may have very little direct control over, and nobody likes being put in that spot multiple times.
Not saying that is right or wrong, just know that doing this multiple times at the same company is often frowned upon.
Also, don't do it without being ready to make the switch--you never know when your company will call your bluff and say "ok, enjoy your new job, your last day is today."
I'd also like to present the flip side, which is what it is like to be on the receiving end of such a request. I had an employee I managed in a past job come to me with a reasonable raise/promotion request. Myself and my boss did everything we could to give it to him as he definitely deserved it in spades. We were blocked by the finance and HR departments. They did not want to do things "out of cycle" which isn't exactly fair to the employee if they started significantly outside the beginning of that cycle.
Ultimately I lost them to a competitor, and felt absolutely awful about it (even though this was in an industry where turnover is incredibly high and 1 year stints are very common). The worst part was that it was totally out of my control and I did everything I could to make it happen and failed.
When I had a similar situation in the future with someone else I managed, I flat out told them I would do my absolute best to fight for them (and they knew I meant it), but said that if the company wouldn't give them what they deserved, I would not hold it against them in the least for switching since they need to do what's best for them regardless of the headaches it would cause the team. They ultimately left for more money and the company lost another valuable employee because they couldn't part with a couple grand per year which was a pittance compared to the value this person added.
Long story short, it sucks just as bad to be on the receiving end of this, but a lot of times the direct manager may not actually be empowered to make the budget decision necessary to offer a raise. In those cases, please do your best not to hold it against them if they can't win that fight.
Very good advice, thanks for adding it, as I totally agree with all of it.
If you are friendly with any managers, it's good to find out the company's policy on competing offers. (I had a friend who was a manager in a different department, so I could find out company and HR policy on this kind of thing). Competing -offers is definitely something you only want to do if you are seriously about switching companies.
Different side story:
My last job I was working out of a satellite office that was closed down as the company slimmed down to be bought out. We have around 50 people in the office. There was a 2nd and 3rd line manager that were cut when it all went down, so we were able to talk a bit more openly with them about it after the fact.
These managers were newer to the company and stunned at how low the salaries were for most of the individual contributors. They were doing the best they could to get salaries up-to-snuff, but when they were only given 3% (of the salaries of all their employees) to use to give raises, it was really hard to get people properly compensated.
Most lower-tier managers really do care for their employees, they just tend to be limited by corporate direction and what HR tells them they can and can't do.
Also, don't do it without being ready to make the switch--you never know when your company will call your bluff and say "ok, enjoy your new job, your last day is today."
That heavily depends on your region. In places like the EU you cannot be fired on the spot for something like that.
Generally if you threaten to quit you should be prepared to quit. In the US most employment is considered "at will" unless a contract specifies otherwise (and a few states have different laws). Meaning employer or employee can terminate the agreement at any time for any reason or no reason. The exception to that is if you were fired for prejudicial reasons and you are a protected class (sexism, racism, etc). That means I can quit today with no notice required. It also means my employer can hand me my last paycheck today and tell me to take a hike.
An example of this. My wife's employer recently found out she had applied for a job at another company. They fired her that day. She didn't get the other position and the previous employer is blocking unemployment compensation.
Yes, I agree that if you threaten to quit, you should be willing/able to follow through. And yes in the USA, the could call your bluff and sack you, but in the EU, they cannot do that. So the equation has changed.
The first thing is to be brave. Understand that the market is currently in your favor. If you leave then you will make new friends and form new relationships. And if you leave then management will likely be very nice to you for two reasons: 1) to build their own network and 2) it kills morale if others see you being treated poorly.
If they treat you poorly then no one from your network will ever work for them. And if you take the story to the Internets then it gets even worse. Trust me, the company has more to lose than you do if the relationship sours.
Even though you have most of the leverage, approach your manager with respect and graciousness. Thank them and talk about how much you enjoy working here. Then tell them your pay is compressed and ask for a raise. You can google this part. Some approaches suggest being straightforward and others say build a list of your accomplishments.
Most companies even have your comp-a ratio on file, they already know you are underpaid.
If they say yes then congratulations.
If they say no (I can't make this decision. I need the VP's approval. We don't have the budget. blah blah) then work on finding a new job. Which sounds daunting but really isn't that bad.
Anyway good luck!
EDIT: Shitty story time. I have had managers say "What we can do to change your mind?" I love that...but the last time I asked for a raise my boss gave me a lecture on how there are more important things in life. People who make over 250k a year are not allowed to tell me money is not important. What a jackass.
At the meeting, bring up how well the company is doing and how well you are doing. Ask for a raise.
You don't need to say where you got your number, or complain that you were underpaid before. Go in knowing your market salary -- which they probably know anyway.
EDIT This isn't a surefire plan; as the sibling comment says, sometimes you have to leave to get paid your market.
