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

Inflated Numbers

[TheFlyingGoat]

I've never found the IT salaries to be that accurate for my region. A few companies pay the amounts listed, but most of them are around $10k less than all of the salary sites. I don't think that the IT personnel are underpaid either... I think the sites are just inaccurate. It's kind of like those places that claim they can train you for an "exciting career in computers in just 6 months". Most of their ads claim that IT people with 2-3 years of experience are making $70k/year.

While it's important to have some facts when negotiating your salary, it's far more useful to bring in a list of all of the major projects you've worked on as well as some positive review/feedback letters from coworkers (not just IT staff... talk to some other staff that like you). Bringing in a printout from a website isn't going to mean beans to a manager... it's what you actually do for their company/department that matters.