Top 10 Tech Companies to Work for in 2012

By Anthony Myers | January 03 2012 5:12 PM

Photo: Reuters

#1 Facebook - Top 10 Tech Companies to Work for in 2012

Everybody's favorite social network (right?) was the number three overall worker-voted best place to work in the U.S. Last year they were number one. It will be interesting to see how they do next year after they go public.

Photo: Mitre

#2 Mitre - Top 10 Tech Companies to Work for in 2012

Mitre is a tech powerhouse due mostly to its impressive list of government contracts. They do computer systems for aviation, homeland security and intelligence. They were ranked number four overall and were in the 12th spot last year.

Photo: Google

#3 Google - Top 10 Tech Companies to Work for in 2012

Google is staying not evil this year with a fifth overall ranking this year. What a year it's been because they were only at 30 last year.

Photo: Career Builder

#4 Career Builder - Top 10 Tech Companies to Work for in 2012

It's a Web site that helps you find a job, so while its not fully tech, it's good enough for this list. They took the sixth overall ranking in the list.

Photo: Reuters

#5 Apple - Top 10 Tech Companies to Work for in 2012

Apple ranked 10th overall, up from 20th last year.

Photo: Rackspace

#6 Rackspace - Top 10 Tech Companies to Work for in 2012

Rackspace, as the name implies, is a Web hosting company based in San Antonio, Texas. They ranked at number 12 in the survey after not having been ranked in the top 50 last year.

Photo: REUTERS

#7 Salesforce - Top 10 Tech Companies to Work for in 2012

Salesforce makes enterprise software, despite the fact their logo depicts an anti-software stance. They ranked 15th overall up from 41 last year.

Photo: United Space Alliance

#8 United Space Alliance - Top 10 Tech Companies to Work for in 2012

Another government contractor who works in defense, energy and NASA, USA ranked 14th overall best place to work.

Photo: National Instruments

#9 National Instruments - Top 10 Tech Companies to Work for in 2012

Makers of engineering and scientific systems, Austin based National Instruments ranked number 18 overall.

Photo: Citrix Systems

#10 Citrix Systems - Top 10 Tech Companies to Work for in 2012

An information technology company, Citrix ranked number 20 overall best place to work. Honorable Mentions: Qualcomm- The chip maker was ranked the 21st best place to work. NetApp – NetApp ranked 30th. They are an IT company.

Every year, a company called Glassdoor does employee surveys to find out who are the best companies to work for. The surveys are anonymous, so that could work for or against a particular company, but Glassdoor has made the results public every year for the last four. This year, the top companies aren't necessarily tech centered, but we've culled the list for the best ones anyway. Glassdoor says the companies that do the best on their surveys are the ones that have competitive pay and benefits packages, open communication practices, and high opinions of the chief executive among other things.

Facebook for example ranks very high, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a lower rating in this year's survey than last. There are other companies that do these surveys, of course, and one of them is a company called Universum. They asked business and engineering students around the world where they wanted to work when they graduated. The lists are pretty different, and the only two companies that show up high in both surveys are Apple and Google. Start the slideshow to see the top 10 tech companies to work for in 2012. Tell us in the comments if you work for one of the companies or if you have a recommendation (or warning) about one.

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