I loved the line a manager at my previous employer gave us circa 2011 about our terrible raises:
"Well, the company is doing well, but since the economy sucks and unemployment is at 8% the company feels like we should be fortunate to have jobs and thus doesn't feel like they will lose anyone over salary."
It should be noted that, from 2006 until I finally got out in 2012 I saw two people leave for outside opportunities, out of a program that had over 300 people. More people retired than quit. Maybe management just had them that well pegged.
That's when you should get another offer. Either you put yourself in a great negotiating position, or you realize that they were right and feel fortunate to have your current job.
Hey I'm at work right now. Later tonight I will try to give you some success and failure stories.
But basically they are more worried about poisoning relationships with you than the other way around. If you leave for a higher paying job and your peers find out...that's much worse for the company.
You call tell how much the H-1B system is being gamed by the Indian in-source companies. They basically never hire software engineers but only "computer programmers" and the ubiquitous "analyst."
Can anyone post a link to the original data source? I'd like to verify this is in fact DOL data. It's much easier to go to an employer with data from an official government source than it is from some site, even if that site claims it got it's data from the source.
Note that (if I'm not mistaken), PERM is the program for green card applicants. I would imagine that GC applicants are on average more senior and better paid than H1Bs applicants.
this web site ( http://visadoor.com/ ) has been blocked because it has been determined by Web Reputation Filters to be a security threat to your computer or the corporate network.
Possibly, but not on the free tier. Anyway, our current plan can only handle 20 concurrent connections to Postgres and I am not planning to pay more to satisfy spikes.
Can you clarify on why not? If you get interest and a big news hit, isn't it important to you to capitalize on that as much as possible and leave a good impression so people come back to use your service?
If you don't have the funds that's one thing and I get it, but seems like spikes are exactly the kind of thing worth spending on.
The website a weekend project, not something I care for whether people use it. On average it has five to ten visitors a day unless linked to from somewhere big which only happens like twice a year.
From my impression, I don't think it's any kind of for-profit service he's running where people are paying for and expecting uptime. He's taken a public data source and make it very easy for people to peruse it, and sees that as his reward.
Heroku doesn't automatically scale it for you, though you have the ability to increase the number of dynos. There are services that will do that for you, but it's probably better that you have to explicitly scale so you don't get hit with a sizable bill you weren't expecting.
In any case, there are other constraints than just the amount of webservers that could be causing the outage e.g. the database.
This is not true. You are only underpaid if you compensation is below market rate compensation. If I got paid $1 plus a $1 million bonus I would not be underpaid.
You should consider how much risk you are willing to take and how likely it is that you will get a smaller (or larger) than expected bonus.
I'm not sure that your argument is a false dichotomy, but it smells of logical fallacy to me.
Using the pathological case to prove your point rather than a more likely case is disingenuous at best.
I'm talking about people trying to make an honest living, and having to deal with nests of vipers while trying get reasonably compensated.
If market is 104k, don't offer me 52k salary + 52k bonus, because I have to say I make 52, not 104 - well below market.
To me it sounds like a way to artificially deflate salaries (not specifically compensation. Your SO might want to know how much you expect to make all year, but for budgeting purposes, there's a big difference in budgeting for a 1k per week cash flow and a 2k per week cash flow.
Disproof by counter example is not disingenuous. I pointed out that what vampirechicken wrote was clearly wrong then tried to get at the heart of the issue. I did not say to count each dollar of maximum bonus (or even expected bonus) as the same value as a dollar of salary, in fact I said the opposite. The value of a bonus is the expected value minus the cost of volatility. You correctly point that you should also subtract the cost of delay.
When you are comparing your current compensation package to the industry standard the better one is the one that is worth more to you. You might put an unusually high or low value on risk or the cost of delaying compensation till the end of the year. You might value the free lunches or health insurance more or less than the average worker. Since you are the one receiving the compensation package what matters is what it is worth to you.
The bottom line is that market rate is total compensation, not just salary. If a company offers you a 'market rate' salary with no bonus and no benefits then that offer is bellow market rate. If an offer has lower salary, but great benefits and a huge bonus then (if you will actually get the bonus) that offer is above market rate.
Since most of the online definitions of bonus that I've found are with my own in that they include the idea of a bonus being above and beyond what is expected compensation, then I'm going to chalk this up to our having differing connotations of bonus.
In my case, a bonus is extra pay, usually tied to performance (individual or corporate), while yours appears to be 'another category of compensation for work done.'
I think we are using the same definition: an amount of money added to wages on a seasonal basis, especially as a reward for good performance. (definition according to google)
Being "extra" does not make it somehow not compensation.
But it makes it not salary, and since there is not market rate for bonuses, since they often depend on profitability or percent to yearly sales numbers, the number that truly matters is salary. It's the number that potential employers will ask you for, or offer you and is typically the only individual component of your compensation package.
