Dive Brief:
- In the large business category of the Glassdoor 2018 CEO rankings, Zoom Video Communications CEO Eric Yuan took home the top spot, followed by Boston Scientific's Michael Mahoney. Technology company leaders that made the list included No. 3 Daniel Springer of DocuSign, No. 10 Mark Benioff of Salesforce, No. 11 Jim Kavanaugh of World Wide Technology and No. 13 Shantanu Narayen of Adobe.
- The leaders of Silicon Valley's icons made the list too. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook took home the 16th spot while Satya Nadella of Microsoft earned the 20th and Sundar Pichai of Google earned the 45th. Apple's Tim Cook cinched one of the last spots, No. 96.
- Across SMBs, Sanjit Biswas, CEO of Samsara, an internet of things GPS tracking company, won highest approval levels by employees. Ron Rother, CEO of technology consulting firm Strive Consulting earned the No. 5 spot while SailPoint Technologies Mark McClain took home No. 7.
Dive Insight:
Whoever sits in the CEO office has a tremendous impact on a company's success. While their performance is often measured through concrete measurements, such as profit and growth, internal approval by employees is also important.
Company culture has a large impact on CEO approval, especially in terms of career opportunities, compensation and benefits quality and the opinion of senior leadership, according to a Glassdoor study. Founder CEOs tend to have much higher approval ratings, as do leaders of profitable companies.
The work-life balance and CEO compensation are negatively correlated to CEO approval. When all these factors are combined, personal characteristics of the CEO, such as gender, age and education, have less of an effect on approval ratings, according to Glassdoor.
While many CEOs share similar academic and professional backgrounds, the rise to the top is often less a question of pedigree and more a measure of the ability to inspire, handle challenges and prove abilities along one's career path.
Faced with digital transformation, CEOs have to be able to tap into the digital tools of the day and support innovation. The importance of technology literacy means more CIOs could move on to become CEOs.
