We're going to develop a new salary poll that will provide filtered searches and sorting options. I would like to open up this discussion to suggestions and comments regarding this new salary poll. To maintain focus, off-topic comments may be deleted.
Thanks, in advance, for your feedback. We're looking forward to your suggestions to help build a more helpful salary poll.
- school(s) attended
- international experience if any
- job title or position held
- Age
- gender
- employed or freelance
- number of firms one has worked at
it seems like some of these items would lend themselves to becoming a data field, along with Age, Location, Gender etc:
School Attended
Add'l school
Job Title
Years of Experience
Number of Firms one has worked at...
also, in lieu of an "other" option on type of workplace, could there be the option to write in the type of workplace? if not, expanding the existing list may be useful...
I have grave concerns about the integrity of the data in a voluntary, on-line poll of this nature ... what's to prevent people from just entering bogus data to skew the results and give themselves more leverage in negotiating with employers.
I was involved peripherally in the design and implementation of the 2005 aia compensation survey ... i know how that data was collected and how it was validated. Knowing that, I have confidence in the results.
While I support the idea of archinect having its own survey as well (the more data the merrier) I think you need to find a way to make sure this is more scientific and credible than the sort of opinion surveys one sees in USA Today and AOL. Otherwise, you'll just be wasting your time and adding more confusion to the marketplace.
Thanks for the suggestions so far. We will have graphs, so it's not necessary to post any more comments suggesting that, unless you want specific types of graphs (age/salary, location/salary, etc.)
postal - I didn't initially think that the salary poll was going to be so popular but over 2,300 submissions and countess emails requesting more features proved me wrong.
quiizzical - You bring up a good point, but the Archinect survey relies on honesty and will never be considered "official". It's meant to be a general overview for interest sake, for Archinect readers, by Archinect readers. Another big difference is that it's free (AIA's survey is $175). We have and will continue to moderate the submissions, so entries that are obviously fake will not be approved. To date, most of the submission seem valid... and I can't understand why someone would lie, anonymously, when this won't be a negotiating tool with employers. We will have a simple system created to avoid duplicate entries. I don't know how it would be possible to compile completely verified salary information other than by going through tax information and attaching salary figures to personal information... and this would be incredibly time consuming and hardly feasibly. How did the AIA collect it's salary data? If they asked employers, what's to stop the employers from skewing the answers to benefit themselves?
I think it would be good to get a sense of what people are being billed out for versus what they're being paid. If you were looking at a particular city and you consistently saw people reporting making $15/hour and being billed at $75/hour, that might indicate an oversupply of people qualified for your position.
It would also be good if people could indicate what percentage of their average weekly work hours they spend doing billable work.
here's whats totally irrelevant. where u went to school. mr. architect isn't going to pay mr. ivy any more than ms. state school if each of them are bringing the same skills to the table. also, age doesnt matter much either. if mr. x went to architecture school right out of high skool and ms. y waited and went went she was twenty five, each would be worth the same to the employer. now ms. y may be able to negotiate a bit more, maybe not.
if one is entry level in tacoma, they will be paid what an entry level person makes in tacoma, whether they went to tacoma tech or hahvahd.
most people on this site, probably have no idea what the person sitting in the next cubicle makes, so i dont see what a salary poll tells you other than its really going to be tough to live in nyc for this. and wow i am surprised architects make so little. aren't they like doctors???
now, my idea, and please don't delete it! is that archinect should track specific individuals. get some guinea pigs, er uh volunteers. you need five entry level interns, five mid level interns, five newly minted registered architects etc, and track their progress over the long term through this career. not only would it be informative, it would be scientific.
I think the entries should expire after a while, or have a date linked to them. No use looking at old data.
Keep the ability to enter whatever you want as "other", I like the comments like "Boss is an ass though" or "Cool place to work" - it adds realness and makes the #'s easier to sort in the mind.
about: where one went to school - What about if someone wants to know how much his classmates or former graduates of his/her school are making and where they're located! wouldn't it be useful then to add this category..?
As for age it can help you estimate how much you would be making at a certain point in the future during your career or what salary range to expect compared to others of similar age. Age does make a difference when applying for a job, not a big difference maybe but nonetheless it can affect one's chances, whether negatively or positively, depedning on what the employer is looking for. Emotional stability for example is something an employer might look for in a candidate.
