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).

For 2011′s rankings, Facebook ranked two spots higher on the list than Google, taking the third spot. Facebook actually slipped from the top spot in 2010 to number 3 on the 2011 list and Google had moved up to the fifth slot from number 30 on 2010’s list. Ratings are based on at least 10 reviews per year per company and on a 5-point scale: 5=very satisfied, 3=OK, 1=very dissatisfied.

Glassdoor also reports that Google CEO and founder Larry Page is currently rating slightly higher than Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Google employees are giving Page a 94% approval (6% disapproval) rating, which is just a tad bit higher than what Mark Zuckerberg earned from his own employees, which is a 92% approval (8% disapproval) rating.

Among employees’ company reviews on Glassdoor, a larger percentage of Google employees talk about the food as a ‘Pro’ of working at the company (Google: 29%, Facebook: 25%). When it comes to benefits, the breakdown is as follows: (Google: 21%, Facebook: 17%) and perks (Google: 21%, Facebook: 12%).

However, when it comes to a favorable opinion on salary and compensation, it is neck and neck (Google: 9%, Facebook: 10%). Specifically, Glassdoor says that long hours and work/life balance are the biggest downsides of working at Facebook. More Facebook employees mention long working hours as a ‘Con’ than Google employees (FB: 9%, Google: 3% of employees). However, more Google employees cite politics and stress as ‘Cons’ over Facebook employees.

It’s still only March, so this is hardly an indicator of how things will stack up for Facebook and Google for 2012′s overall ranking. But in light of the talent wars in Silicon Valley, especially amongst these two companies; it is interesting to see Google’s employee satisfaction rising. Stay tuned.

For more data, check out the infographic below.

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.

Other tech companies that made the list include Salesforce (13); SAP (22); Intel (32); and Groupon (40).

Rackspace, Samsung Austin Semiconductor, NVIDIA, and Hewlett-Packard climbed also saw big jumps up higher on the list. National Instruments CEO James Truchard and NetApp’s Tom Georgens received 100% approval ratings this year, followed by Apple’s Tim Cook (96%) and Synopsys’ Aart de Geus (96%). Rounding out the top 5 is Intel’s Paul Otellini with a 93% approval rating for the year.

eBay’s John Donahoe saw the biggest boost in approval ratings this year, climbed to 65% approval from 30% last year. Sapient CEO Alan Herrick climbed to 85% from 58%. Analog Devices’ CEO Jerry Fishman climbed to 80% from 55%, and Intuit’s Brad Smith climbed to 84% from 60%.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg slipped to a 89% approval rating from 96% approval last year.

Xerox CEO Ursula Burns fell to 28% approval, down from 65% approval last year while Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers fell to 57% approval from 85% a year ago. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings’ approval declined to 61% from 79% last year and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s approval fell to 55% this year from 71% a year ago.

In 2010, Leo Apotheker held 62% approval (and by the time he left office in Sept. 2011 his cumulative rating was down to 57%), yet Meg Whitman now stands at 76% approval. Yahoo’s Carol Bartz held a 56% approval in 2010 (and 54% cumulative approval when she left office) yet current Yahoo CEO Timothy Moore has just a 31% approval in his interim role. Larry Page has a 92% approval, but that falls short to Eric Schmidt’s 96% at the end of last year. Apple’s Tim Cook has an impressive 96% approval, just one point below Steve Jobs’ 97% approval when he officially turned over the reins earlier this year.

You can check out the full list of companies and CEO approval ratings below.

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. While millions of Americans seem trapped on the less-desirable side of a skills-to-jobs-available mismatch, there’s a full-on talent war going on in Silicon Valley, where not only engineers but talented startup executives and worker bees are flooded with offers. Culprits for this talent bubble are certainly companies like Google and Facebook and Zynga who are hiring large numbers of employees as fast as they can, but also to blame is the relative ease of starting a company and getting funding– which takes an increasing number of engineers and potential CTOs and managers out of the job market.

To wit: According to Glassdoor, more than one-third of employees expect to leave their job in the next three years, 28% expect to do so in the next two years and 14% expect to leave in less than one year. Add it up and nearly 60% of respondents in what’s supposed to be one of the worst labor markets in our nation’s history plan to voluntarily leave their jobs in less than three years.

