Glassdoor: Google Overtakes Facebook For Employee Satisfaction For The First Time In Four Years
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.
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands three months after Glassdoor's 2012 Best Places to Work list put Facebook, Google, Apple and Rackspace at the top together — today's comparison pulls them apart, with Google taking the employee-satisfaction lead from Facebook for the first time since 2008. The pickup is broad: Search Engine Land, GeekWire, Business Insider and others all ran the story on the day.
Timing is what makes it more than a stat: Facebook is weeks out from an IPO — it is simultaneously testing $700K-per-day log-out ad pricing — so its workforce is full of employees whose compensation and motivation hinge on how that debut goes. Glassdoor's read on CEO approval, benefits and perks is a public scoreboard for which company can hold and hire the engineers both need.
First-order effects
- Google regains a recruiting talking point it has lacked for four years: candidate-facing evidence that its culture and leadership approval now beat Facebook's on the same rating platform.
- Facebook enters its IPO window with a visible dip in the employee-satisfaction metric it had led, a retention risk precisely when locked-up engineers are weighing whether to stay post-lockup.
Second-order effects
- Both companies' HR arms face pressure to respond with benefits and perk packages rather than messaging, because Glassdoor's employee-written reviews make any gap publicly auditable by every competing offer in the Valley.
- Rivals like Apple and Rackspace — named alongside them on the December 2011 list — now compete against two companies incentivized to bid up compensation, raising the price of senior engineering talent across the market.
Third-order effects
- Employer brand is becoming a quantified, continuously updated competitive metric rather than a recruiting brochure claim, with Glassdoor positioned as the de facto exchange where tech talent prices company cultures.
- If satisfaction rankings keep swinging with equity events like IPOs, retention strategy at pre-IPO companies will increasingly be built around managing the post-listing expectations of option-rich employees.
The trend: Employee-generated review platforms like Glassdoor are turning workplace satisfaction into a tracked, head-to-head competitive metric in Silicon Valley's talent war.