: i understand what you write above; nevertheless, i have serious concerns about a salary poll where a 24 year old individual who claims to have just finished school and to be working in Toronto for yabu pushelberg claims to be paid $100,000 per year. even accounting for exchange rate differences, this is so far beyond the norm as to be totally unbelievable, and - for me at least - totally destroys the credibility of the information being presented
like i said above, i support the idea of archinect having a salary poll. but, for it to be remotely useful, there need to be some standards with respect to definitions and data ... i believe you should adopt the "position descriptions" used in the aia survey (i expect aia would cooperate) so meaningful comparison could be possible ... i believe you should be very careful to make participants clarify distinctions between a) base salary; b) paid overtime compensation; c) bonus or incentive compensation; d) benefits; e) experience level; f) education level; g) the way numbers are presented (you have both hourly and annual data presented now); h) etc.
when i got of school i had a general sense that entry level positions paid between x and y, but I didn't know which end of the spectrum was more realistic in my city with my qualifications. if the salary poll had been around at the time it would have been another tool among many that i used to narrow things down and understand that asking for y would have gotten me laughed out of most offices in my city and asking for x would have made me a sucker. if you know a general range of what people are being paid for doing the same work in the same town, you can throw out a number in salary negotiations that's high enough not to get you screwed but low enough not to scare everybody off.
as for bogus numbers, i don't think most people with even a very cursory knowledge of the profession would believe a 24 year old intern fresh out of school was making 100k. since this website is geared mainly toward people either in the profession or in architecture school, i believe most of us will be able to dicern what's bogus and what's legit. if we can't, it will only take looking at the patterns to see who stands out as being absurdly off base.
one thing that does concern me about bogus numbers is their possible inclusion in the charts and graphs i hear will be part of the new poll. a way to avoid this would be letting people choose, perhaps with check boxes, which entries to include or exclude. that way, if i wanted a chart plotting salaries for interns in Toronto, my results wouldn't be wildly skewed by 100k guy.
My suggestion is that there be an announced period of time in which current information can be submitted, and that this information be collected, formatted (graphed if desired, etc.) and not published until the submission period is closed.
My reasoning for this is that we may get a slightly more reliable, realistic sample if everyone submits their information "blind" instead of being able to see other information that's already been submitted.
It seemed to me that in the current salary poll the incidence of somewhat unbelievable entries increased as time went on. My feeling was that some posters might be trying to "best" previous entries.
No anonymous, unverified poll would ever be entirely perfect, but by collecting all info at once and not publishing it until the collection is complete I think the competition-factor might be reduced somewhat.
Perhaps in the future there would be additional open periods for reporting new data - for instance an annual survey - and the older data would then be archived.
I'm not in favor of a format that would allow posters to vote to exclude certain submissions. There will always be anomolous results in any survey and it doesn't seem right to remove them.
I'm also not in favor of including gender in the results.
some people really do make unusually high and/or low salaries. i know architects with less than 5 years of experience that make over $100K.
what do you think about incorporating a "flag" system, that will allow users to flag an entry if it seems bogus? if a certain number of flags are posted we could contact the person to verify the data, or remove the entry.
formerly - we could display the results to people who contribute to the poll, after they've submitted their data. but i generally prefer the ongoing evolution of the salary poll. i can't think of why someone would need to better themselves (or somebody else) in an anonymous environment like this.
you may not be able to concieve of it, but believe me, they're out there!
I like the flag system idea a lot, so long as you guys actually do let people know if they're entry is being taken down and give them a chance to explain it. I remember being very pissed when my entry at insidearch was removed because of contradictory information (rectified, thank you insidarch, and screw you if you're the principals who went on and blew smoke up everyones butts saying your firms great, because it's NOT), and wouldn't want it to be the same way here.
Alternatively, maybe there should be some sort of sorting system- i.e. an entry would be labled in red if it is verrrry far away from the median, green if it's within a certain range of the median, and yellow if it's in between? That way, without anybody trying to judge whether someone was truthful or not, people can automatically be informed of whether this is a very normal salary or not.
i can accept that there are unusual circumstances under which an individual with a certain experience level will receive an unusually high or an unusually low wage. however, i believe the majority of the people here are interested mostly in the "norms" for a particular combination of community and job description/experience level.
to the extent the database you compile aggregates the data around a) an identifiable community; b) an appropriate job definition; and c) a specific period in time, then I have no problem with it also reporting the high and low salaries in each category ...
but, you also need to report the mean and the median figures (and maybe the quartile ranges) for each category for the information to be really useful to readers of the poll results.
