the buzz log
A Tale of Two Taxpayer Bailouts: Bonus Round
Once upon a time, in a land called Wall Street, a bunch of firms received a biiiiig bailout from Uncle Sam and his little taxpayers. Of the firms, one was an insurance conglomerate called American International Group, with a very naughty financial products unit. Sad AIG had lots and lots of assets to unload, so it couldn't pay Uncle Sam back so fast.
The other was an investment bank named Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs magically turned into a bank holding company, repaid most of the money, and ended up having its best quarter ever.
But both want to give out nice juicy bonuses, and that made Uncle Sam and his little taxpayers see red. How the numbers stack up in this tale of two bailouts, below:
$180 billion
AIG taxpayer bail-out received.
$165 million
AIG March bonuses, part of a $454 million pool paid out for 2008 work. Out of 73 employees who received $1 million to $6.4 million, 11 left the company, including the top bonus-getter.
$273.5 million
Retention bonuses AIG wants to pay in the upcoming weeks.
$10.4 billion
TARP funds repaid June 17 by Goldman Sachs, which borrowed the money in fall 2008. Returning the funds freed the holding company from government restrictions.
$4.7 billion
First-quarter bonuses and compensation that Goldman Sachs paid, out of what Rolling Stone calls "highly suspicious $1.8 billion profit" that included a $12.9 billion payback from AIG, which received funds from taxpayers.
$770,000
Average amount that each of Goldman Sachs' 29,400 employees could receive this year in bonuses—twice the salary of President Barack Obama.
$1.09 trillion
U.S. budget deficit.
9.5%
U.S. unemployment rate as of June, which represents 4.4 million people unable to find a job in the past six months.
$42,270
Average U.S. salary as of May 2008, the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Working in Glass Houses
Transparencies about salaries and job satisfaction? Sounds like a communist plot brewing.
Only a few days old on the Web, Glassdoor is already blanketed in buzz. The site allows working Joes and Janes to dish on their corporate life, from salary to CEO (dis)satisfaction.
While built on the same free concept as travel site TripAdvisor or real estate tell-all Zillow (whose CEO happens to be a Glassdoor founder), the rating system does require participation to see all company reviews.
The most practical appeal may lie in the naked dollar. Despite—or perhaps because of—a rabidly capitalistic bent, Americans are loath to reveal their compensation... except through the magic of anonymity and aggregation. While the San Francisco Chronicle summed up the possible legal brouhahas in revealing the information, Salon already charted a software engineer salary graph—even though Glassdoor boasts only 3,300 reviews at launch.
Middle management and HR hair-pulling aside, will Glassdoor work? Its launch this week already pushed the term into the top 40,000 searches. The initial Silicon Valley bias naturally has brought in online onlookers from the San Francisco-Bay Area and Sacramento, but interest also hails from Chicago, New York, Houston, Philadelphia, and Dallas-Fort Worth. Despite the heavy tech emphasis, women make up 40% of queries.
To compare: Zillow's 2006 launch attracted six times more buzz, and now ranks in the top 1,000 searches this past week. Arguably, there may be more homeowners curious about their assets (and their neighbors') then people comparing their corporate lot.
Then again, Glassdoor's timing during the highest unemployment jump in years may not necessarily be bad: People who feel stuck may find the site a good place to vent, brag or whistleblow. If this were around when Scott McClellan was in the White House...
Filed under: Employment, Jobs, Careers, Internet, Web 2.0, Salaries
What's Wrong With Being Average?
There's nothing wrong with being average. And there's certainly nothing wrong with searching on the word. Because, in Search, the word "average" is anything but.
Every week, thousands of people look up everything from "average salary" to "average credit score" to "average denture cost." Why the obsession with the 50% mean? Well, knowing the average can be a great comfort. After all, nobody wants to be ripped off by their employer, their credit agency, or the local denture outlet.
We assembled a list of the top "average" searches and found a compelling mixture of terms, including the expected (average house size), the surprising (successful people with average IQ), and the extremely specific (average salary for a Burger King manager). Enjoy!
Filed under: Salaries
Salary Searches See a Bump
Rare is the person who is completely satisfied with their salary. Actually, maybe it should be "Nonexistent is the person..." Every week we see queries from curious folks eager to know if they're underpaid.
Some salary searches are simply wishful thinking. After all, who wouldn't want Alex Rodriguez's salary? Other inquiries are more practical—searches like "dental hygienist salary," "airline pilot salary," and "actuary salary" are likely from folks looking for ways to improve their take-home pay.
Below we rank the top 20 salary-related jobs. We cut out the generic terms like "salary calculator" to give you a better idea of which jobs inspire the most curiosity. Now get to work!
top movers
| Rank | Subject | 1-Day Move |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ford 400 | Breakout! |
| 2 | Indonesia Ferry | Breakout! |
| 3 | Jordan Chandler | 3481% |
| 4 | Evan Chandler | 2322% |
| 5 | American Music Awards | 1841% |
| 6 | John F. Kennedy | 1529% |
| 7 | Turkey Stuffing Recipes | 1361% |
| 8 | Liam Hemsworth | 1172% |
| 9 | Lou Dobbs | 1142% |
| 10 | Hendrick Motorsports | 888% |
top leaders
| Rank | Subject | Move | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Black Friday | +340 | 1290 |
| 2 | NFL | +489 | 670 |
| 3 | Jennifer Lopez | +451 | 515 |
| 4 | New Moon | -67 | 250 |
| 5 | American Music Awards | +236 | 249 |
| 6 | UFC | -36 | 239 |
| 7 | Miley Cyrus | +66 | 169 |
| 8 | Hulu | -11 | 154 |
what's the buzz?
A subject's buzz score is the percentage of Yahoo! users searching for that subject on a given day, multiplied by a constant to make the number easier to read. Weekly leaders are the subjects with the greatest average buzz score for a given week.
For more detailed information, visit our FAQ.