It’s a stunning picture of a whole different kind of dysfunction in America’s job market. Typically even if you feel your job isn’t a risk, the fear of shrinking options makes most people clamp on to whatever job they have. But in this market, while millions lose their houses, those on the other side of that skills/need labor chasm have the world as their oyster and there’s little-to-no sense of clinging to your port in a storm. It’s another sign of how deeply a sense of employee/employer loyalty has eroded in our country in the last few decades. When my generation was coming out of college in the late 1990s, the idea of job hopping every few years was still a radical invention of the so-called “new economy,” but now it’s just how someone plans a career.

Part of this comes from employees: Entrepreneurship isn’t just mainstream in Silicon Valley, increasingly most professionals run their careers as if they’re free-agents, merely tied up in contracts from time to time. But it’s also the fault of employers. The rabidly-short term nature of the stock market has dramatically changed how companies view layoffs. Decades ago, layoffs were considered a last resort of a dying — or at the very least unprofitable– company. Today, they are a regular way to trim the fat, compensate for poor hiring decisions and meet quarterly numbers. Is it any wonder a dramatic shift in the use of layoffs has coincided with a dramatic shift in employee loyalty?

Companies gripped in the talent-war side of this economy are no doubt struggling to keep their best people. In the Valley this has taken the form of increasingly large retention bonuses, salaries and perks, and every single tech company will tell you that hanging on to employees is their number one risk factor. Part of this is the healthy churn of employees through the Valley’s ranks that keeps startups as competitive as the big companies. But part of it is in-demand employees’ revenge for decades of being increasingly expendable.

Glassdoor’s numbers also show another sharp divide in the labor market around gender lines. While nearly 40% of men are optimistic about a pay raise, only 30% of women are. Glassdoor ran the numbers for engineers and found good reason why: Women still make far less money than men. The gap ranges between 4% and 9%, getting larger as men and women become more experienced. That’s not too surprising given numbers that show gender parity in low-levels of management in the US, but that shifting dramatically as women climb the economic ladder. In the Valley, the gap is far less than the  20% gender pay gap nationwide, but it’s worrying for a place that prides itself on being a meritocracy nonetheless.

Mike is coming in town today. Who votes I demand a huge raise? [UPDATE: Glassdoor just sent me a spreadsheet of sample reporter salaries. Whoa, we are in trouble as an industry. Nevermind, Mike.)

(Photo by Thomas Hawk)

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.

Go to the Glassdoor blog for the top 25 oddball interview questions, but below are the ones from technology companies, since I reckon you’d be most interested in those.

Don’t forget to list some grueling interview questions you’ve had to answer in your career in the comment section!

“How many basketballs can you fit in this room?” – asked at Google.

“If you could be any superhero, who would it be?” – asked at AT&T.

“Given the numbers 1 to 1000, what is the minimum numbers guesses needed to find a specific number if you are given the hint “higher” or “lower” for each guess you make?” – asked at Facebook.

“If you had 5,623 participants in a tournament, how many games would need to be played to determine the winner?” – asked at Amazon.

“There are three boxes, one contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents of the box it labels. Opening just one box, and without looking in the box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?” – asked at Apple.

“How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine?” – asked at IBM.

“You have 8 pennies, 7 weight the same, one weighs less. You also have a judges scale. Find the one that weighs less in less than 3 steps.” – asked at Intel.

“How many bottles of beer are drank in the city over the week?” – asked at The Nielsen Company.

Pro tip, you can view the answers given by job seekers for the listed interview questions as well. Some of them are quite amusing as well.

Also check out Glassdoor’s List of Naughty and Nice CEOs (TCTV).

Alright, Monthy Python time (thanks, commenter):

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.

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.

In comparison, Steve Jobs has a 98 percent approval rating among Apple employees, Cisco CEO John Chambers has an 81 percent approval rating, and Hurd’s tennis partner and defender, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, has a 78 percent approval rating.  Even Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz (56%) and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (52%) are more loved by their employees than Hurd.

It is not exactly a mystery as to why Hurd was not universally loved by HP employees. He was a relentless cost-cutter, an expert at eliminating thousands of jobs at the company while paying himself handsomely.  He also got HP back on its feet, adding $30 billion in revenues and tripling profits over five years.  Employee sentiment can only tell you so much, and like any review site, people with complaints are more motivated to share their feelings than people who are happy.

And while his approval rating dropped from a high of 57 percent in the third quarter of 2008 down to 19 percent last year or so, it did start to rebound during the current quarter.

