
The Top Tech Companies by Revenue per Employee - nradov
http://www.visualcapitalist.com/top-20-tech-companies-revenue-per-employee/
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joshuamorton
That Apple is on the list and Amazon is not is a bit irking to me. Since
they're clearly counting Amazon's fulfillment employees, but I doubt they're
counting for example apple store employees, or the half of Foxconn which is
basically Apple.

That is to say, this data can be massaged.

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macintux
They do include Apple retail employees.

Updated: 116k employees, 215.6 billion USD in revenue.

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joshuamorton
Ah, my mistake. Even still I think the bigger issue is that Amazon includes
fulfillment employees, whereas Apple (a hardware company, by most accounts)
does not employ anyone in hardware production, instead contracting that work
out.

Of course that leads to a bit of a slippery slope ("why not only count the AWS
team"), but I still think its an important note.

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lpolovets
I'm not sure why infographics like this usually focus on revenue instead of
profit. Revenue is not a meaningful measure of which companies are "stronger."
It's like comparing weighlifters without taking their size into account. (I'm
much more impressed with someone smaller who can lift 300 lbs than someone
huge who can lift 350 lbs.)

Other things being equal, would you rather have a 10,000-employee company that
sells $10b worth of widgets at a 1% profit margin, or $2b of widgets at a 40%
profit margin?

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mojomark
I respectfully disagree. From a short term investment perspective, then yes,
perhaps I would be interested in profit/employee ratio. However, from an
holistic economical health and long term investment perspective, I want to see
the top revenue/employee generators.

Why is that? Because revenue is a pure measure of productivity, whereas profit
is a measure of income after a number of filters (deductions are applied -
some of which are subjective) have been applied. Using revenue, I can see how
much horsepower a company is contributing to society.

It all boils down to what your looking at the data for.

If I'm looking to hire one person to lift kegs of beer into my truck everyday
(this is me dreaming) I'm more interested in the big lady doing more absolute
work (e.g. lifting 350 vice 300 lb).

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lpolovets
I get what you're saying, although my view is a little different. Where we
agree is that it's key to measure the horsepower a company is contributing to
society. However, my perspective is that profit is a better approximation of
that than revenue.[0] Revenue is often more reflective of input costs than
value generated. For example, if you buy $900k of steel, spend $25k doing
something to it, and then sell the resulting product for $1m, then how much
value did you create? I'd argue that it's the profit ($75k) and not the
revenue ($1m).

[0] That said, profit isn't a perfect metric either. By that measure, Amazon
contributes almost nothing to society. Some combination of R&D reinvestment
and contribution margins is probably a better metric.

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bitL
The Top 20 _Public_ Tech Companies by Revenue per Employee.

There are some private ones with far higher revenue per head than any of
these.

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vonmoltke
Specifically, the top 20 of the 69 members of the S&P 500 information
technology sector index.

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beefman
I believe Netflix is missing (should be #1 here with $2.5M per employee).

Apple is notable for its large retail staff. Its profit per engineer may even
exceed that of Netflix, despite being a much larger company.

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jrs235
Are you including the actors and production crews for Netflix's exclusive
content?

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leichtgewicht
Smaller companies can quickly fare better than bigger ones, see Nintendo:
[http://quotes.wsj.com/NTDOY/financials](http://quotes.wsj.com/NTDOY/financials)

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logfromblammo
All this infographic tells me is that these companies probably outsource their
support jobs to other companies.

That is, instead of hiring their own full-time janitor to clean up at
headquarters, they hire CleanCo sanitation service company, who hires the
full-time janitor to clean up at headquarters. Instead of hiring a cook to
work the company cafeteria, they hire CaterCo corporate catering company, who
hires the cook to serve the cafeteria line.

No idea what's going on with Apple. It seems implausible they could bring in
that much per employee if you include all the staff at their retail stores.

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forapurpose
Does that data include contractors? As we know well, companies often use
contractors as large parts of their labor forces and to fill important roles.

In the article's data, the differences between the companies could depend to a
great degree on the variation in employment relationships (i.e., contractor or
employee) and not in the productivity of labor.

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arcanus
Remarkable how capital intensive hardware is: AMD is on the list but often
operates at a loss!

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KSS42
Also wondering why Nvidia didn't make it to this list.

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derek_frome
This would be a much more interesting list to look at if it included all
public tech companies, not just Fortune 500 companies.

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buathrowaway
Now I can brag and add my (small) business in the top 5!! ;) I am guessing
there would be quite a few others in that position.

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santaclaus
Credit Card companies are Tech Companies now?

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sidlls
Credit Card companies are the ones who manage the transaction between the
point of sale and banks that issue credit cards. There is a sophisticated
network of technologies to process transactions and manage and mitigate fraud.
They may not sell tech, but many of the companies in the list don't, either:
tech is a means to their end.

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dominotw
> tech is a means to their end.

Wouldnt this be all companies on the planet then

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sidlls
No, not remotely. Some companies use tech as a tool of convenience but have no
need of being involved in its development. For example anyone who operates a
small-time retail business who sells via Amazon or their own e-commerce site.
Companies like the ones I refer to depend on having and developing
sophisticated technology as a part of their core competencies and business
model.

For example, there isn't a (sane) bank on the planet that would use, say, Visa
as their payment processor without the various indemnities against fraud in
the contracts they sign. And those indemnities are only possible if Visa has a
sophisticated payment processing network with fraud detection.

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macintux
Imagine interviewing at Apple. "Can you bring us an extra $2 million/year in
revenue? No? Then go away."

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user5994461
At $700 per iPhone, that's only 3000 more iPhone to sell in a year.

Could you improve the sales of the iPhone by 3000 somehow? probably.

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otakucode
And at these companies, the employees are paid many times higher than market
average rates, right? Free market dictates this? The appropriate value of any
product or service is quickly determined by the market and compensated
accordingly?

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e59d134d
Do lists like these make anyone feel bad when comparing their pay?

I don't know how to measure my contributions in terms of dollars but these
lists make me feel a bit down.

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otakucode
Measuring your contributions in terms of dollars IS tough. Someone at the
company likely had a number for you somewhere, or at least your 'position'
(since they like to think of you as being a superfluous factor, able to be
switched out for any similar cog), but you won't ever see it. This is why
sales people are usually the best paid people at any company next to the
executives (and sometimes above them for non-public companies). When the
company says 'we don't know if we can give you a raise this year' or similar,
the sales person can say 'I brought you $15 million in business last year -
you can afford to give me a raise that matches cost of living increases.'
Hardly anyone else in a company can ever do that.

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pkaye
How come there are no tech companies from SF there?

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overcast
Most of them make very little, or negative money.

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astrodust
This is revenue, not income. If you spend $2 to make $1 in revenue that's
still revenue.

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overcast
What I said still applies.

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astrodust
You were speaking specifically of profit.

