Best Company To Work For: Money and Perks Like No Other

Profiling the best company in the world.

I’ve had the fortune to work at some great companies, which offered perks that were almost as good as the salaries they gave out. What’s it like at these places? For successful, top-notch companies, rewards abound (to keep employees loyal); and here are some of the extras that can round out one’s compensation package:

Free gym and pool

Stock options (a piece of the equity pie)

Bonus plans

Referral bonuses

401K with matching

Educational plan

Child care services on work campus

ESPP

Health Reimbursement Plans

Flexible Spending Plans

Matching donations to charities and schools

Relocation assistance

Life and disability insurance

These benefits are awesome and can make many hours of toiling away in a cubicle much more palatable. But great as these benefits are, they’re just the tip of the iceberg for a company that has regularly captured the #1 title as “Best Company” in the nation. In Silicon Valley, this is where everyone (from accountants to engineers to web designers) wishes they could work, so I was curious to find out what it really was like to work at a place where nerds rule 😉 .

Profile of A Top Company

Fortune’s number one company to work for “sets the standard for Silicon Valley: free meals, swimming spa, and free doctors onsite. Engineers can spend 20% of time on independent projects. Their company is so stinking rich that it continues to ooze cash even while lavishing benefits on its staff. ” They’re also responsible for a good portion of California’s tax dollars.

These are the reasons why Google takes the title as the best place to work:

What’s it like?

Life for Google employees at the Mountain View campus is like college. It feels like the brainiest university imaginable – one in which every kid can afford a sports car (though geeky hybrids are cooler here than hot rods).

Fun, healthful activites

At Google you can work out in the gym; attend subsidized exercise classes; get a massage (by a masseuse or fancy massage chairs); study Mandarin, Japanese, Spanish and French and ask a personal concierge to arrange dinner reservations. Too many amenities to count, including lap pool, rock climbing wall, pool table. Or how about beach volleyball, Foosball, videogames, ping pong and roller hockey twice a week in the parking lot. Oh yeah, dogs allowed.

So you’re no longer just a wealthy geek, you’re also a wealthy buffed geek!

~ooOoo~

Fantastic food

Google runs 11 free gourmet cafeterias and offers all its employees free gourmet meals. Company lore has it that Brin and co-founder Larry Page believe no worker should be more than 150 feet from a food source.

~ooOoo~

Transportation benefits

How about free Wi-fi shuttle coaches to ferry you from train stations to your work campus? Onsite car washes and oil changes are among the numerous perks Google offers to all its workers. Want to buy a hybrid car? The company will give you $5,000 toward that environmentally friendly end. Oh yeah, get free scooters to travel around campus.

~ooOoo~

Multi-task with lots of help, on site

You can get your errands done at work. Get a haircut while doing your laundry. Exercise at a workout room with weights and rowing machine, keep stuff at locker rooms, have your kid in child care, get your paperwork done with onsite notaries, your car serviced on site and get checkups with five onsite doctors available, free of charge.

~ooOoo~

More money, more rewards for top employees

Refer a friend and you’ll get a $2,000 reward. New parents get $500 in takeout food to ease their first four weeks at home. And what about the 27-year-old engineer who received a million-dollar founders’ award (Google bonus) for her work on a program that searches computer desktops. Then there are those who are coasting, waiting for their stock options to kick in, said to be “resting and vesting.” And despite this all, Google needs to worry about retention! They’re considering starting a sabbatical program and get this — thinking of new career opportunities for the restless (you mean invent new jobs?). It has also institutionalized, among other things, a bevy of compensation incentives, founders’ awards than can run into millions of dollars, and special bonuses.

Get your ideas heard and executed

The Google shuttle bus exists today because an employee got sick of driving to work and scouted out a bus company, then plotted out the routes a shuttle might take. She brought the idea to senior management only after she’d done all the research. Any other company would’ve formed a cross-divisional transportation feasibility committee to study the issue. Google just did it.

~ooOoo~

Now what could possibly beat working for a rich company in Silicon Valley? Well how about working for a rich company anywhere in the world — including in your OWN native country? From the following examples, you can see that you no longer have to go outside of your country to work at Google. If you have the skills such a hot shot employer is looking for, you could be eligible for a golden ticket. And this is why capitalism rules, it affords the ability for massive wealth generation that can be spread to far flung places.

Case in point: these Google employees in India share the culture of the mother company.

Top Company In Bangalore, India

Google’s corporate strategy in India has been described as a “brain drain in reverse.”

A turbaned Sikh relaxes in a massage chair, eyes closed. Interspersed among the cubicles are a foosball table, billiards, darts, a chessboard, and a board game called carrom. A tent-shrouded chair sports a sign, FORTUNES TOLD HERE.

A great side benefit to being part of an elite work force? Landing a job at Google is said to increase marriage prospects in a culture where title and income are critical to the practice of arranged matchmaking.

I also really like this logo 🙂 .

Random Philosophical Ramblings On Wealth and Success

Just like a company that has such far reaching tentacles, I think of individuals as influencing their own space, with certain people more able to reach out than others (also in various ways beyond the financial). Companies like Google enable its employees to be in such a fortuitous and influential position.

How loud does money talk? Well let’s look where money and success can take you: if you’ve done well financially, just think of all the influence and power you’ve got in your hands. Though the great majority of us won’t be facing something like the “Google effect”, even some money can exert influence, albeit at a smaller scale. For those of us luckier than others, I wish that good fortune and prosperity will offer a positive effect that extends beyond our own lives.

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