The happiest employees in the US work at these 10 companies

What makes employees happy to go to work every day?

For most, it's a combination of what the workplace offers, in terms of opportunities to make an impact, grow professionally, interact in a positive environment and take pride in a company's mission. Good pay and benefits help, too.

To dig into who's doing it well, Comparably set out to find at which companies employees are happiest.

The career site analyzed its database of 10 million employee-submitted ratings across 50,000 U.S. companies to determine which companies provided the best overall experience for their workers, based on how employees responded to questions about compensation, work-life balance, perks and benefits and overall culture. A sample of questions include:

• Are your company's goals clear and are you invested in them?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend your company to a friend?
• Are you proud to be a part of your company?
• Are you typically excited about going to work each day?
• Do you look forward to interacting with your coworkers?

Taking the No. 1 spot on the list is Zoom, a San Jose, California-based video communications company.

Zoom's recognition as the company with the happiest employees is perhaps unsurprising, considering how the company was started. Zoom's founder, Eric Yuan, left a six-figure job because he wasn't happy — and following his heart made him a billionaire.

Yuan previously worked his way up from an engineering job with WebEx, a videoconferencing software company that later sold to Cisco, to become the president of engineering, where he earned a salary in the "very high six-figures."

However, "Every day, when I woke up, I was not very happy. I even did not want to go to the office to work," Yuan told CNBC Make It.

Yuan founded Zoom in 2011, and it now employs more than 1,700 people. It doubled its revenue in 2018 to more than $330 million and launched its IPO in April. Zoom also made Comparably's top 10 companies with the best compensation.

Yuan and the company's top-down approach to providing a good work environment hasn't gone unnoticed. "The leadership team is intelligent, empathetic and caring," one employee reviewer wrote. "They understand the importance of excelling professionally but care just as much about our personal life happiness. These attributes result in a unified happy culture which yields positive business outcomes and success for employees."

Here's who else got top marks for having the happiest employees.

Headquarters: Bellevue, Washington

CEO: John Legere

Department with the happiest workers: IT

Headquarters: Atlanta, Georgia

CEO: Bert Bean

Department with the happiest workers: communications

Headquarters: San Antonio, Texas

CEO: Charles Butt

Department with the happiest workers: administration, engineering

Headquarters: Lehi, Utah

CEO: Alex Shootman

Department with the happiest workers: IT

Headquarters: New York, New York

CEO: Daniel Dines

Department with the happiest workers: product, operations, administration

Headquarters: Redmond, Washington

CEO: Satya Nadella

Department with the happiest workers: finance, human resources, legal

Headquarters: Cambridge, Massachusetts

CEO: Brian Halligan

Department with the happiest workers: administration, legal

Headquarters: Issaquah, Washington

CEO: W. Craig Jelinek

Department with the happiest workers: communications

Headquarters: Sunnyvale, California

CEO: Jeff Weiner

Department with the happiest workers: communications

Headquarters: San Jose, California

CEO: Eric Yuan

Department with the happiest workers: communications, IT

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