What does a typical work environment look like for today’s small to mid-sized marketing tech companies? I’ve visited quite a few of them, mostly in New York and San Francisco. The office designs vary from a few rooms staked out in a communal We Work space, to a single floor (always open-plan, of course), to the gilded ambience of Salesforce Tower in Manhattan.
I’ve seen offices with playrooms, in-house pubs, and beds for employee down-time. Dress codes are a thing of the past, of course; however, for some companies, so are scheduled vacations. Indeed, some marketing tech vendors allow employees to take time off as needed and desired — as long as the work gets done.
I see youth; I see welcome diversity; I’m aware of quick turnover and a constant hunt for talent. Then again, this is all anecdotal.
But there’s plenty of research to go around. Job site Glassdoor produced a list of the best tech companies to work for, according to employees, last year. Not surprisingly, Facebook topped the list and Google served as runner up — followed, less predictably, by Missouri’s World Wide Technology and Colorado’s Fast Enterprises. Forbes produced a similar survey this year. Among its sample of large tech companies, Ultimate Software, Intuit, and Salesforce came out on top. Google and Facebook, however, didn’t figure (although World Wide Technology did — it won seventh place among larger companies).
So, with reservations about the likely rigor of results, we decided to run an experimental survey on Best Places to Work among marketing tech companies — which, admittedly, is not an easily defined sector.
We called for entries back in May and had a lot of fun reading the responses employees took time to write. We dutifully processed the scores on dozens of detailed questions to come up with our winners, as well as some honorable mentions.
Our categories were based on number of U.S. employees, but there’s a qualification in there. Rightly or wrongly, we assumed the smallest companies would be start-ups, so we called that the “start-up” category. In fact, our some brands which did well in that category, while definitely start-up sized, have been around for a number of years, and/or have offices overseas: So take the results in that category as assessing what it’s like to work in the U.S. office.
Anyway, you’ll find all of the winners and honorable mentions here. We’ll be announcing the winners of the start-up sized category today, the small business category tomorrow, and the mid-sized winner on Friday. Thanks to all for participating.
