Report: The Best Companies to Work All Feature 3 Key Qualities—and In-N-Out Ranks Second
Why does a burger chain and a car wash company provide more employee satisfaction than fancy tech giants who are household names? Because employees now equate service with certainty. Instead of the volatility of the technology world, businesses with simpler service and product sets that pride themselves on commitment to customer satisfaction are simply more dependable in terms of where to work. Read this eye opening article about this counterintuitive trend.
FROM INC MAGAZINE / BY LEILA SHERIDAN
Employees don’t want flashy benefits and names. They want flexibility and support.
The best company to work for in 2026 isn’t a buzzy Silicon Valley startup or a trillion-dollar tech giant. It’s an Indiana-based, family-owned carwash.
According to Glassdoor’s 18th annual Best Places to Work report, the country’s top employers are frontline and, by traditional standards, unglamorous. This year’s ranking suggests that prestige has lost its grip on what workers actually value.
“Some of these large companies [are] really pushing on return to office, or being much more strict about the hours that people are working,” Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor’s chief economist, said. “What we hear from workers is that they really value flexibility.”
Using employee feedback from U.S.-based companies with at least 1,000 workers, Glassdoor evaluated overall satisfaction across key workplace factors, including career opportunities, compensation and benefits, culture and values, diversity and inclusion, senior management, and work-life balance.
At the top of the list sits Crew Carwash and In-N-Out Burger, both championing tech giants like NVIDIA, Google, and Apple. The best employers, it appears, focus on reliable service rather than status.
Crew Carwash claimed the top spot after sitting in second place in 2024. Glassdoor points to the company’s supportive leadership, expanded opportunities for career growth, and healthy team culture as key contributions to the company’s improvement and ensuing success.
Zooming out, the broader top 100 list reveals a consistent pattern. The highest rated companies emphasize supportive leadership, career growth, and flexibility, including work-life balance. Flashy perks are notably absent. Even elite firms like Bain & Company and Boston Consulting Group lead with people-first culture rather than prestige or pay alone.
Companies are “continuing to invest in employees,” according to Zhao, who pointed to employee support as a defining thread amongst the highest-ranked employers.
That support is particularly relevant in a volatile labor market. Widespread layoffs have upended job security at many major companies, making stability and trust far more valuable to workers than brand name alone.
“2025 was a year of very high uncertainty in the economy, and thus for workers,” Zhao said, noting that employees are increasingly prioritizing long-term support.
While leading tech companies still appear prominently on the list, their fast growth and buzzy headlines are not enough to claim top spots. In fact, 24 tech companies made Glassdoor’s 2026 list, two fewer than in 2025 and seven fewer than in 2024.
According to Zhao, major layoffs have contributed to decreasing popularity of tech businesses. “This is a continuation of what we’ve seen for tech across several years, where the industry has lost some of its luster as some of these big tech companies undergo layoffs,” he said. Even so, tech’s “very high pay and career opportunities,” according to Zhao, make the industry perennially appealing to employees.
Ultimately, Glassdoor’s rankings suggest that an employee’s experience hinges less on prestige and more on whether a workplace can show up for them in lasting, tangible ways. Work opportunities, meanwhile, are far more expansive than traditional hierarchies imply. As Zhao put it, this year’s list shows there are “employers across a whole host of different sectors and parts of the country that offer best-in-class employee experience.”
Check out the top 10 companies below, and read the full list on Glassdoor:
Crew Carwash (company rating: 4.6, headquarters: Fishers, IN, industry: retail)
In-N-Out Burger (company rating: 4.5, headquarters: Irvine, CA industry: food service)
NVIDIA (company rating: 4.5, headquarters: Santa Clara, CA, industry: technology)
Ryan (company rating: 4.5, headquarters: Dallas, TX, industry: finance)
Keller Williams (company rating: 4.5, headquarters: Austin, TX, industry: real estate)
Mars (company rating: 4.5, headquarters: McLean, VA, industry: manufacturing)
ServiceNow (company rating: 4.4, headquarters: Santa Clara, CA industry: technology)
Bain & Company (company rating: 4.4, headquarters: Boston, MA, industry: business consulting)
Houston Methodist (company rating: 4.4, headquarters: Houston, TX, industry: healthcare)
EPAM Systems (company rating: 4.4, headquarters: Newtown, PA industry: Technology)