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:

• What was your best McGuyver [sic] moment? —Schlumberger
• How many tennis balls are in this room and why?  —Yahoo
• How would you move Mount Fuji?  —Microsoft
• What should it cost to rent Central Park for commercial purposes?  —Bain & Co.
• If I put you in a sealed room with a phone that had no dial tone, how would you fix it?  —Apple
• How would you sell me eggnog in Florida in the summer?  —Expedia

http://www.hulu.com/embed/5hUEVyF3633aqqq0x3Q2Dg

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:

• 35 percent think their company’s outlook will improve over the next six months
• 51 percent think their company’s outlook will stay the same
• 36 percent of employees still expect a raise, down from 40 percent last quarter
• 39 percent are confident they could find another job with comparable pay and experience if they had to
• 70 percent would be willing to take on more projects and responsibities to keep their jobs
• 62 percent would be willing to work longer hours to keep their jobs
• 40 percent would be willing to take a pay cut
• 35 percent would be willing to accept reduced health or dental benefits
• 34 percent would take an unpaid leave of absence to save their jobs longterm
• 30 percent would give up vacation time

Interesting what people value the most. More people would take a pay cut before giving up health benefits or vacation time. What would you give up to keep your job? Full survey results embedded below:

http://viewer.docstoc.com/
Glassdoor Employee Confidence Survey 1Q09 – Get more Business Plans

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.

ReputationCheck, the index’s embeddable widget, shows a company’s real-time reputation rank and compares the rank to the best and worst companies relative to customer and employee satisfaction, community involvement, the environment, patriotism and social responsibility. The widget can be used in a post or in the sidebar of a site. Considering all of the various inputs of the index, the ranking system cannot be deemed as 100 percent authoritative. But it certainly is a measure of the public’s perception of a company. (Contrast to Glassdoor, another reputation service from employees’ point of view). While the index widget could be useful to bloggers and writers to show one measure of a reputation of a company, its probably best not to rely upon ReputationCheck as the final arbiter of a company’s standing.

Here’s the index for Google, which ranks highly

Initial seed funding for Glassdoor was provided in 2007 by its co-founders Hohman, Tim Besse and Richard Barton. The startup remained in stealth mode before picking up $3 Million in Series A funding from Benchmark Capital last March (they’ve also participated in this round), and ultimately launched in the beginning of June.

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. A quick glance at the traffic stats shows that the site had a dip after the momentum of its public launch, but is now headed in the right direction. Glassdoor claims it has received 115,000 contributions for 14,000 companies across a wide section of global industries to date. CEO Robert Hohman told the NY Times that many of the site’s visitors are starting their travels at other online job boards and end up at Glassdoor.com to look for ratings and reviews before making a decision.

With the economy in a downturn, man who have been laid off in the past few weeks might want to take the time to join the Glassdoor community in search for the right new employer.

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 means scientific. They are based on 124 responses for Microsoft, 50 for Yahoo, and 37 for Google, all collected during the company’s private beta. The more honest responses the site collects from any given company, the more accurate the results will be.

Beyond the ratings and salary information, what is really revealing are some of the in-depth reviews. Even at Google, it’s not all happy faces. “The free food is starting to wear off,” says Hohman. One review is titled: “Awesome culture, bad management.” Another one: “Fun at first, frustrating in the long run.” And the most devastating: “Google:An Elitist’s Playground.” Here’s an excerpt:

If you enjoy your individuality and time alone, Google is not the place for you (keep in mind I’m not an engineer). Google pushes a highly “googley” atmosphere, which is something akin to what the Brady Bunch would be like if they lived in communist Russia. . . . People are encouraged to have googley attitudes, wear plastic smiles, and not to question the infallible nature of the executive management group. . . . If you like feeling awkward during forced group activity, Google is your haven. It isn’t exactly “forced” (no guns), but if you don’t participate you become labeled as “ungoogley.” Once deemed “ungoogley”, you’re practically viewed as a rotten apple that threatens to spoil the bunch.

Advice to Senior Management:
“Stop acting as those you’re King Midas…just because you struck it rich with AdWords does not mean whatever you create will be tech gold. For a company that prides itself on innovation, I can’t think of any product Google has released since AdWords that has been truly innovative…unless you are calling Google’s mergers and acquisitions innovative (just because Google owns YouTube does not mean you can take credit for the innovation).

Someone is obviously bitter, but it doesn’t make what this person says any less true. (Assuming it truly is a Google employee—there is no way to know for sure). Most of the reviews for Google are positive. Reading through all of them gives a nice cross section of attitudes at the company. Who knew that the heated toilet seats at Google were such a big draw? Or that Netflix has a don’t ask, don’t tell vacation policy? (You take one whenever you can).

If Glassdoor can get people to fess up about their salaries and the inner workings of their companies, the Internet’s culture of transparency will claim another stronghold.