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Comment by sanderjd | Hacker News Reader

Everyone seems to report either median or average, both of which leave out a lot of interesting information. If people simply reported both values, it would go a long way to painting a more accurate picture.

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I was just thinking about this. Ideally, the median and mean salaries should account for added value but not vary so much as to make inequality unbearable. Having CEOs paid 100 or 200 or even 1000 times more than other employees is bad for everyone in the long run. It leads to so much inequality that people end up tearing each other appart, looking for culprits (immigrants, strangers, neighbouring countries, etc). Having a CEO paid more than others is fine as long as everyone can benefit from the added value, not just a few.

For an accurate picture, you can't beat a picture. A graph of the distribution of employees over salaries is easy to understand and information rich.

Median is the only one you need a disclosure for. Mean is simply the compensation expense divided by the number of employees. But the mean salary doesn't really say anything, it'll always be higher than median and at a company the size of Alphabet you don't really get additional insights from that.

Reporting median is a good step, most companies don't disclose that.

The difference between mean and median provides information. It's always safe to assume the distribution is right-skewed, but having both median and mean gives you a sense for how much.

Just the difference doesn't tell you much. It's always right-skewed. But that could be because it's bimodal with developers earning a lot and support staff little or it's because everyone makes the same except for some really well paid executives.

What would be really interesting would be to see the actual distribution. But I don't think we'll ever see that.

I think at this point we're quibbling over the definition of "how much" it can tell you. I think "median of $70k, mean of $150k" vs. "median of $70k, mean of $1.5M" carries a lot more information than just mean or just median, even if it doesn't approach a full summary of the distribution's shape.

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