I recommend skipping salary web sites

This is an editorial based on experience recruiting for over five years.

There are web sites that intend to tell you the salary that you should receive based on your current zip code, your current salary, the target zip code, and/or the position title. In my experience these web sites provide misleading information that ultimately leads to disappointment and frustration.

The worst case is someone moving from the rest of the United States into Silicon Valley. The blunt truth is that if you make this move, your apartment or house will be smaller, your commute will be longer, and/or the amount of money you put into savings each year will be smaller. Salaries simply do not translate based on cost of living, especially housing. After you have been in Silicon Valley for a few years, and/or if you are an entrepeneur, then you will find a way to get a bigger house, a shorter commute, and/or more savings. But do not expect your first employer in Silicon Valley to put you into that position when you first arrive. My consistent experience with the salary web sites is that the job candidate enters the interview process with heightened expectations, only to be disappointed when reality sets in.

Even moving from Silicon Valley to the midwest is a problem. The high salary that you earned on either coast is not what companies in the heartland are used to paying.

I recommend instead relying on your contact base to find out what your contacts in the target area are making. Work your rolodex to find this out. Also, use the salary surveys from engineering trade publications or the IEEE.

For your new job you need to work within the salaries that are actually being payed today, and in my experience the salary web sites do not accurately reflect that.

I've put together some other recommendations for job candidates. There is also a list of currently available job descriptions.