Here’s how much top tech jobs in California pay, according to job ads
Steve Proehl | Corbis Unreleased | Getty Images
A new law that went into effect this week requires most California employers to disclose salaries on job listings.
The law affects every company with more than 15 employees looking to fill a job that could be performed from the state of California. It covers hourly and temporary work, all the way up to openings for highly-paid technology executives.
That means it’s now possible to know the salaries top tech companies pay their workers. For example:
Notably, these salary listings do not include any bonuses or equity grants, which many tech companies use to attract and retain employees.
California is the latest and biggest state to enact a pay transparency law, joining Colorado and New York City, which had previously passed similar policies. But more than 20% of Fortune 500 companies are based in California, including leaders in technology and media, and advocates hope that California’s new law will be the tipping point that turns posting salary information into standard practice.
In the U.S., there are now 13 cities and states which require employers to share salary information, covering about one in four workers in the U.S., according to Payscale, a software firm focusing on salary comparison.
California’s pay transparency law is intended to reduce gender and race pay gaps and help minorities and women better compete in the labor market. For example, people can compare their current pay with job listings with the same job title and see if they’re being underpaid.
Women earn about 83 cents for every dollar a man earns, according to the U.S. Census.
“You’re going to need a lot of different elements in place in order for men and women to get paid the same for the same amount of work and the same experience,” said Monique Limón, the California state senator who sponsored the new law. “And one of those is transparency around salary ranges.”
But the new disclosures under the law might not tell the whole story of what a job pays. Companies can choose to display wide pay ranges, violating the spirit of the law, and the law doesn’t require companies to reveal bonuses or equity compensation.
The law could also penalize ambitious workers who are gunning for more money because of their experience or skills, the California Chamber of Commerce said last year when opposing the bill. Some employers might be wary of posting pay to prevent bidding wars for top talent.
In a comment to CNBC, a Meta spokesperson said, “To ensure fairness and eliminate bias in our compensation systems, we regularly conduct pay equity analysis, and our latest analysis confirms that we continue to have pay equity across genders globally and by race in the US for people in similar jobs.” The firm also noted that it generally pays full-time employees in equity as well as cash.
Apple and Google did not immediately return requests for comment.
The new law
There are two primary components to California Senate Bill No. 1162, which was passed in September and went into effect on Jan. 1.
First is the pay transparency component on job listings, which applies to any company with more than 15 employees if the job could be done in California.
The second part requires companies with more than 100 employees to submit a pay data report to the state of California with detailed salary information broken down by race, sex, and job category. Companies have to provide a similar report on the federal level, but California now requires more details.
Employers are required to maintain detailed records of each job title and its wage history, and California’s Labor Commissioner can inspect those records. California can enforce the law through fines and can investigate violations. The reports won’t be published publicly under the new law.
California state Sen. Limón said that the bill helps narrow pay gaps by giving information to people so they can negotiate their pay better or determine if they are being underpaid for their experience and skills. It will also help the state check to make sure companies are following existing equal pay laws.
“The reason this is important is that we are not able to address problems that we cannot see,” Limón said.
Limón also hopes that the requirement will help California companies recruit the best talent and compete against other states which don’t require employers to post salaries. Ultimately, she says, helping making sure women and people of color are getting paid equally will help California’s economy.
Pay transparency laws could cause competition among companies that need to compete for the best talent. Some companies could even choose to post salary ranges on job listings where it’s not required.
“The consequence is not just for an individual, there are economic consequences for the state for people being underpaid,” Limón said. “That means that their earning power and how they’re able to contribute to this economy in California, whether it’s through a sales market, a housing market, through investment, is limited, because they are not being paid equitably.”
Loopholes
The new law doesn’t require employers to post total compensation, meaning that companies can leave out information about stock grants and bonuses, offering a highly incomplete picture for some highly paid jobs.
For high-paying jobs in the technology industry, equity compensation in the form of restricted stock units can make up a large percentage of an employee’s take-home pay. In industries like finance, bonuses make up a big portion of annual pay.
“Especially for tech employees, ultimately people want to know how much they’re getting in total compensation,” said Zuhayeer Musa, co-founder of Levels.fyi, a firm focused on recruiting and coaching for technology workers. “Sometimes stock compensation can be more than 50% of your actual total comp.”
Musa said that stock from big tech companies is basically liquid because it can be immediately sold on the stock market.
The new law also allows companies to provide wide ranges for pay, sometimes ranging over $100,000 or more between the lowest salary and the highest salary for a position. That seemingly violates the spirit of the law, but companies say that the ranges are realistic because base pay can vary widely based on skills, qualifications, experience, and location.
Companies may be open to hiring candidates with a range of experience — starting from entry-level to a more senior person — for a particular opening, said Lulu Seikaly, senior corporate attorney at Payscale.
Seikaly said she recommends clients should post job listings with a specific seniority level to narrow the potential pay range.
“When we talk to customers, and they ask what do you think is a good faith range, we tell them that’s a business decision, but the way we would do it, especially from the legal side, if you post by levels, that’s going to cover you a lot more than posting one wide range,” Seikaly said.
Some California companies are not listing salaries for jobs clearly intended to be performed in other states, but advocates hope California’s new law could spark more salary disclosures around the country. After all, a job listing with an explicit starting salary or range is likely to attract more candidates than one with unclear pay.
“I was telling some folks this morning that pay transparency right now is kind of the exception,” Seikaly said. “Give it five to 10 years, I think it’ll end up being the norm.”
