2012 Salary Guide for Creative and Technology Professionals [pdf]

http://s3.amazonaws.com/DBM/M3/2011/Downloads/TCG_SalaryGuide_2012.pdf

by uptown • 14 years ago

131 90 14 years ago

s3.amazonaws.com

ckluis• 14 years ago

Well done guide. I will definately pass this around at work.

sounds• 14 years ago

To underscore ckluis' comment, take a look at the document. It's not a scribd even though the title says so. It's a pdf, but well designed. Even if you don't care about the salaries you might find it's an enjoyable read.

It appears to also be a subtle ad/recruiting effort by The Creative Group (TCG) but if so, it's well done.

uptown• 14 years ago

HackerNews auto-appends the scribd link to PDF URLs. If you click on the scribd link, it brings you to the same document via their site.

MattRogish2• 14 years ago

Is there a similar guide for software developers? I'd pay for it

its_so_on2• 14 years ago

I could write that. Is there a guide for pricing this sort of thing? I would pay for it.

cpeterso• 14 years ago

Glassdoor.com is a pretty good guide for tech salaries. The salaries are self-reported, but they are aggregated and anonymous, so there is little incentive for people to exaggerate.

aculver2• 14 years ago

There is and you don't have to pay for it. The Creative Group is a division of Robert Half, a staffing/recruiting company which also does technical staff. I found the information (particularly the bit about local variances) very valuable. Any hiring manager can reach out to one of their recruiters/account managers and get a copy of this thing. The downside is you have to interact with a recruiting company. :-)

It would be great if someone posted the PDF version of the document like they did this one.

noodle2• 14 years ago

http://s3.amazonaws.com/DBM/M3/2011/Downloads/RHT_SalaryGuid...

dsolomon19• 14 years ago

That's worse than the OP's link.

If any company paid that much there'd be a line at the front door every single day of people wanting to be hired.

pnathan2• 14 years ago

Those numbers are in line with what I've seen from other sources such as glassdoor, the BLS, indeed.com, and various postings on HN.

edit: interested parties can find the US Gov's Bureau of Labor Statistics giving salaries for a number of different positions. While they break down job titles in odd ways sometimes, these numbers appear entirely in line with it. Mid-70s is about the average number for starting salary as far as I can tell.

Timothee• 14 years ago

If these salaries are to be believed, it's good news and bad news. Bad news: I've been and am significantly underpaid. Good news: well, I guess I can only go up…

Do these number seem ok to more people?

anateus• 14 years ago

Typical of the undermathed professions* : they provide high and low salary numbers, but no median! This makes this salary guide vastly less useful than it could be.

* This phrasing is an attempt at humor

alttag• 14 years ago

Judging by the ranges, it's my guess that these are not extremes, but possibly 25/75 quartile marks.

The methodology isn't clear, so we don't know how the data were aggregated/culled, but it seems that +/- 3 SD data, at least, were stripped in creating these tables.

dsolomon19• 14 years ago

Certainly strike that from the credible list.

ashliana• 14 years ago

Is the difference in variance between SF and Boston really so low? 135.5 (SF) vs 132 (Boston)

aculver2• 14 years ago

One great takeaway regarding local variances for the people who are fortunate enough to be able to benefit from it: If you're able to work remotely, you can do work for companies in the ~130% areas (e.g. San Francisco, New York, D.C.) and make those wages while living in an area where most people can get by on ~90% of the national average.

krobertson• 14 years ago

Not always. Most employers will likely realize the differences in cost of living and try to get you relative to your local market. One of the benefits of remote employees for an employer is around being more cost effective.

I've also been in the situation working for a remote employee who tried to pay comparable CA wages (wasn't in the Bay Area), but didn't understand the true cost of living differences. Also been on the flip side, in office in SF and looking for people in cheaper markets.

gexla• 14 years ago

Also, there is likely more supply opening up to remote workers, which can drive down rates.

On the other hand, top developers can pretty much ask what they want no matter where they are working from.

moocow01• 14 years ago

I have a limited perspective (I guess as all of us do) but I find that the coefficients listed for offsetting the wages by city are not very on-par with the average wages that I know of in the expensive cities (SF/NYC). They are not drastically off but I've found the wage swings to be more moderate when going to a place with a much higher cost of living. In all honesty, in some of the most expensive spots the average wages should be double the national average to be fair but Im still waiting for that day to come :)

lunchbox• 14 years ago

I fully agree with the principle, but note that these numbers indicate the market rate for salary, not necessarily cost of living. The two are correlated but not the same. Here is a table that lists cost of living as calculated by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics:

http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/bestcities_sort/index.php?sor...

