This is how a country’s Olympic medal haul compares with… the average pay of IT staff
The Olympic Games will no doubt be watched closely by the world's IT staff. They may have a lot riding on it.
At least according to one very original study, which claims to have found "strong correlations" between a nation's Olympics performance and how much their software developers are paid.
Salary-benchmarking site Emolument.com's theory is that IT professionals' pay can be linked to a country's economic prosperity.
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The merit of that link aside, here is what Emolument.com found after analysing the salaries of 6,731 software developers in 21 countries and comparing it with the number of medals they won at the 2012 Olympics:
Switzerland the the Russia appear to be major outliers.
But Emolument has the answer:
While the yearly income in Switzerland is 33 per cent larger than the United States, they came in 33rd in regards to the number of medals won. For the Winter Olympics though, the Swiss ranked 7th. Clearly a matter of topology in this case!
Russia may be on the lower end of the median compensation offered but outperforms most other countries in its performance at the Olympics. The Russian state has a vested interest in doing well in the Olympics, a key indicator of national greatness in which Russians take great pride.