Best Company to Work for: A Technology Story

Adam Rogers
Chief Technology Officer
Ultimate Software


I've watched software companies come and go in the market during my almost 15 years at Ultimate. In that same timeframe, our team has managed through some major technology transitions. DOS to Windows, first-generation Web-delivered products, a brief experiment with hosting and, in 2002, we rolled out SaaS, which wasn’t even an industry term at the time and is now widely considered the future of business software.

What’s fascinating to me is that Silicon Valley has created this mythology that companies, especially business software companies, can only ever succeed in one wave of technology. The leaders in mainframe solutions aren't allowed to thrive in Client Server, and so on. And to a large extent this is true, but not for the reasons typically evangelized by CEOs and industry watchers. Because it isn’t at all about technology, it is about culture.

When Scott founded Ultimate, it was with a belief that taking care of employees and customers was the foundation of a good business.  Technology was a means to an end. And I think that philosophy has enabled us to weather technology transitions that caused dozens of Silicon Valley companies to fall off the map. So for me, being recognized as one of the top 25 companies to work for in America is really a technology story. It proves to me that technology will come and go and the companies that thrive over the long haul are the ones that put people first. Congrats, team.

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