The recession and the merger got together to see HP fall in the rankings from #2 to #9. Despite this, it scored very high on overall satisfaction (second) and peer satisfaction (third). The setbacks came from low training focus, comparatively low average salary scores for a company in its league (#8) and not very high preferred company scores for the kind of visibility it has (#6). Another factor was a fall in retention rate, from 90% last year to 88.2%—thanks to some downsizing. The number of total employees who voted for HP as their dream company increased only marginally, from 4% to 4.5%. However it did well as a preferred employer, with 94.4% of its own employees voting for it (compared to 64% last year). About 2.8% of HP employees voted for Sun Microsystems and IBM (each) as their dream company.