What you usually do when graphing data is eliminate the lowest and highest to account for that error.
But quizzical, I wonder if it is more common and more deceiving to report one's salary 3-5k higher than it really is? If 1/3 of people do this, it is more damaging to the data than one person reporting 100k.
I was just browsing the salary poll and I'm starting to see quizzical's concern. While most entries look plausable, many do not. I do agree with Paul that there are highs and lows in salary range for architecture, or any profession for that matter. Then again, the current polls seems to lack credibility.
Syracuse does a salary survey of their alumni each year which I've always appreciated, even though I'm not an alumn of there. (If that hasn't been mentioned yet, I'd look to it for a good case study for the Archinect survey.) I've always found it to be more interesting than the AIA salary survey, just wish it would cover more than one univ.
: your musings about the possible frequency of bogus data parallel my own -- in a voluntary, anonymous poll of this sort, i just don't know how the integrity of the data can be maintained against malicious or manipulative intent
as for reporting the data, the "median" tends to be a pretty good figure to use, because it is the mid-point of all responses ... i.e. 1/2 of the responses are above the median and 1/2 are below
I wouldn't mind seeing a distinction between self-employeed architects/designers versus people working for the 'man'.
I'd also like it if we could generate graphs/data sets based on certain criteria, e.g. men vs women in salaries.
I hope I didn't offend anyone with the 'man' comment.
But also, it would be nice if we could generate different types of graphs: bar, line, pie, etc. and calculate the information as 'real' numbers or percentages.
I'd like a way to differentiate between base salary, bonus, other forms of compensation such as percentages of fees for projects brought into the firm by the employee. There could be a category for "total compensation" but then some sub-categories.
I'm not sure about the flag issue. It seems fine if it's a system where people can flag entries to symbolize their skepticism - maybe they can even add brief comments to explain why they flagged it. But I wouldn't really want them to be able to flag entries as a means to get them removed entirely.
Both of these issues stem from my experiences with comments that I've written in informal polls on this and other sites. I have an employment situation in which I have a lower than average base salary but usually receive an substantial end-of-year bonus (5 figures, in an average year equal to about 30% of my base salary.) When I've discussed this in relevant threads I've encountered some replies basically saying "bullshit. That type of bonus doesn't exist in architecture except for firm owners" or telling me that I'm stupid to let myself be "exploited" by accepting such a low salary.
I can handle the comments from doubters, but I wouldn't want my data to be able to be "voted off" the poll just because a certain number of people flagged it. That would just result in a poll that was skewed toward whatever numbers are the popular perception of average, because all the unusual situations will be removed.
For those of us who are really data egg-heads, it would be awesome to have info about parent's total schooling, incomes, and ages from all individuals polled.
maybe completely stupid to say so, but i'd like to be able to see who is happy and who is not with there job, and how this relates to all the other factors people are mentioning.
pay vs. level of happiness
experience vs. level of happiness
location vs. level of happiness
i guess it really holds no level of necessity for someone using this data to determine what they should make in a certain environment, but it interests me.
it would be interesting if the salaries could be mapped somehow, so that the median salary for whatever level of experience could be viewed by location.
hmm, lots of good points. The post about Syracuse's survery made me think of something- it could be interesting to be able to sort by what schools people went to. That way we'd stop getting people asking if Ivy grads really make more all the time. Or do we not want to go there?
: hmmm ... intriguing point ... while location can be meaningful, i'm not sure it's meaningful to map a median $65,000 salary in NYC vs a median $65,000 salary in Houston ... there are huge cost-of-living differences between such locations and that factor needs to be a part of the consideration as well ... we probably wouldn't want people to be mislead
no, and i agree with you on that point. but i was viewing the salary map in that sense as a means to understand the state of salary compensation in the profession, not as a gauge for deciding what one's salary should be in a respective place. perhaps information about living costs could be included.
