A.Before I get into specific salaries at the companies you’re interested in, let’s look at broader data on marketing titles. Based on Glassdoor surveys, all salaries at San Francisco companies with “Marketing” (Associate, Analyst,  Specialist) in their title ranged from $40,000-$118,000 (compared with $35,000-$114,000 nationally). I ran a few title comparison searches on SimplyHired, and edited this graph to make the Boolean results more readable:

Source: Simplyhired.com

It won’t surprise you that a level up in title (Director of Marketing and Marketing Director) don’t equate to a higher salary. For many companies, especially startups, it’s easier to give out a higher title or even management responsibilities than pay more. Your desire to trade your title for a chance to operate on a global scale is definitely on the right track for optimizing your compensation, with Global Marketing Managers being offered $15,000-$20,000 more than their Director counterparts.

Remember that sites like Glassdoor are essentially Yelp for companies, so the employee reviews aren’t objective and the self-reported salaries aren’t guaranteed accurate. To get 100% accurate salary data we’ll have to dig deeper to find data that’s legally verifiable. A relatively easy way to do this comes courtesy the US government’s immigration visa application disclosures (pictured below). I’ll also include some of the prevailing wage information to give you a sense of how competitive these salaries are compared to the market.

Facebook has dozens of open marketing positions with different titles in areas ranging from ads to analytics. Here is a range of titles and starting salaries:

Facebook Marketing H1B Salaries 2011-2012

Title	Facebook's Salary	Date Approved
Analyst-Internet Marketing	$78000	February 10‚2011
Product Marketing Associate	$115000	January 5‚ 6‚ 2011
Platform Product Marketing Manager	$125000	March 26‚ 2012
Strategist-Marketing Solutions-Technology	$150000	March 21‚2011

Facebook Marketing H1B Salaries 2009-2011

Title	Employment Category	Facebook's Salary	Prevailing Wage
Agency Marketing Associate	Business Operations Specialists	$85‚000	$66‚248
Marketing Program Administrator	Management Analysts	$88‚000	$82‚493
Global Brand Experience Manager	Computer and Information Systems Management	$140‚000	$114‚712
Director of Marketing Solutions-Online Sales	Sales Managers	$200‚000	$104‚416
Director Consumer Marketing	Misc. Managers and Officials	$200‚000	$178‚131

Next, Apple. According to filing data, Apple paid a “Product Marketing Manager III” $125,580 on February 8, 2012. Below are more salaries from the past few years.

Apple Marketing H1B Salaries 2009-2011

Title	Employment Category	Apple's Salary	Prevailing Wage
Music and Entertainment Marketing Programs Manager	Market Research Analysts	$106‚080	$100‚006
Music and Entertainment Marketing Programs Manager	Market Research Analysts	$110‚005	$100‚006
Senior Marketing Analyst	Market Research Analysts	$106‚090	$100‚006
Retail Marketing Senior Program Manager‚ Mobile Commerce	Marketing Managers	$110‚000	$99‚923
Product Marketing Manager	Misc. Managers and Officials	$115‚000	$100‚901
Worldwide Direct Marketing Producer – Retail	Marketing Managers	$128‚000	$126‚963

Google’s job site groups Marketing with Communications and actually names the product you’d work on in a lot of the titles. A title you would get, however, is fairly uniform. Here are salaries for their associate-to-director-level marketers:

Google Marketing H1B Salaries 2011-2012

Title	Google's Salary	Date Approved
Associate Product Marketing Manager	$87‚500	January 27‚2011
Associate Product Marketing Manager	$87‚500	January 31‚2011
Product Marketing Manager	$95‚000	January 19‚ 2012
Marketing Manager	$110‚000	January 20‚ 2012
Product Marketing Manager	$120‚000	January 14‚ 2011

Google Marketing H1B Salaries 2009-2011

Title	Employment Category	Google's Salary	Prevailing Wage
Product Marketing Specialist	Marketing Managers	$93‚000	$73‚263
Product Marketing Manager	Marketing Managers	$108‚000	$73‚263
Product Marketing Manager	Misc. Managers and Officials	$120‚000	$110‚871
Marketing Director	Misc. Managers and Officials	$170‚750	$152‚381
Director of Marketing	Misc. Managers and Officials	$228‚200	$152‚381

LinkedIn is another global-scale Internet company to consider. They paid a Marketing Analyst $85,000 in 2010, when the prevailing wage was $79,622 for Market Research Analysts. Here are more of their wage disclosures:

LinkedIn Marketing H1B Salaries 2011-2012

Title	LinkedIn's Salary	Date Approved
Market Research Analyst (Research Associate)	$54‚000	May 19‚ 2011
Market Research Analyst (Solutions Consultant)	$80‚000	March 2‚ 2012
Senior Product Marketing Manager	$110‚000	January 20‚ 2011

And finally, here are the Glassdoor ranges for similar tech companies like eBay, Salesforce.com, Yahoo, PayPal and startups like Kamam, Yammer and OpenTable. Again, these aren’t guaranteed to be accurate, but because they’re so close to the verified data, it’s worth sharing:

Source: Glassdoor.com

The post What do Facebook, Google, Apple and LinkedIn pay Marketing Managers? appeared first on Morgan Missen.

