Is 80-100k salary real? there's an app for that, a weekend project | Hacker News Reader

Is 80-100k salary real? there's an app for that, a weekend project

geolary.com

92 pointsrjyo56 comments

In Houston TX, 80-100k for a job is pretty much a given if you can write code. .NET, Java and even PHP jobs easily pay that here, >5yrs experience can/will get you above that range.(sometimes by a large margin)

Yes, this is not an entry level salary, but its easily attainable in 5 years if you are someone that is attracted to a site like this. From the limited experience I have seen, its not uncommon anywhere in Texas or a large part of the US. I have seen some exceptions in Oregon(Portland had a bunch of 65-75k "senior" developer jobs when I looked into that city and North Carolina seems to have a strangely low market average)

I know that not everyone here is a developer or even technical but seems that those that aren't are more entrepreneurial which could lead to far higher pay when you get it right.

Everything is bigger in Texas.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I've been looking in Houston for at least a year now, and I'm finding virtually nothing here, let alone anything at that sort of range. In my (admittedly limited) experience, the development jobs I've seen around are only offering 40-60k. I'd be interested in knowing where these cushy jobs are hiding.

Wow. You should move to Indianapolis. There are companies here dying to give some qualified programmer money. A salary of 80-100k is being offered to experienced Java, .NET -- even Ruby/Rails developers. (I just came from a Rails job at that level.) On top of that, it's a cheap place to live, and is building an interesting little community of tech/startup-minded people.

I dont know what your experience is but if you were coming in at a jr level that seems a bit low. 50-75k seems to be the range for 0-3 yrs of experience. If you are able to get in somewhere and work with the senior guys and find a good group of them who are willing to share knowledge with you it is very easy to get to mid/senior level with some effort.

I have seen some exceptions in Oregon(Portland had a bunch of 65-75k "senior" developer jobs when I looked into that city and North Carolina seems to have a strangely low market average)

How much of this do you think is attributable to differences in cost of living?

Is Portland really that much cheaper? Its not expensive there overall, but it doesn't seem all that cheap either.

I suspect that a direct calculation will show that Portland is more expensive, but the right type of person can live in Portland very happily on much less money than in Houston. Portland really promotes bicycling and light rail, while in Houston urban sprawl is the norm, and a car is virtually a requirement. Between the depressed Oregon economy and the somewhat bohemian culture that is modern Portland, there is probably a self-reinforcing lull in salaries.

It's more a matter of competition. I've worked for companies that picked Portland specifically because it had plenty of developers, but not as many employers, so the supply/demand dynamics favored a lower salary vs. other areas.

Hmm. A rather interesting contract compared to the larger tech cities that can't seem to get enough qualified developers- ever.

According to CNNMoney's Cost of living calculator, it's about 20% more expensive to live in Portland than Houston.

http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.htm...

I haven't tried the app (I don't own an iPhone), but I suggest replacing average by median. Very high salaries can significantly bring the average up, whereas the median is more robust to outliers.

(Same for not owning the iPhone and not trying the app — hope the website version's coming) A histogram (on some separate screen/page) would be nice too.

It would be interesting if this could aggregate in the data from Salary.com, PayScale.com and Glassdoor.com, to kind of generate the mean/range/etc.

Also, integration with the other-recent HN salary tool - http://salaryshare.me/ - would really be a nice addition and the complementary services could feed users to each other.

Insert obligatory Android app request

At least the web side can handle Android now. Thanks!

There's a website for that.. vfxwages.com. Starting with VFX /anim/gaming industries, heading into general tech industries hopefully this year. Since 2009.

http://www.ereleases.com/pr/industry-wages-arms-creative-pro...

What does this provide that glassdoor.com doesn't?

*edit: other than the app-ness, of course.

Focus on a good user story & a nice design, I'd assume?

I think this is brilliant. If you can get enough people typing in their current salary you could have a significantly better data source for affluency than the US census (which is what everyone uses now). That database (completely anonymized of course) that ties location to affluency would be worth a ton to advertisers and marketers.

Well done. Good luck!

I venture to say that even anonymously, people would exaggerate their salaries. Perhaps this could be curved downwards though to get a good estimate.

so you can actually do it online by inputting coordinates:

http://geolary.com/salaries/139.793644,35.864778

In longitude,latitude order.

Unrelated, but did the developer of this application go to Lynbrook High School? I recognize the map location on the home page. That would be cool.

The example shown on the web page is nonsensical. Max 260k, min 2k? Obviously 2k ($0.95/hr) is bogus. One wonders if it is bringing down averages.

Or if not can someone please introduce me to these programmers working for < $1/hr? My startup could really use them : )

Still using the screenshot with test data on an iPhone Simulator... Shame on me :-p

There was another post earlier today with all of the US H1-B salary data for the last 10 years.

http://www.flcdatacenter.com/CaseH1B.aspx

I downloaded it all the second I saw it with the thoughts that I'd just be able to "find something to do with it somehow"

Seems you're alot further along the path of being able to do something with it.

It's literally* a bajillion salary data points that are probably very reliable because the companies are likely taxed on the amount they've entered in that list (or something).

Roll it in! (maybe with a "Source" flag)

*not really literally.

