This is the highest-paying company in America
Source: Sean Rossman
Planning on making a career change? May we suggest starting anew in the tech and business consulting industries?
Evidently, they pay the most, notes job search website Glassdoor. Twenty-four of the businesses atop its 2017 list of the 25 Highest Paying Companies in America were either tech or business companies.
The top payer might surprise you. It beat out Amazon, Google and Facebook.
A.T. Kearney consulting company is nearly a century old and boasts its worked with more than 75% of Fortune’s Global 500 companies. Its median total salary is $175,000, slightly more than second place Strategy& ($172,000), a consulting firm working in the automotive, chemicals and aerospace and defense industries among others.
Glassdoor created the report using salary reports from employees who anonymously and voluntarily shared their pay over the last year.
Rounding out the top five were the multi-faceted VMware ($167,050), which specializes in cloud computing and storage among other services; the machine-data specialists at Splunk ($161,010) and Cadence Design Systems ($156,702), which touts its work with electronic design automation and semiconductor intellectual property.
Scott Dobroski, Glassdoor community expert, wasn’t shocked to see tech and consulting companies on the list, but, “It was a slight surprise to see how much they dominated the list.”
The positions at tech and consulting companies, Dobroski said, share two characteristics that warrant high pay. They require a skill set in which demand highly outpaces supply and cannot be replaced by computers or robots.
Consultants, he explained, are tasked with helping huge companies solve immense problems, not a gig for a robot. In tech, coding is still king, a skill that requires a human even in the case of artificial intelligence.
Glassdoor Chief Economist Dr. Andrew Chamberlain said consultants are making the big bucks because of the high “barriers of entry” in that field, where the cream of the crop are expected to have “contacts reputations and specialized skills and knowledge.”
Technology faces a similar situation.
“In technology,” Chamberlain said, “we continue to see unprecedented salaries as the war for talent is still very active, largely due to the ongoing shortage of highly skilled workers needed.”
A.T. Kearney also topped the 2016 list. In 2015, the top payer was Skadden, a law firm which offers corporate and financial advice to companies. Google, with a median total compensation of $155,250, placed sixth on this year's list, followed by Facebook with a median pay of $155,000.
Dobroski predicts we'll see tech companies and consultants continue to dominate the list in the future. However, health care technology companies and investment banks will squeeze into the top 25 in the next three to five years.
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