
Google overtakes Facebook in employee satisfaction - Garbage
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/google-overtakes-facebook-in-employee-satisfaction/10734
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DaveMebs
Google may or may not have higher employee satisfaction, but I sure wouldn't
trust Glassdoor to know. This is based on an anonymous 20 question survey of
"at least 115 employees" at each company, so you know that one of the two data
sets only numbers 115 responses, implying a best-case response rate of 3.8%
(Facebook at an estimated 3K employees). There is no information on how the
sample set is gathered. Was it self selecting? What type of employees were
consulted? Did they span management, or were they all individual contributors?
How much can you really learn in 20 questions?

Furthermore, the "best tech company to work for list" that is linked in the
article ([http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-named-best-
tech-...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-named-best-tech-company-
to-work-for/6268)) is another Glassdoor list, and a highly suspicious one at
that. I compared it to the corresponding CNN/Fortune list
([http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-
companies/2012/f...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-
companies/2012/full_list/)), and out of the top 10 companies on the Glassdoor
list, only 3 were on the top 100 Fortune list: Google, Facebook and REI. I've
never even heard of 4 of the other 7, including the top 2, and of those 7, 5
aren't even on the CNN/Forbes top 100. On top of all this, this is supposed to
be a tech list and it's filled with companies like General Mills, Southwest
Airlines, Starbucks, Coach and FedEx, not to mention the fact that the top 2
are also both business consultancy firms.

I could go on, but I think the trend is pretty clear. Glassdoor appears to be
basing these ratings on very small (and probably self selecting) samples
sizes, and doesn't appear to have a very good means of gathering data from the
_right_ companies. Considering it's a relatively new company, this feels like
something they want to make big, but they just don't have the brand and sway
to implement a well designed study/survey/what-have-you.

If your curious what the CNN/Fortune study's methodology is:
[http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-
companies/2012/f...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-
companies/2012/faq/)

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jrockway
Once again, misrepresented interview questions. If you are a programmer and
want to know what Google interviews are like, read Steve Yegge's summary:
[http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-
goog...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html)

Hint: all the questions are about programming. There are no puzzles or tricks,
only straightforward problems that require a deep understanding of computer
science to solve. And, questions you've read about on the Internet are
typically not used.

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brandall10
Larry Page gets a 94% approval rating? That seems a bit surprising given the
discontent expressed on HN over recent policy changes.

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wyclif
Yes, but that's here on HN, which doesn't correspond to a group of Google
engineers.

~~~
jerlam
I don't think Google's company-wide 10% raise starting in 2011 hurt either.

Approval ratings aren't as useful, as say compared to something like the US
Presidental approval ratings: unhappy employees can easily leave (clearly
evidenced by a few recent high-profile HN posts), so only the happy remain.

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jacobwil
I'd just like to quickly point out that the pie charts for "What gets talked
about on the inside" are somewhat useless because they not only don't add up
to 100%, but the sum of percentages for the facebook charts doesn't equal the
sums of the corresponding google chart (e.g. cons: sum of facebook
percentages: 26%, google: 22%)

~~~
lukevdp
I agree it's pretty stupid - my best guess is that it could be % of total
respondants, not % of total respondants that selected cons. Said another way -
74% of Facebookers didn't list any cons, 78% of Googlers didn't list any cons.

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varelse
Consider the possibility that googlers dissatisfied with Google tend to leave
Google for the bigger and better while there's a strong incentive for a
disgruntled facebooker to hang on until his/her options fully vest.

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qasar
You know what's more satisfying than being a wage earner at Google or
Facebook? Running your own company.

~~~
joejohnson
Do you run your own company? It would be interesting to compare side-by-side
the benefits of working for Facebook/Google vs. being the CEO of your own
startup. Comparing salary, benefits, and perks would be cool, but I'm also
wondering if most CEOs find their work more or less interesting and
challenging that engineers at these companies do.

