Highest Paid People in a Corporation?

Aside from the C-Suite, obviously, who are the highest paid people within corporations? People on the technical side, like SWEs or Data Scientists, or people on the "corporate" side, like CorpStrat or CorpDev.

This is interesting because I think in a lot of companies, the technical people are paid more. So why do banking just to exit to a worse function in a corporation rather than simply doing something technical?

13 Comments
 

The ppl that exit to corpdev are the ppl who are tryna chill or burnt out. Why would you think those ppl would want to position themselves into the corporate meat grinder to become CEO

 

You can make a lot of money doing anything in a corporation as long as you're high enough up the ladder. Even the VP of HR makes a ton of money. Sales guys make a lot, as do technical people. Corporate people (dev/strat) make solid money with the hopes of becoming a business leader. They're all completely different  paths that require completely different personalities. 

It all depends on the company too. Certain companies/industries value certain skillsets more than others. 

 

Rainmakers

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

This is the brokers and sales guys, hahaha. Sometimes, in a good year, they will make more than most of their C-suite if they own their own book. In CRE a good production team that owns their book mannnnnnnn. 

I know sales guys at Gov't contracted corps, man they just need to keep their Agency counterparties happy and up to date and make 700-1.5M on a easy year. Less than Csuite but more than anyone else

 
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capexprss

This is the brokers and sales guys, hahaha. Sometimes, in a good year, they will make more than most of their C-suite if they own their own book. In CRE a good production team that owns their book mannnnnnnn. 

I know sales guys at Gov't contracted corps, man they just need to keep their Agency counterparties happy and up to date and make 700-1.5M on a easy year. Less than Csuite but more than anyone else

Nearly every role at the top is based on sales. I worked in Management Consulting and the partner who closed the deal, sometimes for billions in signings (ie 5 year contract) got a small percentage of the deal.

Even in IB the top guys are incentivized to close big deals.

You’re right about gov’t contracting. I got stuck in that industry as I had a military background and didn’t realize how good people had it at the time in that industry. The pay isn’t stellar starting out versus the civilian side, but if you make partner, you just keep solid relationships with the clients and barely have to do anything.

And C-suite people obviously need good sales numbers.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

If they're not C-level the highest paid are almost ALWAYS sales. Rainmakers gotta be kept happy if they're going to be kept around. They are the revenue generators. It's almost never going to be people on the technical side or back office (unless it's a research/innovation-driven business in which case engineers/data scientists would be highly paid, but still not typically as high as the top performing sales/bizdev people).

"If you don't have any enemies in life you have never stood up for anything" - Winston Churchill | "It's a testament to the sheer belligerence of the profession that people would rather argue about the 'risk-adjusted returns' of using inferior tooth cleaning methods." - kellycriterion
 

IT company (back office finance VP) employee.  

In terms of take home pay, it's without question Sales, often quota carrying sales with (1) loyal and consistent Clients or (2) whoever landed the big new logo of the year.  These employees can make as much as the C-suite (albeit they're small in quantity).  It's not uncommon to have the top 25% of the sales staff at or above VP-level compensation (VP IT, VP Finance, VP HR, VP Services, etc).  

Excluding sales, I find that 'most' departments pay somewhat equally (+/- 15%) at Director and VP levels.  IT is definitely the place to make decent money at an individual contributor level (engineers, developers on homegrown or outdated applications, etc.).  

 

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