Student Union
Employees Rank Best Companies for Work
Big tech companies like Google, Facebook and LinkedIn have dropped from the Top 10 favorites, a recent worker satisfaction survey shows.
Glassdoor, a popular online job and recruiting site, compiled reviews from anonymous employee grades about workplaces and found Hubspot in Cambridge, Massachusetts, ranked No. 1 in employee satisfaction.
Hubspot is a software developer for marketing sales founded in 2006, the year after co-founder Brian Halligan graduated from the MIT Sloane School of Management. Halligan, who graduated from the University of Vermont in 1990, was also voted a top CEO by employers in 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018.
An employee who self-described as a learning designer in Arlington, Virginia, reviewed Hubspot as "Absolutely Incredible — I'm never leaving!"
"It's such a flexible work environment that it may be a huge shock to someone coming from the outside or from a very structured and disciplined background," wrote the reviewer, who listed this aspect as what might be a negative for some employees. "This does not mean there is no structure or discipline. On the contrary, there's structure with purpose."
Subsequent companies are not all Silicon Valley tech companies whose products are well-known with consumers. In-N-Out Burger in Irvine, California, ranked No. 4; Southwest Airlines in Dallas, Texas, No. 10; and Trader Joe's in Monrovia, California, was No. 14.
No. 5 Sammons Financial Group is headquartered in West Des Moines, Iowa. Sammons CEO is Esfand Dinshaw, who graduated from Drake University.
A business adviser at Sammons called it "a caring company."
"The company truly cares about the team members. … Leaders listen to input from team members and make changes, when possible. Excellent benefits. Recognition for good performance," the adviser said.
The cons?
"The only ‘con’ I can think of is dealing with some legacy technology," the person said.
In the Top 100, Discount Tire in Scottsdale, Arizona, ranked 37; Costco in Issaquah, Washington, ranked 55; John Deere in Moline, Illinois, 58; Milwaukee Tool in Brookfield, Wisconsin, 60; and St. Jude's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, 62.
The top two companies — Hubspot and Bain & Company — are in the Boston area.
West Coast numbers
How did the big tech companies in northern California rate? Google ranked 11; LinkedIn, 12; Microsoft, 21; Facebook, 23; Survey Monkey, 33; Adobe, 39; Dell, 67; Cisco, 77; Accenture, 83; Apple. 84; and Intel, 100.
Google's CEO Sundar Pichai is an Indian immigrant who studied at Stanford University and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He received a 91% approval rating from his employees.
Girish Rishi, who received a 97% approval rating from employees at JDA Software, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, attended the University of Hartford and Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
Women of note
Five of the highly rated CEOs were women: Sheryl Palmer at Taylor Morrison; Colleen Wegman at Wegman's Food Markets; Jennifer Morgan at SAP; Christine Leahy at CDW; Lynne Doughtie at KPMG; and Cindy Mi at VIPKid.
Glassdoor said it promotes workplace transparency, and boasts 60 million unique monthly visitors looking at 12 million job listings, and leaving 55 million reviews, salaries and insight about 1 million employers.
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