Slashdot Mirror
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.
What the hell is with these retarded slashdot articles- first a lot of articles that have been duped and now this. This is just blatant advertising- the first link requires you to pay and the second requires for you to pay or get a watered down report.
Just by chance I was looking into similar information just hours earlier today and happened upon similar solutions offered by the WSJ. The most useful site in my option was payscale. It offered really detailed information about many interesting things, like salaries of recent graduates of my college in a variety of fields (assuming that these students are telling the truth, and gave me pretty good insight into what the career I am heading into should pay.
I learned it in my business classes, but it's not usually related to salary but for marketing and consumer negotiations. The correct term is anchoring, and usually it's related to the fact that most people when they set a value they will not go more then 10% in either directions in negotiating. Also, 10% is usually considered the least amount of change required to make some one switch from one vendor to another. It's less for higher priced items and stores that are closer togethor, but 10% difference is usually a garunteed steal from a competator.
There is a book called Behavioral Game Theory, I think edited by Camerer (he's the author associated with the title, whether he wrote all the content or not...) A collection of experiments and essentially what they mean (theoretically) in various situations. Very interesting stuff.
People who quote themselves bug the crap out of me -- Me.