5 Best SaaS Companies to Work For

Where do you go when you’re a smart, qualified, yet unemployed techie?

Well, there are a few roads to take here. You can focus on the world’s best saas companies, which is great if you’re building your skill set or forging connections you’ll need when you launch your own company. Those late nights spent coding can pay off a lot sooner with the right connections.

What if you’re not planning on launching your own company, though?

What if you really just want to be a part of something bigger than yourself?

Where do you go if you quietly fantasize about a job so exciting it gets you out of bed when it’s time for you to get some sleep at night?

You go to the tech companies that care the most about their employees. This isn’t an exact science, but it’s a decent rule of thumb: companies willing to spend the time and money to cultivate the best internal cultures typically care more about their staff. That means they care more about recruiting the people just like you.

The Importance of The Culture

Company culture is hugely important because it’s the personality of a software company. And like in many relationships, personalities are sometimes overlooked.

Employees are known to be dazzled by vacation time. Sure, vacation time is great.

Yes, benefits are important.

However…

We overlook company culture or rarely assign to it as much importance as we do vacations and benefits. Time off is great, but you’re always going to be at work for more time than you spend at home. At least you will if you’re trying to afford luxuries like the rent.

Benefits are great, but you actually have to work at the company long enough to receive them. Besides, what’s the point of great benefits if you hate where you spend most of your time. What does it profit a person to gain the world and lose their soul?

Too melodramatic? You’re right, let’s take a more pragmatic approach.

Here’s the thing, company culture is the only metric that guarantees you’ll enjoy the time you spend in the actual building. Isn’t that worth a tad more importance? Ensuring you’re comfortable with the company culture is really the best way to make sure you can live and grow with a company.

Now that you know how important company culture is, we can get to the prize at the bottom of the box. Below we’ve wrangled together a list of tech companies that have some of the friendliest company cultures in the world.

The 5 Best SaaS Companies

Docusign

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, DocuSign empowers organizations to automate one of the most tedious and time-consuming formalities of modern-day business: preparing, signing and documenting agreements.

According to CEO Dan Springer, one of the goals of the company is to become the best place their employees have worked at in their entire careers.

Besides relentlessly striving to hit company goals, DocuSign has taken some very real steps towards very big ideals. Buzzworthy ideas like diversity, inclusivity, and empowerment usually receive more lip service than elbow grease, but DocuSign changed all that recently.

They’ve extended their paternal leave benefit to a whopping 6 months off. They expanded both inclusion and diversity with their Employee Resources Group and they’re currently on a mission to hire more female senior executives in an effort to break up the boy’s club and shatter the glass ceiling.

Hubspot

Founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shan in 2006, Hubspot develops software for inbound marketing and sales. It’s products, services and even it’s sophisticated free courses are fan favorites among anyone and everyone looking for educational tools in core inbound marketing disciplines.

What’s one thing you should know about their culture?

They’re obsessive about it. At Hubspot culture is to recruiting as product is to marketing. They believe “culture doesn’t just attract amazing people, it amplifies their abilities and helps them do their best work.”

Their culture code is built on many beliefs and values, but the most memorable (not because it’s a mnemonic device, but because it’s so aspirational) is HEART: Humble, Empathetic, Adaptable, Remarkable and Transparent.

That’s the stuff that makes the world a better place, it’s no surprise people love working there.

Ultimate Software

Ultimate Software is best known for its UltraPro software, a cloud-based alternative to human capital management. Current CEO and President, Scott Scherr founded the company in 1990, releasing the original version of his software in 1993.

Ultimate Software is less known for its tag line, People first, but it’s a line they walk well nonetheless.

A quick glance on Glassdoor will show their obsessed with the happiness of their employees. So much so that necessary changes are sometimes slow to occur if they in any way compromise employee happiness or negatively affect attitudes.

People first isn’t a tag line at ultimate software, it’s their North Star.

Google

If you’ve ever googled Google (we did this just because it sounded fun) you’ll find that it’s the world’s second largest internet company behind Amazon. You’ll also find that they specialize in services like cloud computing, online search, and advertising technologies.

Don’t feel bad if you needed to google cloud computing as well. We’re not all millennials here. As the second largest internet company in the world, Google is automatically one of the Big Four tech companies, a neat little club that seats Google next to the likes of Amazon, Apple, and of course, Facebook. Not a bad resume, right?

None of that is what makes Google so remarkably legendary, though. It’s their culture. It’s centered on innovation first and foremost. No, seriously…everything is about innovation there. Here, I’ll show you…

Okay, pop-quiz time.

• Why does the inside of the Googleplex look like an adult amusement park? Heck, why do they even call it the Googleplex, was The Funplex taken?

Because playfulness is the herald of innovation. And yes, The Funplex was taken.

• Why are the cafeterias at Google designed to keep employees in line for 3-4 minutes?

Because any longer decreases productivity, but any shorter discourages you from meeting new people.

• Why should you be meeting new people at Google?

Because everyone is working on something interesting there. Introducing yourself to new ideas and new thought patterns does what? Yup. It leads to innovation.

• Why are dinner booths more useful than conference rooms at Google?

Because hot food and warm conversation tend to facilitate idea generation much better than a cold conference table.

Maybe it’s a millennial thing, but conference calls and slick tables feel terribly formal, which doesn’t really say innovation like freshly microwaved Chinese takeout. We’re kidding. Google doesn’t do Chinese takeout, they hire chefs to prepare an organic breakfast, lunch, and dinner for each employee. For free.

Linkedin

Founded on December 28, 2002, LinkedIn is an employment and recruitment-oriented website and app. It officially launched May 5, 2003, and is beloved by everyone across the employment spectrum. Everyone from employees to freelancers to business owners and recruiters looking for top talent is active on the platform daily.

LinkedIn’s culture focuses on 5 distinct pillars that the company was founded on. Transformation, integrity, collaboration, humor, and results. There’s more to it than that, about 48 pages more. You can find those here.

One of the more impressive things about their culture is their sense of purpose.

At LinkedIn, you’re part of a mission to link 3 billion members of the global workforce with an opportunity to change their lives and be the best version of themselves. Somehow the company communicates this without slamming an anvil of pressure onto your shoulders. You get the feeling that you can do it, that you can help.

That sense of inspiration and purpose is amazing. What’s more amazing is how well they translate it with little more than a slide deck. It all goes back to those 5 values. They succinctly package the magic that makes the company as effective as it is and showcases what keeps the top talent all around the world happy to say they work at LinkedIn.

Make Sure Your Company of Choice is a Good Fit

Your job shouldn’t just be a benefits package. It shouldn’t be a certain amount of vacation days per year. It should never be just a paycheck. Studies have shown that looking at jobs through this lens leads to a loss of morale, and quite frankly, a really depressing life.

Okay, a depressing life is harsh, but a less than pleasurable career is definitely what you’re in for if you don’t take a software company’s culture into serious consideration before working there.

Most people are great at finding positions that fit their financial goals, their education, and their unique skill sets. Only the people experiencing a real sense of fulfillment from work are great at finding roles that drive them.

There are plenty of saas companies who have spent a lot of time and money to recruit and attract those people. They know what every world-class tech company knows. If they want to stay competitive, they must attract and retain employees who find self-actualization in their workplace. Those are the employees that will keep the company great.