Blind CEO Approval Rating: The Most Popular CEOs, According to Employees
E-commerce, financial services and tech industry CEOs are among the most popular chief executives in the U.S., according to an analysis from the professional social network Blind.
Jensen Huang, the chief executive of NVIDIA, had the highest approval rating in Blind’s inaugural 2023 CEO approval rating index. Nearly every verified NVIDIA professional on Blind (96%) approved of Huang’s work as CEO.
Blind surveyed 13,171 verified professionals in the U.S. on its platform to determine the approval rating of 103 CEOs based on their employees’ feedback in August 2023. The professional social network asked the same question as Gallup’s popular U.S. presidential approval rating measure: “Do you approve or disapprove of the way your CEO is handling their job?”
Besides Huang, other CEOs with high approval ratings in Blind’s CEO approval rating index include Doug McMillon of Walmart (88% approval rating), Nikesh Arora of Palo Alto Networks (84%), Tim Cook of Apple (83%), Ali Ghodsi of Databricks (83%), Andrew Anagnost of Autodesk (82%), Bill McDermott of ServiceNow (81%), Lisa Su of AMD (79%), Brian Schimpf of Anduril Industries (79%) and Ryan McInerney of Visa (79%).
The average approval rating for a chief executive in Blind’s inaugural 2023 CEO approval rating index was 32%.
Blind CEO Approval Rating Index: What do employees want to see from their CEO?
Company stock performance may have benefited some chief executives’ approval scores. Top bosses with the highest CEO approval ratings have generally led their companies to higher valuations in 2023 despite economic uncertainty propelled by rising interest rates, persisting inflation, a pullback of investor capital and more.
NVIDIA shares now trade more than three times higher (+208% year-to-date) than they did at the beginning of the year under Huang’s leadership, benefiting from increased demand for its hardware, especially graphics processing units, as interest in artificial intelligence surges.
Company market capitalizations and valuations are often top of mind among many tech professionals. Stock-based compensation, including so-called restricted stock units, can make up half or more of a tech professional’s total compensation. Some professionals can earn more in stock-based compensation than their annual salary.
“He saw this AI mania coming 10+ years ago,” a verified NVIDIA professional on Blind said of CEO Jensen Huang in a discussion about whether many NVIDIA employees now earn $1 million a year or more in total compensation. “I trust him completely.”
Perceived job security may be one of the most significant factors in determining a chief executive’s approval among employees.
Except for Autodesk, each of the top 10 CEOs in Blind’s CEO approval rating index has not laid off employees in the last year or more. Autodesk cut about 250 jobs, or fewer than 2% of the tech company’s global workforce, in February 2023 but continued to hire throughout the year.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, some chief executives with the worst CEO approval ratings had cut jobs in 2023, including some of this year’s highest-profile workforce reductions.
Erik Nordstrom (0% approval rating) delivered pink slips to about 200 tech workers in Nordstrom’s corporate offices in April 2023 and thousands of wage-workers in San Francisco and Canada as the luxury department store shut some of its retail stores this year.
Similarly, Linda Yaccarino of X (4% approval rating), Andy Jassy of Amazon (10%), Sundar Pichai of Google and its parent company Alphabet (26%), Satya Nadella of Microsoft (30%) and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta (45%) have fired more than 50,000 people combined in 2023 alone.
Methodology
Blind conducted an online survey of 13,171 verified professionals in the U.S. on its platform from Aug. 18 to 28, 2023, to determine and “index” the approval rating of 103 CEOs based on their employees’ feedback.
Blind’s CEO approval rating index asks the same question as Gallup’s U.S. presidential approval rating measure: “Do you approve or disapprove of the way your CEO is handling their job?”
Like Gallup’s poll, survey respondents could answer “strongly approve,” “somewhat approve,” “somewhat disapprove,” “strongly disapprove” or “no opinion.” The approval rating is the sum of “strongly approve” and “somewhat approve” responses. In other words, a CEO with a 0% approval rating indicates no employee answered “strongly approve” or “somewhat approve” in the survey.
Atlassian, Gopuff, Netflix and Workday have co-CEOs, but their respective employees did not rate each CEO individually. Both CEOs share the same CEO approval rating in the index.
Verified Illumina professionals on Blind rated Francis deSouza. Jacob Thaysen became CEO of Illumina on Sept. 5, 2023, the week after the Blind CEO approval rating index survey concluded.
Verified PayPal professionals on Blind rated Dan Schulman. Alex Chriss became CEO of PayPal on Aug. 14, 2023, the week before the Blind CEO approval rating index survey began.
Figures may not add up to 100% due to rounding.