Yahoo Ranks No. 44 on FORTUNE's 2007 Best Companies to Work For

(New York) -- Yahoo (YHOO (Charts)) ranks no. 44 on FORTUNE's 2007 Best Companies to Work For list this year. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company was ranked 73 on the 2006 list.

Yahoo, with 6,840 U.S. employees, added 1,431 jobs last year. A Technical Yahoo Senior, its most common salaried job, is paid an average of $126,000 annually.

Fun's a core value for Yahoos, more than half of whom are age 34 or younger. At five years of service employees get a gumball machine, at ten years an espresso machine, and at 15 years (not possible until 2010) a foosball table.

Ten years ago, when Fortune began compiling this list, the idea that your employer would deliver your groceries (a new perk at Microsoft) or allow you to do your laundry at work (Google) might have seemed crazy. (Of course, the idea that you'd be paying out-of-pocket for health care would have sounded just as nuts.)

Indeed, much has changed in the American workplace over the past decade. Back then 18 companies on Fortune's list offered telecommuting; today 82 do. Only 28 companies on the list offered domestic-partner benefits; now that number is 70.

Competition to get on the list has intensified too: This year 446 public and private companies vied for a slot, up from 161 in 1998. And 100,000 workers evaluated their employers, making this by far the largest simultaneous employee survey in corporate America.

Other tech employers on this year's list include:

Google (Best Companies rank: 1) GOOG (Charts)

Qualcomm (Best Companies rank: 14) QCOM (Charts)

Intuit (Best Companies rank: 33) INTU (Charts)

Microsoft (Best Companies rank: 50) MSFT (Charts)

Texas Instruments (Best Companies rank: 87) TXN (Charts)