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Ask HN: How have Portland SE salaries gone up so quickly?

6 points by claudiulodro ↗ HN
I've been following the Levels.fyi yearly salary reports for a few years now. In 2019, Portland was not on the list at all. In 2020, Portland moved up to 9th-highest salaries. In 2021, Portland moved up again to 6th-highest salaries.

How does the median SE salary of a place go up more than $40k/yr in a couple years? What is the mechanism behind this sort of change? Is it companies opening new offices? Is it existing companies increasing their compensation package by a huge amount?

References: https://www.levels.fyi/2021 https://www.levels.fyi/2020/ https://www.levels.fyi/2019/

10 comments

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phren0logy
I live in PDX, and across this time-frame we've seen an explosion in homelessness, significant increase in crime/vandalism, closed/abandoned businesses, and soaring real estate prices.

I would not be shocked if much of this increase has been necessary to retain and attract people during a difficult time for the region.

leet_thow
Curious what you see in the near future for the city. I've visited friends in PDX annually for years, but last year I didn't feel safe and this year am avoiding it altogether. Even going so far as to avoid freeway routes where I might risk a carjacking or rock throwers.
phren0logy
Your fears about carjacking/rock throwers are probably unwarranted. Passing through the city is really a non-issue. I think that recovery will be a mixed bag. The restaurant/food/beer/wine scene will likely recover pretty quickly, but we'll see what happens to downtown commercial areas where businesses may decide they just don't need all the space they previously occupied - leaving unoccupied buildings that are less likely to be properly maintained. The homelessness problem will likely continue to be a thorny one for years to come.
PragmaticPulp
Big companies are opening Portland offices as places like California and Seattle become less attractive due to rising prices.

levels.fyi salaries should be viewed more as the upper limit for top 5% developers, though, not necessarily the average across all jobs in the city.

giantg2
Really? I would have thought the user base would be more biased to those early in their careers who are looking at what they are worth.
PragmaticPulp
levels.fyi exclusively covers the top companies.

Median compensation across all companies in an area doesn't match what you see at levels.fyi at all. It's basically the best of the best compensation that you can get, but not everybody gets it.

comp_throw7
This is not quite right. levels.fyi has data for all companies that have enough submissions. For historical reasons it has a lot of data from well-paying tech companies in SV, but it also has 167 data points for SWE compensation at Accenture (which is pretty far from the "best compensation" you can get).

The median on levels.fyi is probably higher than the true median, because well-paying companies are overrepresented (people who work at those companies tend to be more plugged in, etc), but most companies that have a sufficiently large number of developers will have enough data points listed that you can get useful information out of it. Heck, there's 69 data points for SWE comp at Nordstrom!

giantg2
My company is definitely not a top company, yet it is on levels.
giantg2
Could be reporting bias. Levels is self reported and wouldn't have rigorous sampling, to my knowledge. Not ton mention it's new and growing which could mean younger, lower paid, job seekers might have been a bigger part of the user base earlier on. Maybe Glassdoor or another larger source would be better. Not sure if the BLS goes down to a city level.
fdgsdfogijq
Amazon upped their mid career pay bands by a full 100-150k. Is having effects across the Seattle area, and salaries in general