A recent report from Glassdoor suggests that well-known big companies may not necessarily be top salary payers.
Glassdoor is a free jobs and career community that offers an inside look at various jobs and companies. The company has recently published a report that uncovers 25 highest paying companies for software engineers in 2013, after identifying employers offering the highest average annual base salary to software engineers in the past 12 months. The report is based on highest paying companies with at least 50 software engineers.
Yahoo, Google, Twitter, Apple and Facebook are amongst the top 10 payers, but the company that tops the list, may not be that well-known to everyone - Juniper.
Glassdoor's report suggests that Juniper, which is Cisco's longtime competitor, has topped the list. The company makes big switches and routers, and employs under 10,000 employees. Juniper's yearly revenue is around $4.4 billion. According to Glassdoor, the company pays its software engineers an average base salary of $159,990.
The report also indicates that Google pays just over $127,000 and Apple pays around $125,000 to its software engineers.
According to a Wired report, however, the base salaries of software engineers do not tell the whole story.
"For example, while Facebook ranks ninth for average annual base salary on this report, Facebook employees receive larger bonuses and more stock options than some other tech companies on this list," said Scott Dobroski, Glassdoor's community expert, via an email to Wired.
The Wired report also cites Scott Purcell, a division manager with national recruiting firm Jobspring Partners, and says that some companies such as Netflix pay engineers far more than other companies. Purcell suggests that Juniper may be paying high salaries to attract talent.
Purcell also said salaries for software engineers have increased in the last few years. He said he has worked with some start ups that are paying software developers a salary similar to management, and in 2012, he had placed a handful of software engineers in the range of $165,000.
