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Show HN: How much developers earn? (tehcookies.com) similar stories update story
32.0 points by mkalygin | karma 315 | avg karma 3.99 2017-09-01 13:16:18+00:00 | hide | past | favorite | 34 comments



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Hi HN!

One week ago there was a good post by @ciaoben and discussion [1]. We noticed that there were complains about data readability. Since we love visualizations we decided to make this data more interesting to view and get insight into.

Our work consists of two parts:

- a form to collect data from developers living in any country in the world;

- a visualization showing statistical summaries for countries and cities.

We would love to collect more data to make the visualization complete.

The project is open-source, so feel free to contribute [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15088840

[2] https://github.com/tehcookies/devsalaries


I noticed you're asking for salary. Many well paying companies have a significant non-salary component, so you're going to get some people who put their base salary and some people who put their total comp.

I don't know shit about survey design, but it might be worth thinking more about how you collect your data.


Good point actually. Do you think that additional input for bonuses would do the trick? Though I have no idea how to account non-cash bonuses (they do have a cash equivalent, but I'm pretty sure that people won't bother to convert).

Nothing about cost of living

How would you suggest to measure it? Isn't it something very personal and specific? Or are there any common methods to measure it?

I want to say rent. But I don't know how reliable that is.

I'd suggest linking to the github repo in the footer of your site

Thanks for the suggestion. Now it's there.

Cool site. Antarctica is getting _a lot_ of space on that map though...

True. But this is how mercator projection works [1]. One idea in my mind is to restrict panning so that Antarctica is not reachable like it's not there.

Wish I could be a remote software engineer working from Antarctica. :-)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection


This is one of those chicken and egg websites. (like stackoverflow). It's only useful once you reach a good traction. I wish you luck. I would find it useful

I agree. This has been driven mostly by curiosity after reading a thread about salaries here on HN. It took one week for us to prototype it and post it. So we don't expect much from it but would like it to be useful for others.

Actually we want to show that collecting data from others can be different. Not a Google Form with Google Spreadsheet which only gets data from people, but an interactive visualization, which also gives data.


Nice work. It works great! Hopefully you'll get some more data in there soon. It's interesting.

Lately it's been a little surprising for me what I make vs market rates. I knew I make a little on the low end, but over the weekend doing some salary comparisons on Glassdoor I discovered I was making much less (to the order of 15 to 60%) than more similar roles and contractors in other departments in the same field, and probably the equivalent of interns or just above throughout the company...

It's good to have some data


Thanks! Do you have any good sources of salary data in mind? I think it may be interesting to collect data from Glassdoor and make similar visualization with it, but I don't know their ToC.

This dataset was created from the one collected here on HN. This was a semi-manual work, but we managed to make it somewhat uniform.


Yeah I couldn't speak to terms and conditions.

I think Indeed also collects voluntary salary data, but I don't know any other sources off the top of my head.


How do you think such visualizations are useful? Is this important for evaluation of the market when you need to recruit somebody from a concrete area?

I can't really speak to recruiting because I haven't done it (at least in tech).

It's useful for people to be able to self-assess, I think. It helps round out your assessment of a) where you are in your career, b) where you are in your field, c) question if you're satisfied.

I'm not sure it's something that should be forced on people, but it's nice to know it's there if you go looking. Once somebody's looking for answers like that, then usually there is dissatisfaction already rooted... or just plain curiosity. Nothing wrong with curiosity.

But where it's largely against the rules, or a faux pas, to discuss salaries with coworkers, it can be hard to gauge your situation if it's a concern.


Glassdoor isn't really that accurate. It doesn't reflect current market rates, it shows rates for the duration of the time the website has been around. Also, there is massive selection bias about who puts their salary up there

That's kind of interesting problem. We did thought about it, but since it's just a quick demo project, we didn't bother.

1. How to measure a credibility of data people submit?

2. How to take into account ageing of data? E.g. due to inflation.


That's a good point. I imagine in my case that could mean that my rate is even worse than it would have been during their terms. I guess it's pretty near impossible to determine an accurate measure without polling my current coworkers and bosses. haha

Best way to know current market is to ask a recruiter who will be honest with you

It's interesting that on the map, Crimea is considered as part of Russia.

Regardless of what one may like or wish, it's the reality on the ground.

form won't submit

What's your platform and browser?

Chrome on macOS Sierra. Just tried again and I get "Oops! Something went wrong on the server. Please try again."

Unrelated - what are you using for the map? D3?

Yes, we use D3.js and for the map we've built topology file with topojson [1]. This file can be used by D3.js to render SVG map.

[1] https://github.com/topojson/topojson



Re: "Oops! Something went wrong on the server. Please try again."

  form.js:225 Error: PERMISSION_DENIED: Permission denied
      at firebase-database.js:28
      at z (firebase-database.js:28)
      at t.callOnCompleteCallback (firebase-database.js:28)
      at firebase-database.js:28
      at firebase-database.js:28
      at e.vr (firebase-database.js:28)
      at t.vr (firebase-database.js:28)
      at t.cr (firebase-database.js:28)
      at e.onMessage (firebase-database.js:28)
      at e.nt (firebase-database.js:28)
chrome 60 on osx 10.11.6 - browser plugins disabled

Thanks for sharing this. looking forward to submitting and checking the site as data grows!


Thanks for the feedback. We're investigating this.

Why is it 'branded' like HN?

It has been done for HN with dataset collected on HN. See description [1]. The initial inspiration we got from HN and discussion here. And the whole demo has been done for fun and curiosity, so it's not a startup, product, or anything we are going to develop further as a standalone app with this design and branding. Otherwise we'll use our own different branding.

[1] http://tehcookies.com/devsalaries/


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