How to research what you should actually be paid

A reader emailed me last month. Senior backend engineer, eight years in, interviewing at a Berlin fintech. He'd done his homework: Glassdoor said €72k average, Levels.fyi said €85k for senior, one Reddit thread said €90k was "aggressive but fair."

He asked for €82k. They said yes immediately. Too immediately.

Three months later he found out the other senior on his team, hired six weeks before him, was on €108k.

That's the problem with average-the-internet salary research. You end up negotiating against a number that has nothing to do with the company in front of you.

The three numbers that actually matter

When people say "market rate," they're usually talking about one number. There are three, and they rarely agree.

The public number. What Glassdoor, Levels.fyi, Payscale, and the German Bundesagentur für Arbeit report. Big sample, low accuracy. Fine for the shape of the market, useless for the company you're actually talking to.

The company number. What this specific employer pays people at this specific level. Almost never public, but almost always discoverable if you put in an hour.

The role number. What this specific role is budgeted for, right now, this quarter. This is the only number that matters in the actual negotiation, and it's the hardest to get.

You need all three. Start with the easiest.

The public number: get it right, then ignore it

Spend thirty minutes, not three hours. Here's the list:

• Levels.fyi for tech and data roles. Tends to skew high and US-heavy, but the EU numbers are slowly becoming usable.
• Kununu and Gehalt.de for Germany — more reliable than Glassdoor for the DACH region.
• The EU pay transparency directive forced most large employers to publish bands starting 2026. Check the company's careers page. A third of them now list them.
• LinkedIn Salary if you have Premium. The data is thin below senior levels but surprisingly solid for director-and-up.

Write down the median and the 75th percentile for your role and location. Not the average — averages get dragged around by outliers. The 75th percentile is your anchor, because that's roughly where a competent negotiator lands.

Now close the tabs. You'll come back to these numbers once, at the end, as a sanity check.

The company number: ask actual humans

This is where most people stop, and it's why most people underearn.

Find three to five people who currently work, or recently worked, at the company. Not HR. Not recruiters. Engineers, designers, PMs — peers of the role you're interviewing for. LinkedIn makes this easy. Filter by company, filter by role, sort by "2nd connections."

Message them. Keep it short:

"Hi — I'm interviewing for a senior backend role at [Company] and trying to calibrate my salary expectations. Would you be open to a 10-minute call (or just a quick message) about comp ranges? Happy to share what I find with you too."

About one in four will reply. One in ten will give you a specific number. That's enough.

You're not asking "what do you make?" You're asking "what's the band for this level?" Most people will tell you. If they won't, they'll often tell you what's not true — "it's definitely above €90k for senior" is already useful.

The role number: ask the recruiter, but ask correctly

The recruiter knows the budget. They will not tell you the budget if you ask "what's the budget?"

They will often tell you if you ask: "What's the range for this role?" Or better: "I want to make sure we're not wasting each other's time — can you share the band so I can tell you if I'm in it?"

If they won't share, name a number first — a high one, backed by your research. "Based on what I'm seeing for senior backend roles in Berlin at similar-stage companies, I'd expect this to be in the €95–115k range. Does that match what you have budgeted?" You'll get a reaction. The reaction is the information.

A concrete example

Same reader, re-running the process last week for a different role.

Public research: Levels.fyi said €88k median for senior backend in Berlin. Kununu said €78k. He wrote down €95k as his 75th-percentile anchor.

Company research: he messaged eight people on LinkedIn. Three replied. One gave a specific number (€112k, senior, hired 2024). One said "definitely six figures, with bonus." One said "the band for senior goes up to €125k base."

Role research: he asked the recruiter for the range. She hedged, then said "€95 to €120, depending on level."

His target went from €82k to €115k. He got €112k plus a €10k sign-on. That's a €30k/year difference from better research. Same candidate, same resume, same company tier.

Takeaway

Public salary data tells you what the market pays in general. The company you're interviewing with is not the market. Spend the hour on LinkedIn messages. Ask the recruiter for the range, directly. Your number should be boring, specific, and backed by at least one human who currently works there — not a scraped average from five cities and three years ago.