Costco, In-N-Out beat Google on list of California's best employers

FILE - According to a new ranking from Forbes, In-N-Out is in the top five best places to work in California. FILE - According to a new ranking from Forbes, In-N-Out is in the top five best places to work in California. Photo: FREDERIC J. BROWN, AFP/Getty Images Photo: FREDERIC J. BROWN, AFP/Getty Images Image 1 of / 33 Caption Close Costco, In-N-Out beat Google on list of California's best employers 1 / 33 Back to Gallery

According to a new ranking released by Forbes, you've got it made if you're a Californian working at Costco Wholesale or In-N-Out Burger.

The list, for which Forbes partnered with market research company Statista, shows the organizations liked best by employees for each state in the country. California's top five include Costco Wholesale, In-N-Out Burger, Workday, Microsoft and Trader Joe's.

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Costco is known for providing even part-time employees with great benefits, including health coverage, dependent care assistance programs and 401(k) plans. According to a Costco executive, the annual salary of a general manager at Costco is $138,000. In-N-Out has also earned high marks for offering free food (who can resist a free Double-Double?), flexible scheduling, paid time off and a starting wage of at least $13 per hour.

ALSO: The surprising amount a Costco store manager can make

Only one of the top five companies — Workday, a cloud-based HR and financial management software company based in Pleasanton — is headquartered in the Bay Area. But many of the other 194 companies featured on the California list are local: Google (Mountain View), E. & J. Gallo Winery (Modesto), LinkedIn (Mountain View), Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (Palo Alto), Kaiser Permanente (Oakland), and Apple (Cupertino) all cracked the top 20.

It also turns out you don't have to work at a big tech company to have the best job in California. Adobe and Salesforce.com made the list, but so did Sutter Health, UCSF Medical Center, the City and County of San Francisco, DPR Construction, PG&E, Peet's Coffee & Tea and Caltrans.

Maybe it's time to ditch Mountain View for the greener pastures of animal fries.

Madeline Wells is an SFGate editorial assistant. Email: madeline.wells@sfgate.com | Twitter: @madwells22