Headcount and pay review

Every budget season, Finance asks the same three questions about people: how many do we have, what do they cost, and where is the next hire most needed. This year there is a fourth: Angela Rivera wants a second Support Team Lead, because she says her managers are stretched. Laura Bennett, Head of Finance, will not sign off on a new manager role without numbers.

The data is small, 60 employees, but people data has its own traps: reporting lines that lead nowhere, averages that hide the typical salary, and groups so small that a summary gives away someone’s pay. This case is the whole job:

1. Frame the question: which people, which measures, which comparison, and what decision it feeds.
2. Check the data: duplicates, managers who are not on the list, the one person with no manager, salaries that look wrong.
3. Analyse in SQL, pandas or Excel, whichever you prefer: headcount, payroll, mean and median pay by department, and direct reports per manager.
4. Recommend: pick the paragraph you would send, with the numbers and the caveats, including what must stay private.

The case opens when you finish any one of SQL chapter 5, pandas chapter 7 or Excel chapter 2. It uses a self-join (or a self-merge in pandas, or COUNTIF on a 60-row sheet in Excel); the lessons walk through each.