:60 read | Chime in on LinkedIn here and Twitter here
“Would I lie to you?” -Tech Salary Data
Sometimes you look at numbers and know something is off. The first instinct is think “this is all bullsh*t, someone fudged the numbers.”
Next you go through a moment of questioning your own reality. Do I live in a bubble? Am I completely wrong? The “cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria!” phase.
And if you haven’t lost your mind, you can piece together the data and your very different experiences can coexist. Because they’re measuring two different things.
Case in point: I pulled some data from CompAnalyst – Salary(dot)com’s upgraded tool. It’s usually pretty accurate. Looking at DevOps, Product Managers, and Java Developers at different levels, it told me salaries are approximately 2%-4% higher in all categories in 2024 than in 2023.
Meanwhile, in our little slice of reality, we’re looking at the most depressed tech market since the dot com crash. Some laid off devs are ok with 10% less than they made before. And I’ve heard the phrase “I’m just lucky to have a job” lately more times than I can count.
We’re just not seeing continued salary inflation. So what’s the discrepancy?
Salary tools survey everyone who is working. But recruiters looking at everyone who is switching jobs and getting new salaries right now.
A few things contribute to the difference:
👉People are less likely to leave jobs, especially if they know they received a big increase in the last few years.
👉Cost of living increases still happen at companies who are doing well.
👉Unemployed people don’t factor into these numbers.
👉Salary data is always backward looking from the non-recent survey, which would be months or quarters old. It’s never real time.
This is the first time I’ve noticed a disparity…because it’s the first time tech hiring has been beaten up in forever.
It’s a reminder: the data vs reality discrepancy always exists to some extent. Whether you immediately notice it or not.
You can follow me on LinkedIn here and Twitter here. Join the discussion on this LinkedIn post (or give it a 👍) here.