💸 Where to find salary data and how to negotiate your next job offer

How to research and evaluate compensation to maximize your offers

April 04, 2022

☝️Tables have turned

'What is your current salary'?

'What's the minimum salary you would take?'

If you've every been on a job hunt, you've been asked these questions a lot.

We used to live in an ecosystem that had (and still has) huge power and information asymmetries between employers and workers. 

As a worker, you were expected to be grateful just for the fact that you were being evaluated, and the employer having the strong hand in the conversation meant that salary conversation was a complete shot in the dark.

Something has changed though:

📈 Supply / Demand - Tech has boomed in terms of VC funding, meaning a lot more startups are being created every year. The probability of success is still very low, but just for the law of large numbers, more will be successful in absolute terms. On the other hand, reskilling/upskilling for the required roles (yes, developers are the most requested, but all other roles will follow) has lagged (hence the boom of coding bootcamps, etc). This means that there are more vacancies than pepole with the needed skills. More demand? More power to the 'supply'.

🗂 Information Availability - In the pre-internet era, we all lived in our little 'local' world: if you wanted to know salary ranges, or any other information about job competencies or company culture, you had to rely on your direct contacts. Fast forward to 2022, you have a lot more information on sites like Glassdoor where employee leave reviews about their experiences, salary ranges etc. More information? More power to the 'supply'.

⏱ Job tenure - Past generations used to have a very linear and long-term relationship with employers, staying an average of 10/15+ years. Today we are reaching an all-time low record of 2.5 years. Why? Globalization of work (accelerated by remote), increased mobility, exposure and hence more opportunities. Decreased tenure? More power to the 'supply'.

All of these factors are starting to turn the tables and changing the asymmetry and therefore the dynamics of interaction (there is a little clever ad that shows how there is a 'reverse' interview going on now).

Here's a few tips on how to take advantage to know your worth in the market and have better salary negotiations when you are approaching a job change.

🔬 Research

There are two main ways to understand where you are in the market with regards to your salary: using your network and using third party websites/tools.

🧏 Using your network - Given that in some countries (I spoke about cultural differences in a previous post - money would deserve its own write-up) sharing salary data between peers / friends / colleagues is more of a taboo than in others (i.e. US is usually more 'open' vs Europe is more closed) this can be quite difficult. However, if you manage to, it can be very useful because you are able to have more information (context, history, specific experience). The best way would be to contact ex-colleagues that have moved to differnet companies and ask directly, specifying you're asking for help and want to use that data to improve your compensation or negotiate a current offer.

🌐 Using third party websites - It's still in its early days, but a few good ones are out there, namely:

- Payscale - You need to insert your own salary info but it will give access to benchmarks

- Glassdoor - Born as a workplace 'review site', it also offers now salary information

- Comparably - - Good one for also culture, CEO ratings etc and to compare companies between each other

- LinkedIn Salaries (seems to be available only in some countries)

- Levels.fyi - Again very focused on tech roles

- TechPays - A new site focused on Europe, though still quite tech focused

If you're also wondering how roles compare between each other, there are some interesting views (this one is from Comparably)

Obviously you will find wide ranges of salaries and there will be strong biases and differences of pays that 'big tech' companies will pay, plus differences based on location due to the higher costs of living (though this is changing now with the surge of remote work)

So if you're considering an offer in a different country, or need to bake in / understand a difference based on location, it's a good idea to check out a site that provides information on cost of living (and you can compare it to your own hometown)

🎯Components and Target

Increasingly, salary will be broken down in four possible components:

1. Base Salary - This is the fixed annual gross compensation

2. Bonus/Variable Salary - This is the variable part that is usually tied to personal and company goals, and usually can average 5 - 25% of your total base salary (but hugely depends)

3. Equity or Stock Options - This can also take various forms but is a stake in the company (equity) which will have a current value based on the valuation of the company, and would be expected to grow over time, as well as stock options if the company is publicly listed.

4. Benefits - This is hugely variable but includes health care, wellness, food, company car, and any other perk you can think of.

Given there is so much room for interpretation, a good idea is to use a site like Comparably to check your current company vs others, to see what is being offered. This site provides also a nice little 'Estimated total value' which can help you summarize all of that in one value.

You can also use something like this 'Total Compensation' calculator which can help you put it all together.

The last step is to set your desired target 'total compensation' or target 'individual salary component' from the elements above.

💰Negotiate

Negotiation is an art, and there are plenty of books that will do a much better job than me at this which I would definitely recommend reading up on (I'll list a few at the end of the article) but once you have researched the market and set targets for your desired outcomes, this will give you a head start and much stronger position.

It's also important to think that so far we talked about salary, but depending on your priorities, there is a lot you can negotiate a new job offer on, namely:

- Job title 

- Vacation/PTO

- Reporting relationships

- Decision-making/Level of authority

- Relocation expenses

- Memberships, association dues, subscriptions

- Signing bonus (a lump sum that can compensate reduction in time of notice, or other benefits )

- Laptop, mobile phone, home office technology

- Auto (car, mileage)

- Flex-time/job share schedule

- Training/re-certification costs

- Remote or virtual work

- Severance provisions

- Terms of contractual relationship

Obviously they may not all be on the table - each company has their own mix - but if you’re not finding agreement on one item, it’s always possible to consider exceptions.

At this stage, your best approach is to ask questions about reasoning and proposing your ideal outcome at first (and this is called 'anchoring' i.e. when you say a price, even if very high, the conversation will start from that) knowing how to fall back on a different mix / subset of outcomes (i.e. what is your bottom line).

No right formula exists, only experience through time. However, if of course you have more options / offers on the table at the same time, you will be able to have more strength and elements to bring to the table.

👨‍🎓Considerations

We've talked a lot about material / economic gains and points of view.

However, in my experience, the real decision about switching or evaluation of an offer, should be based on just one thing.

Learning.

Ask yourself these questions:

How much will you learn in this job?

Can it teach me new skills I wouldn't be able to learn otherwise?

Will it provide a better job after 2 years I leave?

Unless you are being offered a really substantial game-changing economic package (i.e. work a couple of years and you've got savings for a year/can make some investments) your highest return is on how much you are able to learn (which will then take me to measuring how much you learn over time - that's for another article).

This will make you start thinking about long term (where can I go, what can I do next after this) but in the short term will provide much higher satisfaction on a daily basis.

📕TL;DR & Useful Resources

  • Tables have turned in the employer/employee relationship, with huge paradigm shifts (remote), information availability (reviews, salary data) and supply/demand (access to global workforce and talent)

  • Think yourself like a 'product' and research prices (salary) and as much information as possible to know your worth and targets you can set for yourself

  • Use that information when you have a job offer to negotiate your desired outcomes

  • Think about how much you are learning where you're going - 2 years is going to be an average tenure soon; so unless you are getting double the salary, learning more will give you a better outcome in the longer term when you access a better job or reskill/upskill

  • 📕 Getting to Yes - Probably the most famous negotation book, written by an FBI negotiator

  • Some other sites for Salary Data: