According to a variety of sources including your friend who works there, Google is the best place to be an employee. That's even before they build their new canopied campus.

Earlier this month in Fortune's 18th year of partnering with Great Place to Work, Google ranked No.1 for the sixth time. The company was also number one this year on Glassdoor, a kind of RateMyProfessors.com but for employers, and now, agrees Forbes, Google really is THE place to be. After relegating the company to being the 8th best workplace last year, they've made amends and ranked it number one in 2015.

Facebook placed second to Google in the I.T. category, but ranked just 15th overall, with Apple placing 55th. Google HR chief Laszlo Bock told Forbes. “People come visit Google all the time then go and install the lava lamps and bean bags... There’s intense global competition for the best, most creative minds who are able to create the biggest, most important things, and that’s going to continue accelerating. That’s why it becomes even more important to create a kind of workplace where those people want to be.”

The 500 employers on Forbes' list were chosen from independent survey data gathered by Statista.com from 20,000 American employees working for large (2,500 workers or more) U.S. companies, institutions, and American divisions of international firms. The mix of respondents' genders, ages, regions, educational levels, and ethnicities in the sample was, says Forbes, representative of the overall U.S. workforce.

Related: Behold Google's Crazy New 'Canopy'-Covered Campus Designs