Back in March, Louis Columbus reported on some numbers from Glassdoor.com showing employees' rankings of their cloud technology companies. They are not perfect indicators of company culture, but are certainly worth your consideration if you're looking to work for a cloud provider -- or trying to figure out which ones to use as a provider.
Reports like these give an insider's view into some of the top cloud technology companies. I can get an idea of what the culture is really like, which is an indicator of how well they are building and deploying their cloud tech.
[ From Amazon Web Services to Windows Azure, see how the elite 8 public clouds compare in the InfoWorld Test Center's review. | Stay up on the cloud with InfoWorld's Cloud Computing Report newsletter. ]
People say that having a bunch of unhappy employees doesn't measure the value of company's technology. I completely disagree: Dysfunctional cultures mean high turnover and a lack of consistency in building and deploying products or services. As a boss of mine once said, "Scared chickens don't lay eggs."
Google, Mulesoft, Zoho, and Financial Force top the Glassdoor.com employee satisfaction list, with Financial Force in the No. 1 position. Guess what? They all have very strong and competitive cloud technology offerings.
Working down the list, Salesforce.com comes in with 76 percent of employees who would recommend working there to a friend. Amazon Web Services comes in at 66 percent, Oracle at 65 percent, IBM at 59 percent, Verizon at 52 percent, Hewlett-Packard at 47 percent, and Pivotal Software at 40 percent.
Making people happy is not that hard to do. The challenge is creating an innovative culture that drives productivity and value. I suspect that many cloud technology companies are moving so fast that the stress makes its way down to the worker bees, and as the survey shows, they are not responding positively.
When I first became an executive leader, these sorts of data points didn't mean much to me. However, I quickly learned that what the average employee thinks about the strategy, technology, pay, leadership, and the company culture means a great deal to the success or failure of a company or technology.
Today, I consider such markers when I select technology. You should too. Ask yourself: Is the product or service you're about to commit to coming from scared chickens or happy chickens?
This article, "Choosing a cloud provider? Follow the happy employees," originally appeared at InfoWorld.com. Read more of David Linthicum's Cloud Computing blog and track the latest developments in cloud computing at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.