What industry has the highest revenue per employee? • Hacker News Board

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#31

Post by eevilspock » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 2:59 AM UTC

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #10

Not a fan of Revenue Per Employee as a measure of operating efficiency. It would be much more telling to evaluate net earnings per employee: Net Earnings Per Employee: Valero: $365,452 [1][2] Apple: $766,800 [3][4] [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/531676/valero-energy-cor... [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VLO/financials?p=VLO [3] https://www.apple.com/job-creation/ [4] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL…

That Apple number does not include the slave wages of Foxconn workers, other outsourced labor or contractors for which Apple avoids paying benefits.

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#32

Post by gdilla » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 3:05 AM UTC

acchow wrote: post #18

sidlls wrote: post #3

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

Revenue per employee is not a measure at all of your production as an employee.

It's not supposed to be. Your salary is a better indication of that. RPE is just a heuristic to compare companies in the same industry to see if one is more bloated or not - the thinking is if company A can do this with lower head count, company B with lower RPE may be more inefficient. It's not perfect, just one out of many things you would analyze. You would look at other indicators to give you more (or less) confidence.

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#33

Post by throwaway2048 » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 3:12 AM UTC

fwdpropaganda wrote: post #7

So the _average_ energy company has twice as high RPE as Google? That's unexpected...

Most of the field work energy companies do is subcontracted out, and wouldnt be covered in these numbers.

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#34

Post by bradleyjg » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 3:57 AM UTC

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 if you follow this line of thinking you end up with a (economic) rent to labor ratio. Any kind of expensive piece of equipment could have been built by employees so by the same token that you count contractors you can include the labor component of those capital expenditures and so on and so forth.

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#35

Post by folli » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 4:07 AM UTC

I'm sure there exist a lot of One Person Companies that have much higher RPEs than $1M.

They are of course not in the S&P 500, nevertheless it would be very interesting to read about them.

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#36

Post by jhpankow » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 4:10 AM UTC

eevilspock wrote: post #31

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #10

Not a fan of Revenue Per Employee as a measure of operating efficiency. It would be much more telling to evaluate net earnings per employee: Net Earnings Per Employee: Valero: $365,452 [1][2] Apple: $766,800 [3][4] [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/531676/valero-energy-cor... [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VLO/financials?p=VLO [3] https://www.apple.com/job-creation/ [4] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL…

That Apple number does not include the slave wages of Foxconn workers, other outsourced labor or contractors for which Apple avoids paying benefits.

Strategies far from unique to Apple.

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#37

Post by asah » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 4:11 AM UTC

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #10

Not a fan of Revenue Per Employee as a measure of operating efficiency. It would be much more telling to evaluate net earnings per employee: Net Earnings Per Employee: Valero: $365,452 [1][2] Apple: $766,800 [3][4] [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/531676/valero-energy-cor... [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VLO/financials?p=VLO [3] https://www.apple.com/job-creation/ [4] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL…

+1 - revenue is not the same as profit...

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#38

Post by busterarm » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 4:20 AM UTC

Lobby group fundraising, by far.

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#39

Post by ojbyrne » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 4:23 AM UTC

UK-Al05 wrote: post #13

aikinai wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's not how labor economics works. Also, why do you focus on Apple and Facebook (#33 and #42)? If you think employees should be compensated per revenue, then oil drillers are the ones that should be complaining; they should be paid far more than software developers.

Oil rig workers generally are paid well and in low cost areas.

At the peak of the fracking boom, Williston, North Dakota had the highest rents in the country:

https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/community-divide...

Re: What industry has the highest revenue per employee?

#40

Post by askafriend » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 4:25 AM UTC

eevilspock wrote: post #31

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #10

Not a fan of Revenue Per Employee as a measure of operating efficiency. It would be much more telling to evaluate net earnings per employee: Net Earnings Per Employee: Valero: $365,452 [1][2] Apple: $766,800 [3][4] [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/531676/valero-energy-cor... [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VLO/financials?p=VLO [3] https://www.apple.com/job-creation/ [4] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL…

That Apple number does not include the slave wages of Foxconn workers, other outsourced labor or contractors for which Apple avoids paying benefits.

Ok, I'll bite.

Care to name a hardware company that doesn't use parts from Foxconn?