For the 99.99 percent of the U.S workforce that doesn’t work at a sexy, twenty-first century high technology or Web services company, there is a lot of tech giant envy. (Who didn’t ever dream of being able to come down the Google (News - Alert) slide?) We read about Silicon Valley company workforce perks that include massage therapy, in-house medical staff, dry cleaning services, free food and good coffee. We dream of being able to roam the modern buildings with just a laptop and Bluetooth headset, communing with our peers via video conferencing on our tablets and bringing our dogs along just for fun.
In years past, social media giant Facebook held the unofficial title of “best tech company to work for.” Actually, it wasn’t unofficial: the company that Mark Zuckerberg helped build topped a list of the 50 best technology companies to work for, as ranked by the Glassdoor annual Employees’ Choice Awards for three years running. But this year, the company has been dethroned by another social media giant: microblogging service Twitter (News - Alert).
Twitter, which went public this year, appears in the number two spot on the overall list (topped only by Bain & Company) and number one among technology companies. In third place is business social media service LinkedIn (News - Alert). Facebook has dropped to the number five spot on the overall list, and number three among technology companies.
The tech industry made an exceptionally good showing on this year’s overall list. Of the top 50 best places to work, 22 of them were technology companies, more than any other industry on the list. Google remained in the number six spot on the list, and Apple (News - Alert) shows up in the number 16 spot (number 35 on the overall list).
The top 10 technology companies were ranked as follows:
The companies are ranked by a combination of factors from employee input. According to the Next Web, the Employees’ Choice Awards are based on the input of employees who choose to provide feedback on their job, work environment, and company, via an anonymous online company review survey. Glassdoor then uses a “proprietary algorithm” to determine an overall ranking “based on the quantity, quality and consistency of reviews.”
The Next Web notes, wisely, that most of these reviews would have been collected before Twitter went public, so things may change next year as employees get the hang of the transition from privately owned to publicly owned.