Which are the UK's best-paying companies?

Job satisfaction's all very well - but, let's face it, most of us work mainly for the money.

And there seems to be less and less of it around at the moment, with official figures showing that the real wages of the average UK employee have fallen by almost 10% since 2008.

Some companies, though, are bucking the trend and offering serious money to their staff. According to figures from jobs website Glassdoor, Facebook, for example, offers a median pay package of £79,000.

That's more than two and a half times the average British pay of £27,600, and higher than the prime minister's official pay.

It's worth noting that the top two payers - German software firm SAP and data storage company EMC - are both technology companies, as are several others on the list. And salaries are generally very good across the tech sector, largely because of skills shortages. Technology marches faster than training, and it's a perennial problem for the industry.

"Booming demand on a global scale for software engineers, database administrators and data scientists has far outpaced the supply of these skilled, hard-to-find employees," says Glassdoor chief economist Dr. Andrew Chamberlain.

"With tech companies scrambling to poach these valuable workers from competitors, a bidding war has pushed tech salaries to unprecedented heights in recent years."

Also very promiment in the high-pay listings are consulting companies, with McKinsey & Company and Boston Consulting Group taking third and fourth place in the list.

Here, it's experience and seniority that bump pay packages up: generally speaking, you don't get to be a consultant until you've really established yourself in the field, meaning you're probably already earning a lot.

"Top consultants have personal contacts, reputations, and specialised skills and knowledge. Many clients stay with the same consultant for decades at a time," says Chamberlain.

"As a result, these employees are even more valuable to their employers, pushing their salaries to sky-high levels, and making it tough for other people to compete for their jobs."

It might seem surprising that more banks don't feature on the list - after all, bankers are well-known for their sky-high pay. But because the list shows the median salary - the middle figure when every employee's pay is written in a row - the multi-million pound pay packets are counteracted by the many low-paid counter staff.

Across the board, in fact, the gap between the highest and lowest earners is growing. According to the High Pay Centre think tank, the bosses of the UK's 100 biggest firms earn the average Brit's annual salary for just 22 hours of work.

Companies like tech and consulting firms, though, tend to have large numbers of well-paid staff, with very few low-skilled workers. Others make a moral point of having a flat pay structure - so that even if you don't earn all that much you can console yourself with the fact that the boss isn't doing thousands of times better.

And while money does undoubtedly make people happier, there's a limit to how much you need, a US survey five years ago showed. Two Princeton scientists compared people's earnings to their levels of happiness.

And, they found, both life satisfaction and happiness rose steadily the more people were paid. However, happiness plateaued when people reached a salary of $75,000 - £51,873 - with those on million-dollar salaries hardly any happier.

As the authors write, "Perhaps $75,000 is a threshold beyond which further increases in income no longer improve individuals' ability to do what matters most to their emotional well-being, such as spending time with people they like, avoiding pain and disease, and enjoying leisure."

UK's 10 highest paying companies (Glassdoor):

1. SAP
Median Total Compensation: £90,000
Median Base Salary: £75,000
Industry: Tech

2. EMC
Median Total Compensation: £86,500
Median Base Salary: £70,000
Industry: Tech

3. McKinsey & Company
Median Total Compensation: £85,499
Median Base Salary: £78,000
Industry: Consulting

4. Boston Consulting Group
Median Total Compensation: £83,311
Median Base Salary: £80,000
Industry: Consulting

5. Facebook
Median Total Compensation: £79,500
Median Base Salary: £68,420
Industry: Tech

6. Deutsche Bank
Median Total Compensation: £75,000
Median Base Salary: £65,000
Industry: Banking

7. Nomura International
Median Total Compensation: £74,990
Median Base Salary: £65,000
Industry: Banking

8. Cisco Systems
Median Total Compensation: £74,000
Median Base Salary: £58,952.5
Industry: Tech

9. Google
Median Total Compensation: £73,300
Median Base Salary: £60,225
Industry: Tech

10. BNP Paribas
Median Total Compensation: £73,000
Median Base Salary: £62,000
Industry: Banking

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Flying high literally as well as metaphorically, pilots top the salary scale this year. There are various routes into the job, from university courses to airlines' own training schemes; private training will set you back as much as £50,000 to £60,000.

"I most enjoy the variety of the job, working as a team, to a schedule, with the responsibility of safely transporting hundreds of people to their destination. I would advise aspiring pilots to thoroughly research training routes, understand the serious financial outlay required with no guarantee of a job after training and to consider other routes such as flight instruction."