Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff No. 1 in Comparably ranking of top CEOs

Corrections & clarifications: A previous version of this story stated the incorrect headquarters location for T-Mobile. 

Who’s the best CEO in America?

According to compensation,  culture and career monitoring website Comparably’s latest survey, among large companies, it’s billionaire tech businessman-philanthropist Marc Benioff, CEO of customer relationship management and cloud services company, Salesforce.com.

“As the original founder of Salesforce he has a deep connection with the product and employees that uniquely inspires his team,” says Jason Nazar, CEO of Comparbly. “Besides continuing to grow a massively successful public company, he’s been a dynamic leader and consistent voice of company culture issues.”

One of those issues has been closing the gender pay and promotion and gap, an issue that has been top of mind given the large number of sexual harassment allegations coming to light in entertainment, politics and business. Benioff pledged to close the gap in 2015 and by early 2017 Salesforce said it had achieved equal pay,promotion and opportunity for female employees. 

More:Salesforce's Marc Benioff makes sales pitch in first meeting with Trump

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Second in Comparbly's ranking is Brian Halligan, CEO of marketing software company HubSpot. Shares of the company have risen to above $80 a share from an initial offering price of $25 in 2014. Like Benioff, Halligan is also considered a philanthropist, notably giving $1.6 million to the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

"HubSpot has some of the best overall ratings on Comparably across all categories, and stands out as a company whose employees are deeply engaged and passionate about their corporate mission," Nazar said. 

Women CEOs who made the large-company list included General Motors CEO Mary Barra (No. 29) and Julie Sweet (No. 33), CEO of consulting and professional services company Accenture - North America. Among smaller companies, three women, Cyndi Barreda (No. 9), of NetCentrics, Christine Crane (No. 21) of BoldLeads and Lisa Harp (No. 29) of Harp Interactive made the list.

Overall, the top-ranked CEO among small-to-midsize companies was Sameer Dholakia of SendGrid, a cloud-based email services company. 

The lists below represent the Best-ranked CEOs by their employees on Comparably.com. The CEOs are ranked, with No. 1 representing the highest-scored CEO. The rankings are separated by large (500 or more employees) and small-to-midsize (less than 500 employees). 

Best CEOs, large companies

Highest ranked

1. Marc Benioff, SalesForce, San Francisco

2. Brian Halligan, HubSpot, Cambridge, Mass.

3. Brad Smith, Intuit, Mountain View, Calif.

4. Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn, Mountain View, Calif.

5. Satya Nadella, Microsoft, Redmond, Wash.

6. John Pope, Jive Communications, Orem, Utah

7. Hisayuki Idekoba, Indeed, Austin, Texas

8. Adam Miller, Cornerstone OnDemand, Santa Monica, Calif.

9. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, Menlo Park, Calif.

10. Spencer Rascoff, Zillow, Seattle

11. Reed Hastings, Netflix, Los Gatos, Calif.

12.  Glenn Johnson, Insight Global, Atlanta

13.  Sundar Pichai, Google, Mountain View, Calif.

14.  Alex Shootman, Workfront, Lehi, Utah

15.  Tim Cook, Apple, Cupertino, Calif.

16.  Shantanu Narayen, Adobe, San Jose, Calif.

17.  Mark Clemens, Golden Hippo Media, Woodland Hills, Calif.

18.  Aneel Bhusri, Workday, Pleasanton, Calif.

19.  John Legere, T-Mobile, Bellevue, Wash. 

20. Richard D. Fairbank, Capital One, Mclean, Va.

21.  Stewart Butterfield, Slack, San Francisco

22. Aaron Skonnard, Pluralsight, Farmington, Utah

23. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase, New York

24. Jensen Huang, NVIDIA, Santa Clara, Calif.

25. Jeff Bezos, Amazon, Seattle

26. Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat, Raleigh, N.C.

