What Am I Worth?

by Paige Churchman (New York City)

The first time I asked for a raise, I got it. That was way back in the 1970s. I was a secretary in an ad agency. I faced off against my boss’s boss, asking for a lot more than the $150 a week I was making. “Our secretaries don’t make over $160,” he said. “Have faith,” he said. “Lots of girls would do your job for free,” he said. Nice try, buddy. I got $175 a week and a promise for $190 (what I asked for) two months later.

After I left the ad agency, my friend, Varty, busted out of the secretarial pool and became an account executive. We rejoiced…until many months later when Varty found a list of everyone’s salaries in the copy machine. Big surprise: Her salary was way lower than anyone else’s, except of course the secretaries’.

The good news is we no longer have to wait for chance blessings from the copier. Now you can find out in minutes how your salary stacks up. The bad news is that the data aren’t much different from what Varty found ― women are still making substantially less than their male counterparts. More on that later.

The Salary Sites
The two major salary sites are Glassdoor and PayScale. Both are free, but you must give your compensation and other relevant information (but not your name) before you can browse. Salary and Vault are less-robust alternatives. And Vault costs money. You can also visit the Bureau of Labor Statistics to see if your position (and its estimated wage) is listed. If you’re an attorney, take a look at Lawwages.

PayScale: Launched six years ago, PayScale has the most information with over 15 million profiles. I have little patience with surveys, but PayScale’s questions are well thought out and friendly. It even asked how long my commute is. There’s a genuine effort to capture what founder Joe Giordano calls “a richer understanding of someone’s career.” PayScale has attracted some good talent to slice, dice and write about its wealth of information. Al Lee left Microsoft because PayScale looked more interesting. Now he writes a PayScale blog called Dr. Salary. (The Dr. part is real ― he’s got a PhD in physics.) There’s also Kristina Cowan, the Salary Reporter, who often blogs on women in the workforce. The site is rich in tools, blogs and tips. What would happen if you moved to another city? Or got your MBA? You can compare your vacation time and benefits with those of other companies. PayScale is easy to navigate. If you’re looking for a promotion or a new job, you can pay about twenty bucks to get more detailed and customized reports. PayScale doesn’t push you to buy. It makes its money from the 6500 companies – employers – who buy its compensation reports.

Glassdoor: Glassdoor launched in June 2008. By August it was named to PC Magazine’s list of Top 100 Undiscovered Websites. It was created by a couple of guys who built Expedia and transformed the travel industry by making airfares transparent. Rich Barton called his friend Robert Hohman, who had left his job as president at Hot Wire, and asked, “What would happen if someone left the unedited employee survey for the whole company on the printer and it got posted to the Web?” Glassdoor is salary information plus company reviews. People weigh in on the pros and cons of their workplaces and offer advice to senior managers. (“The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent,” wrote a Lehman SVP) There’s a lot of griping, but you do get a good idea of each company’s culture. At Netflix, “good modest performance is not moderated by a good modest salary but rather a generous severance.” As for what it does with the numbers, Glassdoor is nowhere near as flexible or illuminating as PayScale, but Glassdoor is still in Beta.

Um, Should We Be Doing This?
Should our salaries be out there for all to see? Glassdoor’s founders say people get over their initial discomfort and, hey, people under 34 have no problem. Penelope Trunk, a Boston Globe columnist and blogger says the only party protected by secrecy is HR ― no one can see how arbitrary salary decisions are. Who wins the highest dollars? Good negotiators, personable people and people who bring in intangible benefits, she says. Barbarama comments on UK MSN Money that “I run the payroll, so I know exactly what everyone else is earning, and it makes my blood boil when I see the inequity of it, but I can’t say anything because it’s confidential.” In some companies, disclosing your salary is not only taboo, it’s illegal. (That policy is illegal in California and Washington.)

On the nay side is employment specialist Ann Bares who questions the quality of the data. In Compensation Force, she says “There is a difference between the kind of pay information that employees can access for free on the Internet and the kind of pay information that most employers bank on in reviewing and setting their pay programs and practices.” There’s also the strong cultural taboo.

The Raise Lady Meets Dr. Salary
Laura Browne, aka The Raise Lady, reminds The Glass Hammer that all this salary information is not a magic wand. “It’s easy for managers to discount external information and point to non-monetary rewards the company does offer. Also, I spent years in HR and know that companies typically choose whether they’ll pay at the midpoint or higher or lower, so external surveys can be misleading.” Yes, use the salary comparisons, but focus on what you’ve done to save or make money for the company, she urges.

The Gap Is Alive and Well
Not all is transparent. You won’t be able to use the salary sites to see what women make versus men, but Al Lee and Erica Sanders at PayScale put together some numbers especially for the Glass Hammer. No comment.

• Cash Compensation: Annual cash compensation, including base salary or hourly wages, combined with commissions, bonuses, profit sharing and other forms of cash earnings. This does not include equity (stock) compensation, which can be a significant portion of pay for some jobs.
• Median Cash Compensation: 50% of full-time, experienced employees in the United States with this job title will earn more than this amount, and 50% will earn less.
• Pay Gap: the amount less women make than men in each job.Our executive data comes primarily from those working at smaller companies, which constitute a significant portion of the employers in the United States.
• Note, compensation varies substantially for these positions, based upon location, industry, years of experience, company size, etc.
• We found that women are often paid substantially less than men for the same job, even though the years of experience and age of these employees was the same.