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TechCrunch just covered a new website called GlassDoor that provides salary data for individual companies.

User “wallflower” on HackerNews suggested another way to get similar information would be to examine H-1B visa data. So I did. Here are some basic observations.

UPDATE: Check out this site to search for salaries by company. (Use the search box in the top right to search for a company)

Results

I pulled data from 15 companies: Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Global Resources, Inc., Apple Computer, Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., Ebay Inc, Expedia, Inc., Google Inc., Ibm Corporation, Intel Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Oracle Usa, Inc., Salesforce.Com, Sun Microsystems, Inc.,  and Yahoo! Inc..

These stats factor in ALL occupations(not only engineers and programmers, but accountants, analysts, designers, etc.). And again, they exclude salaries of U.S. citizen.

Average Salaries:

Average Salary     Employer Name
$107,892     APPLE COMPUTER, INC.
$100,936     SALESFORCE.COM
$98,632     CISCO SYSTEMS, INC.
$98,212     EBAY INC
$97,218     YAHOO! INC.
$96,598     GOOGLE INC.
$96,339     ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED
$96,270     SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC.
$92,932     AMAZON GLOBAL RESOURCES, INC.
$91,736     IBM CORPORATION
$86,733     ORACLE USA, INC.
$85,237     MICROSOFT CORPORATION
$85,211     EXPEDIA, INC.
$79,500     INTEL CORPORATION

Number of Datapoints:

Total     Employer Name
22     ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED
88     AMAZON GLOBAL RESOURCES, INC.
50     APPLE COMPUTER, INC.
318     CISCO SYSTEMS, INC.
80     EBAY INC
11     EXPEDIA, INC.
225     GOOGLE INC.
247     IBM CORPORATION
352     INTEL CORPORATION
1,778     MICROSOFT CORPORATION
433     ORACLE USA, INC.
15     SALESFORCE.COM
95     SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC.
159     YAHOO! INC.
3,873     Total

Average Salaries of H-1B Visa employees by State(2007):

Average    California    Other States    Employer Name
$96,339      $95,235      $103,333     ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED
$92,932                         $92,932             AMAZON GLOBAL RESOURCES, INC.
$107,892     $107,892                        APPLE COMPUTER, INC.
$98,632      $98,741      $98,253     CISCO SYSTEMS, INC.
$98,212      $98,931      $79,763     EBAY INC
$85,211                           $85,211        EXPEDIA, INC.
$96,598      $97,702      $91,164     GOOGLE INC.
$91,736      $96,094      $90,458     IBM CORPORATION
$79,500      $78,618      $80,023     INTEL CORPORATION
$85,237      $99,291      $84,754     MICROSOFT CORPORATION
$86,733      $89,073      $79,332     ORACLE USA, INC.
$100,936    $100,936                      SALESFORCE.COM
$96,270      $100,055      $88,069     SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC.
$97,218      $97,513      $91,650     YAHOO! INC.
$88,679      $94,565      $85,398     Grand Total

Average Salary by Region of Citizenship:

Average     Continent
$98,534     Western Europe
$98,467     Australia
$93,022     Middle East
$91,850     North America
$89,156     South America
$87,324     Asia
$86,946     Central America
$86,358     Eastern Europe
$84,393     Africa

Method

Took me about 30 minutes. All I did was download the data set, load it into sql, extract the fields I wanted, and threw it into a pivottable. I could have even skipped the sql, but didn’t want to work with that much data in a pivottable.

I did need to learn exactly what an H-1B was. H-1B visas “allow U.S. employers to employ foreign guest workers skilled in specialty occupations if a U.S. citizen or resident is not available.” The great thing about H-1B’s, is that when a company applies for one the data is made public. After downloading the database, I looked at applications for Permanent Labor Certifications.

A Permanent Labor Certification issued by Department of Labor allows a domestic employer to hire a foreign worker to work permanently in the U.S. The program, as administered, certifies that no qualified U.S. worker is available and that hiring the foreign worker will not adversely affect U.S. wages or working conditions.

Dataset

If you want, you can view download the dataset(txt/csv) that I used for this analysis which is a subset of the PERM dataset.

