The course grew out of the company's Resiliency Week, a wellness initiative on stress management, happiness, and work-life balance over five days. It's one of a number of unconventional perks at this plush workplace. Others include a tai chi club, five-times-a-week Pilates, bubble tea in the café, a champion dragon-boating team, lectures from visitors such as Derek Jeter, and an all-night scavenger hunt for charity.

It may sound like the Googleplex, but you'll find Hermès rather than hoodies here: The meditators work forGoldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), the venerable 144-year-old investment bank. Yes, the one that's been in the cross hairs in recent years as it both reeled from and was blamed for the financial crisis; yes, the one where 70- to 80-hour workweeks are considered routine. Say hello to the other side of this company. Beyond the headlines, there's a unique culture and a remarkably satisfied workforce. We swear. And people are dying to get jobs here.

Don't take our word for it. Ask the employees. Goldman Sachs is No. 45 this year on Fortune's annual list of 100 Best Companies to Work For, the definitive ranking of corporate workplaces based on employee feedback. And no, this isn't the result of a new mission to improve working conditions: Goldman has earned a spot on our list every year since we started it in 1998 -- and it's one of just 13 companies that can make that claim. (J.P. Morgan (JPM, Fortune 500) and Merrill Lynch are the only other big investment banks to ever make the list, and not since in 1999.) This year Goldman employees helped to bump up their company 48 slots.

What gives? Conventional wisdom might say it's the money that keeps people sated here. Indeed, the firm saw average compensation of roughly $380, 000 over the past 12 months. And while that number skews high because of multimillion-dollar paychecks at the top, Goldman typically sets aside more cash for compensation per employee than any other major bank.

But according to 62 pages and more than 40, 000 words of unfiltered employee comments collected by the Great Place to Work Institute (which conducts the employee survey) and reviewed by Fortune, it's not just the pay that makes the employees so fond of their firm. Nor is it the swank corporate headquarters, the four-month maternity leave, or an obsessive devotion to philanthropy.

Above all else, employees say, it's the opportunity to work with, and count yourself among, an ultra-elite group. Less than 3% of 97,600 applicants for analyst and associate roles won a seat at the firm last year, making it twice as hard to get into as Harvard. That, plus what employees describe as a flat, consensus-driven, collaborative culture (there are 188 references to "team" in those 62 pages), is what they say they like about their company. "You don't have to be the smartest person, but it's probably the highest combination of smart and interesting and interested-in-the-world kind of people," says Lloyd Blankfein, the 31-year veteran who became chairman and CEO in 2006 and who, according to the most recent SEC filing, has more than 21 million reasons to agree that Goldman Sachs is a splendid company to work for.

To be sure, the past few years have been anything but easy at Goldman. There was the financial crisis and ensuing bailout, in which it took $10 billion from the government. There was scrutiny that led to a $550 million settlement with the SEC over a subprime-mortgage product, and a Department of Justice inquiry (which was later dropped). There was Goldman-bashing everywhere, from late-night talk shows to President Obama to a round of books critical of the firm's ethics. And there was the press -- most notably the 2009 Rolling Stone article that compared the company to a vampire squid. Yet another challenge: regulators cracking down to stamp out the type of risky trading Goldman always did best. The business community never quite shared the vitriol -- clients stayed loyal, and in 2010, even as Main Street's antipathy toward Wall Street crested, the firm climbed seven spots in Fortune's list of the World's Most Admired Companies. But that doesn't always help when almost every article about the company still refers to that cephalopod.

It's true, though, that if Goldman is a great place to work, no one would ever call it an easy place to work. The pressure can be intense. But employees say the upside of admission makes it worthwhile -- and many say those difficult years after the meltdown had the effect of bringing people together in a way that boosted corporate self-esteem. "I will always believe that the culture was one of the most important factors in getting us through the crisis," says John Rogers, the firm's executive vice president and chief of staff to its last three CEOs.