the onda

Having recently run into a table of profit per employee at different technology companies, I was floored to see the difference between the top (Google, $210k/employee) and the not-so-top (HP, $26K/employee).

While this may not be a super meaningful ratio for Wall Street (it it were mega mergers might be less popular), it does strike me as a pretty good way to gauge how much money the company has as a "cushion" to support the things that are most relevant to employees in tech companies: long term research on high risk projects, working environment spending (both IT and real estate), etc. It stands to reason that a company with high profits per employee has more to spend to keep that employee happy.

Given the large discrepancy between tech superstars, I decided to dig in a little and look across industries. The table to the left shows a random sampling of large companies in other industries which range from basic retail to other intellectual property-heavy industries like big pharma. The results are interesting.

While the bottom of the tech range doesn't quite qualify for burger flipping status, we're right around telephone repairman and significantly lower than the folks who dress up in fuzzy suits or sell sugared water.

This may give me pause the next time I wonder why I work in a veal pen and eat in a cafeteria that finds vintage a perfectly good metric to apply to milk.