The median employee at Salesforce made $155,284 last year — just 3% what CEO Marc Benioff took home (CRM)

pulse

April 20, 2018 11:51 PM

All of Salesforce's top executives brought home seven-figure salaries.

The median Salesforce employee made $155,284 during fiscal year 2018, which ended January 31.
That's just 3% of CEO Marc Benioff's compensation for the fiscal year: $4,653,362.
While Benioff's seven-figure salary is nothing to gawk at, it doesn't tell the full story. Equity wasn't included in the fiscal year 2018 figures, and his real salary is closer to $13.2 million.

The median employee at Salesforce made a total of $155,284 in fiscal year 2018, according to a proxy statement filed by the company Friday.

The word "median" is key here: It's different than an average; this salary represents one Salesforce employee whose salary happens to fall right in the middle of the range for its 29,000 workers around the world — though, notably, that calculation excludes the chief executive.

That median Salesforce employee makes:

While that six figure salary may seem generous, it's nothing compared to top-level executive compensation at the company, which is valued at $90 billion by market cap.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff made $4,653,362 for fiscal year 2018 — a total made up of $1,550,000 in base salary, and $3,100,000 in non-equity insentive compensation. This means that the median employee got paid at a rate of 1-to-30, raking in about 3% of what Benioff made.

Salesforce, like most other publicly-traded companies, is required to disclose this information as part of federal regulation in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. This is the first time Salesforce has ever disclosed this information.

Meanwhile, Salesforce CFO Mark Hawkins made $1,500,000 in salary and incentive pay; chief operating office Keith Block made $2,300,000; Chief Technology Officer and cofounder Parker Harris made $1,800,000, and Chief Strategy Officer Alex Dayon made $1,800,000 as well.

It turns out, however, that these numbers only tell part of the story.

That's because Benioff actually makes around $13.2 million annually when you factor in his equity bonuses.

Salesforce moved its annual executive equity payments from November to March, which means that executives didn't receive any equity payouts during fiscal year 2018. This number made Salesforce's reported executive compensation totals considerably lower than they would have been otherwise, according to the proxy.

If equity were included, Salesforce said that the CEO to employee compensation ration would have been 1 to 130, which means this median employee actually receives just 0.77% of Benioff's annual pay.

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