[mdjasper]

For the last couple years, I've conducted a survey of software engineers in my region about their pay, education, and other career related things. I believe strongly that opening up discussions about pay will help everyone overcome some of that information asymmetry especially early in their careers. 2017 Survey info for comparison https://mdjasper.github.io/utah-js-pay-data/

[imglorp]

It's interesting to speak directly to someone taking a survey, thank you for posting.

My question isn't about your surveys themselves, but rather if you have observed any bias in other surveys compared to your results.

A pessimist might believe that most compensation surveys are used by peer HR departments to set compensation bands and, naturally, they have incentive to systematically report those surveys low. Then they can point to these as "Market Rate" to cover their asses if challenged.

So is that intentional under-reporting happening, or do independent surveys mostly agree?

[mdjasper]

That's a great question. I haven't directly seen any other surveys performed by "the other side" so to speak. But in looking at comparative data online (https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/utah-computer-programmer-... for example), our dataset seems to show a more broad range of pay (both lower and higher).

Anecdotally, I have been told by a couple former managers something along the lines of "the highest payed engineers in Utah are in the 120k range," which this survey shows is not the case.

[suresk]

Reports on Glassdoor have always felt kind of on the low-end, not sure why.

> Anecdotally, I have been told by a couple former managers something along the lines of "the highest payed engineers in Utah are in the 120k range," which this survey shows is not the case.

I think part of the problem is that the range can be so huge. I've seen senior developer postings in the last year that range anywhere from $85k to $160k. I'm guessing a lot of managers have limited experience and knowledge about salaries outside of their company, rather than intentionally trying to downplay salaries.

I would personally guess that the 95% for senior/principal devs in Utah is in the $140-160k range. The only people I know above $200k would be people doing 1099 work and maybe some one-offs from stock options.

[Spooky23]

People don’t understand what they make and frequently report all sorts of wacky stuff.

I worked for an org that had a fixed pay scale and read some detailed survey data that included them. The top/bottom reports were bullshit.

People will report what they think their benefits are worth, won’t know their gross salary at all somehow, will deduct alimony, add 401k interest, miscategorize themselves (ie identify as an engineer but be a director), or just make shit up.

Surveys may target wrong. Someone who is supposed to be in Utah may be in SFO or NYC.

[Spooky23]

People don’t understand what they make and frequently report all sorts of wacky stuff.

I worked for an org that had a fixed pay scale and read some detailed survey data that included them. The top/bottom reports were bullshit.

People will report what they think their benefits are worth, won’t know their gross salary at all somehow, will deduct alimony, add 401k interest or just make shit up.

[dsnuh]

Great article and data, thanks for doing this.

Small note: you have a typo, "long tale" should be "long tail".

[mdjasper]

Thanks!