I think that might be taking it a bit far... Shouldn't people know that the cost of living differs between the various places? Maybe we should just put link to a good resource on the subject and call it done, because that's whole other set of data we're asking them to analyze.
"Shouldn't people know that the cost of living differs between the various places?"
... well, you'd think so, wouldn't you. However, you can't imagine how often we have to wade through this issue in excruciating detail when we interview candidates working in high cost-of-living areas ... people currently working in the Northeast or DC would actually get a raise by taking a pay-cut to work in our city.
however, i'm not advocating for the salary poll to do anything special on this topic ... i just got a little concerned by le bossman's suggestion that we map salaries ... that could be misleading without some sort of notation or reference to sites where cost-of-living differentials could be understood
Mapping salaries can be useful in showing other trends though besides just salaries linked to cost-of-living information. For example, in the 2005 AIA salary survey there was a chart showing how intern salaries were increasing sharply over the previous three years in the Northeastern US, while they were much steadier in some places, and even declining in the midwest. The costs of living are actually pretty similar in much of the northeast (excluding the greater Boston and NYC areas) to some of the larger midwestern cities, but other factors (notably a huge boom in residential construction in the northeast) were affecting salaries during that time.
I agree that cost of living info is very important to consider. A lot of people I know have said that they wouldn't work in particular places because those regions don't pay well - but they don't always look at the costs to live there. And the money saved by living somewhere with a lower cost of living is an actual savings, while the higher salary in another place can be misleading because of the taxes and such. For instance if you can get an 8k higher salary in city A, but city B will cost you 8k less to live in over the course of a year, then city B is the better deal because in city A the 8k is gross and you'll only see a fraction of it after taxes.
it would help to have a search form. The user could search by location, age, salary, type of firm, years of experienc, and maybe even specify the order (least to most or most to least). Also, in order for anyone to post their info, there should be required areas to fullfill a minimum amount of info per person.
those would just make it a more useful survey. but its great to have so much data to begin with!
The simplicity of the existing poll is what has encouraged so many replies. Changing the poll may discourage responses if the new poll is more sophisticated, as has been discussed. Changing the poll may, as well, skew how people think about their answers thereby making comparisions between the answers of new respondents and those of previous respondents unreliable. This will happen even if the individual questions from the original poll have not themselves been changed. Moreover, previous respondents may take the poll again. The duplication of answers will further complicate comparisons.
With regard to the plausibility of replies I think the implausible ones are easy enough to pick out and discount. More sophisticated questions will not lead to more plausible results.
I skipped a good chunk of the responses in order to type mine before I forgot what I was going to ssay, so forgive me if I'm repeating someone:
Somebody above mentioned that we should have open periods for data collection, and then close the salary poll for awhile until data collection time rolls around again (for example, encourage a yearly poll.)
While I think this may result in lower numbers of people reporting their salaries, it has one enormous positive benefit in my mind:
Salaries will be reported with respect to a particular time period.
For example: we all know that salaries fluctuate with time. They tend to go up with inflation, but, partly due to geographic differences, don't always. It would be really helpful if, when I was sifting through the salary poll, I could tell when the information was collected, and even if I were able to sort through a chronological reporting of a certain geographic area to see the salary trends over time.
With the current, rolling system of salary polling, you lose all temporal assocations with the salaries. This seems to me very misleading and problematic.
Are there other ways we could address this problem? What do people think?
New Archinect Salary Poll
We're going to develop a new salary poll that will provide filtered searches and sorting options. I would like to open up this discussion to suggestions and comments regarding this new salary poll. To maintain focus, off-topic comments may be deleted.
Thanks, in advance, for your feedback. We're looking forward to your suggestions to help build a more helpful salary poll.
The existing salary poll can be viewed here
I think a few archinecters mentioned before of a salary poll graph that could show growth based on experience, degree, license, location etc.
this new archinect salary poll sounds great! thanks a lot paul!
I just wanted to send in another request for some kind of graph or chart that organizes the data.
i'm sure you've seen this site...
http://insidearch.org/
it just needs more frequent love and care, but I check here all the time... (not that i need a job)
but i'm not sure how archinecters would feel about filling out a survey...
