The big technology companies, without a doubt, are a huge engine of employment around the world, although they have been going through a downturn lately. In recent years they have hired thousands of people with very diverse profiles and, although computer engineers abound in their ranks, these professionals are far from being an overwhelming majority.
As multinationals that they are, Google, Microsoft or Apple, among others, need very diverse employees, and in their workforce there is a large number of graduates in careers such as Business Administration, Marketing, Mathematics or Economics. Below we explain what are the most common qualifications among the workers of the big tech.
Informatics Engineering. Careers related to Computer Engineering, Computer Science and the like continue to be the most abundant among the employees of these companies, so they are the most direct entry route. According to data from LinkedIn, Amazon has almost 175,000 graduates in these careers, Google just over 100,000, Microsoft and IBM about 120,000 and Meta and Apple around 40,000.
Electronic Engineering. Many of these companies are not only responsible for software development, but also manufacture hardware. The clearest cases are those of Apple, Samsung or IBM, but all the big technology companies, to a greater or lesser extent, create their own devices. Therefore, in all of them the number of electronic engineers is also important.
Apple has some 15,000 of these graduates in its ranks, according to data from LinkedIn, IBM with more than 25,000, Samsung with about 9,000, Amazon with around 20,000, Google and Microsoft with just over 10,000 and Meta with around 5,000.
Business Administration. Among the non-technological profiles that are most abundant in these large multinationals are graduates in Business Administration and Management (ADE), something normal if we take into account that they are large corporations that need a large number of professionals to take care of everything. matters related to the management and finances of a company.
Amazon, for example, has about 45,000 employees with a career in ADE, IBM more than 16,000, Microsoft more than 13,000, Google around 12,000, Apple around 9,000 and Meta around 5,000.
Marketing. Another of the careers with the most graduates in the big technology companies is Marketing, and it is not surprising, since for some of them advertising is their main source of income, and for others it is a notable line of business. Thus, Amazon has about 23,000 employees with this career, Google around 11,000, Microsoft about 8,000, Meta just over 5,000 and Apple just over 4,000.
Math. Another fairly common career among employees of large technology companies is Mathematics. IBM has about 8,500 of these graduates, Google with more than 7,500, Microsoft with around 6,500 and Meta with just under 3,000.
Economy and Finance. Finally, among the careers of big tech employees we also find many degrees related to economics, finance and international trade. Amazon employs about 20,000 International Business graduates, IBM about 10,000, Apple about 4,000 and Samsung about 2,000.
As for economics graduates, there are more than 17,000 in the Amazon workforce, around 10,000 in Google, more than 6,500 in Microsoft, around 4,500 in Meta and around 2,000 in Samsung.
Not everything is titles. However, both employees and managers of many of these companies have repeated on several occasions that university degrees are not the most important thing to get a job in big technology. For example, in May we featured the case of a Google employee who works as a product specialist at the Californian multinational and who studied Business Sciences at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.
This professional explained, through her TikTok account, that to work at Google, titles are not as important as experience relevant to the position to which you apply. Although she clarified that, obviously, it is easier to have that experience if the candidate has studied a related career.
However, in the technology sector we know of several cases of self-taught professionals who, without having obtained a university degree, have landed a relevant job thanks to their experience and the quality of their work.
The data. The data for this article has been obtained from the public profiles of the companies cited on LinkedIn, so the actual figures may vary slightly. The numbers have been taken as a sample that, without representing the exact total, do serve to give us a fairly precise idea of the majority degrees in each of the companies.
Likewise, we have chosen a series of technology companies that stand out for their popularity, turnover and number of employees, there are many others that have been left out. Finally, the data of some companies, such as Tencent, are not accurately reflected publicly, so it has been decided to discard them for this article.
Image | ICSA
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism