Last year, Sun Microsystems missed the Top 5 by a whisker. This year, its rank plunged to #15. The reason—Sun employees seemed the most affected on just about every recession parameter and the company had rather low scores on overall employee satisfaction. This feeling of general dissatisfaction spread to salary and despite being one of the best paymasters in the industry, employee satisfaction on salary was low. Perhaps the key lay in the fact that only 33% of its employees strongly felt that they were paid enough for the work they did. It also showed up in preferred employer rankings. In 2002, 97% of its own employees had voted for it as their “dream company” (pushing it to #1 on that parameter). That was down this year to 45% and a ‘Preferred Employer’ rank of #9. Despite this, however, employees rated the company high on culture and work environment. A good 90% said they had fun at work and that their relationship with peers made for a better work environment.