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These Are the Top-Paying Companies in the Country

By:
Martha C. White
3 min read
A cyclist rides past Google Inc. offices inside the Googleplex headquarters in Mountain View, California, on February 18, 2016. - Michael Short—Bloomberg via Getty Images
A cyclist rides past Google Inc. offices inside the Googleplex headquarters in Mountain View, California, on February 18, 2016. Michael Short—Bloomberg via Getty Images

It's probably no surprise that Silicon Valley giants like Google and Facebook pay really well. Technology firms dominate the list of the 25 top paying companies in America from salary comparison site Glassdoor, taking up 20 of the top 25 slots.

That said about the tech industry, this also was a very, very good year for consultants. Management consulting firm A.T. Kearney was the highest-paying company, with a median base salary of $143,620 and total median compensation (which includes other payments like commissions and bonuses) of $167,534. Last year A.T. Kearney was in fifth place, and law firm Skadden Arps held the number one spot; the new list doesn't have any law firms represented at all.

Second place this year went to Strategy&, another consulting company that was formerly known as Booz & Company until it became part of the PwC family, with a median base salary of $147,000 and median total compensation of $160,000. A third consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, also cracked the top five.

Comparing salary alone, there was a tie between the two top paying companies, both in the consulting field: Both Strategy& and Boston Consulting Group had a median salary of $147,000.

Unfortunately for most of us, consulting salaries are so high because of what Glassdoor termed ‘barriers of entry’ in the industry. People who earn those big paychecks need to have a network of valuable contacts, specialized skills, and experience.

Some of the companies are more household names than others: Twitter, Microsoft, Visa — the only financial firm on this year's list — and divisions of both Amazon and Walmart all made the cut, along with lesser known but equally generous firms like Juniper Networks, Guidewire and Cloudera. If you have the tech chops (or are just curious) the full list can be viewed here. Glassdoor used employees' own anonymously reported salary data to compile the list.

When it comes to corporate America's demand for tech talent, people with the skills don't even have to work at a technology firm to command a top salary—and better yet don't have to live in the pricey tech hub around San Francisco. "It's not just at the companies most people are familiar with like Google and Facebook," said Glassdoor community expert Scott Dobroski. For example, he highlighted Walmart eCommerce, which came in at number 15 on the list, with a median total compensation of $149,000. "The company knows it needs top talent to help its online business grow," he said.

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