Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers to common questions. For more detail, see the related help page.
- Where does the data come from?
- We crawl public job listings daily from tech company career pages and job boards, focusing on software engineering roles. All data is aggregated and anonymized.
- How often is data updated?
- Job data is crawled daily. Market aggregates — salary percentiles, tech demand, hiring velocity — refresh after each crawl.
- What does the free newsletter include?
- Everything. The newsletter is fully free — there is no Pro edition. Every Wednesday: an AI-generated TL;DR (6 bullets), a rotating headline that cycles through 5 dimensions across weeks, role-category mix with a salary table (p25/p50/p75/p90), the top 12 stacks with a co-occurrence panel, soft skills, experience-level distribution with median salary, the top 10 hiring metros with per-metro salary, a 12-month hiring-intensity chart, 5 weekly news stories, up to 10 featured companies with roles, and a closing block that points at the Pro tools. See /help/newsletter for the full structure.
- When does the newsletter come out?
- Every Wednesday. The exact send time depends on when data processing completes, but it typically arrives by midday UTC.
- Why does my newsletter headline change every week?
- The headline cycles through 5 dimensions on a fixed weekly schedule (ISO week number mod 5): total-volume lede, role-category shift, location shift, experience-level shift, and salary spread. The rotation guarantees variety — no single signal dominates the newsletter week after week — and each headline always surfaces a real mover, not a sticky leader.
- What is the TL;DR section?
- A scannable factual digest at the top of every issue, generated by AI from the week's data across all dimensions. Every subscriber sees all 6 bullets. The bullets are numbers-only — no editorializing, no marketing voice. If the model fails to return valid JSON the system falls back to a deterministic digest so the newsletter always ships.
- What's the difference between free and Pro?
- All of the market data is free for everyone — full salary percentiles (p25/p50/p75/p90), salary benchmarks by level/city/stack, 52 weeks of historical trends, tech-specific market news, all 7 filter categories, the full job board (10,000+ listings with full-text search), the complete weekly newsletter, and 1 saved search. Pro ($19/mo) sells the tools that act on your job search: AI resume matching and tailored materials (10/day), the application tracker, interview prep (10/day), AI chat, 10 saved searches with daily alerts, and API + MCP access. See /pricing for the full comparison.
- Is the AI chat free?
- No — chat is a Pro tool. There is no free chat tier. Pro includes AI chat over the live market data (1,000 messages/month). All of the underlying market data the chat reasons over is free to browse on /market.
- What is the application tracker?
- A Pro tool that closes the loop on your search: track every role from saved → applied → interviewing → offer, with your resume match score and any tailored materials attached. At the interviewing stage you can generate interview prep; at the offer stage you can pull a Negotiation Brief. See /help/tracker-and-brief.
- What is interview prep?
- A Pro tool (10/day) that generates likely questions, talking points, and gaps to prepare for a specific role and level — using the job and your resume if one is on file. Generate it from the interviewing stage of any tracked application.
- What is the Negotiation Brief?
- A one-time purchase ($79, or $49 for Pro) sold at the offer moment. It shows exactly how your offer stacks up against the market for your role, level, city, and stack — with a counter-offer range and a script you can send. It is delivered in-app, by email, and as a downloadable PDF, and lives in both the application it came from and a standalone /negotiation section. See /help/tracker-and-brief.
- Why is the market data free now?
- The market data is the audience-acquisition engine, not the product. Salary percentiles, trends, the job board, and the newsletter are all free so anyone can use them. We make money from the Pro tools that act on a job search and from the one-time Negotiation Brief — the things that are worth paying for at the moment you need them.
- What is the job board?
- The job board is free for everyone — full-text search across thousands of listings and all 7 filter categories. Save filters as a saved search and (with Pro) enable daily email alerts when new matching jobs are posted.
- What are saved searches?
- A saved search is a named combination of filters (roles, locations, tech, etc.) with optional daily alert and newsletter toggles. Free users get 1 saved search; Pro users get up to 10. Saved searches work across the market dashboard and job board.
- Can I cancel anytime?
- Yes. The free newsletter requires no payment. Pro subscriptions can be cancelled anytime from Settings — you keep access until the end of your billing period.
- How do I unsubscribe from the newsletter?
- Click the one-click unsubscribe link in the footer of any newsletter email, or toggle off the newsletter in Settings. Your account stays active.
- How do salary percentiles work?
- Salary percentiles (p25, p50, p75, p90) are computed monthly from jobs that disclose salary. p50 is the median — 50% of salaries fall below this value. Only annualized US salaries above $30K are included.
- What file formats does Resume Match accept?
- PDF and DOCX files up to 5MB. You can also paste your resume text directly if you prefer. Resume upload is a Pro feature.
- What does the co-occurrence panel show me?
- On /market and /jobs, the panel surfaces tech, skills, cultures, roles, experience levels, and companies that most often appear in jobs matching your current filter. Each row shows a density % (share of filtered jobs that mention the value) and a lift annotation when a value is meaningfully more or less common than average. Click any row to add it to your filter; click again to remove. See /help/co-occurrence for the full guide.
- Why doesn't the co-occurrence panel appear?
- The panel only shows up once at least one filter dimension is set — Tech, Skills, Cultures, Roles, Experience, Companies, or Locations. Boolean toggles like Remote-only and salary thresholds do not reveal it because the math conditions on the dimension filters. Set any one dimension and the panel appears.
- Does the newsletter stack limit apply to the /stacks page?
- No. The "top 12 stacks" limit applies only to the tech-stack snapshot inside the weekly newsletter — it caps how many technologies that one section lists. The /stacks pages on the site are fully free: anyone can browse every tech stack, open any /stacks/<name> page, and combine up to five stacks with the + character.
- Can I compare more than one stack at once?
- Yes. The /stacks/<name> URL supports up to five stacks joined with the + character — for example /stacks/typescript+react+postgres. The page header renders one chip per stack with an × to drop it; the Related Tech tab is a co-occurrence list scoped to the joint filter, so you can keep clicking to extend the combination.
- Why does the job board show different jobs first now?
- If you've uploaded a resume on /resume and there's no search term, the job board automatically re-orders results so jobs whose content best matches your resume rise to the top. Same filters, smarter order — this is automatic ranking, not a filter, so the set of eligible jobs doesn't change. When you type a search term, your query dominates and resume similarity blends in. Removing your resume reverts to standard ranking. See /help/job-board for details.
- Does my resume affect my filters?
- Two different things use your resume, and only one of them touches filters. Default job-board ordering is personalized automatically when a resume is on file (see the previous question) — that changes the order, not the filter set. Filters only change when you explicitly check the "Use resume match" box on a filter panel; otherwise your resume has no effect on which jobs are eligible. The checkbox is off by default on /market, /jobs, /companies, and /stacks. When checked, your parsed resume signals overlay onto the manual filter set, filling only the dimensions you haven't already set yourself. The checkbox is disabled until you upload a resume on /resume. See /help/resume-match for details.
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