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How are Glassdoor salaries info kept?

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  • Dec 9th, 2015 11:18 am
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Deal Fanatic
Dec 6, 2006
5805 posts
1972 upvotes
Toronto

How are Glassdoor salaries info kept?

Anyone know how are the salary data & average in Glassdoor kept over time?

Do they keep all the salaries submitted all time, or do they only use the ones from, say, the last 2 years?

Reason I wonder is that I started/bargained my job using the Glassdoor average salary, a year+ ago. Just looked at the same title in Glassdoor now, and the average is up by $5000 now, which is alot. But the number of salary data has only increase from 12 from a year+ ago to 14. From the range or salaries, it's impossible for 2 additional salary data to increase the average that much. So it would seem some oldest data (lower salary) were discarded, and there were actually more than 2 new (higher) salary submitted.

Any idea?
7 replies
Deal Expert
Oct 7, 2010
15536 posts
5790 upvotes
boyohboy wrote: Anyone know how are the salary data & average in Glassdoor kept over time?

Do they keep all the salaries submitted all time, or do they only use the ones from, say, the last 2 years?

Reason I wonder is that I started/bargained my job using the Glassdoor average salary, a year+ ago. Just looked at the same title in Glassdoor now, and the average is up by $5000 now, which is alot. But the number of salary data has only increase from 12 from a year+ ago to 14. From the range or salaries, it's impossible for 2 additional salary data to increase the average that much. So it would seem some oldest data (lower salary) were discarded, and there were actually more than 2 new (higher) salary submitted.

Any idea?
Using the more recent salaries should be the norm. Salaries increase overtime. Or the average could be all adjusted with inflation. Discarding will screw with the average if not kept.
Deal Fanatic
Dec 6, 2006
5805 posts
1972 upvotes
Toronto
I thought about Glassdoor adjusting the salary re inflation... but that can't be it. We have no where that much inflation in a year :)
Newbie
May 21, 2014
71 posts
68 upvotes
Toronto, ON
I hope you don't mind boyohboy, but I borrowed from your original post and posed the question to Glassdoor Help. I searched for the answer on their site myself and couldn't find anything indicating how they determined the range/mean/average. As soon as I get a response, I'll post it here.

Cheers,
Tom
Deal Fanatic
Dec 6, 2006
5805 posts
1972 upvotes
Toronto
TomBwoy wrote: I hope you don't mind boyohboy, but I borrowed from your original post and posed the question to Glassdoor Help. I searched for the answer on their site myself and couldn't find anything indicating how they determined the range/mean/average. As soon as I get a response, I'll post it here.

Cheers,
Tom
No problem! That helps me with my question too.


Abit of sad face seeing the average went up by $5k.... felt under-paid now > :(
Newbie
May 21, 2014
71 posts
68 upvotes
Toronto, ON
boyohboy wrote: No problem! That helps me with my question too.


Abit of sad face seeing the average went up by $5k.... felt under-paid now > :(
I received a response from Glassdoor yesterday:

----------
Hello, and thank you for contacting Glassdoor. We do not "discard" salary data after any amount of time passes. However, we are continually encouraging feedback from our users, and using trusted publicly available data to increase the accuracy of salary information shown on Glassdoor.

While the number of salaries may not have changed much, it is possible that some old salaries could have been removed and new ones added, etc. Users do have the option of deleting their contributions.

Salary average displayed on Glassdoor are an average of all salary data we currently have available for that position.

If you have any further questions or problems, please let me know.

Kind regards,
Aimee
Lead, Content & Community Associate


----------

I hope helps explain the adjustments that you've noticed. As I'm reading, it is far from an exact science. I suppose the take away from this to use Glassdoor to help you formulate a few numbers in your head before you start negotiating salary. All in all, whatever salary you end up working for, you have to be happy with it. At the end of they year $5,000 extra really amounts to around $2.5 to $3K - which broken down to hours, amounts to $1.20 to $1.44 an hour.
Deal Addict
User avatar
Aug 17, 2008
1180 posts
114 upvotes
boyohboy wrote: Anyone know how are the salary data & average in Glassdoor kept over time?

Do they keep all the salaries submitted all time, or do they only use the ones from, say, the last 2 years?

Reason I wonder is that I started/bargained my job using the Glassdoor average salary, a year+ ago. Just looked at the same title in Glassdoor now, and the average is up by $5000 now, which is alot. But the number of salary data has only increase from 12 from a year+ ago to 14. From the range or salaries, it's impossible for 2 additional salary data to increase the average that much. So it would seem some oldest data (lower salary) were discarded, and there were actually more than 2 new (higher) salary submitted.

Any idea?
I have to say... after seeing all the lack of knowledge and misuse of statistics in my job, I'm glad that you did good analytical job here.
Deal Fanatic
Dec 6, 2006
5805 posts
1972 upvotes
Toronto
TomBwoy wrote: I received a response from Glassdoor yesterday:

.....

I hope helps explain the adjustments that you've noticed. As I'm reading, it is far from an exact science. I suppose the take away from this to use Glassdoor to help you formulate a few numbers in your head before you start negotiating salary. All in all, whatever salary you end up working for, you have to be happy with it. At the end of they year $5,000 extra really amounts to around $2.5 to $3K - which broken down to hours, amounts to $1.20 to $1.44 an hour.
So in my case, some salaries definitely got removed by users then. Didn't realize there's option for user to remove salary.

Yeah... breaking down to $/hr isn't much. Still... say when thinking about vacation (like now with holidays coming), that extra $3k after tax could be good use...
bruizeman wrote: I have to say... after seeing all the lack of knowledge and misuse of statistics in my job, I'm glad that you did good analytical job here.
Thanks... trivial stuffs though heh.

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