Nadella joined the software company in 1992, holding leadership positions including Executive Vice President of Cloud and Enterprise before being named CEO in 2014.
“Microsoft had thousands of employees partake in the study. (Nadella) had incredible scores from his team,” said Jason Nazar, Co-Founder and CEO of Comparably. “Microsoft was not the darling of the tech space three-plus years ago. Now they’ve been in the news for being the most valuable company in the world. I think the team is really excited about what he’s done to build that business.”
That isn’t to say that Nadella’s transition was smooth. In 2014, the tech company executive told women at a computer industry event that asking for what they’re worth isn’t the best way to get ahead. He later clarified his remarks on Twitter, and issued an apology.
Nazar said Microsoft employees have had time to see “how he dealt when times were really good, but also when there were mishaps. The team felt that he handled the mishaps with grace.”
To spotlight which company leaders are the best in the U.S., Comparably compiled data using survey responses from employees at some of the nation’s largest companies that have 500 or more employees.
In total, Comparably received nearly 10 million ratings across 50,000 U.S. companies.
Other big names in the top 10 for large companies include Home Depot’s Craig Menear, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Saleforce’s Marc Benioff.
The top-ranked CEO among small-to-midsize companies with fewer than 500 employees was David Cancel, founder of messaging software company Drift. Cancel is an American entrepreneur and investor from The Bronx, New York.
Best CEOs, large companies
Highest ranked
1. Satya Nadella, Microsoft (Redmond, WA)
2. Craig Menear, The Home Depot (Atlanta, GA)
3. Sundar Pichai, Google (Mountain View, CA)
Google CEO Sundar Pichai delivers the keynote address at the Google I/O 2018 Conference at Shoreline Amphitheater on May 8, 2018, in Mountain View, Calif. Google’s two day developer conference runs through May 9, 2018.JUSTIN SULLIVAN, GETTY IMAGES
4. Brad Smith, Intuit (Mountain View, CA)
5. Brian Halligan, Hubspot (Cambridge, MA)
6. Jeff Bezos, Amazon (Seattle, WA)
7. Bert Bean, Insight Global (Atlanta, GA)
8. Alex Shootman, Workfront (Lehi, UT)
9. Marc Benioff, Salesforce (San Francisco, CA)
10. John Legere, T-Mobile (Bellevue, WA)
John Legere, left, and Braxton Carter.T-MOBILE
11. Lynn Jurich, Sunrun (San Francisco, CA)
12. Timothy Cook, Apple (Cupertino, CA)
13. W. Craig Jelenik, Costco (Issaquah, WA)
14. Julie Sweet, Accenture (New York, NY)
15. Carlos Rodriquez, ADP (Roseland, NJ)
16. Doug Mack, Fanatics (Jacksonville, FL)
17. John Van Siclen, Dynatrace (Waltham, MA)
18. Rami Elghandour, Nevro (Redwood City, CA)
19. Elon Musk, Space X/Tesla (Hawthorne, CA)
FILE – In this Sept. 17, 2018, file photo SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk speaks in Hawthorne, Calif. Musk says he’s planning to offer the public free rides through a tunnel he bored under a Los Angeles suburb to test a new type of transportation system. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)CHRIS CARLSON/AP
20. Mike Morhaime, Blizzard Entertainment (Irvine, CA)*
21. Bryce Maddock, TaskUs (Santa Monica, CA)
22. Cathy Engelbert, Deloitte (New York, NY)
23. Ed Bastian, Delta Air Lines (Atlanta, GA)
24. Ryan Smith, Qualtrics (Provo, UT)
25. Michael Dell, Dell (Round Rock, TX)
26. Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan Chase & Co. (New York, NY)
27. Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber (San Francisco, CA)
28. Amy Zupon, Vertafore (Denver, CO)
29. Harley Lippman, Genesis10 (New York, NY)
30. Hubert Joly, Best Buy (Bloomington, MN)
31. Andrew Cecere, U.S. Bank (Minneapolis, MN)
32. Reed Hastings, Netflix (Los Gatos, CA)
33. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook (Menlo Park, CA)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the company’s F8 developer conference.FACEBOOK
34. Steven Berglund, Trimble (Sunnyvale, CA)
35. Mark Parker, Nike (Beaverton, OR)
36. Bob Sulentic, CBRE (Los Angeles, CA)
37. Susan Wojcicki, YouTube (San Bruno, CA)
38. Colin Doherty, Fuze (Boston, MA)
39. Michael Sullivan, Acquia (Boston, MA)
40. Daniel Schulman, PayPal (San Jose, CA)
41. Frederick Smith, FedEx (Memphis, TN)
42. Richard Fairbank, Capital One (McLean, VA)
43. Arne Sorenson, Marriott (Bethseda, MD)
A Marriott hotel in Hangzhou in China’s Zhejiang province. Marriott is one of the international luxury hotel chains featured in a web video showing unsanitary housekeeping practices in their Chinese properties.-, AFP/GETTY IMAGES
44. Gene Hall, Gartner (Stamford, CT)
45. Gail Boudreaux, Anthem, Inc. (Indianapolis, IN)
46. Bruce Cerullo, Nordic Consulting (Madison, WI)
47. Brian Roberts, Comcast (Philadelphia, PA)
48. Scott Wagner, GoDaddy (Scottsdale, AZ)
49. Mary Barra, General Motors (Detroit, MI)
50. William McDermott, SAP (Newtown Square, PA)
*Mike Morhaime is now the former Blizzard CEO and the one rated for these awards. The new CEO took office in Nov. 2018.
