Am I paid fairly?

We’ve all asked this question at one time or another — maybe during yearly performance reviews, possibly as students applying for jobs, or as working professionals trying to make a career change. But conversations on salary with coworkers and friends are just…awkward. So we go to the vast web of the internet for data, using sites like Glassdoor.

And this is what we get:

Massive salary ranges, with no indication where we belong based on who we are — our unique qualifications, education, or experience. A salary range of $120K for the same job (in this case, a Product Manager at Amazon) is hardly useful for decision-making.

Untrustworthy, contradictory data. Glassdoor, like Yelp, relies on anecdotal text reviews, which encourages the loudest voices (typically extremely positive or overly negative) to rise to the top. How do I know which to trust?

Noise, noise, and more noise. How am I supposed to navigate 25,000+ salaries and over 12,000 reviews? Sure, I can filter by job title. But how do I know where I fall within that range? More crucially, how do I know which jobs I’m qualified for based on my experience?

We set out to solve this problem a year ago, and built TransparentCareer. It frustrated us to find a lack of granular compensation and culture data on companies we were interested in, based on people similar to us in experience and education. So we compiled the first database of its kind, combining quantitative pay and culture data (like Glassdoor offers) with education and career path information (similar to LinkedIn).

“It’s like Glassdoor meets LinkedIn…finally I can see what I should earn based on who I am, not just what job I have.” — John, Northwestern ‘12

It’s worked well — our simple, free database of roughly 10,000 unique jobs across 5,000 companies has already helped users find careers suitable for people in their true peer group, and negotiate over $6.8 million in increased salaries. Here’s how we do it:

You can personalize every single data point you see. Filter by job attributes (location, full-time vs. internship) or people attributes (degree obtained, school).

“Show me compensation for only full-time jobs in Chicago for people who obtained an MBA, and display by job function”

Granular company and job title data, without the noise. No more high-level averages or huge salary ranges. Based on my qualifications and location preferences, I know to expect a salary of ~$120K.

“Let’s see compensation and average hours per week for full-time Product Managers with 4–6 years of experience, at Amazon, working in Seattle, for people with bachelors degrees.”

Automatically benchmark your pay. Our Benchmarking dashboard stacks you up against your true peer group in less than 5 minutes. We also display similar companies and job titles so you can dive deeper.

“Show me how my Google internship offer stacks up against other business development internships at technology companies in San Francisco”

Qualitative data that’s less subjective, and more trustworthy. We capture only the most important metrics, like average hours worked, travel, and satisfaction, with no noisy text.

Better quality data. Every data point submitted goes through an algorithmic and human review process. Career decisions are some of the most important we make in our lives — make them based on quality data.

The best part? Our site is completely free for job seekers. Sign up here and get started in less than 5 minutes.