JINX

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,889
www.cnbc.com

10 companies with the best workplace cultures, including pay, perks and work-life balance

Comparably considered nearly 20 different topics that define a positive workplace culture in its ranking including compensation and work-life balance.

According to a new report from the company review site Comparably, Microsoft is the No. 1 global company with the best workplace culture. The annual ranking is based on anonymous employee ratings for 70,000 companies shared on their site over a 12-month period from March 2021 to March 2022.

Comparably considered nearly 20 different topics that define a positive workplace culture including compensation, work-life balance and professional development opportunities.

1. Microsoft

CEO: Satya Nadella
Headquarters: Redmond, Washington
Industry: Technology

2. IBM

CEO: Arvind Krishna
Headquarters: Armonk, New York
Industry: Technology

3. Google

CEO: Sundar Pichai
Headquarters: Mountain View, California
Industry: Technology

4. HubSpot

CEO: Yamini Rangan
Headquarters: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Industry: Technology

5. Elsevier

CEO: Kumsal Bayazit
Headquarters: New York, New York
Industry: Publishing

6. Chegg

CEO: Dan Rosensweig
Headquarters: Santa Clara, California
Industry: Education technology

7. Concentrix

CEO: Chris Caldwell
Headquarters: Fremont, California
Industry: Technology

8. RingCentral

CEO: Vlad Shmunis
Headquarters: Belmont, California
Industry: Technology

9. Experian

CEO: Brian Cassin
Headquarters: Costa Mesa, California
Industry: Credit reporting

10. Estee Lauder Companies

CEO: Fabrizio Freda
Headquarters: New York, New York
Industry: Skincare, makeup, fragrance and hair care


Of course MS previously has had multiple reports of a bad work culture for women, so it's nice to see a seemingly positive improvement which according to Nadella has been a large focus the last couple of years. Reports :
www.reuters.com

Microsoft women filed 238 discrimination and harassment complaints

Women at Microsoft Corp working in U.S.-based technical jobs filed 238 internal complaints about gender discrimination or sexual harassment between 2010 and 2016, according to court filings made public on Monday.
www.theverge.com

Microsoft workers shared dozens of sexual harassment stories on an internal email chain

Demeaning comments and requests for sexual favors
Microsoft has also recently selected a law firm to review it's sexual harassment policies, following a shareholder resolution spurred on by recent allegations against Gates :
www.cnbc.com

Microsoft hires law firm to review sexual harassment policies, with report due in the spring

The report will include summarized findings of a decades-old probe involving Bill Gates, after years of concerns regarding handling of harassment cases.
 
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Kalor

Resettlement Advisor
Member
Oct 25, 2017
20,313
I assume the employee ratings were mostly from the US considering the list. Maybe they only had a English copy of the survey.
 

Se_7_eN

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,777
This is a big surprise to me.... living in Seattle and knowing dozens of people that have worked there.
 
Dec 5, 2017
1,926
I think you will find most of these companies are actually all based out of the same PO Box in the Caribbean and not the US.
 

Rowsdower

Shinra Employee of The Wise Ones
Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
18,331
Canada
Good on MS, though this seems to be US based only.

Oh no, there's two UK companies here.

Does this mean the best workplace culture is in America? 🤔
 

Shoot

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,487
No company is better suited to clean up at Activision Blizzard than Microsoft and that's the reason why the devs there were so excited about the acquisition. Microsoft has a reputation as a great employer. In an industry as filthy as gaming that's not common.
 

Dest

Has seen more 10s than EA ever will
Coward
Jun 4, 2018
15,032
Work
Out of all my friends, the one guy I know who works at Microsoft is the one guy who never complains about his job for what that's worth.
 