Best CEOs, small- and mid-sized companies
Highest Ranked
1. David Cancel, Drift (Boston, MA)
2. Sameer Dholakia, SendGrid (Denver, CO)
3. Giuseppe Incitti, Sitetracker (Palo Alto, CA)
4. Robert Wahbe, Highspot (Seattle, WA)
5. Gavan Thorpe, Boostability (Lehi, UT)
6. Mahe Bayireddi, Phenom People (Ambler, PA)
7. Ariel Cohen, TripActions (Palo Alto, CA)
8. Greg Besner, CultureIQ (New York, NY)
9. Bob Pritchett, Faithlife (Bellingham, WA)
10. Whitney WolfeHerd, Bumble (Austin, TX)
11. Howard Brown, RingDNA (Sherman Oaks, CA)
12. Scott Wolfe, Jr., zlien (New Orleans, LA)
13. Brian Hartnack, Archer Education (Los Angeles, CA)
14. Brew Johnson, PeerStreet (El Segundo, CA)
15. Nick Mehta, Gainsight (Redwood City, CA)
16. Blake Murray, Divvy (Lehi, UT)
17. Steve Carlson, ForwardLine Financial (Woodland Hills, CA)
18. Stephane Donze, AODocs (San Francisco, CA)
19. Harry Glaser, Periscope Data (San Francisco, CA)
20. Sean Kelly, SnackNation (Culver City, CA)
SnackNation provides healthy snacks for consumers.ASSOCIATED PRESS
21. Alexander Austin, Branch Metrics (Redwood City, CA)
22. Anindya Datta, Mobilewalla (New York, NY)
23. Cynthia Barreda, NetCentrics (Herndon, VA)
24. David Glass, LHP Engineering Solutions (Columbus, OH)
25. Timothy Harris, Swift Navigation (San Francisco, CA)
26. Timo Rein, Pipedrive (New York, NY)
27. Francis Davidson, Sonder (San Francisco, CA)
28. Erik Huberman, Hawke Media (Santa Monica, CA)
29. Christine Crane, BoldLeads (Chandler, AZ)
30. Karl Mehta, EdCast (Mountain View, CA)
31. Matt Westgate, Lullabot (Providence, RI)
32. John Wise, InvestCloud (West Hollywood, CA)
33. Ryan Malone, SmartBug Media (Newport Beach, CA)
34. Zohar Dayan, Wibbitz (New York, NY)
35. Oleg Rogynskyy, People.ai (San Francisco, CA)
36. Chuck Goetschel, Rallio (Irvine, CA)
37. Max Roper, Appetize (Los Angeles, CA)
38. Sam Shank, HotelTonight (San Francisco, CA)
39. Robert Blatt, MomentFeed (Santa Monica, CA)
40. Anant Kale, AppZen (San Jose, CA)
41. Dustin Moskovitz, Asana (San Francisco, CA)
Asana co-founder Dustin MoskovitzERIC RISBERG, ASSOCIATED PRESS
42. Gleb Polyakov, Nylas (San Francisco, CA)
43. Peter Swaniker, Ximble (Carlsbad, CA)
44. Steve Elliott, AgileCraft (Austin, TX)
45. Alan Rich, Chrome River Technologies (Los Angeles, CA)
46. Brooke LeVasseur, AristaMD (La Jolla, CA)
47. Christian Gormsen, Eargo (San Jose, CA)
48. Shafat Qazi, BQE Software (Torrance, CA)
49. Sarah Nahm, Lever (San Francisco, CA)
50. Kylie Wright-Ford, Reputation Institute (Cambridge, MA)
Methodology
Comparably Awards are derived from sentiment ratings provided by employees who anonymously rated their CEOs on Comparably.com between Nov. 26, 2017 and Nov. 26, 2018. There were no fees or costs associated with participating, nor was nomination required. The answer to each question was given a numerical score and then compared to companies of similar size across the U.S. Additional weight was given to scores at companies with more participation from their employee base.
