At the start of 2024, worker engagement in America fell to an 11-year low, with a Gallup poll revealing that just 30% say they are “highly involved and enthusiastic about their work and workplaces.”

At the same moment, businesses everywhere are working hard to redefine the post-lockdown workplace as somewhere employees would choose to come to. Solutions range from establishing a culture of openness and diversity of both demographics and personality types to awe-inspiring architecture and games rooms.

America’s tech giants would appear to have a head start. “Working at Apple means that the things you work on get into the hands of hundreds of millions of people, literally,” says one employee on Glassdoor. “It’s a lot of pressure to get things right and drives one to do the best work of their lives. 2+ years later I’m still blown away by the talent and creativity of people I work with.”

But with scale comes bureaucracy, anonymity and alienation — from those around you and the local community where the premises are set.  “This building is $5 billion and 2.8 million square feet of Steve Jobsian-Jony Ivesian-Norman Fosterian genius,” wrote Adam Rogers in WIRED when new Apple’s Cupertino campus landed in 2017. “[But] You can’t understand a building without looking at what’s around it. From that angle, Apple’s new HQ is a retrograde, literally inward-looking building with contempt for the city where it lives and cities in general.”

Still, with all that talent and money, the tech giants are, on the whole, able to keep their employees happy. To find the best place to join them, Switch On Business found the average employee rating for the big five tech companies in every city and state where they do business.

What We Did

We analyzed employee reviews on Glassdoor.com for Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta published between January 2023 and October 2024, calculating the average employee rating by state and city. 

Key Findings

• The best place to work for Apple is Palo Alto, where employee ratings average 4.48.
• Amazon has the biggest disparity between the highest- and lowest-rated cities: employees rate working in Herndon, VA, at 4.24 but in Buena Park, CA, at just 2.73.
• Neither Google nor Microsoft have a single U.S. location with an employee rating averaging less than 4.0.

Palo Alto, Orlando and Columbus Are Higher-Rated Apple Locations Than Cupertino HQ

 

Working for Apple in Cupertino, CA (4.08), where the company has its headquarters, is rated significantly lower than in Palo Alto (4.48), just 15 miles away. One reason may be that Cupertino is something of an Apple town, while Palo Alto maintains a richer blend of Silicon Valley firms across a similarly sized population. On balance, this leaves Ohio (4.35) to pick up the honors as the best-rated state to work for Apple.

Says an Apple employee on Glassdoor: “Apple Park is way too minimalistic and overbearing, accessibility features are limited beyond the first floor, petty theft can happen (got my scooter stolen), and the insane levels of secrecy to keep about projects is annoying and can even get in the way of collaboration.”

Google Rated A Good Place to Work — Everywhere

 

The lowest-rated place to work for Google is Kirkland, WA, where the average employee rating is 4.00 — not bad at all. The highest-rated Google location is Chicago (4.54), which the company describes as a “diverse, cross-functional site where Googlers of all backgrounds and job descriptions work, thrive, and grow together.” The “coffee bars, two cafes, outdoor decks (including one with a train car!), a gym, a music room, a makerspace, and arcade games” mean there’s something for all ages.

On the downside, Google’s Chicago staff report a lack of direction among the management and a shift to revenue-oriented work following recent upheavals across the web — “goal attainment can be hard to achieve ethically,” complains one reviewer. Still, even the staff at Kirkland have to praise the wages and benefits of working for a $2 trillion company.

Microsoft’s Redmond Headquarters is Far From Employees’ Favorite

 

Like Google, Microsoft has an average rating of over 4.0 in every U.S. location. The highest-rated Microsoft location of all is Los Angeles (4.52). The company maintains a Corporate Sales Office in LA, which employees have tagged as a very “respectful and polite place to work” and a “[f]un place to work with great benefits,” although competition and pressure within the company are high.

There are 12 cities where working for Microsoft is rated higher than in Redmond, WA (4.16), where the company has its headquarters. The Microsoft Corporate Campus has been here since 1986 and is currently amidst a major rebuild, with 17 new buildings to be “designed and clustered into five distinctive villages.” But “Redmond and seattle are a bit boring,” according to one intern, while “Being locked into the bloated Microsoft tech stack makes work slow and painful and uninspired,” says another.

Significant Disparity in Employee Experience Across Amazon Sites

 

The least consistently rated of the tech giants we’ve profiled, the world’s biggest shop turns out to be a tale of two Amazons. While 49 out of the 176 cities where Amazon operates are rated 3.5 or higher, 18 are rated 3.0 or lower. To some degree, this appears to be a divide in the blue- and white-collar experience.

The average employee rating for Herndon, VA (4.24), is 1.55 higher than that of Buena Park, CA (2.73), where work is “Labor intensive and can destroy your body,” according to one reviewer — a theme that is echoed across the site. Conversely, one Herndon employee says: “To grow here you have to be get comfortable standing on your decisions and being a free thinker. You will be challenged but know its coming from a place of wanting to see you become better at your job.”

Meta’s Gehry-Designed Headquarters a Bittersweet Experience

 

As with other tech giants, Meta’s hometown is among its lowest rated for the employee experience. Facebook bought its Menlo Park, CA (3.84), premises in 2011 and hired no less a figure than Frank Gehry to design new buildings and a team of Disneyland consultants to build the main street. However, despite both the urban conveniences of an on-site laundry service and international cuisine and the pastoral pleasures of wild foxes and a firelit outdoor office, a balanced routine is hard to find.

“If you don’t learn to make the work life balance work for you, it can be exhausting,” writes one employee. “But you’ll also be given lots of support with this if you ask for it.” Meanwhile, working so close to the center of power in a time of sweeping job cuts is a nerve-wracking business. “Everyone is stressed and anxious about losting [sic] their jobs and they’re overworking themselves to try and save their jobs,” writes an employee doing their second stint with the firm. “It’s sad to see and it has completely killed the culture and morale.”

How to Live While Making a Living

Employee ratings suggest that working for the tech giants is a positive experience in general — and it may depend as much on the type of work as the location itself. However, employees feel the heat if working too close to the core of the company, and reviews suggest that many would benefit from more effective middle management and an upper management who listens to them.

One thing is clear: flashy premises and workplace gimmicks mean little if the work isn’t balanced and fulfilling and employees are made to feel anonymous or powerless. For a further look at how companies can attract top talent and keep them happy, check out Switch On Business’s look into how big tech firms headhunt their rivals’ star players and the companies where employees feel most positive about how things are going.

 

Methodology

To find out the best locations to work for America’s Tech Giants, we analyzed employee reviews on Glassdoor.com for Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta published between January 2023 and October 2024, calculating average employee rating by state and city.