How far the mighty have fallen! Fortune magazine announced Jan. 22 that network storage provider NetApp has been knocked from its No. 1-in-the-world perch in 2009 and slipped all the way down to No. 7 in its annual “100 Best Companies to Work for” list for 2010.
What’s going here? A chef in the cafeteria not working out? Workout room turned into a storage closet? Cheaper coffee?
Of course we’re poking fun at NetApp, long recognized as an exceedingly employee-friendly company. Just getting into such a Top 100 list is quite an honor.
This is the second straight year NetApp was ranked in the top 10 and the fourth consecutive year it was ranked in the top 15. That says a lot about how the place is managed.
By the way, business analytics/intelligence software maker SAS was voted No. 1 this year. Here’s the entire list.
NetApp was the only storage company listed. Other notable IT companies included Google (4), Qualcomm (9), Cisco Systems (16), Adobe Systems (42), Salesforce.com (43), Microsoft (51), Brocade Communications (61), Intuit (94) and Intel (98).
Funny thing, though: NetApp actually received higher scores from employees than it did last year, when it topped the poll. The company’s overall score was six points higher than last year’s, and the company achieved higher scores in all five of the poll’s categories: credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie.
Credit certainly goes to longtime chairman and former CEO Dan Warmenhoven, current CEO Tom Georgens and all their lieutenants, who set the pace at the Sunnyvale, Calif., campus.