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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'