The $100k mark is a psychological barrier to management and HR I'm told. I've 
seen surveys in the past that looked nicely spread out such as this, but every 
company I've had the level to be able to look at salary info, they seemed to 
asymptotically approach 100k. Some cross, but it seems to not be just another 
number... I also don't know many who are employed by larger companies making 
these ranges. Self employed probably get this, small company employed close, 
and big company, furthest away. The HR rationale is that other benefits and job 
security make up the difference. The reality is that it only plays to one's 
paranoia as nothing is secure from anywhere these days, but they still play 
that hand...

On another angle... long ago when starting out and bright eyed and eager to 
fill in my first industry salary survey, an older engineer came over and said 
"You know, HR departments use this info to set competitive salary levels. 
Imagine what would happen if everyone just checked one box higher on the survey 
each time..." then winked and walked off. While I've never seen any organized 
effort in this area, but given the analytical ability of engineers, I wonder 
how many see this as a closed loop system... ;)

It might explain why most tend to make less than these surveys show they 
should, a few are spot-on, and you never see anyone being overpaid as one might 
expect in a Gaussian distribution...


Christopher Cole wrote:
> graduating from Akron University with BSEE degrees are currently starting at 
> $60-65k.  The 5-9 and 10-14 figures above both seem spot-on for me, 
> personally.  I graduated 10 years ago from Akron University with a BSEE 
> degree.  I cannot yet comment on the latter figures in the survey :)
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