For example, note that Honolulu has a salary coefficient of 92, but it's actually one of the most expensive places in the country to live. It has a cost of living coefficent of 171.

Another thing is that in addition to cost of living, one must consider state taxes, which you can calculate here:

http://letsrebuildit.com/index.php?option=com_jumi&filei...

WA, NV, TX, FL, and IL have very low state taxes (for me), whereas DC, CA, HI, NC, and NY have high state taxes.

thatmiddleway3• 14 years ago

Wow. I'm severely underpaid as a web developer w/ 2 years experience. That was a depressing read. :(

ajross• 14 years ago

Would it be better to be poorer in ignorance? If you're worth more go out and get it.

thatmiddleway3• 14 years ago

Your right, I will!

huherto• 14 years ago

You should be happy that you can do better.

civilian• 14 years ago

email me your resume?

thatmiddleway3• 14 years ago

Http://jtmkrueger.com/resume/index.html

kmlymi• 14 years ago

I wish there was a guide like this for Canadian cities.

nathos• 14 years ago

It's not comprehensive, but there is a page in this guide that has survey data for Toronto.

noodle2• 14 years ago

The tech guide referenced in the other comments has a much larger Canadian section.

bignoggins• 14 years ago

More salary guides from the same company http://www.rhi.com/SalaryGuides (covers legal, tech, and others)

dsolomon19• 14 years ago

Garbage

amvp• 14 years ago

This is beautifully designed. But I didn't quite get the cover. All [something] is a matter of belief. What's the something? Money?

jarek8• 14 years ago

Yep it's money. It's a pretty well known quote by Adam Smith. Money, fiat or otherwise, only works as long as people believe they can conduct their next transaction with it.

duzour• 14 years ago

Here's a really solid Salary Guide from Modis (Tech-focused, low|high|average, multiple levels).

http://www.modis.com/clients/salary-guide/downloads/2012-sal...

dsolomon19• 14 years ago

More junk.

chc• 14 years ago

You do realize the ideas you're pushing are here essentially indistinguishable from a conspiracy theory, right? Not only do multiple sources show similar results, but everyone here says, "Yep, that seems about right in my experience." But because your experience is different, you think everybody must be lying or totally hoodwinked, and you're the only one who knows the real truth. The more likely conclusion is that your experience is below average, not that everybody else is falsely reporting the same above-average working conditions.

uncr3ative• 14 years ago

I'm confused by the term "starting" - do they mean starting fresh out of college? or a newly hired employee starting in that company (might have 5 yrs experience)? or starting out of high school?

jrockway• 14 years ago

It means starting out of college. For your next job, you ask for more than you were making at your last job. (Why else would you leave?)

vonmoltke2• 14 years ago

To get out of a crappy, dead-end situation. I took a pay cut to get to a better company without having to relocate. The reasons are somewhat complicated, but my reply to grumps above explains a good portion of why.

gavanwoolery3• 14 years ago

Is it just me or are the highs in developer salaries kind of low? I know people who make $250k+/year at Google and other companies. If I took full salary as a mobile developer (rather than leaving it in our company's reserves) I would make about $300k/year.

dzlobin• 14 years ago

These are the average _starting_ salaries.

gavanwoolery3• 14 years ago

Starting salaries for various tiers - i.e. 1-5 years, 5+ years, etc. Even still, I know a college grad that entered Kaiser as a developer at $150k. It does not seem to say how they define "high" and "low" though (right/left bell curve average, median, etc)

9oliYQjP• 14 years ago

How experienced are these developers at Google?

gavanwoolery3• 14 years ago

One is 6 years and the other 8 (of working experience) -- but both started programming at early ages.

vladiim• 14 years ago

It would be interesting to show the salaries as a ratio of average cost of living and then compare it to Madison Ave salaries in the 80's... my bet is average has gone dowwwwwwwn.

2012 Salary Guide for Creative and Technology Professionals [pdf]

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