Also, as with the Facebook news that their median is $240k (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16955393), it could well be the case that Alphabet's lower paid staff are mostly contractors who wouldn't be counted in this metric.
Reporting median is a good step, most companies don't disclose that.
What would be really interesting would be to see the actual distribution. But I don't think we'll ever see that.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-typical-worker-is-in-a-...
When you have a Democratic Congress, $15/hr minimum wage is coming. Many of the grunts will be getting a big raise, which will increase that median significantly in a few years.
That story from a year calls out that it excludes contractors. It does include full-time and part-time employees.
But sure sounds like a feasible strategy to prop up median pay.
Also, do you have to state median pay in such a filing?
0: https://www.sfgate.com/business/networth/article/Yes-median-...
>the fourth-highest pay among the hundreds of companies in the S&P 500 index that have disclosed those figures.
seems to imply that it is not.
>As Congress chips away at bank regulations established by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, another part of the measure is exposing the extreme income inequality between bosses and their workers.
>The law requires publicly traded companies to calculate the ratio of their chief executive officer’s compensation to the median pay of the companies’ employees. After a series of delays, firms are finally disclosing their pay ratios in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. [0]
[0] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ceo-pay-disclosure_us_5...