Suggestions for sorting categories:
1. Licensure
2. Years at firm
3. Years experience (total)
4. Degree (none; BA/BS; BArch; MA/MS; MArch; PhD)
5. Firm size
6. Firm type
Oh, and while I'm making wishes: can you delete off-topic posts in ALL threads?
benefits would be another category to survey
An easy way to filter out the American wages so that I can see what my British chums are making
More suggestions:
- school(s) attended
- international experience if any
- job title or position held
- Age
- gender
- employed or freelance
- number of firms one has worked at
Type of clients, i.e. corporate retail, hospitality, k-12 education, higher ed, single family residential, etc.
Avg weekly hours worked, ie. part time, 40, 50, etc.
Overtime compensation, i.e. 1.5x hourly, comp time, bonus, nothing, etc.
it seems like some of these items would lend themselves to becoming a data field, along with Age, Location, Gender etc:
School Attended
Add'l school
Job Title
Years of Experience
Number of Firms one has worked at...
also, in lieu of an "other" option on type of workplace, could there be the option to write in the type of workplace? if not, expanding the existing list may be useful...
this sounds great...i do think that Location is KEY...i tend to scroll around to find my city!
I have grave concerns about the integrity of the data in a voluntary, on-line poll of this nature ... what's to prevent people from just entering bogus data to skew the results and give themselves more leverage in negotiating with employers.
I was involved peripherally in the design and implementation of the 2005 aia compensation survey ... i know how that data was collected and how it was validated. Knowing that, I have confidence in the results.
While I support the idea of archinect having its own survey as well (the more data the merrier) I think you need to find a way to make sure this is more scientific and credible than the sort of opinion surveys one sees in USA Today and AOL. Otherwise, you'll just be wasting your time and adding more confusion to the marketplace.
Thanks for the suggestions so far. We will have graphs, so it's not necessary to post any more comments suggesting that, unless you want specific types of graphs (age/salary, location/salary, etc.)
postal - I didn't initially think that the salary poll was going to be so popular but over 2,300 submissions and countess emails requesting more features proved me wrong.
quiizzical - You bring up a good point, but the Archinect survey relies on honesty and will never be considered "official". It's meant to be a general overview for interest sake, for Archinect readers, by Archinect readers. Another big difference is that it's free (AIA's survey is $175). We have and will continue to moderate the submissions, so entries that are obviously fake will not be approved. To date, most of the submission seem valid... and I can't understand why someone would lie, anonymously, when this won't be a negotiating tool with employers. We will have a simple system created to avoid duplicate entries. I don't know how it would be possible to compile completely verified salary information other than by going through tax information and attaching salary figures to personal information... and this would be incredibly time consuming and hardly feasibly. How did the AIA collect it's salary data? If they asked employers, what's to stop the employers from skewing the answers to benefit themselves?
I think it would be good to get a sense of what people are being billed out for versus what they're being paid. If you were looking at a particular city and you consistently saw people reporting making $15/hour and being billed at $75/hour, that might indicate an oversupply of people qualified for your position.
It would also be good if people could indicate what percentage of their average weekly work hours they spend doing billable work.
here's whats totally irrelevant. where u went to school. mr. architect isn't going to pay mr. ivy any more than ms. state school if each of them are bringing the same skills to the table. also, age doesnt matter much either. if mr. x went to architecture school right out of high skool and ms. y waited and went went she was twenty five, each would be worth the same to the employer. now ms. y may be able to negotiate a bit more, maybe not.
if one is entry level in tacoma, they will be paid what an entry level person makes in tacoma, whether they went to tacoma tech or hahvahd.
most people on this site, probably have no idea what the person sitting in the next cubicle makes, so i dont see what a salary poll tells you other than its really going to be tough to live in nyc for this. and wow i am surprised architects make so little. aren't they like doctors???
now, my idea, and please don't delete it! is that archinect should track specific individuals. get some guinea pigs, er uh volunteers. you need five entry level interns, five mid level interns, five newly minted registered architects etc, and track their progress over the long term through this career. not only would it be informative, it would be scientific.
I think the entries should expire after a while, or have a date linked to them. No use looking at old data.
Keep the ability to enter whatever you want as "other", I like the comments like "Boss is an ass though" or "Cool place to work" - it adds realness and makes the #'s easier to sort in the mind.
