Glassdoor for Canada
Glassdoor is a very useful website where one can see salaries for jobs in a given geographic area. Until recently, the service was limited to jobs in the United-States. However, we got a pleasant surprise last week when Glassdoor announced the availability of their survey for Canada.
It works on a century old barter: tell me your salary and I will tell you mine. Almost all the salaries are private until you report how much you earn for a given position. Once you disclosed your little secret, you can see very detailed break down of salaries and bonuses for specific job titles, grouped by companies and cities. One common objection to using the service is that one might exposed himself to retaliation if his report reveals his identity, which is probably common is small shops. It turns out that this is no problem at all since Glassdoor will gladly unlock the survey for you as long as you provide a salary and a job title; the company is not required.
Here in Montréal, I am always amazed by the wide diversity of salaries for people doing essentially the same IT related job. In the States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases very detailed data in the public domain. Those data are re-released by numerous independent websites in an easy to search format. Until Glassdoor opened for Canada, there was no public database of average salary for a given profession. These is some census data by Statscan but they only release those for a fee and I'm not sure on the level of details.
Let's hope that the Glassdoor survey will help many to back their argument when they start an overdue wage negotiation.