Salar.ly - real salary info for tech jobs

http://www.salar.ly/

by craigkerstiens • 13 years ago

131 76 13 years ago

danso• 13 years ago

I don't know if the lag is from the HN rush, but this app needs more caching (the about page took 30+ seconds to run).

Speaking of the About page, it should list where the data came from.

Another helpful feature: a generated list of the companies for which you have the most data for, so that seeing the list is just a click away rather than having to type it in.

edit: the source information is mentioned on the front page: Salarly does not rely on self-reported salary data but uses the salary data of foreign workers in the US. This salary data must be reported to the Department of Labor and is available on their website.

mey• 13 years ago

That seems like a significant-bias for salary.

tibbon• 13 years ago

It is, but so are self-reported industry salaries. This isn't perfect data, but it is (fairly) reliable data that all comes from one place.

rhizome• 13 years ago

I'd say it might be useful as a lower bound.

bdcravens• 13 years ago

It's on Heroku - looks like they're on the free plan, and need to spin up some dynos (and get the caching that comes with paid database)

thekevinjones• 13 years ago

MOAARRRR DYNOSSS.

seivan• 13 years ago

No need for more dynos if it was cached properly

willlll• 13 years ago

Sure, but it's always good to keep in mind that spinning up more dynos if you're already the limits for your database is a bad idea.

yawgmoth• 13 years ago

Is there result caching? Do you execute the query completely every time?

For results with statistically low numbers of data points, does it make sense to show them? They really distort the reports and there seem to be a lot of records for which this is the case.

david_shaw• 13 years ago

sadly, I'm just getting an Application Error:

    Application Error
    An error occurred in the application and your page could
    not be served. Please try again in a few moments.

    If you are the application owner, check your logs for
    details.

jimg• 13 years ago

Actually, application error is probably good advice anyway.

ahmetaltay• 13 years ago

Salarymania ( http://www.salarymania.com/ ) provides the same information for mobile. It is not limited to tech sector either.

mgcross• 13 years ago

Sorry, but the huge, pixelated N1, along with "We do not have a review yet. Send us your review and if we publish it we will give the app to you for free!" kinda put me off.

simonsarris• 13 years ago

Since it's getting hammered here's one screencap I just made: http://i.imgur.com/YxDb9Sz.png

And here's the top 250 median salary counties as a google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U-opUT1wyVtrWuXxfvARV7xt...

Are tech job salaries really correlated to anything at all? When I mention my salary to other software people I get either "I wish I made that much" or "why do you make so little?"

jpdoctor• 13 years ago

448K in Frackville PA? Looks like an extra zero got added. Either that, or it is about to be overrun with hipster geeks toting iPads.

spennino• 13 years ago

There are only two data points for that

Swizec2• 13 years ago

Tech salaries are correlated only to your ability and willingness to negotiate.

That's what happens with a market starved for good people.

afhof• 13 years ago

How do I know if I'm good? If I'm a fresh grad I have no idea if the salary I'm getting is good. Without an objective measure of skill and without knowing how "good" other people are its pretty hard for a greenhorn to know.

gunmetal• 13 years ago

Internal server error

cedricd• 13 years ago

The data looks to be way way off. I looked at salaries in NY. There were several software developer jobs with salaries in the 1.6M range. Looking at the result set it looked like everything could be off by 10x. I can't see the site now to give specific examples though.

mseebach• 13 years ago

Why is that so way off? Insane finance salaries also applies to developers.

espinchi• 13 years ago

Well the median is 95k in NY [1], which seems reasonable. Probably the average is higher due to these outliers, though.

[1] According to the spreadsheet that simonsarris shared in another comment: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U-opUT1wyVtrWuXxfvARV7xt...

spoiledtechie• 13 years ago

Whats the point in Salary data? Its been done a hundred times... Is there any money to be made from capturing this information?

inerte• 13 years ago

If you get on the first results of a Google search, yes.

tvirot2• 13 years ago

Does it use the same dataset as http://www.h1bwage.com/? The results seem different.

sp_3• 13 years ago

We probably used the same dataset but when we developed, most DoL database dumps were 404 links and so salar.ly only has data for 2011 and 2012.

I sent an email to the DoL to fix their links but haven't heard back yet.

makmanalp• 13 years ago

I did this too. It's been that way for months. It's outrageous. Maybe they don't read their e-mail.

canttestthis• 13 years ago

Do these salaries refer to base salaries (not including stocks, bonuses, etc.)?

WayneDB• 13 years ago

Oh, I can't wait for the "ly" suffix thing to be over.

macey• 13 years ago

Yeah - It's kinda hard to say "salarly" without sounding a bit drunk.

Samuel_Michon• 13 years ago

ya srsly...

braveheart1723• 13 years ago

http://srslytheshow.com

mortenjorck• 13 years ago

At least they didn't register an ironic dot-xxx.

samstave• 13 years ago

www.slower.ly

tharshan09• 13 years ago

Supports UK?

zem• 13 years ago

sara.ly would have been a lot cleverer, if they had to go the .ly route

alxndr• 13 years ago

There's a joke about their dataset being from reported foreign workers' wages in there somewhere.