Thanks for the effort archinect team.
vado retro
about: where one went to school - What about if someone wants to know how much his classmates or former graduates of his/her school are making and where they're located! wouldn't it be useful then to add this category..?
As for age it can help you estimate how much you would be making at a certain point in the future during your career or what salary range to expect compared to others of similar age. Age does make a difference when applying for a job, not a big difference maybe but nonetheless it can affect one's chances, whether negatively or positively, depedning on what the employer is looking for. Emotional stability for example is something an employer might look for in a candidate.
: i understand what you write above; nevertheless, i have serious concerns about a salary poll where a 24 year old individual who claims to have just finished school and to be working in Toronto for yabu pushelberg claims to be paid $100,000 per year. even accounting for exchange rate differences, this is so far beyond the norm as to be totally unbelievable, and - for me at least - totally destroys the credibility of the information being presented
like i said above, i support the idea of archinect having a salary poll. but, for it to be remotely useful, there need to be some standards with respect to definitions and data ... i believe you should adopt the "position descriptions" used in the aia survey (i expect aia would cooperate) so meaningful comparison could be possible ... i believe you should be very careful to make participants clarify distinctions between a) base salary; b) paid overtime compensation; c) bonus or incentive compensation; d) benefits; e) experience level; f) education level; g) the way numbers are presented (you have both hourly and annual data presented now); h) etc.
when i got of school i had a general sense that entry level positions paid between x and y, but I didn't know which end of the spectrum was more realistic in my city with my qualifications. if the salary poll had been around at the time it would have been another tool among many that i used to narrow things down and understand that asking for y would have gotten me laughed out of most offices in my city and asking for x would have made me a sucker. if you know a general range of what people are being paid for doing the same work in the same town, you can throw out a number in salary negotiations that's high enough not to get you screwed but low enough not to scare everybody off.
as for bogus numbers, i don't think most people with even a very cursory knowledge of the profession would believe a 24 year old intern fresh out of school was making 100k. since this website is geared mainly toward people either in the profession or in architecture school, i believe most of us will be able to dicern what's bogus and what's legit. if we can't, it will only take looking at the patterns to see who stands out as being absurdly off base.
one thing that does concern me about bogus numbers is their possible inclusion in the charts and graphs i hear will be part of the new poll. a way to avoid this would be letting people choose, perhaps with check boxes, which entries to include or exclude. that way, if i wanted a chart plotting salaries for interns in Toronto, my results wouldn't be wildly skewed by 100k guy.
My suggestion is that there be an announced period of time in which current information can be submitted, and that this information be collected, formatted (graphed if desired, etc.) and not published until the submission period is closed.
My reasoning for this is that we may get a slightly more reliable, realistic sample if everyone submits their information "blind" instead of being able to see other information that's already been submitted.
It seemed to me that in the current salary poll the incidence of somewhat unbelievable entries increased as time went on. My feeling was that some posters might be trying to "best" previous entries.
No anonymous, unverified poll would ever be entirely perfect, but by collecting all info at once and not publishing it until the collection is complete I think the competition-factor might be reduced somewhat.
Perhaps in the future there would be additional open periods for reporting new data - for instance an annual survey - and the older data would then be archived.
I'm not in favor of a format that would allow posters to vote to exclude certain submissions. There will always be anomolous results in any survey and it doesn't seem right to remove them.
I'm also not in favor of including gender in the results.
some people really do make unusually high and/or low salaries. i know architects with less than 5 years of experience that make over $100K.
what do you think about incorporating a "flag" system, that will allow users to flag an entry if it seems bogus? if a certain number of flags are posted we could contact the person to verify the data, or remove the entry.
formerly - we could display the results to people who contribute to the poll, after they've submitted their data. but i generally prefer the ongoing evolution of the salary poll. i can't think of why someone would need to better themselves (or somebody else) in an anonymous environment like this.
you may not be able to concieve of it, but believe me, they're out there!
I like the flag system idea a lot, so long as you guys actually do let people know if they're entry is being taken down and give them a chance to explain it. I remember being very pissed when my entry at insidearch was removed because of contradictory information (rectified, thank you insidarch, and screw you if you're the principals who went on and blew smoke up everyones butts saying your firms great, because it's NOT), and wouldn't want it to be the same way here.
