10 ms·
What industry has the highest revenue per employee?
- arjunsa 8y agoNeat!
- sidlls 8y agoHow can any software developer at, say, Apple or Facebook see this and not think they're under compensated.
- aikinai 8y agoBecause 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.
- jjeaff 8y ago>they should be paid far more than software developers. They most likely are being paid more, when adjusting for cost of living. You can work on a rig making $100k a year in areas where $250k buys you a very nice 3500 SQ ft home with a big backyard. Something that would cost millions in SF, NYC, Seattle, etc.
- davrosthedalek 8y agoTrue in general, but the cost of buying a house is a bad example. Most of that is the cost of the ground, and that doesn't depreciate. So when the developer walks away from the job and moves, they can settle down with millions. I is ttrue though for rent, food etc.
- jjeaff 8y ago>they can settle down with millions Yes, assuming an ever upward trend that never crashes. Which everyone should know by now will not likely be the case.
- UK-Al05 8y agoOil rig workers generally are paid well and in low cost areas.
- ojbyrne 8y agoAt the peak of the fracking boom, Williston, North Dakota had the highest rents in the country: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/community-dividend/north-dakota-oil-boomtown-has-nations-highest-rent https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/community-divide...
- adventured 8y agoOverall the energy sector is still the best paying. Median compensation for energy sector employees: $123k (tech is at $96k). https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-05/shale-country-upstages-silicon-valley-in-fat-paycheck-lure https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-05/shale-cou...
- sidlls 8y agoBecause of the demographics at HN and my tenure in the tech industry and lack of it in others on that list.
- burntrelish1273 8y agoI didn't down-vote. The article was about revenue per employee, what goes to the employer; this is rarely linked to compensation going to employees. The only way for employees to earn livable wages is to demand it in an organized manner, because fair wages compared to business performance are almost never given voluntarily. The serfs shouldn't argue about which one has the better status... divide-and-conquer is fail.
- acchow 8y agoRevenue per employee is not a measure at all of your production as an employee.
- gdilla 8y agoIt'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.
- toomanybeersies 8y agoI'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 Facebook this is $250k. For janitors and cooks it's $15 p/h. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/26/facebook-workers-housing-janitors-unique-parsha https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/26/facebook-...
- bfrog 8y agoSame problem with the gig economy
- sidlls 8y agoVery good point about the epsilons. But at least in the story even they got their soma.
- jldugger 8y ago> 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.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoThere's an interesting comment in that article, by someone who doesn't believe in the Copenhagen intepretation of social justice. > She said she liked working at Facebook and didn’t resent the engineers and product managers she cleans up after. “I know that they are the ones that are making the money,” she said in Spanish. “They are the ones doing the hard job and getting fair pay.”
- jldugger 8y agoOne 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.
- mattzito 8y agoOne 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 would be much larger if you included all of the subcontractors.
- extralego 8y agoThe same could be said for a lot of other industries; only not the other industries which fall in these rankings. But, the prominent 3 categories that made the list are: - known as the most corrupt 3 industries in America - a poor American’s only means of access to 3 of the most critical commodities in their life. The other 2 (food, housing) are disqualified by their own unique attributes. - oil, healthcare, finance
- nomel 8y agoThis is also true with many consumer electronics companies. Design and some level of QC in house, most everything else from the vendors, at cut throat rates.
- jofer 8y agoI 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.
- AngryData 8y agoTelecomms do this for laying new wires/fiber too. They subcontract most all of the lashing, digging, and boring and the pulling of actual fiber lines, leaving the ends loose, and only then use their own employees to go out and actually splice them into the previous lines or into an active network. The connections at the end are quick and easy with little liability risks, unlike climbing electric or telephone poles, trimming trees near aerial cables, going into underground utility tunnels, and digging trenches through power and gas and water and other cables. They also don't have to buy and maintain nearly as many boom trucks and excavating machines like horizontal boring machines or mini excavators.
