Deciding the best company to work for depends on your universe of choices. A Tata Motors will obviously score over a Tatia Motors simply because of the brand image which goes with the Tata name. But if you have to choose between Tatia Motors and Ghatia Motors – and you don’t know anything about either of them – your choice may well be random.

RMSI has come out on top in the 2015 survey by the Great Place to Work Institute. The company came into being following a demerger with its parent Risk Management Solutions, Inc. of the USA in 2011. It is a global information technology company which offers solutions in sectors ranging from utilities, wireless telecommunications, land information management, agriculture and natural resources, and risk and insurance.

The study defines the best companies as ones that offer:

• Special and unique benefits
• Willingness to share wealth and equal opportunities for recognition  
• Reliability of managers
• Career growth and Pride   
• ‘Family’ or ‘team’ feeling   

They all seem to be about money and the opportunity to make more money. By contrast, Erika Andersen writing in Forbes magazine defines the attributes of a best company to work for as:

• A strong positive culture, firmly grounded in a meaningful purpose
• Real chances to grow professionally
• The opportunity to work with people you like and respect 
• Work that requires you to stretch your brain and skills

Notice that all the features are about career and accomplishment. Intelligent colleagues play a positive role; in India, they would be treated as competition. But the basic question is: Can you do an across the board best companies to work for survey? How do you compare Godrej Consumer Products with American Express? If all the companies are in technology space, it might make sense because there is job mobility amongst them.

There is an aura about some companies, however, which depends on the difficulty in getting in. Microsoft and Intel are known for their trick interview questions. But in these days of the Internet and wide information diffusion, they don’t mean a thing.

How will you answer: How many elephants can you put in a car? A quick reply, “two in the front and two in the back” may work. Or for that matter how many golf balls can you squeeze into a school bus? Smart reply: I am yet to see somebody playing golf in a school bus.

So, bright sparks apart, can you really compare apples and oranges in the best companies to work for field? How can you compare this with an establishment that has 10,000 workers? The logical way to go would be to have categories: The 10 large companies to work for, the 10 small companies to work for… But that defeats the purpose of the survey which is likely to be used by the winners as publicity material. The list (see box) has two hotels – Marriott and Accor. What else do they have to offer but rooms without a view if you get late while at work? The luxuries are only for guests.