Bay area software engineers/programmers: is salary.com accurate?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Raise time is coming up for me soon, and as usual, I want more cash.

Living where I do, there’s really no local comparisons for me. I can’t go say “well, other programming jobs around here pay $XXX” because there are no other programming jobs around here.

For various reasons that I’m not going to go into, comparison to pay rates in the Bay area does make sense for me & this company. In essence, I want to be able to say “Look, even with a -25-35% adjustment for living in the boondocks, you still ain’t paying me what I’m worth.”

Of course, to do that, I need accurate information as to what people are being paid out there. I know there’s a lot of salary surveys out there; what I want to know is if they reflect reality. (I know, for example, they absolutely do not reflect reality when applied to where I currently live.)

I’m looking at a software engineering job with ~15 years experience in commercial software desing and coding. No team lead or management required (we’re simply too small for that right now). Cutting edge big Enterprise level software - 3 tiers, big deal databases, big big BIG software.

So if you’re a code type person living in the Bay area, can you give me an idea of whether or not salary.com reflects what you earn? If it doesn’t, is there a better source of information out there?

2

For a DBA it seems a little high, but not that much, maybe 10% higher than reality. You should know the lowest rent for a single bedroom appartment here is around $900 a month. The cheapest house to buy is around $900,000. So housing costs arround here are a major factor.

3

I know the cost of living is outrageous out there. Y’all just gotta trust me that there’s a good reason that I’m doing the comparison to the Bay area and not somewhere where the cost of living is more reasonable.