TimReynolds• 13 years ago

Awesome I was looking for anther example of a website using the default bootstrap style!

gergderkson• 13 years ago

If it functions well, who cares.

noname123• 13 years ago

Oddly enough, out of the statistically significant sample-set Suffolk,MA (covers Boston/Cambridge) at $120K beat out San Francisco,CA at $105K. And rent's a bit cheaper in Boston vs. SF.

But perhaps the best statistically significant bet is getting a job at Montgomery, OH where the average H1B salary is $95K which using cost of living calculator in comparison between Cincinnati, OH (the nearest metro) to San Francisco, CA is worth $165K in SF money or $222K in NYC-Manhattan money. Woo! You guys know any companies doing hiring in Cincinnati?

Link to cost of Living calculator: http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/

sandyarmstrong• 13 years ago

Better yet, Montgomery's a lovely place to live! Best BBQ ribs in the tri-state area!

Source: Grew up around there

rdtsc• 13 years ago

But a horrible place for tech jobs. So fly there for the ribs.

encoderer2• 13 years ago

Cost of living calculators are useless. For entertainment purposes only.

In the last 6 years I've lived in Ohio, Sarasota, FL, and now San Francisco. Two cross-country moves, in neither case was a cost of living calculator remotely relevant.

dionidium• 13 years ago

How did reality differ from prediction?

coin• 13 years ago

Guess they couldn't get salary.com and had to settle for a Libyan domain.

negamax• 13 years ago

Box.net salary for software engineer title is 1.8 million. What?

cgh• 13 years ago

Yeah and a "junior software engineer" in Wisconsin makes $660,000. I think extra zeroes are getting added somewhere.

If not, I hear the cheese is good in Wisconsin. I like cheese.

eclipticplane• 13 years ago

Wisconsin is also good for drinking. hic

bcx• 13 years ago

The zoomed in says he makes 143.. must be some bug.

iframe• 13 years ago

Internal Server Error

bearmf2• 13 years ago

Does it only include H-1B wage data? What about PERM (green card labor certification) data?

Also, what years are included?

shimon• 13 years ago

Odd: there's a major deviation among two counties that are both in metro Boston. The counties are Suffolk, MA (covers Boston and some towns South but not Cambridge, where the major tech cluster is) and Middlesex, MA (Cambridge & some towns North, including most of the big companies on Rt 128).

Suffolk's median is 120k based on 339 employees. Middlsex's median is 90k based on 929 employees.

Could there really be a plausible reason for these places to differ so much? The only thing I can think of is that the big boring suburban companies are mainly in Middlesex, whereas most of the software companies in Suffolk are likely in Boston where the rents and salaries are higher. Of course, Kendall Square in Cambridge is a bigger and pricier tech hub than downtown Boston, so it might cancel the effect somewhat.

Alternatively, the data could just suck.

misiti3780• 13 years ago

bummer:

http://www.salar.ly/salaries/?title=Data+Scientist&compa...

kang• 13 years ago

Trying 'Delhi' as location, NY results popped up.

Further search, I now know, there is a Delhi in New York! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi,_New_York

cnp• 13 years ago

Not to be (too) critical, but the least you could have done was to spend some time coming up with something other than the default Twitter Bootstrap theme. Care about your baby!

jaysonelliot• 13 years ago

I tried a search using "California" as the only input variable.

A total of seven results were returned. Only two were in the state of California. Only one was a tech job (programmer analyst). The others were for a pharmacist, a dentist, a professor, two office managers, and a football coach.

Is this thing on?

smnl• 13 years ago

Looks like some wages were probably incorrectly labeled as monthly rather than yearly, so that's why those are 12x what they should be

daurnimator• 13 years ago

Keep getting Internal Server Error.

But I know it's legit, I found my own old salary :P

tedchs• 13 years ago

Hi craigkerstiens, first, thanks for making this. If you're open to feedback, although I'm sure a lot of effort went into the current mouseover-driven interface, I would just share that I'd strongly prefer a simple list of results in addition to the graph.

slosh• 13 years ago

doesn't seem to be working

supersaiyan• 13 years ago

"I want to see median salaries for all counties in the US" - OP you need to edit this

bbrizzi• 13 years ago

> Salar.ly - real salary info for US tech jobs

FTFY - Even though the majority of HN readership is American, it's still not the center of the world. Sorry.

Kurtz79• 13 years ago

I second that, and would be curious to see to what extent "The majority of HN readership is American"... anyway.

For me (and I guess a lot of people) it would be quite interesting to see what is the difference in salaries across the EU countries, for example.

brownbat• 13 years ago

I'd really like to see salaries around the world for jobs where you can work from home and VPN in.

Because, uh, idle curiosity:

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/17/business/us-outsource-job-...

cfontes• 13 years ago

I think we just topped your free GAE(Google App Engine) free quota :D

marginalboy• 13 years ago

I tried several times over several hours and never could get the thing to work :-(

leeny• 13 years ago

This is awesome.

I did want to report a few bugs I noticed:

- Sorting appears to be broken. Specifically, sorting on the salary field appears to neither sort the data is currently visible nor all the data (i.e. the global max or min).

- Sorting on salary also causes the "Title" column to resize. I tried in both FF and Chrome, and the behavior is consistent.

- Pagination is also kind of weird. The total number of pages listed at the top is different than the number of pages listed at the bottom.

Salar.ly - real salary info for tech jobs

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