Glassdoor: Google dethrones Twitter as the best tech company to work for in the U.S., also tops new U.K. list

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Career website Glassdoor today released its seventh annual Employees’ Choice Awards, a list of the 50 best places to work for in the coming year. Google was elected the number one tech company to work for in 2015, displacing Twitter.

In the last two years, Google placed sixth, and we were surprised it wasn’t higher, so this year’s list makes sense in that regard. Yet it’s worth noting that Google didn’t just take the top tech company spot: it was the top company overall.

Last year, Twitter displaced Facebook, which held the top tech company crown for three years straight (2011, 2012, and 2013). This year, Twitter isn’t even on the list.

In previous years, many tech companies placed rather close to the number one spot. This year, F5 Networks was the only other tech firm that managed to break the top 10.

In fact, there were just 14 companies among the top 50 this year. That’s down from 22 tech companies last year.

Here are the tech companies on this year’s U.S. list (ratings are based on a five-point scale: from 1.0 as very dissatisfied to 5.0 as very satisfied):

• Google (#1, 4.5 rating)


• F5 Networks (#4, 4.3 rating)


• Facebook (#13, 4.1 rating)


• Qualcomm (#14, 4.1 rating)


• Adobe (#18, 4.1 rating)


• MathWorks (#19, 4.1 rating)


• Apple (#22, 4.0 rating)


• LinkedIn (#23, 4.0 rating)


• Zillow (#33, 3.9 rating)


• Mindboy (#34, 3.9 rating)


• Nvidia (#36, 3.9 rating)


• Orbitz Worldwide (#42, 3.9 rating)


• Interactive Intelligence (#44, 3.9 rating)


• Genesys (#45, 3.9 rating)

Both Google and Facebook compensate their engineers very well, so seeing them near the top is never surprising. As in previous years though, Apple didn’t do as well as we thought it would (that said, it is up to #22, while it was #35 last year). Once again, Microsoft didn’t make the list (it didn’t last year or the year before that either).

This brings us to the U.K. list, which Glassdoor is doing for the first time this year. Google was first there as well, although with a slightly lower rating of 4.4. Despite its absence on the U.S. list, Microsoft placed third in the U.K. with a rating of 4.1.

The other two tech companies on the list were Cisco (#8, 3.9 rating) and Expedia (#25, 3.2 rating). The UK list thus had four tech companies on it, meaning was the category tied with finance as the most-represented industry.

The Employees’ Choice Awards is 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.”

In other words, these results are based on what employees anonymously tell Glassdoor about their employer. These include the best reasons to work for a given company, the downsides, how satisfied they are with their company overall, how they feel their CEO is leading the company, as well as key workplace attributes like career opportunities, compensation, benefits, culture, values, senior management, and work-life balance.

Google engineers are clearly happy with the company as of late. Twitter employees meanwhile were happier before they experienced its first year as a public company.

Here’s the full list of 50 companies in the U.S.:

Here’s the full list of 25 companies in the U.K.: