In Silicon Valley, salaries have often been kept under wraps in the tech world. However, this past year, the top tech companies in the Valley have all jumped on board with California pay transparency laws, which require companies to disclose data on employee salaries, hours worked, and other benefits as part of their contractual agreements with their employees.
What has surfaced from all this information is that the tech giants are paying their employees highly. Facebook, for example, disclosed that their employees make an average of $255,228 on an annual basis. Google employees make an average of $245,829, and Apple’s employees earns an average of $238,619 annually. Even smaller companies such as LinkedIn, Uber, and Twitch have seen a surge of high-paying salaries in the past year.
The average salary for tech workers in the Bay Area has sky-rocketed as demand for tech talent grows. This is also a function of the lack of diversity and gender disparity in executive-level decision-making, which can result in higher salary offers to employees with certain backgrounds, such as those with doctoral degrees or engineering backgrounds.
The influx of money has resulted in immense pressure on workers to keep up, as well as brought a widening of the economic gap within the region. Even with comprehensive pay transparency, there is still a significant demand for more disclosure about the compensation practices within the tech industry, and more importantly, greater advocacy for closing the pay gap.
Aside from the legal disclosure requirements, the push for pay transparency has resulted in a movement among the biggest names in tech to ensure that their employees’ salaries are adequately representative of their skills and worth. This is evidenced by the wide variety of recruitment and retention solutions that tech companies are introducing to accommodate their employees’ financial and personal needs.
The California pay transparency law has been extremely beneficial not just to the tech industry, but to the economy as a whole. Not only has it allowed companies to be more open to potential talent, it has also helped to ensure that all employees are adequately paid for their work, regardless of their gender or background. Transparency has helped to close the pay gap, and it is heartening to see the big names in the industry stepping up to the plate.