Alternatively, maybe there should be some sort of sorting system- i.e. an entry would be labled in red if it is verrrry far away from the median, green if it's within a certain range of the median, and yellow if it's in between? That way, without anybody trying to judge whether someone was truthful or not, people can automatically be informed of whether this is a very normal salary or not.
i think a flag would work with concern to "bogus" posts.
(craigslist has a similar feature)
Also, i don't see any logic for eliminating Gender from the poll.
I guess the same would go for School/Education...
...I say collect the data, and let it speak for itself...
sorry Rationalist, couldn't resist...
Paul, feel free to delete my "off-topic" comment.
i can accept that there are unusual circumstances under which an individual with a certain experience level will receive an unusually high or an unusually low wage. however, i believe the majority of the people here are interested mostly in the "norms" for a particular combination of community and job description/experience level.
to the extent the database you compile aggregates the data around a) an identifiable community; b) an appropriate job definition; and c) a specific period in time, then I have no problem with it also reporting the high and low salaries in each category ...
but, you also need to report the mean and the median figures (and maybe the quartile ranges) for each category for the information to be really useful to readers of the poll results.
What you usually do when graphing data is eliminate the lowest and highest to account for that error.
But quizzical, I wonder if it is more common and more deceiving to report one's salary 3-5k higher than it really is? If 1/3 of people do this, it is more damaging to the data than one person reporting 100k.
I was just browsing the salary poll and I'm starting to see quizzical's concern. While most entries look plausable, many do not. I do agree with Paul that there are highs and lows in salary range for architecture, or any profession for that matter. Then again, the current polls seems to lack credibility.
Syracuse does a salary survey of their alumni each year which I've always appreciated, even though I'm not an alumn of there. (If that hasn't been mentioned yet, I'd look to it for a good case study for the Archinect survey.) I've always found it to be more interesting than the AIA salary survey, just wish it would cover more than one univ.
: your musings about the possible frequency of bogus data parallel my own -- in a voluntary, anonymous poll of this sort, i just don't know how the integrity of the data can be maintained against malicious or manipulative intent
as for reporting the data, the "median" tends to be a pretty good figure to use, because it is the mid-point of all responses ... i.e. 1/2 of the responses are above the median and 1/2 are below
I wouldn't mind seeing a distinction between self-employeed architects/designers versus people working for the 'man'.
I'd also like it if we could generate graphs/data sets based on certain criteria, e.g. men vs women in salaries.
can't we also get data on people working for the "woman" ?
blah
I hope I didn't offend anyone with the 'man' comment.
But also, it would be nice if we could generate different types of graphs: bar, line, pie, etc. and calculate the information as 'real' numbers or percentages.
I'd like a way to differentiate between base salary, bonus, other forms of compensation such as percentages of fees for projects brought into the firm by the employee. There could be a category for "total compensation" but then some sub-categories.
I'm not sure about the flag issue. It seems fine if it's a system where people can flag entries to symbolize their skepticism - maybe they can even add brief comments to explain why they flagged it. But I wouldn't really want them to be able to flag entries as a means to get them removed entirely.
Both of these issues stem from my experiences with comments that I've written in informal polls on this and other sites. I have an employment situation in which I have a lower than average base salary but usually receive an substantial end-of-year bonus (5 figures, in an average year equal to about 30% of my base salary.) When I've discussed this in relevant threads I've encountered some replies basically saying "bullshit. That type of bonus doesn't exist in architecture except for firm owners" or telling me that I'm stupid to let myself be "exploited" by accepting such a low salary.
I can handle the comments from doubters, but I wouldn't want my data to be able to be "voted off" the poll just because a certain number of people flagged it. That would just result in a poll that was skewed toward whatever numbers are the popular perception of average, because all the unusual situations will be removed.
For those of us who are really data egg-heads, it would be awesome to have info about parent's total schooling, incomes, and ages from all individuals polled.
and a way to download the full data set by field, so we could run staatitistical tests on it.
