from Hacker News

Find salaries paid at companies using foreign worker data

by krishna_sh on 9/3/14, 5:25 PM with 109 comments

• by kelukelugames on 9/3/14, 5:52 PM

  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!

  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

• by hungrygs on 9/3/14, 9:15 PM

  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."

  Look at this (Salaries in New Jersey? $45,000 for systems analysts?) http://www.h1bme.com/?employer=COGNIZANT+TECHNOLOGY+SOLUTION...

  Systems Architects $73k and "programmers" $63k. Not a single software engineer or developer! http://www.h1bme.com/?employer=TATA+CONSULTANCY+SERVICES+LIM...

• by johnward on 9/3/14, 7:03 PM

  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.

• by hyperlz on 9/3/14, 7:24 PM

  I use http://visadoor.com for the same info, and I believe from the same official source:

  http://visadoor.com/perm (Daily PERM results)

  http://visadoor.com/h1bvisa-database (H1B )

  http://visadoor.com/greencards-database (PERM, more detailed info)

• by kassner on 9/3/14, 6:09 PM

  Server Error (500) in any search

• by datamatt on 9/3/14, 7:24 PM

  Does this include bonuses? Many companies (mine included) pay 40%+ extra in bonuses to bring people to the market level.

  (site is also down so I can't see)

• by ronnier on 9/3/14, 8:06 PM

  Salary is very misleading. Total compensation is ultimately what matters.

• by s_m on 9/3/14, 6:50 PM

  i also like http://h1bwage.com/ for this purpose

• by foobarqux on 9/3/14, 7:00 PM

  Note that this excludes bonuses so is not helpful for positions where performance pay is a large part of compensation.

• by safepants on 9/3/14, 7:36 PM

  is there a similar web service for Canadian results, or even the raw data from the Government?

• by arenaninja on 9/3/14, 11:21 PM

  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-)

• by yuribit on 9/3/14, 7:45 PM

  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?

• by zszugyi on 9/3/14, 7:54 PM

  They seem to be making 500 (server error).

• by jprince on 9/3/14, 7:13 PM

  Put in Pangea, Chicago, 2009-2013, got server error, running Google Chrome on Macbook Air 2013 Snow Leopard.

• by KSS42 on 9/3/14, 7:52 PM

  Some info gleaned from these site:

  At Apple, one VP of SW has a salary of approx $400K.

• by new_guy123 on 9/3/14, 7:43 PM

  I was so hoping for auto completion!

• by rabidonrails on 9/3/14, 7:56 PM

  I got a 500 - Server error.

• by momchenr on 9/3/14, 6:38 PM

  This site is getting CRUSHED...

• by clutterjoe on 9/3/14, 7:24 PM

  Server Error 500... boo

• by SushiMon on 9/3/14, 9:56 PM

  Server Error 500. Sigh. Yawn.

• by buchols on 9/3/14, 6:33 PM

  Title is not accurate. This site is actually a great server-error generator, but no sign of any salary data.

• by MaxwellM on 9/3/14, 6:27 PM

  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.

  Finally they need to claim that because the position is so hard to fill, they are willing to pay above prevailing wage. See H1B LCA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Labor_Condition_Appli...

  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.