In Their Dreams: Where Tech Professionals Long to Work

It's the salary. And the location. And the mission. And the reputation. It's a combination of these things-as well as, let's face it, the coolness factor-that make a tech company a dream employer for a software engineer, product manager, data scientist, or other tech professional.

Job search firm Hired surveyed 3,600 tech professionals to come up with a list of top employers. They did this by creating a positivity index-a number based on a mix of survey respondents who either would "love to work" or "might like to work" at a particular company. Hired also asked respondents what factors played into their choices.

Some of the usual suspects-Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft-made the top 15. But others, particularly on the list of privately held tech companies-were a bit of a surprise. I didn't realize engineers dreamed of working at Virgin Hyperloop One or Instacart; and stock-trading app Robinhood hadn't even been on my radar until it ranked seventh on LinkedIn's list of hottest startups released earlier this month. Overall, the top 15 public companies pulled higher positivity indexes than all of the private ones except Airbnb, SpaceX, and Hulu-perhaps simply because they are better known.

Silicon Valley companies dominated Hired's dream employer rankings-of the top 30 (15 public, 15 private) companies that Hired identified, 19 call the San Francisco Bay Area home. With another five based in Los Angeles and two in Seattle, that left only four tech dream companies with roots beyond the west coast of the U.S.: three in New York and one in Austin, Texas. And in spite of this being a global survey, no non-U.S. company made the top rankings.

Companies Most Loved by Tech Professionals (Private)

*based on number of respondents interested in working for a company

Source: Hired

Companies Most Loved by Tech Professionals (Public)

*based on number of respondents interested in working for a company

Source: Hired