25 top-paying companies | Hacker News Reader

25 top-paying companies

money.cnn.com

11 pointsrockstar915 comments

The top 15, from: http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/106493/Top-Payi...

  1. Bingham McCutchen (law firm)
  Average total pay: $256,312
  For: Associate

  2. Lehigh Valley Hospital & Health Network
  Average total pay: $244,605
  For: Physicians

  3. Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe (law firm)
  Average total pay: $240,955
  For: Associate

  4. Alston & Bird (law firm)
  Average total pay: $203,655
  For: Associate

  5. Perkins Coie (law firm)
  Average total pay: $190,126
  For: Associate

  6. Devon Energy (oil and natural gas producer)
  Average total pay: $186,882
  For: Engineer

  7. Chesapeake Energy (natural gas producer)
  Average total pay: $178,108
  For: Toolpusher

  8. Salesforce.com (CRM software)
  Average total pay: $172,303
  For: Senior Sales Engineer

  9. Arnold & Porter (law firm)
  Average total pay: $172,192
  For: Associate

  10. Adobe Systems
  Average total pay: $165,947
  For: Sr. Computer Scientist Software Development

  11. EOG Resources (oil and natural gas producer)
  Average total pay: $158,302
  For: Engineer

  12. Goldman Sachs (holding company)
  Average total pay: $144,994
  For: Other Exempt (i.e. Analysts, Program
  Analysts, Associates and Professional Non-Exempt)

  13. Boston Consulting Group
  Average total pay: $141,111
  For: Consultant
 
  14. Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants
  Average total pay: $134,769
  For: General Manager

  15. NetApp (data storage firm)
  Average total pay: $134,716
  For: Member Technical Staff, Software 4

A bit bogus because the companies are ranked by most common salaried position, so it starts off with a bunch of law firms. There is a hospital with the most common salaried position being physician and a hotel chain with general director, conveniently ignoring all the orderlies and chamber maids which would make the average wage a lot less attractive. An there is that annoyance of clicking through 25 pages.

I would upmod the submission - but 25 individual pages?

Nice. BusinessWeek seems to do that a lot, too. It doesn't even look like the "Print" link circumvents it as on other sites.

So what were the companies? For some articles I just read the comments here. ;)

You want someone to click through 25 pages and copy the names of each company for you?

I doubt most people here won't make past 5 before closing the tab.

Edit: First 5 were either law firms, hospitals or energy companies.

Does it bother you that so many of them are law firms. With all due respect to undeniable need to uphold law and order in a society, so many law firms say something about in which direction is productivity headed. Do you want people proficient in laws or those building something of more value to be higher rewarded?

I was surprised at the number of tech firms in the list (e.g. Adobe, TI, NetApp, Cisco, Juniper) and the jobs that are listed are the engineering and other technical jobs. Reading the comments I wasn't expected any tech firms to be on the list.

What exactly is a 'Toolpusher'? The most common job at #7 Chesapeake Energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toolpusher

What the hell is a Senior Sales Engineer (Salesforce.com)? I have a pretty good understanding of what those words mean separately, but as far as I can tell they to not belong together.

aka. pre-sales: Engineers whose main responsibility is complementing sales people in demos, POCs, presentations and other technical aspects of sales.

Common in the enterprise software world.

They work with the Sales team to give technical support and advice to potential customers before they buy a product. It's not a fun job IMHO unless you are technical and like to travel a lot.

I've done it before. It also involved working with the client on customization since the sales people don't always understand exactly what's possible.

It's fun if you like traveling and interacting with customers. Actually being part of closing a deal is kind of a rush. I imagine it pays well because it's not too easy for the sales guys to find engineers whom they're excited to bring to a meeting.

It can also be a great place to get comfortable dealing with high level business people, Fortune 100 executives, etc... You have to be able to (or learn to) communicate clearly to the super technical folks they bring, and to the CEO who can barely use his e-mail. You get very comfortable speaking in front of a large group, and you learn to think on your feet.

I did it for a few years, before the travel burned me out, and I feel I learned an amazingly amount of useful skills from it. Stuff they can't effectively teach in school and that you can't learn coding in your living room.

Fly home on Friday, fly out on Sunday. I don't know how they do it but I do hear if it's cheaper to fly somewhere else for the weekend (e.g. San Diego vs East Podunk) they'll let you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com