Pay transparency

I was recently inspired after discovering a Slack channel at work for discussing pay.

Folks have posted their current salaries and salaries before and after promotion. There was also a case of a former coworker posting their new salary at a different company after resigning.

This got me thinking of when #talkpay was trending on Twitter circa 2018. I distinctly recall a Tweet from a very accomplished developer and being surprised that I was being paid significantly more.

I never posted my salary back then as I’d always viewed revealing one’s salary as a zero-sum game, sort of like playing poker with your hand facing the other players.

In 2017 I was elected by my union local to negotiate a collective agreement with our employer. All salaries were readily available as they are printed in the previous agreement. Given someone’s title and tenure, you could calculate any bargaining unit member’s salary.

In the private sector, there’s no such transparency, and discussing pay has devolved into a strange social taboo that clearly empowers employers.

So with that said I am going to routinely publish my salary, offers, raises, bonuses, stock refreshes, and anything else that might be marginally useful to others with the idea of providing some data on a currently opaque aspect of employment.

Previous Salaries

Sensible Development (2012 - 2014)

Role: Software Developer

£25,000 per annum. Raised to £26,000 after a year.

Park Group PLC (2014)

Role: Java Web Developer

£30,000 per annum.

^{Park Group doesn’t appear on my resume because I left the position after 6 weeks after realizing the job was a poor fit.}

Sportech PLC (2014 - 2015)

Role: Agile Software Developer

£25,000 per annum. Raised to £30,000 after 6 months.

^{My only base pay cut. The salary increase was prenegotiated before accepting the position.}

Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan (2015 - 2018)

Role: Senior Software Developer (SO III)

$86,332 CAD per annum. 5% bonus on average per year. Mandatory pension enrollment with a company match of 12%.

Salary reached approx $100,000 when leaving in 2018.

Capital One (2018 - 2021)

Role: Principal Software Developer

$120,000 CAD per annum. Bonus 8-15%. Company match pension of 3.5%. Company ESPP with 8% discount. Signing bonus of $10,000.

The salary was static other than “cost of living” increases.

Jane Software Inc. (2021)

Role: Ruby Developer

$140,000 CAD per annum. Employee Stock Options.

^{Jane Software doesn’t appear on my resume because I left the position after 6 weeks after realizing this job was also a poor fit. Technically this was also a pay cut with bonuses included. At the time I planned to relocate to Vancouver and this position accomodated that.}

HashiCorp Canada (2021 - 2022)

Role: Senior Engineer (Senior Site Reliability Engineer) (L3)

$180,000 CAD per annum. 5200 RSUs. 12 month cliff then 3 month vesting periods.

HashiCorp US (2022 - Present)

Role: Senior Engineer (L3)

$190,000 USD per annum. RSUs carry over.

^{I’m relocating to San Diego, California in July 2022. HashiCorp has region-based pay in the United States and my salary was adjusted accordingly.}

Pay revision 2022-06-01 $197,000.

Previous Offers

CarWow (2015)

Role: Ruby Developer

£45,000 per annum.

^{Offer was declined as it would have left me worse off relocating to London from Liverpool.}

Edit History

2022-11-13 - Updated pay HashiCorp