Providing a Public Salary History Page

With my recent job hunt, and quite a few friends and colleagues looking at the job market, I've been keeping an eye on what the going rate for Software Engineering roles are.

Knowing what you're currently paid is one thing, but knowing what others are being paid for the same / less work, is even more important. It's very important to know if you're being correctly compensated compared to your colleagues, so you can demand the compensation you're owed. Although you can be really happy with the compensation you're getting, finding out that someone sitting next to you earns double, for the same work, is incredibly demoralising.

Minorities are generally less likely to ask for increments, and are more likely to be discriminated against, so as a friend of mine puts this quite nicely with "channel your inner middle-aged white man who'd feel entitled to ask for more". It's incredibly likely that there are colleagues who'd be demanding compensation increases just because they want them, so you shouldn't be feeling like you shouldn't either.

But to ask for more, you sometimes also need to understand what others are being paid, so you can understand more appropriately how much more you need to ask for. Apple are recently under fire for preventing salary transparency investigation, and it's really sad to see, because it's leading to a lot of people finding out that they could be woefully underpaid.

Because money is something that is quite taboo and that people don't like talking about, it can be difficult. With my privilege - my upbringing, and feeling very happy with my compensation - I'm comfortable talking about it with folks.

Recently, I've been talking to a few folks about my salary progression, both in terms of comparisons against the market, and in terms of how their progression should likely require a bit more compensation. I've been very happy sharing numbers and figures, and I wondered why I was only sharing it with them, and not wider, which means people don't need to feel they need to ask an awkward question that may offend me.

This is now available on the /salary/ page, and includes my history at Capital One, and my starting salary at The Cabinet Office.

I hope it's helpful - please let me know if there's anything I could do to make it more useful / readable.