Charles Liang, chief executive officer of Super Micro Computer Inc., during the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan, on Wednesday, June 5, 2024. The trade show runs through June 7.
Annabelle Chih | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Super Micro investors continued to rush the exits on Friday, pushing the stock down another 9% and bringing this week’s selloff to 44%, after the data center company lost its second auditor in less than two years.
The company’s shares fell as low as $26.23, wiping out all of the gains for 2024. Shares had peaked at $118.81 in March, at which point they were up more than fourfold for the year. Earlier that month, S&P Dow Jones added the stock to the S&P 500, and Wall Street was rallying around the company’s growth, driven by sales of servers packed with Nvidia’s artificial intelligence processors.
Super Micro’s spectacular collapse since March has wiped out roughly $55 billion in market cap and left the company at risk of being delisted from the Nasdaq. On Wednesday, as the stock was in the midst of its second-worst day ever, Super Micro said it will provide a “business update” regarding its latest quarter on Tuesday, which is Election Day in the U.S.
The company’s recent challenges date back to August, when Super Micro said it would not file its annual report on time with the SEC. Noted short seller Hindenburg Research then disclosed a short position in the company and wrote in a report that it identified “fresh evidence of accounting manipulation.” The Wall Street Journal later reported that the Department of Justice was in the early stages of a probe into the company.
Super Micro disclosed on Wednesday that Ernst & Young had resigned as its accounting firm just 17 months after taking over from Deloitte & Touche. The auditor said it was “unwilling to be associated with the financial statements prepared by management.”
A Super Micro spokesperson told CNBC that the company “disagrees with E&Y’s decision to resign, and we are working diligently to select new auditors.” Super Micro does not expect matters raised by Ernst & Young to “result in any restatements of its quarterly financial results for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024, or for prior fiscal years,” the representative said.
Analysts at Argus Research on Thursday downgraded the stock in the intermediate term to a hold, citing the Hindenburg note, reports of the Justice Department investigation and the departure of Super Micro’s accounting firm, which the analysts called a “serious matter.” Argus’ fears go beyond accounting irregularities, with the firm suggesting that the company may be doing business with problematic entities.
“The DoJ’s concerns, in our view, may be mainly about related-party transactions and about SMCI products ending up in the hands of sanctioned Russian companies,” the analysts wrote.
In September, the month after announcing its filing delay, Super Micro said it had received a notification from the Nasdaq indicating that its late status meant the company wasn’t in compliance with the exchange’s listing rules. Super Micro said the Nasdaq’s rules allowed the company 60 days to file its report or submit a plan to regain compliance. Based on that timeframe, the deadline would be mid-November.
Though Super Micro hasn’t filed financials with the SEC since May, the company said in an August earnings presentation that revenue more than doubled for a third straight quarter. Analysts expect that, for the fiscal first quarter ended September, revenue jumped more than 200% to $6.45 billion, according to LSEG. That’s up from $2.1 billion a year earlier and $1.9 billion in the same fiscal quarter of 2023.
WATCH: I don’t know if Super Micro is guilty or innocent, says Jim Cramer
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks at the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco on June 8, 2022.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon shares jumped 7% on Friday and neared an all-time high after the company reported better-than-expected earnings, driven by growth in its cloud computing and advertising businesses.
The stock is up about 32% for the year and touched $200.50 on Friday. Its highest close was $200, a mark the stock hit twice in July.
Revenue increased 11% in the quarter to $158.9 billion, topping the $157.2 billion estimate of analysts surveyed by LSEG. Earnings of $1.43 topped the average analyst estimate of $1.14.
Sales in the Amazon Web Services cloud business increased 19% to $27.4 billion, coming in just shy of analysts’ estimates, according to StreetAccount. That was an acceleration from 12% a year ago, but trailed growth at rivals Microsoft and Google, where cloud revenue increased 33% and 35%, respectively. Microsoft’s Azure number includes other cloud services.
Amazon’s capital expenditures surged 81% year over year to $22.62 billion, as the company continues to invest in data centers and equipment such as Nvidia processors to power artificial intelligence products. Amazon has launched several AI products in its cloud and e-commerce businesses, and it is also expected to announce a new version of its Alexa voice assistant powered by generative AI.
“Amazon has integrated AI into what is the most diverse tech footprint of any mega cap, with multi-billion revenue streams in e-commerce, advertising, subscriptions, online video, and cloud,” analysts at Roth MKM wrote in a note after the earnings report. They have a buy rating on the stock.
Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s chief financial officer, said on the earnings call that the majority of the company’s 2024 capex spending is to support the growing need for technology infrastructure.
CEO Andy Jassy said the company plans to spend about $75 billion on capex in 2024 and that he suspects the company will spend more next year.
“The increased bumps here are really driven by generative AI,” Jassy said on the call. “It is a really unusually large, maybe once-in-a-lifetime type of opportunity,” he said, noting that shareholders “will feel good about this long term that we’re aggressively pursuing it.”
Advertising was another bright spot. Sales in the unit expanded 19% to $14.3 billion during the quarter, meeting expectations and outpacing growth in Amazon’s core retail business.
Amazon’s ad growth was about in line with Meta, which saw 18.7% expansion, and faster than growth at Google, which reported a 15% increase in ad revenue. Snap‘s sales also jumped 15% from a year earlier.
Amazon forecast revenue in the current quarter to be between $181.5 billion and $188.5 billion, which would represent growth of 7% to 11% year over year. The midpoint of that range, $185 billion, fell short of the average analyst estimate of $186.2 billion, according to LSEG.
— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.
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