As I see it, this database is a breach of an implicit social contract between me and the companies that I work for. Since my employers apparently have no issues sharing my salary with their peers, I see no reason not to do the same with my peers.
Contracting is interesting. You make more, but there’s more downside. No sick days.
Though the last 3 month contract was kind enough to calculate the start and end dates to be exactly 12 work weeks (60 work days, skipping holidays) which was a nice Jedi mind trick. I still don’t get paid for Christmas, but somehow it doesn’t feel like I’m losing a day since the end date was extended by a day to compensate. But of course that only makes sense if you don’t think too carefully about it. :)
I dunno. It’s stressful but I like the freedom. But you live with a sword over your head; salaried employees don’t.
Plus now my salary isn’t in a database somewhere since it’s not salary. blows raspberry
If it looks surprisingly dull, I hope it inspires you to realize you can get similar rates. I’m not particularly special; just determined, and willing to say no to low offers. (The initial offer was salary equal to half this rate plus stock. Being completely uninterested in stock is a tricky thing — you can offend your colleagues unless you’re especially tactful.)
My cv hasn’t been updated since 2016, but it’s also the exact cv I used at this company. That should indicate how much cvs matter relative to forming personal connections with founders.
The technique in this case was to ask an ML engineer on the JAX team what a hypothetical total comp package would be for this type of work at google. They said “making up numbers, but ~$400k.” So I refused any offers lower than that by pointing out that I could make this at Google rather than a high stress startup for half the pay plus stock.
I hope some of that is useful to anyone.
1. What kind of companies do you consult with? Is it startups, enterprises, mid-size companies? I see you mentioned forming connections with founders so I presume you mostly work with early stage startups.
2. What kind of work do you do? Advisory? Hands-on engineering? Modeling? Architecture?
3. How do you find your clients?
Salary is $200k/yr with 1% stake in the company (0.5% early exercised - nothing vested yet).
Edit 2: removed my personal salary and share options because this account is public
$155k base $145k/year RSUs (2021); $175k RSUs (2022 est)
"Senior" SRE in SF 3.5 YEO, 3.5 years at current company
This is the reason behind the "keep your data confidential" idea.
(this is a weakly held take. just spitballing)
They then started having kids, running into HR issues and all of a sudden everyone got a real harsh wake up call and understood what their real place in life is.
The kind of "told you so" that doesn't feel particularly satisfying.
It's also illegal under the NLRA of 1935. Employees talking about working conditions, like compensation, is a legally protected act whether it's on employer time or not.
So employee B comes in and says, "Hey employee A makes 15% more than I do and we have the same job! I even have more experience!" And the manager rates employee A's performance above employee B's so the salary is "appropriate" considering their relative productivity.
The problem comes in when the manager can't have an honest conversation with B to tell them this, and instead in their review gives them lots of happy talk and makes some sorry excuse for the small raise (or no raise!) saying something like "It has been a tough year and even I didn't get the raise I had hoped for! I really went to bat for you but nothing I could do could move them on available compensation." When, in fact, that is a lie and the employee is just being gaslighted because the employee would be mad and upset if they told them the "truth."
A good manager tells their reports what is expected of them and how it is measured so that when review time comes they are both on the same page when it comes to their pay. It also helps with making actionable plans to improve.
Sadly, there are a LOT of crappy managers out there.
For context, and again I don't disagree here, I was using it in the sense of saying something that may be technically 'true' (didn't get the raise I hoped for) & (went to bat for you) but in context would give the opposite impression than the one you got.
Consider a company that has a 'mandatory fire the bottom 10%' and a manager who doesn't want to go through the effort to hire someone and so argues that they should be allowed to keep employee A even though they are their lowest rated employee (that would be 'going to bat for you') and it would easy to imagine the manager wasn't happy with their own raise, and "it's been a tough year" ? How? Tough to get stuff done with under performing employees or tough for the company?
So lying? Yes, all by omission. And of course some particularly bad managers just straight up make things up.
To be fair, there are also the interesting niche cases where someone is equally capable as Jim/Pam, but they're just not as good at selling themselves. Both cases usually more applicable to larger companies.
One thing that impressed me about IBM, during my brief tenure there after the Blekko acquisition, was that they had a very deep catalog of online self paced training material for developing manager skills. I don't know how many people availed themselves of that resource but since that time I have really wished I could have pointed people who were struggling at some of the courses they had.
Also a lot of people get really defensive and go into denial mode. Or are really full of themselves. People have a really hard time getting the straight out evaluation, or get despondent, and your manager is trying to give the feedback to the capacity level you have shown.
And yes, the ability for one person say “I am doing the same work as this other person, but am receiving 72c to the dollar” is exactly why employers don’t want you sharing.
They don’t want employees to know what their labour is worth.
Additionally, in most European countries we don't have a culture of hidding our salaries from each other.
You don't need a public list from HR, and almost everyone will answer when asked "do you mind telling me...".
Surely there are people that will answer that they rather not, so far I haven't bumped in such people so far.
Unions and CSEs try to give some transparency on salaries for a given position in a given company, but even then, it's not like knowing the salary of everyone.
This is the reason behind the "put all the data in a database" idea.
Recruitment kind of worked like the following: the company that we were all employed at just paid a fixed amount per freelance developer. And the developers all got contracted through a preferred supplier. For development jobs the amount per hour for a freelancer was capped at around 90 EUR. The preferred supplier wanted to get at least 10 EUR per hour, so this meant the maximum a dev could earn was around 80 EUR per hour.
However often other recruitment companies would place developers at the preferred supplier, so they wanted a share of the cut as well.
One dev had the preferred supplier and 2 recruitment companies between himself and the company we worked at, so he earned only 55 EUR an hour.
Once we realised that for the employer it didn't really matter how much people earned, as long as it was no more than the hourly rate the company was willing to pay, all of us increased our rates at the next term, at the cost of the middlemen of course.
However, the recruitment company that hired me told me I could get one final raise, but I was forbidden to discuss remuneration in the future with my peers at this company.
Employer sharing your data means you shouldn't think twice about doing the same.
Employer not sharing your data does not necessarily imply you can't.
It takes a while for people to learn that, with exceptions, companies have never heard of this rule. But it's understandable that people would still feel bad about doing stuff we've been taught all our lives isn't really a good way to be.
Sure, a company isn't your friend, but that doesn't make "betraying trust" in response a nice feeling.