This is huge! We'll have it in! Thank you!

The new screenshot makes less sense to me - the max is 6,400k, but the average is 8,200k?

I really don't understand why this is an app. Out of interest, what process led you to developing it as one?

Actually I tried to answer this: "If average salaries are 80-100k why does everyone keep getting 40-60k offers?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2453174

We used many cutting-edge things like node.js, expressjs, mongodb, mongoose, pjax and a lot more in this project. We learned how to put these things together and how to move it to a production box.

Even if no one use it, we learned a lot. And if people really love it, another great PLUS!!

I think he was asking why it is a phone app and not a more appropriate website format.

Oops! AppStore can be a good traction for getting people to use it, which is a chicken/egg problem for this app. I'll try to make it work on the web ASAP. Thanks!

That is an developer answer if I've ever heard one! ;)

Where does the data come from?

edit: It appears one source is from the app users.

I think that using the median instead of mean might be more meaningful. If you have someone put in a really high salary, the mean will be skewed to a point potentially above most of the population.

Given a mostly normal distribution with only a few extreme outliers, the median will be a more realistic number.

Thanks for the advice! We are using median now, although it shows avg in the app.

I think it's an excellent idea. However, the app never worked for me. I've got an iPhone 4 with the latest firmware, and just after opening all it does is crash.

This app uses a number of private (or at the very least, semi-private) APIs. I'm surprised Apple approved it.

errr. for example?

Pretty sure we didn't used any ourselves. And for the libs, we actually used: ShareKit/asi-http-request/Admob/regexkitlite/JSONKit

All great open-source projects used by tons of apps.

Has anyone found the easter egg?

Can you give us a clue? :P

Anyway pretty good UI, a few suggestions: Perhaps you could add a graph of the normal distribution and where you lie on it. Choosing the location of your workplace is a little confusing at first, it might be more intuitive to make it similar to the Facebook checkin sections, show a list of places nearby. Just curious if you are making any ad revenue yet? :P

I will never use an application that makes me tell it my salary on the first page.

Well, considering the fact they need more data points to make it more accurate and meaningful...

Now I can understand why employers want to keep them a secret, I have never understood why individual employees want to keep their salaries a secret.

Why not make a website that could take my zip, or use smartphone location services? you've reduced your potential user count, espectially since it's a free app.

Cool! we'll make it happen. A website is much more agile than the app. Thanks a lot!

This seems like an instance of putting the solution before the problem. I imagine you went in knowing you wanted to write an app and came up with one, not that you wanted to help people find out salaries, and then decided the app was the way to go. You are not alone.

I got the idea when reading this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2453174

It's a weekend project and he hasn't charged anyone for it, cut some slack here.

On my weekend projects, the thinking is usually "What's the most fun I can have building something?" and then I go build it. We don't need to apply deep level strategy to everything, sometimes it's enough to just build fun things. If it ends up being useful, damn, what a great weekend. Either way, your skills and experience by Sunday have grown relative to Friday. Any benefit derived by others is just a bonus.

OP, keep on jammin' on the weekends doing whatever makes you happiest. :D

I wish I had those kind of skills to bust out something like this in a weekend.

The beauty of weekend projects is that if you do enough of them that are fun for you (and not freighted with intense strategy) one day, you will have those skills.

I started off with a kinda boring job, mediocre graphics skills and the tiniest grasp of C syntax. Now I get paid to design and build iPhone apps. It's awesome. But it all started with little side projects to sharpen me up. Start practicing, you can do it if you commit.

I don't mean to criticize, what I said was "you are not alone."

You know what I am waiting for, and maybe with the Linkedin API this could be easily accomplished with your app:

I install the app, and I tell you my linkedin profile, zip code and current salary.

I want to know people in my area with similar skills in their linkedin are paid XXX, how many there are and the high-low range.

I would like to see comparison of what skills I lack to those who make more money than me.

I would like to see comparison of what skills I lack to those who make more money than me.

That would be fantastic. How cool would it be to have an app/site that tells you where you are, and where to go for the best return? "If you add an open source Ruby project to your profile you may gain $10k/yr on your next job."

Aside from confining it to zip code and metro area vs. address, I think there more data points that need to be added in order to get a more accurate picture of the job market. Just a suggestion, but:

1. Industry 2. Specific job title/function 3. Education level 3a. College(s) attended 4. Years experience 5. # of jobs held a different employers within the same industry 6. As a bonus, what type of discipline within the job function: enterprise, startup, consulting, freelance 7. Benefit level to include bonuses, healthcare, equipment/education reimbursement, travel

then sell job ads based on what the user inputs, because after all, isn't that we're looking for? Those admob things do nothing for me.

There's one for the creative fields already.. vfxwages.com. I posted a news release about them below. I think they still need some work to do, but it's getting more relevant.

I agree. Especially concerning industry. You can have all things equal (Title, Education, experience, etc) and one industry will still pay way more than another.

Besides, does it really make sense to be downtown and have your salary being compared to the guy working at the McDonalds in the food court of your building?

I like the idea, and with a few tweaks it could really be a big thing. There are some companies who pay a very large sum to see how they compare against others in terms of pay/benefits/long term incentives.

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