Market rates for job roles

[fortnightlily]

What are the most credible sites these days for finding out average salary ranges for a given job role in a given locale?  I know there's Glassdoor, but that relies in self-reporting and I have found it to be kind of all over the place.

How does HR determine what range to state for an open position?

How can the average employee do their own research to determine if their company pays fairly?

Is it really just a matter of looking for job listings and trying to aggregate what they list, if they even list a range?

This is for the tech industry, which is also undergoing some upheaval and perhaps some resetting, so I don't know how reliable or representative past industry salary surveys are. I'm talking positions that aren't in NYC/Seattle/San Francisco but rather other markets around the country that still range in COL.

[bee20]

For the tech industry you want levels.fyi

Glassdoor isn't inaccurate but when I was looking doesn't seem to do a great job of keeping up with jumps in payscales that have happened recently (maybe more of an issue in 2021/2022 than now). 

You can also look up salaries for roles in Colorado or Washington which require a salary range to be posted for the position. 

ETA: For your question on how does HR decide on what to offer for a position, it varies a lot from place to place.  Options at places I have done hiring at include:

--Employees will be offered the median of the pay band for existing employees.  Hiring manager determines appropriate pay band (ie, entry level, mid-career, senior, principal).

--Employees will be offered at of .7 +/-.1 x industry benchmark for the pay band.  Benchmark data is purchased from various 3rd party aggregators, like Hewitt.  This results in an employee getting about 70% of the median, but the plus or minus is based on factors like the scores/interest from the hiring team, if the employee meets diversity targets, if the employee attended a "preferred" college, and other keywords. Level/Pay-Band is determined by HR based on a formula of years of experience and highest degree.

--Manager sets hiring budget based on organizational budget.  Manager negotiates pay after interview results are in.  HR approves the pay, based on similar roles in the company. 

For all of the above, we typically will post a super wide salary range, often covering multiple pay bands.  It meets the letter of the law but not the spirit, but we also hire specialized skills and often don't know if we'll find the ideal senior candidate or end up picking someone junior we have to train.

[jwright]

This is dumb, but there's a lot of information available on Reddit. If you drill down to the specific forums for your industry or even your employer if they are large enough, people post about evaluating and comparing compensation all the time. At least they do in consulting, accounting and finance.

[7costanza]

Companies often participate in and/or purchase salary surveys.

I’m in Washington and have found the pay ranges on job postings fairly useless, companies seem to be posting huge ranges. My H just applied to something with a ~$50k range, but in reality they were targeting the bottom $10k of the range (per the recruiter and internal contacts.)

ETA: Ask a Manager did a salary survey over the summer, the Google doc is open so you can drill down a bunch of ways. I thought it was very interesting!

[jlt19]

Nov 2, 2023 18:21:36 GMT -5 jwright said:

This is dumb, but there's a lot of information available on Reddit. If you drill down to the specific forums for your industry or even your employer if they are large enough, people post about evaluating and comparing compensation all the time. At least they do in consulting, accounting and finance.

Glassdoor has a super secret site like this for big companies. It’s kind of nice because you have to sign in with an employee email, so you know everyone is actually an employee.

[fiddles]

www.payscale.com/

Hopefully that works, I’m on my phone. It’s a great tool and fairly accurate. My company actually gets salary surveys from them.

[fortnightlily]

Thanks, all. I work at a medium-sized company that was formed from the acquisition of several smaller companies and the compensation philosophies at these legacy companies was very different, so you have folks with the same title making vastly different salaries. I think overall the company wants to (and has to, because of financial state) pay at the lower end of the market, which I think is a shame.

[midwestmama]

I work in Compensation & Benefits. Most companies (except maybe small companies) will have a compensation philosophy that defines how they position their pay to the market (such as market median, or 75th percentile of the market). Position to the market could even differ within one company based on the type of job, such as jobs which are critical to the business or jobs which are difficult to recruit for (e.g., Technology).

I agree with fiddles on Payscale. I really like the information they provide.

fortnightlily, I agree it is unfortunate when a company positions pay lower compared to market (recognizing what you mentioned about financial situation). I worked for a company like that many years ago, and they "justification" for that is that people should WANT to work for the company so much that they are willing to earn less than market. Maybe for some people who drink the company kool-aid that will work, but I ended up leaving to go to a company to earn what was actually fair market pay. Also, it sounds like there is some work that needs to be done to have a cohesive and aligned approach to jobs, pay, etc., to make it seem like one company, as opposed to a bunch of legacy companies acting like a single company.

[fortnightlily]

Nov 3, 2023 9:36:37 GMT -5 midwestmama said:

fortnightlily , I agree it is unfortunate when a company positions pay lower compared to market (recognizing what you mentioned about financial situation). I worked for a company like that many years ago, and they "justification" for that is that people should WANT to work for the company so much that they are willing to earn less than market. Maybe for some people who drink the company kool-aid that will work, but I ended up leaving to go to a company to earn what was actually fair market pay. Also, it sounds like there is some work that needs to be done to have a cohesive and aligned approach to jobs, pay, etc., to make it seem like one company, as opposed to a bunch of legacy companies acting like a single company.

Yeah, they are in that process (and have been for like, a year, now, but there have been several leadership changes). I just wonder how they are going to reconcile the disparities, but it certainly doesn't seem like "just adjust everyone toward the top" is going to be it. But then what does that mean for those folks who are at the higher end now? Just years of no raises and middling bonuses?

Some of the legacy companies definitely had a "we can get away with paying people less because they're here for the mission" attitude. The new CEO has talked a good game about how if you work in tech you need to pay like it to attract the best talent, but I don't see that becoming a reality. 

I mainly have trouble gauging just how far below market we are since the tech industry seems to be undergoing an adjustment.

Thanks to those who responded!