- fwdpropaganda 8y agoSo the _average_ energy company has twice as high RPE as Google? That's unexpected...
- soared 8y agoNot really.. the article explains that energy relies on natural resources while google relies on human capital.
- throwaway2048 8y agoMost of the field work energy companies do is subcontracted out, and wouldnt be covered in these numbers.
- coldtea 8y agoIf Google disappeared tomorrow nothing would be tragically different after a year or so of adjustment. Without the energy companies we'd be in Mad Max mode for decades...
- pkaye 8y agoYou are comparing one company Google against all the energy companies. You should say it differently. What if Google disappeared vs Exxon disappeared.
- coldtea 8y ago>You are comparing one company Google against all the energy companies. Doesn't matter for my point, Google is the majority of web search in the west. Even if we add Bing and that Chinese engine, the argument is the same. Can read it as "if we lost web search".
- TeMPOraL 8y ago> If Google disappeared tomorrow nothing would be tragically different after a year or so of adjustment. I wouldn't be so sure. Google Search and Google Maps disappearing would be mildly annoying, but people would adjust. But if GMail and Google Docs (both personal and business GSuite versions) were to suddenly shut off, I dread the impact it would have on the economy. It would seriously disrupt many, if not most, small companies in very many places around the world. The extent to which people depend on Google for their data is just scary. Whatever technical literacy a typical person might have gained in the desktop era, we're losing it again in the mobile era.
- consz 8y agoMultiple HFT companies would be top 10 on that list.
- hermitdev 8y agoExcept most, if nearly none, are not public companies listed on the S&P 500 (which the article was examining). Disclaimer: work in finance, have worked in HFT, don't currently.
- vostok 8y agoNeither of the two major publicly traded HFT firms would have made the top 10 if they were in the S&P 500. http://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001592386/f7d31d31-5d43-40e4-b561-53ef6960dde6.pdf http://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001592386/f7d31d31... https://www.flowtraders.com/system/files/downloads/Flow%20Traders%20Annual%20Report%202017.pdf https://www.flowtraders.com/system/files/downloads/Flow%20Tr... I can imagine some smaller firms making the list. Did you have any specific ones in mind?
- osullivj 8y agoThere's been a lot of consolidation in the HFT sector recently [1]. Back in 2008, when HFT was hot and new, a lot of money was made. But lower post crisis volatility and multiple HFT firms chasing the same opportunities has compressed margins. The party is over... [1] https://www.thetradenews.com/hft-not-so-flashy-anymore/ https://www.thetradenews.com/hft-not-so-flashy-anymore/
- 11thEarlOfMar 8y agoNot 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-corporation-number-of-employees/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/531676/valero-energy-cor... [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VLO/financials?p=VLO https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VLO/financials?p=VLO [3] https://www.apple.com/job-creation/ https://www.apple.com/job-creation/ [4] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/financials?p=AAPL https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/financials?p=AAPL
- acchow 8y agoWhat about efficiency of capital?
- eevilspock 8y agoThat Apple number does not include the slave wages of Foxconn workers, other outsourced labor or contractors for which Apple avoids paying benefits.
- jhpankow 8y agoStrategies far from unique to Apple.
- askafriend 8y agoOk, I'll bite. Care to name a hardware company that doesn't use parts from Foxconn?
- int0x80 8y agoThat doesn't make it less true.
- askafriend 8y agoWhy are you assuming OP’s statement is true? It’s demonstrably false especially relative to other employers in the region. Foxconn standards are actually quite high relative to other manufacturers. People there want to work at Foxconn. The “slavery” rhetoric is entirely baseless.
- airstrike 8y agoThis 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.
- foota 8y agoWages can diverge quite easily from the economic value you provide.
- opportune 8y agoThis is ridiculous. Wages measure the cost of hiring you, not the value. If the economic value of employees were their wages, then there would be no profit.
- airstrike 8y agoThe value of the firm is greater than the sum of its parts.
