Goldman Sachs first appeared on the “Best Companies to Work For” list in 1984. For their best-selling book The 100 Best Companies to Work For in America, business journalists Robert Levering, Milton Moskowitz and Michael Katz spent more than a year traveling the United States, visiting firms and interviewing hundreds of employees in dozens of cities. Goldman Sachs not only made the final list of 100 companies in the book but was also included in the authors’ short list of the 10 “Best Companies to Work For” in the United States.

In 1998, Fortune magazine partnered with the Great Place to Work Institute to devise its own list of “100 Best Companies to Work For,” a ranking that would henceforth be published in the magazine each year. Inclusion in this US-based list is determined based on a combination of employee surveys and a “culture audit” that reviews each company’s benefits and people programs. Goldman Sachs debuted on the list at number 12 that year and has been included in the ranking in every year since.

The firm was one of only four companies from the original 1984 list to appear on Fortune’s “Best Companies to Work For” list in 2019. That year, Goldman Sachs climbed from number 89 to number 62 due to its leadership in “diversity, communication, and relationships” and philanthropic initiatives that give employees “a sense of purpose.”

Goldman Sachs’ 14 Business Principles, which form the basis for its strong and distinct culture, touch on values such as innovation, teamwork and diversity, reflecting many of the criteria for inclusion in Fortune’s annual list.

 

This article was originally published as part of a series commemorating the 150th anniversary of Goldman Sachs' founding in 1869.