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What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

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Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#21

Post by jofer »

mattzito wrote: post #6

One item that I find potentially misleading is that, to my understanding, oil and gas companies outsource/subcontract a lot of the seasonal/irregular/less predictable work to third-parties. This means that these people aren't calculated in these numbers, but they generate a good chunk of the revenue. I could be wrong about that, but I used to work with Exxon and they talked about this - that the total employee base w…

I think people often don't realize the scale at which energy companies use contractors/etc. The "boots on the ground" folks are almost entirely contractors or hired through another company. Plenty of companies exist purely to provide employees to one oil company in one field.

Exxon/Chevron/Total/BP/etc each have around 50-100k employees (I may be a bit off there, but it's in the ballpark). The workforce required for each of their operations globally is in the low millions.

At the end of the day, a major oil company is actually a construction company. Their specialty is managing complex projects with lots of subcontractors. As a result, they have a surprisingly low employee count.

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#22

Post by pbnjay »

Unless you're going to also plot operating costs per employee I don't know why anyone would expect this to make any sense.

Net Margins, Net Earnings, Profits, etc would be a much more interesting measure of employee productivity - though it still hides much of the details.

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#23

Post by bfrog »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #20
sidlls wrote: post #3

How can any software developer at, say, Apple or Facebook see this and not think they're under compensated.

I'm more concerned about the janitors at Facebook that are earning $15 per hour with minimal benefits [1]. Those free meals and free gyms at Facebook and Apple are only for the alphas, the epsilons are there simply to cook their food and clean up after them. To actually answer your question though, companies will pay the lowest wage possible while still being able to sufficiently fill positions. For engineers at Face…

Same problem with the gig economy

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#24

Post by supercanuck »

mattzito wrote: post #6

One item that I find potentially misleading is that, to my understanding, oil and gas companies outsource/subcontract a lot of the seasonal/irregular/less predictable work to third-parties. This means that these people aren't calculated in these numbers, but they generate a good chunk of the revenue. I could be wrong about that, but I used to work with Exxon and they talked about this - that the total employee base w…

there is a 50/40 split of EE's to contractors just in IT

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#25

Post by sidlls »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #20
sidlls wrote: post #3

How can any software developer at, say, Apple or Facebook see this and not think they're under compensated.

I'm more concerned about the janitors at Facebook that are earning $15 per hour with minimal benefits [1]. Those free meals and free gyms at Facebook and Apple are only for the alphas, the epsilons are there simply to cook their food and clean up after them. To actually answer your question though, companies will pay the lowest wage possible while still being able to sufficiently fill positions. For engineers at Face…

Very good point about the epsilons. But at least in the story even they got their soma.

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#26

Post by foota »

airstrike wrote: post #19

This is a pretty useless metric. It's really only used as a proxy to compare the value of similar companies in the same industry when no other data is available. You know what measures your economic value as an employee? Wages. Your value as an employee is that which is lost by removing you from the equation. If you can be replaced by virtually anyone, your value approaches zero.

Wages can diverge quite easily from the economic value you provide.

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#27

Post by jldugger »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #20
sidlls wrote: post #3

How can any software developer at, say, Apple or Facebook see this and not think they're under compensated.

I'm more concerned about the janitors at Facebook that are earning $15 per hour with minimal benefits [1]. Those free meals and free gyms at Facebook and Apple are only for the alphas, the epsilons are there simply to cook their food and clean up after them. To actually answer your question though, companies will pay the lowest wage possible while still being able to sufficiently fill positions. For engineers at Face…

> Those free meals and free gyms at Facebook and Apple are only for the alphas, the epsilons are there simply to cook their food and clean up after them.

Apple, at least, charges all employees for food and gym. And staffing the dining center has become hard enough that they pay a thousand dollar referral bonus.

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#29

Post by jldugger »

sidlls wrote: post #3

How can any software developer at, say, Apple or Facebook see this and not think they're under compensated.

One thing that skews these numbers is what counts towards the denominator. Facebook has tons of contractors working inside their datacenters doing breakfix. Do they count towards the 'employee' count?

The other bit is how much of SV's employees are paid in stocks; after 4 years of RSU granting cycles and appreciation, you may well be earning more in stock vests than base salary.

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