Do you know your Job’s net worth ?

5 min readOct 8, 2021

Where do you begin analyzing your data when you want to know if you are getting paid fairly ? Let’s start out by asking what is FAIR

Define Fair ?

Some definitions depending on who you talk to are

Fair can be what somebody else with the same job title gets paid in another company (Define the list of “another” companies :) )
Fair can be — not below the lowest paid in my company
Fair can be — not below average pay in the industry/job family
Fair can be — not below median pay in the industry/job family
Fair can be — whatever the employer decides your net worth is (This is by far most of the industry unless you get to call the shots with your high skills)
Fair can be — based on my previous salary and increments (This is debunked already and it is illegal to force a job seeker fill previous salary in job applications in many states of US)
Fair can be — in the eyes of beholder and so on..

As you can see, there are many ways in which you can define fair. And as long as you can convince your employer with your line of reasoning, you get paid what you think is fair.

How do you convince then ?

A holy grail question ! Any negotiation starts with information exchange between the parties involved. Each participant generally has a goal to optimize in the negotiation process and some constraints

Hirer would like to hire you as cheap as possible, yet keep you happy and satisfied in your job (as productivity is still required) — There is nothing sinister about this dynamic. If you are running a business, and you have 100 options to choose from, and one costs lesser than other everything else being the same — you would choose the lower cost option and use the saved money for other needs
You (as a job seeker) would want to maximize your wage/salary , yet not push it to the point where you would NOT get the job

Both parties do not want to disagree and break up to the best extent possible — otherwise why would you invest time in interviewing, and incurring the time and cost

Cutting a deal — that is agreed to be fair to both parties is the best outcome , and the speed of reaching that outcome stands on the foundation of access to symmetric information (both parties have access to same information)

Symmetrics.fyi is free platform that is designed to achieve symmetric and fair deals among job seekers, recruiters, staffers and employers

In 2021, the top jobs that got hired the most as below

Top Job Titles in 2021 — Source: https://www.symmetrics.fyi

Job Title Net Worth

The Dashboard [INF] JOB_TITLE — WAGE KPIS provides the answer (to a great extent in that it gives authentic insights on base salary. There are other components like stocks, bonus etc. however that is very personalized)

Select your job title in the filter and know the minimum, average and maximum salary for your job instantly

Further, you can see a wide variety of other metrics viz.

Distribution of wages for the job title (not all employers pay the same for the same job title)
States, Cities and Employer count — that hire the job title (Know the popularity of the job title)
Minimum, Average and Maximum wage for the job title — separated by employer, city, and state (Depending on which city, state you live in and probably which employer you work at)
A Geo map of USA that shows how many such jobs were hired (in each state)

A few selected job titles for analysis — Of course you could select any job title for analysis by registering for free

# Job — Software Engineer

In 2021, a software engineer got paid up to $300k

Across USA, there are ~4000 employers that hired software engineers
The top states hiring software engineers are — HI, CA, WA, NY, DC, MA, NJ etc. (See the full list)

Software Engineer — Top States Source: https://www.symmetrics.fyi

A software engineer got paid an average wage between $126k and $135k per annum in the state of CA (See other states)
Software engineer in Kihei (city in Hawaii) got paid up to $210k
The top employers are as below

Software Engineer — Top Employers Source: https://www.symmetrics.fyi

# Job — Project Manager

Project managers got paid up to $400k , with most of them paid under $150k nationally
657 employers hired project managers across USA in year 2021
46 states and 443 cities had employers who hired project managers
The top 10 employers who hired project managers paid between ~ $160k — $312k (See the individual split)

Project Manager KPIS Source: https://www.symmetrics.fyi

# Job — Physical Therapist

Physical therapists got paid up to an average $140k, with most paid under $100k nationally
459 employers, 43 states, 546 cities hired physical therapists
The top 10 employers who hired physical therapists paid between ~ $114k — $241k (See the individual split)