Facebook drops off the greatest places to work list
A new list of the 25 companies that give employees a good work-life balance has 12 tech companies on it, but the only big name is LinkedIn. And Facebook has fallen off the list since 2011.
Marquee tech companies have always had a good rap of being great places to work: beautiful campuses, casual clothing, free food, and lunchtime workouts. But maybe that's not really the case?
A new list by company review site Glassdoor compiled the 25 best places to work for those trying to achieve an even work-life balance for 2012. And the results are surprising.
Of all well-known tech companies out there, LinkedIn, Orbitz, and CareerBuilder were the only ones to make the list. And for the first time, Facebook entirely dropped off the list. However, of the 25 companies, 12 were tech focused -- so maybe it's just the smaller companies that offer the good life.
The ratings are based on 385,000 company reviews given over the past year by employees. The goal of this listing was to look for companies that don't keep their employees chained to their desks or laptops 24/7. Glassdoor sought workers who could balance their lives between work and personal life and whose employers offered benefits like flexible schedules, work from home options, free food, and a gym at work.
The top five companies were MITRE, North Highland, Agilent Technologies, SAS Institute, and CareerBuilder. And of these five, three are technology companies, Agilent Technologies, SAS Institute, and CareerBuilder.
"SAS offers countless benefits (not just health insurance) like aquatic center, onsite childcare, subsidized meals at the onsite cafes, gym, and list goes on and on and on," a SAS employee told Glassdoor. While an employee for MITRE said, "Work-life balance is very real and everyone is encouraged to take time off and keep their work hours under control."
Facebook was No. 7 on the list in 2011 and now it's not even on the list. This is an interesting fact given that the social network has received a lot of press lately about its high-level executives moving on to different companies. In March, Glassdoor specifically scrutinized the social network and determined that Facebook employees biggest gripe was working long hours.