I'm not seeing a place for location when it comes to the salary reported. Location (cost of living) is a big deal when it comes to market rate salaries. I'm sure a Software Engineer at Google makes more money working in CA or NY compared to the market rate for the same job here in Boston.

Am I just not seeing these details since I haven't signed up?

I signed off and still couldn't find it, but I didn't look for it too much time. Location is very important. It seems that I'm the best paid programmer in Madrid :-) But if I want to keep that smile, I better don't look to other EU countries.

That results are from payscale.com, that I tried before and have to say that: interface is pretty much the same, except that Payscale didn't force me to register and gave me some information, right after submitting the last page.

Glassdoor not only required the registration and later took me to a useless (for me) page, but also told me that I'll be able to see results for a certain time. What results, BTW?

Also, it says they've started in the Bay Area. There's a definitely bias there, as the top-paid Google, Yahoo, and Cisco employees will be there, but the top-paid MSFT employees are surely in Redmond.

If you look at the screenshot on the techcrunch article it says they'll be able to show salary by location and years of experience when they have more data.

Thanks for pointing that out.

I wonder what their collection threshold is before they begin publishing this data. I imagine it could be a static number or a percentage based on the population and industry in the locale.

Simple idea and an apparently nice implementation. It's interesting that they plan to sell to HR folks when their site will undoubtedly make some HR folks lives much harder. This feels like a total "why did this take so long?" site. Nice job.

This is just awfully depressing. I'm Belgian working for a British company, so my wage is about half, and with much higher taxes so my real wage is more like a third.

The cost of living here eats up a lot of the difference.

Not if he lives in London.

True. But the point isn't that he's well off; it's that a valley employee pulling down $90k/year isn't particularly wealthy.

Yeah I was surprised it was so low. 150K a year in the valley isn't much.

I live in Belgium.

A somewhat better Overhear.us, except Glassdoor clearly targets recruitment agencies and HR, while Overhear.us was mostly for fun, as I understand it.

Which means, there is a niche for leaking "confidential" information. Internet just ideally suits this kind of anonymous social networks.

Just tried Overhear - why is the site down? (Assuming it's a YC startup, someone can answer maybe)

I always enter a higher salary than my actual on sites like this. It is irrational to be honest here.

Why?

I think it comes into play "Stop comparing yourselves" .. You are you, not me or the other guy. If you want more go ask for it. Everyone is capable of making whatever someone is willing to pay them.

*Also if you enjoy your job, what does money matter as long as the basics are met

It's prudent to gather pricing information before any large financial transaction, whether buying or selling stocks, an automobile, or a home.

Why should searching for a job or asking for a raise be any different?

Given the number of reviews (max 142 Microsoft) I just curious why is this big news for Techcrunch given that the idea is not new I also think they should have a threshold to reach before publishing rating on CEO approvals and other metrics.

Pretty eye opening. Underpaid :(

Hard to say. A lot depends on where you live and the cost of living there. If you're not in the Valley, NYC, or other high cost market you might be closer to your peers wherever it is that you live.

On the other hand, if you are in the Valley, etc., maybe it's time to update your resume. :)

If you really want to know salaries, take a look at the H1-b job databases (they are required to report salaries for particular titles). I don't look because I don't want to know (plausible deniability)

Here we go: http://career.clemson.edu/graduate_students/H1B/2007/

tbh Vault who's the elephant in this game has an ugly website with a terrible interface which charges it's userbase. It's only value is in it's content. Whoever can offer the same content with either a good interface or for free is probably going to do well for themselves. I'm not sure Glassdoor is the one though.

Matches up quite nicely with what I've heard actually.

Nice site too - great UI and, of course, interesting content.

Vault.com has a similar service, but you have to pay to access the salary reviews.

"My little cousin could build and maintain this during after-school hours!"

So why didn't he?

I was wondering about this too... Can't see where those 3 millions go except maybe for marketing (and even then, it seems to be a bit high.... )

I'm sure some of it is still in the bank, but of the part that's been spent, a big share is people's salaries. They've been around over a year, and have 12 salaries to pay, including a management team full of former Microsoft and Expedia execs.

Having 12 people working on this full time is just as ridiculous as sitting on 3 mil...

If this service requires 3 million marketing dollars to take off, maybe indeed it's not that great of a product to begin with...