Employees heading into work at Google. Source: Shutterstock
Who are today’s tech companies hiring?
WHEN you think of tech companies, you think they’d be staffed with high-caliber programmers: generalists who can code in a few in-demand languages, or specialists who call themselves analysts or data scientists.
However, there are other non-tech skills that today’s tech companies need to survive. According to a new survey by employer review site Glassdoor, 43 percent of the open positions in tech companies today are for non-tech roles; the other 57 percent are for tech roles.
Here is a list of the top five non-tech roles at tech companies, ranked by demand:
- Account executive
- Project manager
- Sales representative
- Operations manager
- Account manager
“As tech companies grow and mature, they begin to require a variety of more traditional non-tech roles to help transform their tech into revenue. Sales, marketing, business operations — these are the roles that can help scale a company in any industry, creating the opportunity for a variety of positions to work at these coveted tech employers,” said the report.
Who earns the big bucks?
Usually, it is the tech talent that commands a premium. Especially in a tech company.
Figures from Glassdoor’s US study show that for non-tech jobs, most salaries are concentrated in the US$50,000 to US$90,000 per year range.
By comparison, tech job salaries are significantly higher, with the majority falling into the US$80,000 to US$120,000 per year range.
For tech jobs, the average base pay in our sample was $98,400 per year, while the average base pay for non-tech roles was US$73,500 per year — a difference in average pay of more than US$20,000 per year.
While there are some examples of both non-tech and tech jobs with base pay above US$150,000 per year, there are many fewer non-tech roles that fall into this category.
Xiaomi Inc in China employs about 15,000 tech and non-tech people. Source: Shutterstock
These figures and trends hold true in Asia too.
According to the Robert Walters Greater China and Southeast Asia Salary Survey 2018, a business analyst in China earns up to RMB 800,000 (US$ 88,000) while a software architect can up to RMB 1.3 million (US$ 191,000) per annum.
However, a financial analyst might earn up to RMB 350,000 (US$51,380) and a sales manager can make up to RMB 550,000 (US$81,000) – excluding commissions, of course.
Figures are similar in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia too, according to Robert Walters’ report.
“Despite growing opportunities for non-tech workers in tech, there’s a stark difference in the average salary between tech and non-tech job openings. While some legal and marketing management positions in our sample had high salaries, there are significantly fewer high paying non-tech roles in tech,” Glassdoor concluded.