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Salary: Why "Do Your Own Research" is terrible advice

Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard on October 04, 2022

Article was originally called What's the Most Accurate Salary Survey in your Country or Industry? I renamed it because, as we will see, this i...
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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard • Edited

Here is a salary survey I got about France.
silkhom.com/salaire-informatique-e...

The survey

  • covers a large number of IT professions: Webdev, Mobile, DevOps, Python, UI/UX designer .Net, Data Engineer, CTO, ...
  • methodology looks sound. It's done by a recruiting company who add thousands of candidates and many clients over the last three years, and their numbers are based on that.
  • They give numbers by 3 levels of seniority and 3 areas where the cost of life differs: Paris vs Big Cities vs Rest of France.
  • I can confirm that the numbers I do know are more or less reliable
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sandordargo profile image
Sandor Dargo

Sorry, but that survey is BS. Most of my friend are leaving for much higher salaries than that. I work in France and they don't go for less than 80k/Y for senior dev positions.

All these methodical analysis are to keep you in the dark and to find a way to promote the positions with low salaries they offer...

Read this.

What advice to give? Subscribe to that newsletter I shared just now, at least for a month, check the resources it offers to find a good paying job and go for it. It will pay off soon.

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard • Edited

What advice to give? Read this!
The Trimodal Nature of Software Engineering Salaries in the Netherlands and Europe - The Pragmatic Engineer

Thanks a lot!

And don't be sorry, not only did I want to share what I had, I was also planning to leverage the magic of Cunningham's Law

Named after the inventor of the wiki, the law states that "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."
Cunningham's Law can be considered the Internet equivalent of the French saying "prΓͺcher le faux pour savoir le vrai" ("preach the falsehood to know the truth"). Sherlock Holmes has been known to use the principle as well.

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sandordargo profile image
Sandor Dargo

The problem is that your "wrong" answer is considered good by many employers.

A few months ago I decided to look around, partially because of the article I shared. I registered to one of the sites offering some "great salary benchmarks" and I put a salary expectation that was 70% above my current salary and also above their benchmars. They soon contacted me that oh, wow, it's probably too much you're asking for and you won't have many contacts...

Even some of their clients contacted me, but it's true that it's better not relying on these sites...

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard

The problem is that your "wrong" answer is considered good by many employers.

Oh absolutely!

That's why I can't stand people using the "do your own research" bad advice.

The useful "wrong" answer I was referring too is when you get a number from an unreliable benchmark or an offer, and then you ask your friends - or your blog readers - whether that's actually true.

That's where you learn a lot, like I just did today thanks to you.

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard • Edited

@sandordargo I updated the article to clarify the intent.
Question is too important for ambiguity, thanks for your response.

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Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard

Ah yes in that case I can see why that works: remote companies tend to be transparent and for the US there is a lot of data. Thanks.

 
jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard

I agree, at the same time I know many devs who think they know nobody that could possibly help them.

What do you do then?

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mikkergimenez profile image
mikkergimenez

I suspect this idea of "Do your own research" is bad advice for anything that is contentious or non-factual, unless you're willing to go deeper than the publicly available information. In this case, I'd say the salary data is a bit of both, as well as very timely and hard to keep in date.