On Fri, 19 Jun 2009, Brad Knowles wrote:

> Michael Halligan wrote:
>
>>> My understanding is that the fully loaded cost of regular employees (of
>>> any type) is at least 3x their salary in low-overhead organizations,
>>> and 5x to 10x in high overhead organizations.  I'm not sure how that
>>> works out with employees that get most of their income through
>>> incentive compensation or stock options, but I don't think that a
>>> sysadmin would tend to fall in those categories with most employers.
>>
>> As the owner of several businesses, I promise you this rule of thumb
>> is the work of some delusional man's imagination. I this
>> were true, none of the 5-50 person companies I know personally would
>> be able to perform business at all.
>
> Could you be more specific in terms of what rule of thumb you are
> specifically referring to?  I've had these numbers quoted by people who ran
> small to medium size businesses, and by people who knew of the internal
> overhead costs at larger (and higher overhead) businesses, so I'd like to
> understand your personal experience better and what universal rules of thumb
> you would extract from that experience.

a multiplier of 1.5-2x accounts for taxes, health care, etc

the only way to get to the 5-10x costs you are describing is if you 
allocate a portion of the cost of the building, HR department, management, 
etc to each 'worker' employee.

for some companies this latter accounting may be very reasonable (if your 
consultants are the ones generating the income, everything else is part of 
the cost of supporting those bodies), but for most a figure closer to 2x 
is more reasonable.

David Lang
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