27. Alan Trefler, Pegasystems, Cambridge, Mass.

28. Craig Jelinek, Costco, Issaquah, Wash.

29. Mary T. Barra, General Motors, Detroit

30. Lew Cirne, New Relic, San Francisco

31.  Willam McDermott, SAP, Newton Square, Penn.

32. R. Milton Johnson, HCA Holdings, Nashville

33. Julie Sweet, Accenture - North America, New York

34. Pat Gelsinger, VMware, Palo Alto, Calif.

35. Jack Dorsey, Square, San Francisco

36. Mikkel Svane, Zendesk, San Francisco

37. Gene Hall, Gartner, Stamford, Conn.

38. Dan Rosensweig, Chegg, Santa Clara, Calif.

39. Brian Chesky, Airbnb, San Francisco

40. Kenneth Lamneck, Insight, Tempe, Ariz.

41. Brad Jackson, Slalom Consulting, Seattle

42. Omar Ishrak, Medtronic, Minneapolis

43. Michael Bloomberg, Bloomberg, New York

44. Niraj Shah, Wayfair, Boston 

45. Brandon Beck, Riot Games, Los Angeles

46. Logan Green, Lyft, San Francisco

47. Robert Iger, Walt Disney, Burbank, Calif.

48. Chuck Robbins, Cisco, San Jose, Calif.

49. Edward Stack, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Coraopolis, Penn.

50. Zander Lurie, SurveyMonkey, San Mateo, Calif.

Best CEOs, small- and mid-sized companies

Highest ranked

1. Sameer Dholakia, SendGrid, Denver

2. Timo Rein, Pipedrive, New York

3. Harry Glaser, Periscope Data, San Francisco

4. Matthew Gonnering, Widen Enterprises, Madison, Wisc.

5. Gavan Thorpe, Boostability, Lehi, Utah

6. Howard Brown, RingDNA, San Francisco

7. Chris Ovitz/Reed Shaffner, Workpop, Santa Monica, Calif.

8. Giuseppe Incitti, SiteTraker, Palo Alto, Calif.

9. Cyndi Barreda, NetCentrics, Herndon, Va.

10. Kirk Simpson, Wave Financial, Toronto

11. Matt Westgate, Lullabot, Providence, R.I.

12. Yuri Sagalov, Redbooth, Palo Alto, Calif.

13. Bob Ruffolo, IMPACT Branding & Design, Wallingford, Conn.

14. Bob Pritchett, Faithlife, Bellingham, Wash.

15. Alexander Austin, Branch Metrics, Palo Alto, CA

16. Rob Vandenberg, Lingotek, Lehi, Utah

17. Hadi Partovi, Code.org, Chandler, Ariz.

18. Alan Rich, Chrome River, Los Angeles

19. Nick Francis, Help Scout, Boston

20. Marc Hawk, RevLocal, Granville, Ohio

21. Christine Crane, BoldLeads, Chandler, Ariz.

22. Cody Sperber, Clever Investor, Tempe, Ariz.

23. Mark Leck, The REDX, Orem, Utah

24. Daniel Vetras, Kollective Technology, Bend, Ore.

25. Ariel Cohen, TripActions, Menlo Park, Calif.

26. Brian Lacey, Mobomo, Vienna, Va.

27. Sam Shank, HotelTonight, San Francisco

28. Paul Brady, Unitrends, Burlington, Mass.

29. Lisa Harp, Harp Interactive, Lombard, Ill.

30. Marcus Cobb, Jammber, Chicago

31.  Dave Crumby, Realvolve, Raleigh, N.C.

32. Kirill Evdakov, Fasten, Boston

33. Tom Seery, RealSelf, Seattle, Wash.

34. Jon Bischke, Entelo, San Francisco

35. Lior Div, Cybereason, Boston

36. Ben Peterson, BambooHR, Lindon, Utah

37. Larry Gadea, Envoy, San Francisco

38. Mikita Mikado, PandaDoc, San Francisco

39. Charles Ramsey, Sauce Labs, San Francisco

40. John Benson, Verisys, Alexandria, Va.

41. Erick Joseph, Renaissance Electronic Services, Indianapolis

42. Karl Mehta, EdCast, Mountain View, Calif.

43. Brent Bellm, Bigcommerce, Austin, Texas

44. Amrinder Arora, BizMerlin, Vienna, Va.

45. Fred Maglione, OmegaFi, Columbus, Ga.

46. Flint Lane, Billtrust, Trenton, N.J.

47. Jeff Tench, New Signature, Washington, D.C.

48. Ashwin Navin, Samba TV, San Francisco

49. Sean Kelly, SnackNation, Los Angeles

50. Vivek Mehra, ParqEx, Chicago

Methodology
Comparably’s "Best Of" lists are derived from sentiment ratings provided by employees who anonymously rated their employers on Comparably.com during the 2017 eligibility period (Jan. 1, 2017– Nov. 17, 2017). There were no fees or costs associated with participating, nor was nomination required. The CEOs are segmented by small/midsize and large organizations.