- White House to Crank Up Pressure on Mortgage Industry
- Treasury Threatens Banks, Not Borrowers
- Dubai World to Restructure About $26 Billion of Debt
- Cramer: Dubai Can’t Sink These 6 Dividend Stocks
- Bove: 26 Banks May Need To Raise More Capital
- Lesson From Dubai: Start Cutting Risk In Your Portfolio
- Iranian Seizure of British Yacht Pushes Oil Above $77
- Should Homeowners Be Able to Stop Paying Mortgage?
- Buffett's Predictions For Next Year—And Every Year
- Treasury Threatens Banks, Not Borrowers
- We're Approaching a Market Bubble: Portfolio Manager
- Hershey Shares: What Options Are Saying
- Nov. 30: Unusual Volume Leaders
- Why Careful Shoppers Are Great for the Box Office
- Blue Nile CEO: 'We're Having the Best Cyber Monday Ever'
- Best Online Retailers to Buy Now: Internet Analyst
- ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue: A Financial Success
- Cyber Monday: The Last Vestige of Dotcom Hype
MOST SHARED
- Timeless and Time-Tested Warren Buffett Watch Predictions
- Should Homeowners Be Able To Walk Away From Mortgage?
- Goldman Sachs Party Ban: No Gatherings of 12 or More
- Dubai World Set to Restructure About $26 Billion of Total Debt
- Bove: 26 Banks May Need To Raise More Capital
- Notre Dame Fires Charlie Weis After 5 Seasons
- Treasury Threatens Banks, Not Borrowers
- Nov. 30: Unusual Volume Leaders
- Oil Demand Sees Year-Over-Year Rise, First Since 2007
- Blue Nile CEO: 'We're Having the Best Cyber Monday Ever'
Text Size 
What would happen if someone left the unedited employee survey for the whole company, salary information included, on the printer and it got posted to the Web?
A new Web site is trying to do just that.
 |
Bill Haber / AP |
"We have more information on what TV I should buy, what model iPhone I should get than what is my going rate," said Robert Hohman. And recognizing that, Hohman and Richard Barton, the founder of Expedia and Zillow.com, created Glassdoor.com.
Glassdoor allows anyone to anonymously share reviews and salary details about specific jobs for specific employers. The catch? It's a give-to-get model — you must first post your own employment and salary information, albeit anonymously, before gaining access to the salary information and company reviews of others. The two-month-old site currently has more than 60,000 salary reports and company reviews for more than 11,000 employers in more than 80 countries.
Salary-sharing sites are not exactly new, but Glassdoor, unlike most of its competitors, provides company names and job-specific information.
"Other sites tend to aggregate the information at such a high level that they aren't extremely useful to consumers," said Hohman, CEO of the operation. "You can find out what a software engineer in the Bay Area makes from those sites," but he added, "What you want to know is, what is Google paying software engineers with three years of experience."
According to Glassdoor.com, a software engineer at Google's Mountainview, Calif., office with one to three years of experience has an average salary of $88,895 a year. If you include cash and stock bonuses, this number jumps to $114,000.
Hohman says knowing what a specific company and its competitors are paying someone with a specific job title in a specific city with a specific amount of experience is the only way to make the right career decision and be armed for the salary negotiation.
So is salary transparency the wave of the future? Daniel Mitchell, a professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management, is skeptical.
"It would help people to negotiate their own salaries if they knew what the guy next door got, but that’s why employers often say they don’t want you to disclose that information," says Mitchell. "Most bigger employers have some kind of rules about this, so this could only occur if it’s anonymous, and of course if it’s anonymous you don’t necessarily know that it’s accurate."
To combat the potential problem of false information, Hohman says Glassdoor employs researchers who look at every company review and salary posting before it goes live on the site. Those who post suspicious information are emailed and asked to confirm the information.
So go ahead, visit Glassdoor.com and see if part of your company’s hypothetical spreadsheet is posted online.
More from CNBC.com ...
The Best Places for Retirement Savings
Print
Email
- Ever wished your cab driver would stop chatting and just get to where you're going? Well, that moment is closer than ever.
- UPS is giving its customers the option to offset its carbon emissions when sending a package.
- Romania's presidential campaign has been rocked by a video that may show the president striking a 10-year-old boy.
- Raising alligators is hard work, and the fickle taste of rich consumers has just made it much harder, says the NY Times.
- A recent issue of ESPN Magazine was one of its top sellers ever, and it only took scantily clad athletes to make it happen.
- The continued real estate boom in China is partially fueled by a generational flood of newlyweds.
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes