
Glassdoor: Airbnb dethrones Google as the best tech company to work for in U.S - aritraghosh007
http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/08/glassdoor-airbnb-dethrones-google-as-the-best-tech-company-to-work-for-in-the-u-s/
======
noname123
I find these rankings to be really arbitrary. They should really have them
split into categories like they have them for types of schools people like to
go to (engineering schools, big city schools, hipster schools, ivies, facing-
saving schools for ivy rejects etc.),

Perfect Places for A Personality People also Like Cults (Amazon, Bridgewater
Associates)

Places for people who like to Chillax and Still Get Paid (Lucrative BigCo with
flex-time, summer hours, no morning standups, WFH)

Places for parents (BigCo with generous maternal leaves, daycare or benefits
for families)

Places for brogrammers (Genius formerly known as RapGenius)

Places for 'Silicon Valley' Show Lovers (Company mission statement that
includes the phrase "change the world," Nerf Guns part of office deco,
uncompromising nature to adopt the latest cool tech like Node.js)

Places for introverts (Places with offices for employees, not open office
plans, WFH options; in fields that are less sales-oriented and more academic,
niche research companies)

Curious if anyone else has any ideas on the 'ecology' of tech companies and
what 'animals' are best fit for which one!

~~~
tootie
I'd like to hear more about Lucrative BigCo. Are they hiring?

~~~
spyspy
We here at Lucrative BigCo are always looking for paradigm changing talent to
accelerate our dynamic synergy efforts. Please submit your resume to our jobs
portal. This will require manually typing all of the info on your resume by
hand into individual fields. Resume itself may only by in .txt format. We look
forward to not responding for 6 to 12 months!

~~~
Spooky23
Don't forget the portal has no back button, and a 30 second page timeout!

~~~
LargeCompanies
Uggh was just going through this process a few hours ago .. dealing with those
horrible enter your cover letter and resume systems for X big company. I even
just encountered this when applying for a job thru StackOverflow.

Overall those systems frustrate me to the point of finding the hiring managers
name and their email address (just google for example @xcompany.com to see how
their work email address is formatted) and sending them a personal message
with my resume attached. This works at times, while other times it doesnt.
But, either way I dont have to deal with those horrible CV/resume data entry
systems. Also, since not many are using this hack Im sure the recruiting
manager saw my resume vs. it going into a black hole.

~~~
alex-warren
If you encountered a problem like this when applying via Stack Overflow, can
you let us know which job it was?

You can either reply here or email careers@stackoverflow.com. Thanks!

~~~
LargeCompanies
No issues and now I realize after writing the above your system was only two
windows. Create cover letter and upload resume ... easy stuff compared to the
annoying/frustrating Big corp CV/resume data entry systems.

------
spaceflunky
The problem is that Airbnb has about two thousand employees, all of whom for
the most part, are on the cusp of getting a very nice payout from an IPO. So I
would say company vigor and enthusiasm is at peak levels.

Google on the other hand has like 60,000 employees and IPO'd over a decade
ago. It almost goes without saying that, as a large, more mature company it's
a lot harder to keep employees happy.

So... not really a fair comparison IMO.

~~~
rifung
I'm not sure it's true that a larger, more mature company has a harder time
keeping employees happy.

I get that pre IPO companies have that advantage, but a company like Google
which makes absurd amounts of money also has its advantages, like being able
to afford giving their employees high salaries and also better work life
balance. I am not sure that Google gives its employees that though, at least
not the latter. Plus, a more mature company should have its processes already
ironed out and no more growing pains.

~~~
asuffield
> I am not sure that Google gives its employees that though, at least not the
> latter.

I've been at Google for over a year, and I'd say that you get as much "work-
life balance" as you can be bothered to make for yourself. As far as I can
tell there's no penalty for choosing to do that, but not everybody does.

~~~
skj
My experience as well.

------
anindyabd
Glassdoor reviews -- like all reviews posted online -- should be taken with a
generous helping of salt. A general reason is that most people post reviews to
sites like these to either rant or rave, and the employees who had neither a
great nor a bad experience (the majority of employees) have little to no
incentive to post thoughtful reviews. Arguably, however, companies that a
higher proportion of stellar reviews are clearly doing a better job keeping
employees happy, so the overall rating may be worth trusting. But heed this
warning: I know of one company that has a _policy_ of posting positive reviews
on Glassdoor. And they're clever enough to always populate the "Cons" section
(and avoid overly glowing reviews) so that they won't give themselves away.
Apparently they were having a hard time recruiting new employees, and one of
the reasons was negative reviews on Glassdoor. Because Glassdoor wouldn't take
the reviews down, they decided to post fake reviews. After learning about this
(through a former recruiter at that company) I have a hard time trusting
Glassdoor reviews. Who knows how many other companies do the same thing to
attract talent?

------
kelukelugames
I worked at a company with ~200 people in HQ. We were often encouraged to vote
in "Best place to work" contests.

~~~
dudus
I don't think it's a problem to encourage people to vote on these contests,
but you can't force them to vote and you can't tell how to vote.

~~~
tomtang0514
The problem is many startups, especially those trying to "double engineer
headcount within this year", encourage new hires to write good reviews during
orientations when those employees barely know the working environment at the
company.

~~~
ethanbond
Part of the problem is the encouragement, part of the problem would be people
who actually do that.

Seriously, this happens?

~~~
kelukelugames
There are obviously fake reviews written by HR and managers on Glassdoor.

It's comical.

------
JoshuaJB
I visited Airbnb's headquarters this past summer, and they are very
impressive. For example, their conference rooms are themed off actual
listings. So you have the African hut meeting room, the elegant Milan room,
and the tiny Japanese stress relief space. On top of that, their hallways tell
stories. For example, one describes the origins of their logo in beautiful,
exquisite detail. Overall, I have yet to see a more creative workspace.

~~~
randycupertino
There was some controversy that they ripped off the designs of many of these
rooms without giving the designers credit:

[http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/designer-sues-
airbnb...](http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/designer-sues-airbnb-
copying-paris-6825939)

~~~
enraged_camel
They are the company's private offices. What type of credit are they expected
to give the designers? If I see an interior design online and redesign my
living room to match it, do I have to hang a sign that says "special thanks to
the designers at myinteriordesigns.com"?

~~~
gohrt
AirBnB hired a designer who plagiarized designs from AirBnB customers:
[https://customspaces.com/office/ZewNn5vLy4/airbnb-office-
san...](https://customspaces.com/office/ZewNn5vLy4/airbnb-office-san-
francisco/)

I don't know how copyright works for interior design, but if it were a book
she wrote, and then someone else rewrote without permission, there'd clearly
be room for claiming a violation.

~~~
code4tee
Theres no such thing as "plagiarized" interior design. Certain elements (like
a painting) could be plagiarized or reproductions of photos or wall artwork
could be a copyright violation, but the overall design and "look and feel"
isn't really afforded any copyright protection. Same with things like recipes.
If you can figure out how someone makes their "secret sauce" you are free to
produce and sell it at will. Trademarks and such are afforded protection, but
the food product itself is not.

~~~
ascagnel_
As a related aside, this is why designers splash their logos all over clothing
and accessories. The name and logo are protectable on their own, the rest of
the "look and feel" of the article is not, but the whole article is
protectable when combined.

------
alphonse23
> 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.”

What does that mean? The "algorithm" could be anything, possibly not even an
algorithm.

~~~
Karunamon
Releasing it would just be nothing but incentive to game it.

Unless you think they're lying?

~~~
Karunamon
By the way, HN is open source, save for the anti-spam/anti-voting-ring stuff
for the same reason.

------
ceejg
Glassdoor reviews are faked, at least at my company HR routinely writes tons
of positive ones and when we purchase Glassdoor advertising suddenly our
negative reviews vanish or get ranked lower and lower.

~~~
randycupertino
My boss actually blatantly asked us all to go write some 5-star reviews, it
was ridiculous.

~~~
patates
Same here in Germany, our employer asked us to write 5-star reviews on Kununu
(Glasdoor-like site from XING).

------
ojm
From some of the employee comments in the video, you would think that they are
solving all of the worlds problems, rather than an accomodation booking site.

~~~
ljk
ahem, don't you mean _disrupting_ accommodation booking site scenes?

------
dack
I'm continually surprised that Guidewire is up there near the top. If you look
at the company itself, it's insurance software, yet they've managed to rank
above Google and 3rd overall. I'm somewhat sad that the article doesn't
mention them at all.

(full disclosure: I did work there previously, along with Google, but now work
for neither)

~~~
hkmurakami
Do you agree with their high ranking, having worked there?

------
serge2k
> For some reason, Apple doesn’t do as well in these lists as we would think
> (it’s down to #25 from #22 last year). Once again, Microsoft didn’t make the
> list

curious why apple would be higher but microsoft doesn't seem to be a surprise.

~~~
GCA10
Wikipedia tells me that of Apple's 43,000 U.S. employees, 30,000 work in Apple
stores. That's probably an above-average retail experience, but it's retail.
Customers get angry. Long hours. Pay is what it is. I'd expect that a blend of
Apple's HQ talent (very satisfied) and its store employees (hmmn) is the
explanation.

------
adrianlmm
Even Facebook is a better place than Google to work now, according to that
article.

~~~
rahij
I'm curious as to why that part is hard to believe.

~~~
arasmussen
As an ex-Facebook employee, I don't. :)

~~~
puredemo
You don't what?

------
steinnes
It's funny how Amazon isn't mentioned in the article as one of the tech
companies that should by vying for top position.

Although I suppose in raw numbers most of their staff are not engineers, so
maybe it wouldn't be a fair comparison.

------
digital43
I wish there was a ranking like this with only reviews from engineers counted
as that would be more relevant for me.

------
chipgap98
I was excited to see that HubSpot was number 4. Its nice to see a Boston tech
company get some love

------
horsecaptin
As a former prospective employee of both, I can say that they're both kind of
ok, I guess.

------
erik_landerholm
Who the hell reads glassdoor?

~~~
bogomipz
Bloomberg had someone from Glasdoor on yesterday and they were asking them how
they arrived at these results. He said they had an "algorithm", when pressed
further about the criteria he mentioned the company had to have at least 75
reviews in the last year, seemed kind of laughable. Their site feels cheap and
tacky, not sure how much credibility they have but I don't ever hear people
talking about it. I don't doubt AirBnB might be a good work environment but it
seems like this is a way for Glasdoor to ride someone else's coat tails to a
headline.