Deepwater

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
6,349
microsoft inappropriately leverages contractors way too much for this to be objective in any sense
 

CubeApple76

Member
Jan 20, 2021
7,120
Anecdotally from people I know who have worked there I believe this can largely be true. However at the same time I knew some friends who worked at IBM after graduating and had less than nice things to say about their experience, so I'll take the list with a grain of salt
 

ghibli99

Member
Oct 27, 2017
19,401
Out of all my friends, the one guy I know who works at Microsoft is the one guy who never complains about his job for what that's worth.
Yeah, I know quite a few people there, and they love it. That's just a small sample of my tiny bubble, but hey, it is what it is. :)
 

MonadL

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,012
Anecdotally from people I know who have worked there I believe this can largely be true. However at the same time I knew some friends who worked at IBM after graduating and had less than nice things to say about their experience, so I'll take the list with a grain of salt
Yeah IBM being on this list is almost enough to invalidate the entire thing lol.
 

Jogi

Prophet of Regret
Member
Jul 4, 2018
5,808
I imagine the bar is low, but it seems like it is headed in the right direction.
 

Severance

Member
Oct 27, 2017
456
Nothing to do with Microsoft but… Experian really? After they leaked the data of more than half of all Americans and others? I'm sure they treat their employees wonderfully if how they treat their customers in any indication lol.
 

The Lord of Cereal

#REFANTAZIO SWEEP
Member
Jan 9, 2020
10,894
I have a lot of doubt about this…

Microsoft is good and certainly has a lot of public facing positive culture, but they also extensively use contractors and temp positions and allegedly don't treat them as well
 

jmsebastian

Member
Nov 14, 2019
1,134
microsoft inappropriately leverages contractors way too much for this to be objective in any sense
This is a really important point. If contract workers are not included in these kinds of surveys (and I'm quite confident that they aren't), then they have absolutely zero value. As someone who is bombarded with corporate surveys about how I feel about my job, I also know that people very often don't tell the truth in their responses. I'm not sure what you can really do about that given the nature of trying to decide a fairly subjective thing, but yeah, it seems extremely unlikely to me that MS and Google actually have some of the best working culture. Google is especially laughable given the efforts to unionize there and Google's predictable efforts to stop labor organization.
 

gothmog

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,434
NY
I work in the FAANG space, and I have always heard MS is a great place to work. I know my personal experiences doing some work with Azure in the past were always good. Full access to product teams and long deep dives with busy people.

To take this into gaming, I kinda wonder how something like Halo/343i's work with contractors fits into this. It sounds a bit like a cultural problem and not a good one.
 

SCUMMbag

Prophet of Truth - Chicken Chaser
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,407
The people I know who work at Microsoft claim to be very happy there. That said, even a place is great for a lot of people, it doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't hellish and incredibly problematic for some.

While lists like these are typically a general indicator of employee happiness, they shouldn't be use to invalidate anyone who has something negative to say about the company.
 

Helix

Mayor of Clown Town
Member
Jun 8, 2019
25,486
ykw, even I would give a five star rating if I got Free Office 365 and Game Pass
 

DopeyFish

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,207
Anecdotally from people I know who have worked there I believe this can largely be true. However at the same time I knew some friends who worked at IBM after graduating and had less than nice things to say about their experience, so I'll take the list with a grain of salt

there's no such thing as a perfect corporation

just with sheer number of employees, you're also going to have bad managers and in turn pockets of bad culture, it's unavoidable

that's why often there's a lot of proactive approaches on top of reactive responses
 

cursed beef

Member
Jan 3, 2021
772
this probably says more about the avg condition of labour worldwide than it does microsoft's company culture
 
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SlayerSaint

Member
Jan 6, 2019
2,573
I imagine it's similar to my company. People who actually work there fucking love it, meanwhile the contractors get the grunt work that sucks ass and none of the benefits packages, etc. that come from working for the company.

I'm a contractor, but my manager is currently fighting for me to be transferred over to our company because I have way more responsibility than a contractor should have. Hoping.
 

christocolus

Member
Oct 27, 2017
14,953
Can confirm. Most stress-free, accommodating, work-life balance you could possibly ask for.
Nice... I use a number of Microsoft products for work and home stuff and whenever I have issues I've found their customer service personnel to be always excellent, a huge contrast from some other organisation's I've had to deal with.
 
Oct 25, 2017
5,100
New York City
Always heard nice things about Microsoft. (Though because they only have a very small presence here in NYC, I never really did any job hunting there.)

I know a few people at IBM and haven't heard anything particularly good or bad about them, except for one person who used to work there at a more secretarial role and hated it.