Glassdoor has taken a look at how Google and Facebook compare in the eyes of employees and job candidates, and has extracted a number of interesting data points related to CEO approval, benefits, perks and more. For background, Glassdoor is a jobs and career community where employees can anonymously rate companies and CEOs.
First, Glassdoor says that so far in 2012, Google has overtaken Facebook in employee satisfaction company ratings. In fact, this is the first time Google has overtaken Facebook in the past four years, says Glassdoor. In 2012, Google’s company rating reached a 3.9, surpassing Facebook’s 3.7 rating. From 2009 through 2011, Facebook received a higher company rating from its employees (2009: 4.4; 2010: 4.7; 2011: 4.2), than Google did from its employees (2009: 3.8; 2010: 3.7; 2011: 4.1). → Read More
Glassdoor, a jobs and career community where employees can anonymously rate companies and CEOs, has just released its fourth annual Employees’ Choice Awards, listing the top 50 “Best Places to Work,” based on surveys collected from U.S. employees in 2011. The top five Best Places to Work, according to employees, are: Bain & Company, McKinsey & Company, Facebook, MITRE, and Google.
Looking at just the tech sector, the 2012 best places to work in technology are Facebook, MITRE Google, Apple and Rackspace. Facebook actually slipped from the top spot last year to number 3 on the 2012 list and Google had moved up to the fifth slot from number 30 on last year’s list. → Read More
Glassdooris reporting an Employment Confidence Survey today that shows robust and increasing confidence in the job market– never mind most of the nation remains gripped in 9% unemployment with only a little hope of things getting better.
40% of respondents expect their company’s outlook to improve in the next six months and just 17% are concerned about a possible layoff, down from 26% in the first quarter of 2009. And there’s decent optimism that should they lose their jobs, 40% of them say it is “likely” they would find a new job matching their experience and pay within six months– the highest that number has been in six quarters. Glassdoor notes that “only” 35% of respondents expected to get a raise within the next 12 months, but given the top line economic data for the country, that still seems pretty healthy to me.
While unemployment is getting better, the numbers say as much about who uses Glassdoor as anything else. → Read More
Glassdoor.com, a venture-backed online career and workplace community, has self-reportedly culled through tens of thousands interview questions that job seekers have shared on the site in 2010, and selected a number of weird ones. Some of them are pretty bizarre, some are downright hilarious. → Read More
Glassdoor.com is a site where employees can honestly say how they feel about their employers. The promise is it helps people make more informed job decisions. But even if the company never pulls that off, I’m glad it exists to give business voyeurs like me a window into the companies that put on such a brave PR face.
Enter this year’s list of naughty and nice CEOs and best companies to work for– as told by the insiders. Spoiler alert: People who actually work with Mark Zuckerberg like him a lot more than Hollywood does. Glassdoor CEO and founder Robert Hohman joined me over Skype to talk about the good, the bad and the downright stunning inside the country’s biggest tech companies. → Read More
Softcore-porn-actress-turned-marketing-consultant Jodie Fisher wasn’t the only person who failed to be enamored by HP CEO Mark Hurd, who was forced to resign as a result of an investigation into his relationship with Ms. Fisher. According to Glassdoor, a site where employees can anonymously rate companies and CEOs, Hurd had the lowest employee approval rating of any major tech CEO. Only 34 percent of self-described HP employees on the site approved of his performance, and 66 percent disapproved. → Read More
Google and Microsoft are famous for asking brainteasers during employment interviews to see how candidates think on their feet. But they are not the only companies who ask oddball questions. Glassdoor, the anonymous employee review site, collects these questions from interviewees and just posted a list of the 25 oddest questions from last year.
Most of them tend to be math problems (“How many lightbulbs are in this building?”), but there are a few which are more creative and go deeper to reveal not only a candidate’s character, but the company’s character as well. When an interviewer for oil services behemoth Schlumberger asks an interviewee for his best MacGyver moment, he is projecting a sense of adventure onto the prospective job that is being applied for. The question almost says more about the prospective job than any answer says about the candidate: “We’re looking for a MacGyver. Are you a MacGyver?”
