A recent survey of tech professionals around the world about which company they would most want to work for produced a few surprises — including in Seattle, when it came to one of the biggest and fastest-growing tech giants out there.
The survey was produced by the recruitment website Hired last month, and was picked up in a story by the World Economic Forum on Monday. The 2,349 respondents came from 15 tech hubs: Austin, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C., in the U.S.; London in the U.K.; Melbourne and Sydney in Australia; Toronto in Canada; and Singapore.
Hired said that beyond recruiting gimmicks, employees are more interested in working for companies that cater to what they value most, adding that “value” is subjective to each candidate’s preference and can be defined as compensation and benefits, company culture, or the opportunity to learn new skills.
“To better understand what candidates most often value in a potential employer, we sought to identify the most attractive companies in tech, by surveying our exclusive pool of qualified technical talent in software engineering, product management, design, and data science to determine which companies interest them most,” Hired wrote.
While six Bay Area companies dominated Hired’s top 10 list when it came to brand positivity, Elon Musk’s Los Angeles-based SpaceX came in at No. 1. Something about the race to get to outer space proved to be most desirable when it comes to recruiting power.
The list is notable because it does not include Amazon, a global powerhouse in terms of brand recognition. In fact, in Seattle where the e-commerce company is headquartered, Amazon was third behind the real estate technology companies Redfin and Zillow.
Seattle’s top 10 does include Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos-founded space racer that competes with SpaceX. Non-tech notables Costco and Alaska Airlines are also on the list.
And Redfin managed to score higher than companies based in other big cities, such as Squarespace (New York), Boeing (Chicago), Indeed (Austin), TripAdvisor (Boston) and others.
