Demystifying Salary Information

Arun Jacob points us to an article in the NYTimes about online tools that can help in salary negotiations. The article concentrates on two websites — Salary.com and Payscale.com — that use different approaches to provide information on standard compensation packages for particular positions and roles. The theory is that, armed with information that was once available only to corporate HR departments, you could have an easier time negotiating your pay using a fact-based rather than a feelings-based approach.

Comments

If it's not too late already...

[StikyPad]

On the other hand, if you're a well-paid administrator, you may want to add the following line to your HOSTS file:

127.0.0.1 www.salary.com
127.0.0.1 www.payscale.com

Re:If it's not too late already...

[Joebert]

if you're a well-paid administrator

Or you work at Best Buy.

You can't demystify the wife.

[twitter]

Salary.com measures the salary of a stay-at-home mom. (The statisticians calculated that doing the housekeeping, cooking, babysitting, chauffeuring, administration and other jobs involved in staying at home with a preschooler in Chicago would probably take around 91 hours a week and be worth about $146,000.)

Don't tell your wife, she'll quit her job!

Re:You can't demystify the wife.

[DataBroker]

My stay-at-home Wifey tried this with me months ago. I told her that I could hire a nanny, a housekeeper, and umm... escorts... for less than she cost. She sorta snarled at me when she looked at the spreadsheet I worked up. I expect that any day now she might start talking to me again.

Re:You can't demystify the wife.

[Anonymous Coward]

That reminds me of an old joke...

A husband comes home from work one day to find his wife busy packing her suitcase. Of course, the husband asks her why she is packing, and she somewhat angrily replies that she read a magazine article about Las Vegas escorts. "I don't know why I ever married you" she says. "After all of these years having to scrape by on your meager salary, and now I find out that an escort in Las Vegas gets paid $200.00 for a blowjob. I'm leaving you to start a new life as an escort". The husband stares at her in disbelief for a few moments, then gets his suitcase out of the closet and starts packing too. The wife stops packing her bag and yells at her husband "Didn't you hear me? I said I am leaving you". "I heard you" the husband replies. "Then why are you packing your suitcase?" she asks. The husband looks up and replies "I wanna see how you're going to manage to live on $200.00 a year".

HA! Nice try !

[tempestdata]

You're just an HR manager trying to do damage control.

You aint foolin nobody mister!

Re:Inflated Numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

So I'm a CIO, I make $440K a year. Apparently way above median (well, for CIOs looking for a pay increase, anyway!)

So I get to the end of the process, and it says....

Press here to increase your earning potential with a Microsoft cert!

Hmmmm....

Easy formula

[michaelmalak]

if ( out_of_work )
salary_request = previous_salary
else
salary_request = current_salary * 1.3

Re:Ways to avoid having to mention a number, polit

[cerberusss]

You: "I notice that you have not offered me $PERK, where $PERK is an unsigned integer variable, 4 bytes long, automatically allocated on the stack.
HR: "?? WTF ??"

Mystical? Pah

[isorox]

There's nothing mystical about my salary.

I get paid a basic salary, plus London weighting, about 5-6% of that is deducted for pension, which they then match. I get paid 10% extra pre-pension for unpredictable hours, then 3/70 of my pre-pension weekly wage for every hour of overtime I work. Any hours between midnight as 4 attract about $15 an hour bonus, and between 4 and 6 attracts an extra $30 an hour. I then have Income tax deducted (post pension), the first $10K tax free, the next $4K at 10%, the next $70K at 22%, and the rest at 40%. On top of that I have 11% of another part of my monthly salary for national insurance (pre-pension) on every pound of my salary >$800/month, and 1% of my monthly salary over $5000 a month. However that reduces somewheat (I have no idea how much) because of my pension. I then finally have money deducted (pre-tax, post-pension) for my student loan (10% > $30K) perks like taxi journeys home > 40 miles when public transport isn't working (40 miles is free, but I used to live 55 miles away), membership of the work club. The occasional work-paid do has tax deducted (although not all). Fortunatly there's no tax on company mobiles any more, and as I work in Central London there's no need or desire for a company car, which save more tax.

Easy as pie. My next salary negotiation will involve me coming off one set of terms (with the hourly overtime) and onto a set of terms that will pay me a fixed rate for working an extra day, but no hourly extras, however my basic pay (and therefore company pension contribution) will increase accordingly.

My role has increased in responsibility over the last 6 months too (hence the renegotiation rather than the standard 2.5% yearly increase). I've taken over someone on a much higher basic salary, but with more experience, and on non-overtime conditions.

So working out my next required wage and conditions is a walk in the park.

Re:my two cents

[mgblst]

Remindes me:

A guys walks up to a pretty girl at a bar.

"Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?"

She looks him up and down, "Well, OK"

"Well, then, would you sleep with me for a dollar?"

"Hell no, what sort of girl do you think I am" she replies.

"I think we have already established that, now we are just working out price!"

Re:They'll just fire you

[mrcolj]

You obviously know as little about management and hiring as they know about programming. I know about programming, and I would still blackball anyone who made comments with your tone or content. In fact, I have google alerts set up on most of my employees (and their usernames and whatever), so if I were your boss I'd probably already know you posted this and be joking about it with your other bosses... My advice, look at the Myers Briggs types (I know your type of people don't believe in that voodoo) and learn that HR people think programmers are illogical idiots as much as programmers think the same of HR people. Why? Not because one of them is right. Programmers, no matter how "management" their title is, have no more business hiring than HR people have programming. Neither HR nor management care about saving money as much as they care about making money, they just understand exactly what you just said--a new graduate probably is more excited to work there, will work for less, and won't complain or sue; and old programers have their old ways of doing things, always demand more than market forces dictate, and always end up suing. I was in one place where we had to keep the AC on full-blast at all times, AND keep a space heater (most of the time on full-blast) at every station. That's not worth it when a young punk will do 80% as good for 50% of the money, and will have ideas. And if anyone ever said "I'm not here to..." or "That isn't part of my job" within earshot of me, they'd be gone befor they finished the sentence. No exceptions.

Re:Ways to avoid having to mention a number, polit

[tx_mgm]

A 4 billion dollar perk, eh? I don't think Exxon needs a new CEO at the moment, but good luck with that app =)