Glassdoor recently came out with its best places to work list. Like it's counterpart from Fortune, the list doesn't make any sense. How can you put consulting firms and retail chains next to each other in the same list, where people in the former typically have multiple Ivy League degrees and $150,000 starting salaries (partners get paid by the 1,000,000) and the latter may only have workers with high school diplomas that average $25,000 per year?
A more meaningful list would segregate companies by educational level or selectivity, where people could at least compare jobs that are relatively obtainable. A high school diploma is probably the only qualification for most retail jobs such as Trader Joes, REI and J. Crew. For some corporate jobs, a bachelors degree might get you in the door, such as lower-tier technology firms like Intuit or Rackspace. To get interviewed for associate (post-MBA) positions McKinsey, Bain or Goldman, you need to have at least one Ivy League school on your resume (the key exceptions are for Stanford and Northwestern).
I'm always skeptical when consulting firms are listed in the top 5. The pressure is so high that most people quit or get fired after two years. The environment is grueling, with long hours that typically involve spending weeks living out of hotels while working at client sites in the middle of nowhere. And when people leave, they don't change consulting firms, they work in industry or try their hand at startups.
Additionally, the top consulting firms do not have large headcounts: I've always wondered how they get enough responses to tip the ratings in their favor. Bain, is estimated at having 5,500 professionals according to Wikipedia. This is about 1/4th of Google and 1/10th of Dow Chemical.
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