Why The '100 Best Companies' To Work For List Is Useless: 24/7 Wall Street

24/7 Wall Street:

Anyone who enters one of the 77 high-end supermarkets owned by Wegmans Food Markets Inc. throughout the Northeast or clicks on the website of the Rochester, NY-based company quickly learns that it has been designated as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For by Fortune magazine for more than a decade.

Read the whole story: 24/7 Wall Street

Comments

[Louise Mc]

04:01 AM on 04/09/2011

My company is very big on a similar list of Washington companies published by Seattle Magazine. There is tremendous pressure every year for employees to fill out the survey. I don't believe anyone would care how valid it is. The important thing is getting to post the plaque prominently, use the log in literature and that kind of thing. It's all about the marketing.

[fortressfountain]

09:28 AM on 02/13/2011

Simply ask the employees of the company if they are the best to work for. If they are being taken care of by the company-decant pay and benefits they will say yes.
If not-then they will say no.
There are tons of people who work for walmart and b of a who love their job. They can take from the lowlies and recieve pay raises and bonuses.
Produce an actual income? Many do not.

[jabailo]

06:14 PM on 02/12/2011

The problem with the list is the problem with a list of the 100 Best Stocks to Invest In from the past 20 years...by the time you get to them, the party is over.

So, yes, the early employees who managed to get taken for a ride skyward, of course it's the "best company"...but for the people who come later and end up being their servants. No. Not good.

[Nick9075]

03:33 PM on 02/12/2011

These retail companies all have pitiful and rude customer service. Of course they have to hire fresh out of college 20 somethings because they are attractive and "fun to be around" which is all that seems to matter when making hiring decisions today.

[loki]

05:15 PM on 02/12/2011

no, they hire college grads as they have not been introduced to the real world of working yet, and are very gullible. For a time. Once they catch on, they are let go. That is why these companies have what is called a " Revolving Door" policy when it comes to employees. Hire the young and dumb.

[jdevans]

05:23 PM on 02/12/2011

And cheap.

[RedRat]

01:53 PM on 02/12/2011

Hmm. Some serious flaws in how the survey is conducted. It would appear that this is only a marketing ploy, as is typical of this kind of purported pseudo-scientific polling. What would be far more interesting is the turnover rate of employees at these various businesses. Of course, one must factor in the particular jobs too. Some people, due to their job training and expertise just cannot leave an employer, they are pretty much stuck no matter how onerous the conditions may be.

[okiedemocrat]

11:18 AM on 02/12/2011

It's like Who's Who and those dopey "What's best" sections in newspapers. They aren't honest.

[jdevans]

05:30 PM on 02/12/2011

Its like with those "Best Places to Retire" articles. You have to find out what criteria were used to determine "best" and see how well it matches your own list of criteria. But often the articles don't say what criteria were used.

[DXM]

09:36 AM on 02/12/2011

How come I'm not surprised that this whole "Top 100" BS is just a money-making/PR scam for everyone involved (from the company do the survey to the companies being surveyed to Fortune magazine).

[jdevans]

08:38 PM on 02/11/2011

Accenture, #99 on the list, hires 50,000 people a year. Most of the hires are fresh out of college and after a year or two of working 70 hours a week, are laid off so another batch of new college grads can be hired at entry-level wages. If this is one of the "100 Best", I'd hate to see the worst.

[golfnut49]

07:56 PM on 02/11/2011

To list Intel at 51 on the list of the top 100 companies to work for is laughable......

Please ask the people who have worked for Intel and were laid off after 18 or 19 years of service because they would be able to draw retirement.

Please ask the people who have worked for Intel who have a medical problem. Very quickly they find out that they are added to a targeted list and forced from their job to save Intel money.

Please ask the people who have wokred for Intel who are over 50 and find out that they havebeen laid off and told that the group there were in was not profitable, but the real reason was because of their age and nothing more.

Intel is shaking in it's boots when someone mentions "union" as they would never be able to treat it's employees like the above examples........just who got paid off to have them on this bogus list of the best companies to work for?

[RedRat]

01:58 PM on 02/12/2011

I suspect that this typical of just about every company out there, including the federal government. Usually, as employers get older, they are paid more money which makes them susceptible to layoffs. Most employers see older employees as pay liability, they can layoff an older employee and hire a young college grad for half to three-quarters the salary.

Face the fact that businesses now run cookie cutter jobs, that is what they want. People come and people go, that is the way they want it. Every person is replaceable on the spot. Never let an employee get to be too expert in their job, they may actually become indispensable and God knows we can't have that.

[golfnut49]

05:39 PM on 02/12/2011

Yes......and now we know why Wikileaks has so many sources of info.........what goes around comes around..........for companies that screw their employees, they deserve to be exposed............horray for Wikileaks.............

[WarrenPease]

07:01 PM on 02/11/2011

If the article is an indicator, 24/7 Wall Street will not win any awards for writing.

[JScott]

05:17 PM on 02/11/2011

It's Forbes for gosh sakes, so it's 100 of the best places in Forbes view.
And that view is Big Corporations and their execs are everything good and nothing bad and make a s*it load of money any way you can, and free market hands of goverment, nil regulation capitalism
is the holy grail. AKA internalize your profits and externalize your costs.

[wernerholm]

03:36 PM on 02/11/2011

Publix, Men's Warehouse, and Starbucks are all on the list... and all awful employers

[Repubnomore]

07:38 PM on 02/11/2011

Carmax isn't much better. For the sales consultants, they haven't increased the commission amount paid on a sold car since they first opened their doors. But then again, an employee's cost of living hasn't really gone up since 1993...

[mcmutter]

11:49 AM on 02/11/2011

most of these companies offer pitiful career opportunity ....