Salary Check

The most common reason people are underpaid is that they don’t know they’re underpaid. Compensation information has historically been opaque — shared selectively, guarded by employers, and difficult to benchmark accurately from public sources. That opacity has shifted meaningfully in recent years through pay transparency laws in states including California, Colorado, New York, and Washington, and through the expansion of compensation databases that aggregate self-reported salary data. Using these tools correctly is the foundation of any effective compensation strategy.

The most reliable data sources for compensation benchmarking: Levels.fyi for technology roles (particularly software engineering and related positions at major tech companies, where the data is highly granular and regularly updated); LinkedIn Salary for broad role and industry comparisons; Glassdoor for base salary benchmarks by company and location; Radford/Aon and Mercer surveys for HR and compensation professionals at larger companies who can access paywalled professional surveys. Salary.com and PayScale are widely used but tend to run slightly low relative to actual market rates for specialized roles in high-demand fields.

Benchmarking effectively requires being precise about the comparison class. Total compensation — base salary plus bonus plus equity value plus benefits — is the correct unit of comparison, not base salary alone. At technology companies, equity compensation (RSUs or options) can represent 30–100% of total cash compensation, and a base-to-base comparison misses most of the picture. Similarly, a senior role at a Series B startup with significant equity should be benchmarked against late-stage compensation differently than against public company total comp.

Once you have the data, using it effectively in a negotiation requires the framework covered in raise math. For context on how your compensation compares at the level of income and lifestyle, see six-figure life. The Income Reality pillar covers compensation benchmarking as the starting point for all the income optimization strategies that follow.