Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) was the No. 1 company on the Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Awards, a list of the 50 Best Places to Work for 2013. This is the fifth year that the organization has produced the research. Clearly, the value of the stock options in Facebook’s failed IPO did not charge the hearts of many of its workers.

Most of the companies just below Facebook on the list are not public. Two consulting firms, McKinsey & Company, and Bain, finished second and fourth. Boston Consulting group was No. 10. MD Andersen Cancer Center was N0. 5. Slipping into the No. 2 spot was Riverbed Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: RVBD), an unknown IT performance firm that has been badly beaten by investors recently.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) filled the No. 6 spot. Several unknown companies rounded out the top 10: Edelman, a PR firm, National Instruments Corp. (NASDAQ: NATI), a measurement and automation products company, and In-N-Out Burger. The chain has most of its locations in the U.S. Southwest. It has an absurdly small 281 outlets, most likely fewer that McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD) has in New York City.

Among the other companies in the top 50 are ones well-regarded for customer service, incidentally: Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV), Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE: CRM), JetBlue Airways Corp. (NASDAQ: JBLU), Costco Wholesale Corp. (NASDAQ: COST), and Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX).

The list also included a large number of tech giants and Web 2.0 firms: Linkedin Corp. (NYSE: LNKD), Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM), Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC), SAP A.G. (NYSE: SAP) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL).

The only criticism some research purists might have of the research is sample size. Only 138 people reviewed Riverbed, and MD Andersen with 123 reviews.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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