Seems really low. Imagine if they unionized!
As someone living/working outside of the US, I'm not sure if this post is a joke. Is a median of $200k actually low?
Depends on where you live.
Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k
41–50 of 80 posts
Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k
#42Seems really low. Imagine if they unionized!
I have always wondered why Americans see their unions as so dysfunctional and harmful. I have never had problems with unions as en employer. Then I learned that US has completely different union system from Europe. You guys have so called enterprise-level bargaining with union shops and agency shops where workers must be part of an union or pay the fee for an union. Then union negotiates pay in enterprise-level. I ca…
In practice, labour contracts with one firm within an industry, for major unions & firms, often set the industry payscale
This was long the practice in the US auto industry.
Discussed in this story:
https://www.freep.com/story/money/business/2015/09/08/uaw-pr...
Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k
#43Google has the lowest ceo/pay ratio since their CEO gets $1.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/ceo-pay-ratio/
I know Facebook included Mark's security/ travel into compensation. Did google just not do that?
Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k
#44Considering their quarterly profit per employee, they still have room to go up from here: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=google+profit+per+empl...
Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k
#45Just a quick reminder what median means in this case: You have a finite set of wages/pay - and $197,000 should be in the middle of this set. Meaning that half the wages at Alphabet are below, the other half above this wage. It is a rather robust measure, because it is insensitive to extreme values (like the arithmetic average would be), while also giving you a good overview, e.g. that 50% of all the wages are above $…
Also, as with the Facebook news that their median is $240k ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16955393 ), it could well be the case that Alphabet's lower paid staff are mostly contractors who wouldn't be counted in this metric.
It is the case. Almost all of their scaled support is from overseas most of which are not Google employees. They pay other companies to manage these folks. That 85K employee headcount is only the FTE count. The number of non-FTEs is crazy.
Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have always wondered why Americans see their unions as so dysfunctional and harmful. I have never had problems with unions as en employer. Then I learned that US has completely different union system from Europe. You guys have so called enterprise-level bargaining with union shops and agency shops where workers must be part of an union or pay the fee for an union. Then union negotiates pay in enterprise-level. I ca…
In practice, labour contracts with one firm within an industry, for major unions & firms, often set the industry payscale This was long the practice in the US auto industry. Discussed in this story: https://www.freep.com/story/money/business/2015/09/08/uaw-pr...
That can be true even without unions when the industry is dominated by handful of large companies and their is demand for labor.
Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k
#47Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also it isn't even clear if it includes benefits like health insurance and 401k costs. Anyone know?
I think this probably includes base salary, stocks, and bonuses. I don't think it includes health insurance and 401k.
Why not? It is an ask from feds, and they track insurance as a sort of income.
Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k
#49The same as for Facebook, most low-paid workers don't work for the main company (cleaning, building security, support, hospitality, various services), probably not even half the people working full-time for Alphabet are actually employed there.
Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, as with the Facebook news that their median is $240k ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16955393 ), it could well be the case that Alphabet's lower paid staff are mostly contractors who wouldn't be counted in this metric.
Everyone seems to report either median or average, both of which leave out a lot of interesting information. If people simply reported both values, it would go a long way to painting a more accurate picture.
Median is the only one you need a disclosure for. Mean is simply the compensation expense divided by the number of employees. But the mean salary doesn't really say anything, it'll always be higher than median and at a company the size of Alphabet you don't really get additional insights from that.
Reporting median is a good step, most companies don't disclose that.