This is a guest post written by Matt Gamboa.

If you ask most people the question, “Do you get paid enough?” You’ll most certainly always be answered with a NO. Salary is a top concern and there’s always that certain number that will make you a happy worker. Fortunately, there’s a Seattle Startup to let you know what you should be making after all.

PayScale has a service that determines how well you are being paid compared to others who have a similar job. The service is free in a limited fashion, but your scale is determined based on many factors including work environment, education, your professional experience, company size, etc. This is all information you must provide. Some of it is optional, but the more you provide, the more accurate PayScale will be in determining how well you’re being compensated. In the end, you receive a report and graph that shows where you are in relation to other people who’ve reported. The report is anonymous, so don’t worry about your co-worker giving you dirty looks because he found out you’re making much much more than him.

You can also upgrade to their premium service for $19.95. By doing so, you’ll gain insight to a lot more information that you could leverage to get that raise you know you deserve! With the largest online employee salary database according to PayScale, I’m pretty sure you can confident your scale of pay will be compared accurately.

If you’re a developer, you should check out Deploy 2010 on Monday, November 08, 2010 from 9:00 AM – 5:30 PM (PT). Deploy 2010 is an all-inclusive conference for technology builders to give you new tools to create the applications of tomorrow. The conference will be held at the Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle.

How Much Are You Worth?

Are you getting paid what you’re worth? Most of us would probably answer that question ‘No’ even if we spend our days running out the clock surfing YouTube. Seattle-based company PayScale is attempting to help answer the question of whether you’re getting paid what you’re worth, along with a number of other important questions you should be asking anytime you are actively seeking a new job. While most companies frown on sharing what you’re getting paid with the guy in the next cube, it’s natural to be curious if your efforts are being compensated in line with what other people get for performing similar functions. PayScale is taking a fairly unique approach to this problem by collecting data from both employers and employees (published as part of an anonymous whole) to get a better sense of the overall market across many job categories. By signing up for their service, you can keep track of movements in pay in your field and get useful data for negotiating your next pay raise. Employers get better access to data about what positions are worth in the global marketplace, which theoretically drives expectations to something of a market price in a large enough pool of data. Here Chris talks with Joe Giordano, founder of PayScale, about how the service works, how it benefits both employees and employers, and why a service like PayScale provides better information about the job market than previous methodologies.

Joe Giordano of PayScale on Employee Compensation