Levels.fyi started in 2017 as a side project. Today over 1.5 million professionals use Levels.fyi each month to find and evaluate their next job. The site started off helping job seekers compare levels across different companies. While recruiters often had internal leveling data, that information wasn’t transparent to prospective employees. As a result, it could be weeks after starting a new role before an employee realized that they had been down-leveled. This could mean a smaller scope of work or missing out on a higher pay band.

As we collected leveling and salary information, we noticed that our data looked very different from what we saw on other sites. Whether intentional or the consequence of the market changing rapidly, published compensation numbers seemed lower than our data. It turns out that salary transparency becomes complicated when data is manipulated, stale, or worse, intentionally suppressed.

We use a combination of verified submissions and leveling information to help employees understand what they should be getting paid. And while we do investigate and remove suspicious data points, we’re proud to say that we never accept any form of payment to adjust leveling or salary numbers.