Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg topped the list of a recent poll of most liked tech CEOs by earning a 48 percent favorability rating. Apple's chief executive Tim Cook earned the No. 2 spot with 39 percent, which could have been affected by the tech giant's battle with the FBI about user privacy involving iPhones and iPads. Amazon's Jeff Bezos was just 1 percentage point behind, while Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey got 21 percent as he tries to turn around the microblogging service.
The poll was conducted by media and analytics company Morning Consult. It polled 1,935 registered voters last week to get the polling results, according to Re/code.
Zuckerberg reportedly had "I'm CEO, B!tch" business cards in the past. However, since then he has improved the perception of him held by Facebook headquarters, Silicon Valley, and the general public.
In fact, a recent New York Times (NYT) article reported that Zuckerberg received high marks from tech startups' CEOs.
Each year Zuckerberg has made public promises to improve himself, such as wearing a necktie every day (2009), learning to speak Mandarin (2010), meeting a new person each day (2013), and reading a new book every two weeks (2015), according to NYT. Many Facebook users keep track of those pledges even though the online news cycle is about one day.
Many tech workers are also now taking steps for self-improvement. For example, Dave Fontenon is an ex-agent of engineers who is trying to become a better person by improving his posture, meditating, and spending more time by himself.
In 2012 Fontenot visited Facebook's California headquarters. He was inspired when Zuckerberg learned basic juggling skills in about 20 minutes after watching a juggler.
However, CEOs that are well-liked might not be well-known. Almost one-third of the poll's respondents had never heard of Zuckerberg, while 44 percent made the same claim about Cook.
The survey also shows that about 50 percent of voters believe Apple should unlock the iPhone 5c of a terrorist involved in last December's San Bernardino shootings. Meanwhile, tech giants including Google, Facebook and Twitter have supported Apple's decision to reject the FBI's request to create an encryption backdoor that would allow law enforcement to access the device's data including contacts.
Here's Zuckerberg speaking Mandarin: