Show HN: I put employees inside S&P 500 market-cap bubbles

What happened

A developer shared a new tool on Hacker News, a tech forum. It draws each S&P 500 company as a bubble. Bigger bubbles mean a higher market cap, which is the total value of a company's shares. Bubbles are grouped by industry sector. Inside each bubble, small stick figures stand for employees. Users can click a company to see details and zoom in to see the small ones.

How to read the chart

Think of it as a way to compare money and people at the same time. A bubble full of tiny figures is worth little per worker. A big bubble with only a few figures is worth a lot per worker. Because every figure is the same size, how packed a bubble looks shows how many employees it has for each dollar of market value.

Key facts

• Only companies with enough employees and a large enough market cap are shown. These make up a share of the S&P 500.
• A few large companies with fewer employees, such as Palantir and Welltower, are drawn as one half-size figure.
• Employee counts are full-time staff from each company's latest annual report, so they can be up to a year old.

Why it matters

The chart gives a simple picture of how value and jobs are related. Some companies are worth a lot of money but employ few people. Others have many workers but are worth less. Seeing this side by side can help people think about how big companies make money.

What to watch

• Whether the creator adds more companies or new details.
• How the employee numbers change when companies publish new annual reports.
• How market values shift, since bubble sizes will change as stock prices move.