How JobWhat Insights are computed

Everything on these pages is aggregated from JobWhat extension users who allow sharing. Nothing is sold, no individual activity is ever shown, and small groups are hidden. Methodology version 2026-09-24.

Sample data right now. The pages show a generated preview while real community data builds up. They're not indexed by search engines, and the numbers don't describe real companies.

Sources

Activity (map, trending, company activity): applications, saves and views logged by the extension. The city feed stores city × month counts only. The company feed (setting "Share company activity", on by default with a notice) adds company × title family × metro × day, with a contributor hash that rotates every day. It never stores install ids, IPs, URLs, job ids or raw titles.
Reviews: only from people whose résumé lists the employer ("Résumé-backed"). Text is scrubbed of names and contact details and published by quarter.
Pay and benefits: offers and current pay shared from the job log, labelled Offer or Current, annualized, rounded to $5K. Posted ranges come from pay-transparency listings users viewed; we keep only title family, level, metro, company and min/max.
Interviews: the extension's interview feedback, summarized by company.

Anonymity thresholds

A number appears only once enough distinct people contribute. Below that you see "not enough data" and a progress meter, never the value.

Ratings (overall and sub-ratings)	5 reviews
Review text	5 reviews; 2 shown publicly
Rating markup for search engines	10 reviews
Interview summary	5 reports
Pay median per level	5 reports
Pay middle 50% (p25–p75)	8 reports
Pay full range (p10–p90) and histogram	20 reports; histogram buckets ≥ 3
Benefit cells	5 reporters
Posted-range medians	5 listings
Map hexes	50 events and 5 distinct people in the window (city-only history: 100 events)
Trending entries	8 distinct people and 20 weighted events in the week
Companies with 1–50 employees	every threshold doubled

Complementary suppression. When a total is published, a part is hidden if subtracting it from the total would reveal fewer than the threshold (for example, a level whose siblings add up to all but 2 reports). On the map, if the national total minus the published hexes would reveal a small hidden remainder, the smallest published hex is hidden too.

Rounding. Pay to $5K, activity counts to 2 significant figures, review dates to the quarter. "People" means distinct contributor-days, because the contributor hash rotates daily.

Delays

Activity publishes 2 days after it happens. Weekly trending editions cover Monday–Sunday and publish on the following Wednesday; once published, an edition never changes. Snapshots rebuild daily.

The hot score

x(day) = 5·applications + 3·saves + 1·views (views ≤ 3 per person per company per day; apply/save once per person-day) A = Σ over the week 0.5^(age in days / 3) · x(day) growth = (A_this_week + 40) / (A_last_week + 40) heat = ln(1 + A) · clamp(growth, 0.5, 4)^0.7 eligible = people ≥ 8 ∧ A ≥ 20 ∧ passed in one of the 3 prior weeks

Anti-gaming. Days more than 4 robust standard deviations above normal are capped; no single contributor-day or network (/24) can supply more than 20% of a week; a company entering the top 10 for the first time with mostly views is held for a week. Rising metros rank by change in share of US activity.

What gets indexed

A company page is built once anyone contributes, but only indexed with 10+ ratings, 10+ pay reports, or 12 weeks of published activity across 3+ role families. Salary pages need 50 reported (or 200 posted) for a role, 30 (or 100) for a role in a metro. Filtered views and comparisons are never indexed. We never mark up job postings.

Opt-out, deletion and corrections

Turn off "Share company activity" or "Share community activity" in the extension settings at any time; new activity stops immediately and past rows age out (activity rows are deleted after 120 days). Reviews and pay reports can be withdrawn from the extension. Found something wrong? Tell us on the support page. See also the privacy policy.