- pbnjay 8y agoUnless 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.
- refurb 8y agoRevenue is a terrible metric. For example, drug distributors have billions in revenue, but they are just middle men who make a fraction of a percent in profit.
- folli 8y agoI'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.
- busterarm 8y agoLobby group fundraising, by far.
- crb002 8y agoRemove the oil companies and you mostly have a list of rent seekers ready for massive disruption.
- vkou 8y ago... Who operate on razor-thin margins. 99.9% of that revenue goes right into paying suppliers.
- sunstone 8y agoI'm guessing it would be one of the professional sports leagues.
- eganist 8y agoAltria Group is categorized as "consumer staples." If you've ever seen the Altria headquarters in Richmond... well, it's unusually intimidating for a consumer staples company -- https://www.google.com/maps/@37.6002824,-77.5147176,3a,75y,300.63h,89.54t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s81IcLMzH-iS72bES_Yg_nQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.6002824,-77.5147176,3a,75y,3... Altria is the tobacco industry.
- heartbreak 8y agoIt seems their giant cigarette on I-95 in Richmond was undergoing maintenance when the street view car drove past. https://goo.gl/maps/ZwkRjFHJizP2 https://goo.gl/maps/ZwkRjFHJizP2 https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/pole-displaying-marlboro-brand-cigarette-signage-stands-outside-the-picture-id915369944 https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/pole-displaying-marlbor...
- astura 8y ago"Consumer staples" includes tobacco; it also includes alcohol.
- henadzit 8y agoAll Big Four tech companies are there... except Amazon.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoThat's just because Amazon's warehouse workers are employees instead if outsourced.
- picsao 8y agoAnything hacking related. Law hacking and calitalsystemhacking come to mind. The reward for effort needs to be decoupled from effort after a first investment and the rent seeking mechanism needs to be enhanced by the system.
- bboytwist 8y agoScam ICOs
- testaccount6 8y agoElectronic prop trading.
- wolframhempel 8y agoI feel this is missing some industries with smaller company sizes and extreme employee to revenue ratios, e.g. Hedgefunds, High-end Legal Practices etc. Even more so as these may have the ability to avoid support-functions (HR, Mid Level Management etc.) that don't directly add to the bottom line.
- grigjd3 8y agoWell, it is companies listed on the S&P 500 so privately held companies aren't included.
- jexah 8y agoI'm going to go out on a limb with no evidence what-so-ever and say anesthetists.
- jacksmith21006 8y agoReinsurance. A company like RGA has $12.5B revenue with about 2600 employees. So about $5M per employee https://www.rgare.com/about-rga/rga-key-facts-and-figures https://www.rgare.com/about-rga/rga-key-facts-and-figures Would be curious anyone else close? Looking through the comments have not seen any.
- mathattack 8y agoThe better metric for human resource efficiency is profit per employee or market cap per employee. This would help adjust for large subcontractors by including them in the cost.
- benologist 8y agoIn tech high revenue per employee is indicative of shirking responsibilities, like the minimal fraud oversight on google and amazon, or not paying taxes.
- nashashmi 8y agoThis confirms my suspicion of world power being concentrated in the hands of a few mighty industries. When software engineering took off, the first industry that software engineering helped was software engineering. Then once that was nearly complete, the second industry they helped was the financial industry. And now the next industry being revamped/upgraded/futurized is the healthcare industry. Surprised to see energy in there but as another commenter pointed out, it is because subcontractors are not included. So Financials is the most powerful industry, second is healthcare, and then IT. After IT, my prediction is manufacturing/factories, media, building construction, and then engineering... in that order. Not sure where to place energy, but I always saw them as too backwards for shift. Not sure where to place auto industry either.
- smallhands 8y agoFacebook?
- rdlecler1 8y agoEarning per employee would be a better number because it would better control for contractors, and high COGs. Finance and tech should do well there.
- ToFab123 8y agoThat gotta be drug dealing or ATM hacking.