I work for a "best place to work".

Before that I worked at a place I could charitably call a "bottom place to work".

I've worked at a few very mediocre places as well.

So I've been around the block so to speak.

About a decade and a half ago, I worked at a place that doesn't show up on any of these lists. The main day-to-day difference it seems from where I work now and this place I worked at long ago is that I get free candy and juice. The other place had more interesting work. Almost all of my professional acquaintances come from the former place.

We have a badass cafeteria, but I still have to pay for it. So I guess that's better than the Amazon gig and the mediocre to decent food I was offered?

One of the chefs here is a former Google executive chef, his Polenta with mushroom sauce is pretty good, but a bit tart.

I get whatever hardware and resources I've asked for so far. So far I've gotten a large format printer with staff, 3 developers, a new rMBP with top of the line specs, a new monitor, travel expensed and have $100k worth of rack mountable GPUs on order. I'm throwing a lot of people and hardware at a problem that everybody including the client thinks should be solved this way, but for <reasons> probably won't work out in the end...and we all know it.

I've found not-for-profits to be consistently decent places to work, plus I can take pride in working at them for all kinds of principled reasons. Even if the pay sucks, the offices tend to be nice and its nice knowing you're helping the species move forward a little every day. The unofficial motto where I work is "fuck the money, do the right thing by the client". I like that.

But I know from long-timers that work-life balance kind of sucks and there's been some lean times recently that have left some old-timers hungry with a thirst they can't quite get rid of. There's a yoga class I can take, $60/season. We have a Gym, the showers are cleaned twice a day.

I've found that for-profits make me a heck of a lot more money, but range from miserable to mediocre.

I've almost worked at Google, Amazon and a few other bright stars on these kinds of lists, but the problems didn't seem terribly interesting even if the cafeterias were cool. I guess pushing ads, on-line retail or some other kind of kool-aidery is hip. I like my Android phone well enough. Maybe if I could have taken that salary and moved cross country and displaced my life, the free catered meals would have been worth it. The quiz-show interview was lame and completely irrelevant for the job they wanted me to do.

I've interviewed with a few places that think they're best places to work. 3 catered meals a day, game room, casual dress code, whatever. It's fine, but then they're supporting 10 year old application cruft and the hardest problems they have to solve is supporting the new release of Java.

The most I've ever learned, and thus the most rewarding job I ever worked was for a small and scrappy startup that failed. The lessons I learned there have earned me nonstop promotions at better places. I would absolutely do that again if I had a time machine even though it had really sucky aspects to it. It didn't even come close to being a best place to work...though I also got free candy and juice.

The best problems I've ever worked was for a shitty shitty mega-corp. They sent me around the world 4 times in two years, to active war zones, where I got shot at. Coding under fire is amazing. Saving people's lives is amazing. Dealing with corporate bullshit back home where none of that is recognized for any reason sucks. I recently was contacted by an employee to answer questions about code I hacked out 7 years ago while I was taking mortar fire. The stories I'll tell my grandkids come from this job. Also not a best place to work. No free juice or candy, no cafeteria.

It's interesting McKinsey is in the top-10. I've only ever heard terrible things about working there. The average rate of burn-out is under 2 years for new hires, so the suck factor must be incredibly high. But then again, a McKinsey bullet on your resume opens lots of doors.

In-N-Out and Costco are probably great to work if you don't have options. But I definitely need more than $12/hr for the lifestyle I've become accustomed to.

I know of Googlers who take month-long spur of the moment vacations 3 times a year and keep advancing. I know others who are on-call and put in hard 14-16 hour days constantly and fight with their managers for their pay increases.

It really is relative. If the work doesn't interest you, or the politics suck, or you like getting paid on time, and that matters to you more than anything else, then you might have a terrible time. You want dry-cleaning, catered lunches and work-life balance? Then maybe this list is a good one for you.

Google does have interesting problems, but it's likely that you won't be working on them.