Here are a few of the standout questions from Glassdoor’s list and the companies which asked them: → Read More
When it comes to layoffs, the light always seems darker over your co-worker’s cubicle. A new employee confidence survey conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of company/job review site Glassdoor.com shows that 26 percent of respondents are concerned about being out of work in the next six months. That is up from 21 percent in the last quarter. But when asked about their colleagues, a full 44 percent said some of them wouldn’t last through the summer. You never think you are the one who is going to get fired until your boss calls you into his office for a little chat.
More than half of those surveyed, 57 percent, said that layoffs or planned layoffs had occurred at their companies the past six months. Other findings from the survey: → Read More
Social evaluation platform Vanno launched a widget application of its real-time company reputation index called ReputationCheck. Vanno’s platform allows customers and others to share stories about their personal experiences with a particular company, submit news articles they’ve read about companies, fill out surveys and comment on companies. Vanno then quantifies this dialogue and information into an index using Bayesian algorithms (the same statistical methods used to filter spam and detect credit card fraud). The company’s index measures the reputation of more than 5,800 companies worldwide.
Vanno’s reputation index was recently brought into the public light when Vanno quantified the damage Kellogg’s brand sustained after the company pulled the plug on Michael Phelps’s sponsorship following the swimmer’s marijuana photo fiasco. Vanno’s data suggested that Kellogg’s reputation plummeted after its decision, falling even further on the index than when the company had to recall products after this year’s peanut butter salmonella scare → Read More
Glassdoor has added another $6,5 Million to its war chest, thanks to a Series B funding round led by Sutter Hill Ventures. Jim White, managing director of the venture firm will assume a seat on the company’s board of directors. Glassdoor enables anyone to find and share real-time reviews, ratings and salary details about specific jobs for specific employers, free of charge and anonymously. → Read More
The idea behind Glassdoor is simple: You tell me your salary, and I’ll tell you mine. The stealth startup, which raised $3 million from Benchmark Capital last March, just went live. The site collects company reviews and real salaries from employees of large companies and displays them anonymously for all members to see. (The startup plans to make money from ads targeted at job seekers, premium services, and aggregated compensation data it wants to sell to HR professionals). The idea is to collect as much detailed salary information and feedback for every job title at a company so that job seekers can know how to evaluate an offer, and current employees can see how they are doing relative to their peers. “When the annual compensation review comes,” says CEO Robert Hohman, “you need to know what your market value is.” Or you can just live vicariously through others. So how much does a Google software engineer really make? The average, based on ten submissions, is $97,840. And the range is between $80,000 and $150,000, with annual cash bonuses coming in anywhere from $20,000 to $45,000. Adding salary and bonus together, the Google engineers that have entered information on Glassdoor average $112,573 in take-home pay. (And then there are stock options on top of that). Yahoo and Microsoft engineers get about the same salaries, but smaller bonuses, leaving their take-home pay at an average of $105,642 and $105,375, respectively. Apple software engineers make only about $89,000, on average, but they get to create some of the most loved products on Earth. As a teaser, anyone can see the full details for four companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Cisco), but beyond that it is a give-to-get model. You need to post your own review to see the other reviews. Same with salaries. (Using a variety of techniques it won’t discuss, the company does its best to sniff out false posts). And each company and CEO gets a rating. Here’s a chart comparing Jerry Yang’s and Steve Ballmer’s approval ratings from their own employees over time (Yang’s is currently 59 percent, Ballmer’s is 69 percent): Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s approval rating, incidentally, is 89 percent. While the overall satisfaction rating for Google as a company to work at is 4.2 out of 5. Microsoft’s satisfaction rating is exactly the same, whereas Yahoo’s is not surprisingly lower at 3.8. These ratings are by no → Read More
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