There is of course a market rate for total compensation much more so that there is more just salary. When companies compete for you, they do so by offering more than just salary. You can tell potential employers whichever number you want. If want to tell them your previous compensation that would be reasonable.
In the United States bonuses are taxed as ordinary income.
Companies may withhold a higher percentage than a standard paycheck, but this is generally because they treat the bonus as if you will continue to receive that income throughout the entire year, and withhold at the corresponding higher rate. When taxes are filed you will receive a refund for any taxes overpaid.
Where I live, tax rate (and income bracket!) is determined month to month, so bonuses are problematic but the company will spread them around to avoid fluctuation.
Is it a large or small company? How long have you been there? Are you looking only at the base salary part? (e.g. for the reference my total compensation is almost double than my base salary)...
It is illegal for companies to retaliate for your discussing your salary (though probably not for calling them a "liar"). Look up the National Labor Relations Act.
That being said, you can be fired for things that you're legally allowed to discuss, and then it becomes an issue of whether you're willing to pay lawyer's fees to sue. Which is not usually a great situation to be in.
This dataset often has typos and other mistakes. If you consider the other salaries for that company, it's likely there's just an extra zero at the end.
Is there something similar for non-H1B data? I've previously used salary.com, glassdoor.com and search results on indeed.com to try and compare local salaries, and the variation can be as much as $15k on either end (low-|high-)
Very interesting, I'm waiting that it comes up again.. in the meanwhile, don't you think that every input fields in the "Find salaries" page should be a dropdown menu?
Lynn, FYI - these numbers reported to the DoL are not necessarily accurate and thus should only be used as a ballpark estimate. They are likely to be overestimates of actual numbers.
Having seen H1B document submitted to the DoL, I know that firms misrepresent these numbers. An H1B is granted to immigrants for positions that ostensibly couldn't be filled by US citizens, this is rarely the case. Firms have to show that a job application was life for a certain amount of time and they were unable to fill it.
They however do not need to prove that the claimed wage is what is actually being paid. These numbers are thus overestimates and I would guess >10% off the mark.
That said, it is obviously illegal to misrepresent these numbers and some firms are more scrupulous than others.
I, like the other replies here, had the exact salary which my H1B Visa application represented to the DoL. It is illegal to misrepresent this, so in order for the prevailing wage to be misrepresented by 10%, the vast majority of H1B Visas would need to be illegally submitted.
Edit: The application also includes a representative sample (or exact numbers of the last few employees) of others who were hired into a similar position. This includes non-H1B employees.
As an H1B employee, I can assure you that the amount on my LCA was the same as I was paid. That said, it is important that people understand what these figures are - they are not actual technically salaries.
The Wikipedia article probably does a better job than I do, but the LCA is a company submitting what they plan to pay an employee when they hire them. As far as I am aware, if I get a pay rise the company does not need to resubmit an LCA.
Imperfect data is still useful in a negotiation. Present it with minimal comment as a negotiating point and let the counterparty poke holes in it if they so choose. Don't undermine yourself!
Sure the large tech employers are going to have better salary databases than an individual, but that doesn't mean there's no point in trying to arm yourself with relevant info.
Actually, in practice I've seen totally opposite of what you mentioned. Companies do not want to reveal real salaries so they apply and report LOWER salaries than what it actually is and then when person joins they adjust it to be higher. This way company still complies with law but does not disclose real salary.
You have to meet or exceed prevailing wages for the area/position. The reason is to make sure you're not underpaying foreign workers at the expense of local US candidates.
We sponsored H1B applicants in the past, and the numbers were reviewed by the lawyer who took care of the application. We also had to post the opening notice internally, with the salary offered. And finally, as others have stated, the number is known by the sponsored employee, so there's really no incentive to inflate that number.
Yes, but if you hire software engineers and label them as computer programmers (see my post here), employers completely side step the "meet or exceed prevailing wages" requirement.
In fairness, blue chip US tech companies don't do that.
Overestimates seems to be a wrong label, having gone through several H1B visa and transfer applications myself. I would say that most lawyers simply fill in the actual amount.
Not sure which firms you worked with, but from my experience, all the numbers I've seen are accurate down to the last dollar digit.
There's simply no incentive for any party involved to misrepresent the figure. Why would companies, foreign employees or lawyers ever change the number when they have nothing to gain but expose themselves to incredible risk by doing so?
Here is comparing google to microsoft to amazon in Seattle. The gaps are pretty wide even for college hire SDE salaries. Go demand a pay raise today!
http://www.salar.ly/salaries/?title=&company=amazon&location...
http://www.salar.ly/salaries/?title=&company=google&location...
http://www.salar.ly/salaries/?title=&company=microsoft&locat...
Site is down by they are looking at it: https://twitter.com/roguelynn/status/507231579752902656