A.Great news MM, Marketing Managers make a lot of money–especially in the Bay Area. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2011 median annual wage (salary + bonus cash compensation) for 168,410 Marketing Managers was $126,190 (the mean, or 50th percentile, was $116,010). In San Francisco, 4.23 out of every thousand employed people are Marketing Managers, with an annual mean wage of $169,520. That’s more than dentists and many types of physicians and engineering managers. There are almost two thousand more Marketing Managers 40 miles south toward San Jose, and they’re paid about $9,000 less on average.

Compare the mean wage for Marketing Managers in San Francisco and San Jose to Los Angeles and New York:

Before you get too excited about these numbers, note a few things at play here. First, this is annual mean wage, meaning the total cash compensation that would be reported on a W2, not just base salary. Second, the majority of these employees are classified as “management of companies and enterprises,” meaning they are leaders within organizations rather than consultants or individual contributor service providers within companies. Compare Glassdoor’s self-reported salary averages for people with the title Marketing Manager vs. Marketing Director:

Also, based on the same data, all salaries with “Marketing” in the title (e.g. Associate, Analyst, Strategist, Specialist) ranged from $40,000 – $118,000 in the Bay Area, and $35,000 -$114,000 nationally.

Splitting the difference between Manager and Director titles to look at Senior Marketing Managers, data from PayScale support the same ranges:

Source: PayScale

Putting this data all together, average Marketing Manager pay ranges in the San Francisco Bay Area are:

• Individual contributor (salary)  $70,000 – $110,000
• Senior individual contributor (salary)  $80,000 – $150,000
• Tech company leadership level (salary)  $110,000 – $160,000
• General leadership level (bonus included)  $160,000 – $170,000

The post What’s the market salary for a Marketing Manager? appeared first on Morgan Missen.

Using the example of a Web (UI) Designer that lives in San Francisco and has 2-6 years of experience, below are ten ways to determine salary ranges. I chose a designer specifically because it’s tricky — there are a lot of different titles (UI, UX, Product, Interaction, Graphic, Web…) and it can be difficult for both the designer and the employer to quantify the value of work produced. Even at a large publicly-traded tech company, design is often viewed more as art than knowledge work; and, like purchasing any kind of art, its worth is often in the eye of the potential beholder. It’s also one profession in the technology industry that has a particularly high wage gap between men and women, with women only earning 76 cents on the dollar compared to their male counterparts.

Below are ten reliable research tools for determining market salary for a UI, UX, Interaction, Graphic or Web Designer:

1. The Bureau of Labor Statistics

Part of the US Department of Labor, the BLS produces extensive employment reports and has a search engine based on the results of a semiannual survey.

Source: US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics

 

2. Glassdoor.com

The best-known site of its kind, Glassdoor tracks employee self-reported salaries, employer reviews, and interview experiences. Below are designer salaries at Google, Amazon, Facebook, Zynga, Twitter and eBay as of April 2012.

Source: Glassdoor.com

3. Salary.com

Below is Salary.com’s data visualized for Web Designer II in San Francisco. This site requires users to submit a lot of personal data before it offers any value, so I wouldn’t recommend investing ten minutes in this one unless you can use it for negotiation purposes immediately.

 

4. PayScale.com

Another salary reporting site with reports based on position titles, industries, companies and geography. This site produced a $77,750 average from a $58,672-$95,739 salary range based on 45 self-reports from UI Designers in San Francisco.

5. H1B Employer Submitted Data

Unlike a lot of online salary resources, these are verified salaries from specific companies on specific dates. Where does this information come from? When companies apply for an H1B visa for an employee, the government requires them to disclose the proposed title and salary for the employee, compared to the prevailing wage for the position. They must also post this information publicly both in the office and online, it’s just (conveniently for them) hard to find. The data is the same on every site, but a few more aggregator examples are immihelp.com, h1bwage.com and salaryquest.com.

6. Tech Company Pay

This site is an H1B visa data aggregator, with LinkedIn mashed-up to give you immediate examples of people making certain salaries. It was made by a former Google engineer. Below are verified salaries of a few different types of designers at large tech companies.

