Anyone looking for riches in employment might want to consider working at Google, as their median employee wage for 2024 has left many shocked and desperate to join the company.
The wider tech industry has been known as the place to be for top pay packets over the past decade, as many of the most valuable companies belong in the technology world, and their wages certainly reflect that.
While yearly earnings of the average employee might not be quite as much as those in command, especially if you look towards the record-breaking pay packages sought by people like Elon Musk, but they're still certainly nothing to scoff at when outside the bubble of the ultra rich.
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Google in particular is known as a great place to work from a pay perspective, and the 5th most valuable public company worldwide certainly makes use of its $1.95 trillion market value when it comes to compensating its workers.
As reported by Entrepreneur, the median wage of a Google employee - which roughly correlates to a mid-level employee - sat at $331,894 last year, which was a 5% increase from the year prior.
This is slightly below an equivalent-level wage at a company like Meta, which was $379,000 in 2023 (and thus is likely more now), but it's still far above the median annual wage of workers across the US, which currently sits at $48,060, as per CNBC Make It.
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It's also far above the median wage of California workers too, as Google workers earn roughly six times more per year than the $54,030 per annum median salary of employees in the state.
Even within the microcosm of Silicon Valley - home to many of the world's biggest tech companies, including Google - it's over double the average salary of $164,075, showing quite how much the search engine giant is able to give its workers.
This, unsurprisingly, scales up to the top of the ladder too, as CEO Sundar Pichai received a total annual compensation of $10,725,043 in 2024, which was just under $2 million more than he earned in the year before.
That means that Pichai made around 32 times more money in 2024 than Google's median employee, but his overall net work pales in comparison to others in similar positions like Musk, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, and Google co-founders Larry Paeg and Sergey Brin, who all sit near the top of Forbes' rich list.
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Reacting to these jaw-dropping salaries, the immediate reaction on Reddit was seemingly a desire to have a slice of the pie themselves. "Sounds like I need to work at Google," writes one comment, with another questioning "why did I go to med school again?"
One user notes that the "compensation is both a cause and an effect of the company's performance," implying that their high-paying wages are why Google is able to remain a giant in the industry.
Additionally, others have noted that "Google just prints money," outlining that they have "a monopoly on internet search." However, that monopoly could end up forcing them to sell Chrome to an unexpected buyer, as courts are currently pressing the tech behemoth to divest what they're calling an 'illegal monopoly' - even after the company overcame antitrust allegations in their acquisition of Wiz.