Now We Are Getting Somewhere on What Happened on OTHER BOARD

[Geek31415]

Remember the sale of salary info collected by the owner of that other board (from us ingrates.)  I will bet $20 she was squelching the "negative" discussions as this was not favorable for "new visitors", the people who she was selling data to; and as someone else mentioned here, giving HONEST advice about the generally depression like state of the IT market.

[JBB]

That sounds like a possibility, though I doubt it's the whole picture.  I've commented on her survey's lack of scientific method in the past.  Anyone buying the survey from her is getting a stuffed ballot box anyway since there are no controls over data collected.

[Randy Given]

Not to mention the obvious sexist slant contrary to apples-to-apples evidence. I guess that is what you mean by unscientific. In that case, I agree. Still, some of the information is useful.

[JBB]

What I meant is that it is a self-selecting survey, meaning that it can't accurately represent the data that it purports to represent.  It's unreliable data.

Anyone can log on and post whatever answers to it that they want to, and if I'm not mistaken, as many times as they want to.   I like the idea of gathering real data from real people like you and me, but I would like better controls over the data so that it isn't subject to my sort of scrutiny.  I want irrefutable data, or as close to it as possible.

[Randy Given]

I agree. The unverifiability of the data leaves it open to all kinds of mind games. Of course, the blatant ones can be deleted (e.g., VB at $750/hr) but what about less blatant ones (e.g., C++ at $90/hr or at $30/hr) where someone might be screwing with the data to make a point -- borkers and managers wanting to keep rates low or consultants and contractors wanting to keep rates high. I believe most people are pretty honest, but it does not take too many bad data points to skew the trends.