• Google User Interface Designer  –  $102,250
• Google User Interface Designer  –  $85,700
• Google Interaction Designer  –  $80,000
• Facebook Product Designer  –  $87,000
• LinkedIn Marketing Designer  –  $92,000
• Apple Senior User Interface Designer  –  $120,000
• Yahoo! Interaction Designer II  –  $80,000
• Yahoo! Graphic Designer (Senior Interaction Designer)  - $92,400

There was no information from Square, Zynga, Twitter, PayPal and eBay; presumably they didn’t extend H1B visas to any designers in the past few years.

6. Quora

Quora is a knowledge marketplace in the form of crowdsourced Q & A. It’s hit-or-miss these days, but you can ask anyone anything and get answers based on their experiences (often anonymously) or expertise (very publicly).

8. AIGA (Professional Association for Designers)

The AIGA’s website has an extensive research tool to determine market salaries for all different types of designers. A designer told me about this site after I’d started composing this list. A cursory Googling reveals that there are lots of other compensation resources like this for other industries.

9. Salaryshare.me

SalaryShare.me is a simple salary pool tool that allows you to anonymously compare salaries with a group of people. You have to get others involved, but if you joined your company as a new grad or were told you couldn’t negotiate because everyone is paid the same, this is a fun way to find out if that’s true.

 

10. AngelList Talent

AngelList, the online community that matches startups with investors to streamline the fundraising process, now has a job board feature that specifies salary and equity ranges for advertised positions. I found the broad salary ranges irritating (e.g. “.01-99.9% equity” for a employee #5 at a startup, when there are probably founders with less than 10%) but most seem legitimate, if not too generous on cash. If you’re thinking of joining an early startup, this is especially helpful for getting a sense of equity vs. salary compensation. Below are the salary and stock option ranges for a UI or Product Designer at the Silicon Valley or San Francisco startups MindSnacks, Bloodhound, Storenvy, Chart.io, PlayerPro, YourMechanic, StartupDigest, ChartBoost, Pintics, Postmates and (so meta) AngelList.

I didn’t include the most obvious and effective method — ask a recruiter. I assume if you’re reading my blog you already know what a great resource recruiters can be, even when you’re not looking for a new job. If you receive emails and LinkedIn messages from recruiters, I’d encourage you to take them up on their offer for an introductory call. Mine them for information. You have no obligation to other companies’ recruiters, but it’s customary to offer them a solid lead or LinkedIn endorsement in exchange for their time.

Putting it all together

Averages

• Bureau of Labor Statistics – $72,820 in San Jose and $69,190 in San Francisco
• PayScale –  $77,750 ($58,672 – $95,739)
• Salary.com  - $83,626 ($58,230 – $95,424)

By Position & Company

Product Designers

• Facebook – $79,000 ($75,000 – $87,000) reported, $87,000 verified
• Twitter – $98,670 ($82,000 to $115,000) reported
• Apple – $112,000, $115,000, $120,000 and $122,000 verified

UI Designers

• Google – $87,661 ($65,000 – $108,000) reported; $80,000, $85,700, $91,400, $97,000, $102,250, and $107,500 verified
• Apple – $110,000 and $120,000 [Senior] verified

UX Designers

• Google – $97,950 ($83,000 – $118,000) reported, $104,575 ($95,000 – $118,000) reported for Senior
• Apple – $120,000 [Senior] verified

Interaction Designers

• Google – $80,857 ($65,000 – $120,000) reported, $80,000 verified
• Yahoo! - $58,100, $72,900, $80,000, $83,700 and $92,400 [Senior] verified

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Top left to right: Twitter’s Core Values tweeted by @rno, a slide from Netflix’s famous Values presentation, Amazon’s Leadership Principles, Twilio’s Nine Company Values, Yahoo’s Values (see also what they Don’t Value), Google’s Mission and Core Values snapped by Blogoscoped in Hamburg, Facebook Analog Research Laboratory slogans snapped by Mike Hickinbotham, Zappos Family Core Values via its About page, Square’s building philosophy via its careers page, Google’s Ten Things We Know to Be True (actually different from its core values), and the first day greeting given to Apple employees instagrammed by @m.

Zappos Family Core Values

Google’s Core Values

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Google’s Ten Things We Know To Be True

How We Build at Square

Twilio’s Nine Values

Amazon’s Leadership Principles

Yahoo’s “We Value”

Facebook’s Analog Research Laboratory Posters

The post Tech Company Core Values appeared first on Morgan Missen.