: great post !
maybe completely stupid to say so, but i'd like to be able to see who is happy and who is not with there job, and how this relates to all the other factors people are mentioning.
pay vs. level of happiness
experience vs. level of happiness
location vs. level of happiness
i guess it really holds no level of necessity for someone using this data to determine what they should make in a certain environment, but it interests me.
back to work now.
my grammar is horrible
it would be interesting if the salaries could be mapped somehow, so that the median salary for whatever level of experience could be viewed by location.
hmm, lots of good points. The post about Syracuse's survery made me think of something- it could be interesting to be able to sort by what schools people went to. That way we'd stop getting people asking if Ivy grads really make more all the time. Or do we not want to go there?
: hmmm ... intriguing point ... while location can be meaningful, i'm not sure it's meaningful to map a median $65,000 salary in NYC vs a median $65,000 salary in Houston ... there are huge cost-of-living differences between such locations and that factor needs to be a part of the consideration as well ... we probably wouldn't want people to be mislead
sorry ... "misled"
no, and i agree with you on that point. but i was viewing the salary map in that sense as a means to understand the state of salary compensation in the profession, not as a gauge for deciding what one's salary should be in a respective place. perhaps information about living costs could be included.
I think that might be taking it a bit far... Shouldn't people know that the cost of living differs between the various places? Maybe we should just put link to a good resource on the subject and call it done, because that's whole other set of data we're asking them to analyze.
... well, you'd think so, wouldn't you. However, you can't imagine how often we have to wade through this issue in excruciating detail when we interview candidates working in high cost-of-living areas ... people currently working in the Northeast or DC would actually get a raise by taking a pay-cut to work in our city.
however, i'm not advocating for the salary poll to do anything special on this topic ... i just got a little concerned by le bossman's suggestion that we map salaries ... that could be misleading without some sort of notation or reference to sites where cost-of-living differentials could be understood
Mapping salaries can be useful in showing other trends though besides just salaries linked to cost-of-living information. For example, in the 2005 AIA salary survey there was a chart showing how intern salaries were increasing sharply over the previous three years in the Northeastern US, while they were much steadier in some places, and even declining in the midwest. The costs of living are actually pretty similar in much of the northeast (excluding the greater Boston and NYC areas) to some of the larger midwestern cities, but other factors (notably a huge boom in residential construction in the northeast) were affecting salaries during that time.
I agree that cost of living info is very important to consider. A lot of people I know have said that they wouldn't work in particular places because those regions don't pay well - but they don't always look at the costs to live there. And the money saved by living somewhere with a lower cost of living is an actual savings, while the higher salary in another place can be misleading because of the taxes and such. For instance if you can get an 8k higher salary in city A, but city B will cost you 8k less to live in over the course of a year, then city B is the better deal because in city A the 8k is gross and you'll only see a fraction of it after taxes.
it would help to have a search form. The user could search by location, age, salary, type of firm, years of experienc, and maybe even specify the order (least to most or most to least). Also, in order for anyone to post their info, there should be required areas to fullfill a minimum amount of info per person.
those would just make it a more useful survey. but its great to have so much data to begin with!
The simplicity of the existing poll is what has encouraged so many replies. Changing the poll may discourage responses if the new poll is more sophisticated, as has been discussed. Changing the poll may, as well, skew how people think about their answers thereby making comparisions between the answers of new respondents and those of previous respondents unreliable. This will happen even if the individual questions from the original poll have not themselves been changed. Moreover, previous respondents may take the poll again. The duplication of answers will further complicate comparisons.
With regard to the plausibility of replies I think the implausible ones are easy enough to pick out and discount. More sophisticated questions will not lead to more plausible results.
I skipped a good chunk of the responses in order to type mine before I forgot what I was going to ssay, so forgive me if I'm repeating someone:
Somebody above mentioned that we should have open periods for data collection, and then close the salary poll for awhile until data collection time rolls around again (for example, encourage a yearly poll.)
While I think this may result in lower numbers of people reporting their salaries, it has one enormous positive benefit in my mind:
Salaries will be reported with respect to a particular time period.
For example: we all know that salaries fluctuate with time. They tend to go up with inflation, but, partly due to geographic differences, don't always. It would be really helpful if, when I was sifting through the salary poll, I could tell when the information was collected, and even if I were able to sort through a chronological reporting of a certain geographic area to see the salary trends over time.
With the current, rolling system of salary polling, you lose all temporal assocations with the salaries. This seems to me very misleading and problematic.
Are there other ways we could address this problem? What do people think?
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