For a company C, define S(C) to be the set of companies where the "average" employee at C could conceivably get a job without significant extra training. Under this survey, a company C is ranked highly if it is considered great within the group S(C) of companies. Said differently, a company C is ranked highly if employees working at other companies within S(C) tend to want to work at C specifically.

While we may not be telling our kids to strive to work at a burger place when they're adults, the reality is there are millions of people out there who aren't going to be working at Google for various reasons but they still deserve good jobs that pay well and treat them with respect. It could very well be the case that In-N-Out stands out as a great place within S(In-N-Out) more than Google does within S(Google).

Perhaps the point of contention then is whether lists like this should be aspirational or empirical. You could easily make an aspirational list by reducing it down to raw absolute pay. I'm not sure how useful that really is. This list is interesting (to me, at least) because these are places where people are actually really happy, given what their realistic options are.