In self-development, there’s your comfort zone, your panic zone, and your learning zone. Picture a target board with your comfort zone in the center. Despite some (literal and figurative) stray bullet holes, Flint was the bulls-eye. At 21 I’d already satisfied my major life goals. I was first person in my family to go to real college, I had achieved my goal height of 5’8,”  and was going to be the first of my friends to make it not only out of Flint, but to California.

In 2006 I drove 2,000 miles west, parked, and stepped out into the panic zone. The economy in Silicon Valley was booming, everyone knew it—and acted like it. None of the hot tech companies wanted my resume, so I starting sending them other people’s. I hired engineers to all the top tech giants (Yahoo, Oracle, EA, Cisco…) save for one glaring omission. It was common knowledge that to get into Google, you had to go to Stanford or an Ivy. As the most desirable employer on the planet, it was their privilege and prerogative to only hire the Best of the Best, and my Big 10 degree didn’t cut it. As I found out later, there’s actually an internal chart saying so.

I never applied to Google. It’s not that I thought I could network my way in without applying, I was just certain that some algorithm, probably the same one that keeps “V1agra” out of my inbox and search results, would reject my resume. I was a very different person at 22. Anyway, they found me; and a few recruiters invited me to explore opportunities (their words, of course) with the company. After a series of famously grilling interviews, they offered me a contract position, as is custom with in-house recruiting. I never asked how much I’d be paid because I knew I’d take whatever it was. I’d also heard that because Google could hire anyone they wanted and had so many perks, the pay was terribad. My first day I found out my contract was for $45 per hour, or $95,000 for the year. The contract excluded benefits or vacation but I was healthy and duh, it’s California, I was already living a vacation.

Even in the contractor orientation, I was the only state school graduate. After weeks of training, I learned I’d been allocated to “Yolanda’s team.” I had never heard of any Yolanda and had the impression I’d be put on something like Site Reliability Engineering or the Partner Solutions Organization, so I didn’t know what to make of this.

As it turned out, Yolanda, a Stanford MBA who’d been an investment banking VP and a Principal at Boston Consulting Group, was starting Google’s X Labs for People Operations—the Seal Team Six of staffing. As they say, it was all up and to the right from there.

Our small team (which inexplicably nicknamed “central”) came up with strategic experiments and special projects that other groups were structurally inhibited from devoting time to. Sure, we also did unglamorous triage work and acted as a clearinghouse for orphaned and misfit candidates, but that let us partner with senior managers across Google globally. I went on to travel to four continents for Google and hired people to twelve different offices.

Yolanda also helped me “convert” to become a full-time Googler. This was a really big deal. Contractors are told that conversion possible, which was true, but less than a percent were actually given the offer. At Google, employees wore white badges and contractors donned the Red Badge of Shame. I called it the Red Badge of Courage, but I really hated it. There are thousands of Google contractors, but the badge embarrassed me. It seems silly, but getting that white badge significantly improved my self esteem.

I was later told I was individually selected for this team. That still amazes me, considering there was nothing about me on paper that could’ve impressed them. Working for Yolanda was the best thing that could have ever happened in my early career.

In “How Will You Measure Your Life?”, an article based on a commencement speech that has literally changed the course of my life, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen writes that “management is the most noble professions if it’s practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team.” If there is nobility in good management, then Yolanda is royalty. Management is not my chosen career path, but the most valuable thing I could learn early on was how much of a difference having the right–and best–people in an organization makes.

As I embark on a new adventure in my career in Talent, I want to help people like I was back then. As important, I want to help connect them to people like Yolanda that see the potential of people like I was. The best part of my career (and life) has been helping people get to the most exciting moments in theirs; and the scale at which I’m able to do that is how I will measure my life.

Morgan

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None of these issues are being addressed at a tactical level across the industry, and I’ve thought of little else over the past several years. I’m excited to announce that I’m starting a company called Main and devoting myself completely to this, what I consider my life’s mission.

Working at Google, Twitter and foursquare has offered me unparalleled experiences and opportunities to build expertise in my field; though unfortunately now I realize that to truly scale my passion, I must give up being a salaried, vesting employee of a startup I love.

In programming languages like C++ and Java, main(), or the main method, is the entry point for the code, where a program starts execution. Main is where I am at with this endeavor, and where most of the teams and people I’m helping are at in theirs. To begin, I’ll be working closely with entrepreneurs, investors, and most importantly, intrapreneurs—the experts within (or joining) teams without whom leaders cannot accomplish their goals.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in seeking out mentors to help me with this big decision, it’s that everyone I admire has brilliant ideas and strong thoughts on what’s working and what isn’t for what I refer to as Talent. If we haven’t spoken yet, I’d love to hear them.

Morgan

@mm
@main

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