If you know someone who works at a leading technology company, you may have heard about some of the amazing benefits they use to lure coders, program managers, data scientists, and other highly skilled workers. Such employers offer everything from on-site day care and nap rooms to free cafeterias, gyms, dry cleaning, and massages. The descriptions of those workplace perks can make those of us whose resumes aren't liberally sprinkled with words such as "Java," "Python" or "C++" green with envy.
What may not have occurred to you is that these perks aren't solely for employees who do the technology-based work. An accountant at Apple has the same access to the company's fitness facilities as a coder, the human resources specialist at Microsoft enjoys the same amazing selection of free drinks as the folks working on the XBox One X, and a salesperson at Alphabet can take the same extended paid new-parent leave as an engineer developing its autonomous vehicle systems.
So, if you dream about working for a company that offers more benefits than a stale pot of coffee in a break room where the couch is patched with duct tape, you might be interested in a new report from Glassdoor that shows more than four out of 10 jobs at technology companies are non-tech in nature.
A look at tech company hiring
To compile its results, Glassdoor looked at technology companies with at least 100 job postings. It then examined the open jobs and classified them as "tech" or "non-tech." The jobs and recruiting site defined tech jobs as those "requiring knowledge of code, software or data," according to a press release.
Glassdoor also eliminated any third-party jobs, and used its own Know Your Worth tool to estimate salaries for every open job. It found that just 57% -- nearly 71,000 open positions -- were technology-based, while the remaining 53,000 or so were not.
The ratios varied widely from tech company to tech company. Glassdoor found that Intel, Microsoft, and Walmart eCommerce had the highest percentages of tech jobs to fill, at 78%. Amazon was not far behind -- 72% of its open positions fell in the tech jobs category.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, more than half of the jobs posted at IBM, Salesforce, and Verizon were non-tech positions. Uber was in roughly the same place, with a 50/50 split.
Does the pay compare?
While the perks and benefits at these companies may be equally generous regardless of the job category, the pay scales are not. In most cases, non-tech workers make less money -- and the difference is big enough that you probably can't make it up in free coffee or massages.
"For non-tech jobs, most salaries are concentrated in the $50,000 to $90,000 per year range," wrote Glassdoor's Amanda Stansell. "By comparison, tech job salaries are significantly higher, with the majority falling into the $80,000 to $120,000 per year range."
The average base pay numbers clearly reflect a major difference. Tech workers' average base was $98,400 per year, compared to $73,500 for non-tech employees. Of course, averages can be skewed somewhat by salary outliers -- while there were examples of non-tech jobs paying more than $150,000, there were significantly more tech positions paying that much.
It's about more than perks and pay
It's pretty cool to have an arcade, a basketball court, and free meals at the office, but none of those are reasons to take a job. You should weigh every piece of an offer, and consider the whole culture and workplace environment when deciding whether to take a job at a technology company -- or anywhere else.
Benefits and pay matter, of course, but so do quality of life and the nature of the work you will be doing. If you're happy with the total package, then added benefits and cool office stuff will only sweeten the deal.