Salary data for 15 tech companies from H-1B apps

The query after loading the dataset into mysql was:

SELECT
perm_fy2007_data.`Employer Name`,
perm_fy2007_data.`Wage Offer From 9089`,
perm_fy2007_data.`Wage Offer To 9089`,
perm_fy2007_data.`Job Info Work City`,
perm_fy2007_data.`Job Info Work State`,
perm_fy2007_data.`PW Job Title 9089`,
perm_fy2007_data.`Country of Citizenship`,
perm_fy2007_data.`Class of Admission`
FROM perm_fy2007_data
WHERE
perm_fy2007_data.`Employer Name` LIKE  'EXPEDIA%' OR
perm_fy2007_data.`Employer Name` LIKE  'IBM%' OR
perm_fy2007_data.`Employer Name` LIKE  'INTEL CORP%' OR
perm_fy2007_data.`Employer Name` LIKE  'ORACLE U%' OR
perm_fy2007_data.`Employer Name` LIKE  'CISCO S%' OR
perm_fy2007_data.`Employer Name` LIKE  'HEWLETT P%' OR
perm_fy2007_data.`Employer Name` LIKE  'APPLE COMP%' OR
perm_fy2007_data.`Employer Name` LIKE  'SUN MICRO%' OR
perm_fy2007_data.`Employer Name` LIKE  'EBAY%' OR
perm_fy2007_data.`Employer Name` LIKE  'YAHOO%' OR
perm_fy2007_data.`Employer Name` LIKE  'MICROSOFT C%' OR
perm_fy2007_data.`Employer Name` LIKE  'SALESFORCE%' OR
perm_fy2007_data.`Employer Name` LIKE  'AMAZON GL%' OR
perm_fy2007_data.`Employer Name` LIKE  'ADOBE S%' OR
perm_fy2007_data.`Employer Name` LIKE  'GOOGLE%' AND
perm_fy2007_data.`Wage Offer Unit of Pay 9089` =  'yr'

Just launched QCrunch.com. It’s a start page for the Web 2.0 community. If you aren’t in the Web 2.0 world, it’s not for you(there’s not much benefit). But if you are, QCrunch gives you a clean start page like Google.com or the Mozilla Firefox start page except with a few added benefits:

1. Links to the sites you probably use 80% of your time on the web
2. Clean layout
3. Fast
4. Cool statistics(every week the statistics will be published showing the most popular links, etc)
5. Ad free
6. Updated (you don’t need to customize your own page)
7. Easy domain name. QCrunch.com. Works anywhere you have an internet connection.

Enjoy

I just got back to the office after spending a few hours at Startup Weekend Boston in Newton. The idea of the event is that a bunch of entrepreneurs and developers get together and go from idea to company in one weekend. Even if the companies don’t pan out, it’s a very interesting process that is a ton of fun. And it’s a great way to meet other people with similar entrepreneurial/web 2.0 interests. In my estimate over fifty very talented and nice people were in attendance and eager to work.

Unfortunately there came a point where we had to sign a contract to contribute. Normally I wouldn’t mind one bit, but due to other engagements I now have that are quite legally binding I figure I shouldn’t risk it. I felt if I wasn’t going to sign, it wasn’t fair for me to partake, so I went back to the office to catch the last part of Nick’s show on SeeMeWin(no winners tonight).

But I did stay long enough to witness the process of idea generation and selection. There were some great ideas. I would say 3-5 of them could have been terrific startups.

The group ended up deciding by a slim margin(1 vote) to build LaptopYoga. I have to be honest: I do not understand the idea. I am not going to call it a bad idea, because the high caliber of people supporting it must mean there is something there. But I didn’t get it right away. The great thing though is that I bet in two days it will be very clear why it’s a good idea and I’ll learn that I should have thought about it in a different way.

I wish them the best of success! And of course, the whole point is to build a community and the company is the secondary goal. With that I know they will succeed.

I just read a very good article that makes me believe Vista isn’t going to capture a large market share of the OS market.

From my own experience, I would agree. XP is better than Vista. I actually just reinstalled XP on my Dell instead of Vista. Vista is slower and unless you really care about pretty graphics, I recommend XP.  In fact, if you care about style, go with a Mac.

And a very interesting point is that the OEMs are now offering more and more Linux Desktop distros.

Maybe it’s time for MSFT to move on to more interesting things than OS’s. I think we can say the proprietary OS market is on its very last legs.