Remember that dystopian view of the future in which technology displaces millions of people from their jobs? It’s happening. While this has always been top of mind for me, it’s never been more so than now. Let me explain why. Every day I come to work, I’m primarily guided by two things:įirst, realizing our mission and vision. Translation: I’d like to give you facts, but first, how about a hug. Regardless of the ups and downs, we’ve come out the other side knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt, this is the best thing for our company. Every member of the exec team has experienced the same, but we’ve had months to process. You might feel a sense of excitement, fear, sadness, or some combination of all of those emotions. No matter what you’re feeling now, give yourself some time to process the news. Translation: As your CEO, I have to remind you of our mission and vision at every opportunity, even if what you care most about is whether you’ll still have a job in a year. I will, even though I can’t write a grammatical sentence about myself. Today’s announcement, that LinkedIn will be combining forces with Microsoft, marks the next step in our journey together, the next stepping stone toward realizing our mission and vision, and in remaining CEO of the company, the next chapter in the greatest professional experience of my life. Translation: We’ve grown a lot in the last eight years - big enough to compete with Facebook, but not to beat them.ĭespite those accomplishments, we’ve only just begun to realize our full potential and purpose: Our mission to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful, and our vision to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Our team has grown from 338 people to over 10,000, our membership from 32M to over 433M and our revenue from $78M to over $3 billion. Never in my wildest dreams, could I have imagined what would happen in the next 7½ years. My rationale for joining LinkedIn was simple: The opportunity to work with Reid Hoffman, a founder I greatly admired and respected to join an extremely talented and dedicated team and to massively scale LinkedIn’s membership and business, both of which had the potential to fundamentally transform the way the world connects to opportunity. Commentary (in brackets) and translation are mine.ĭecember 15th, 2008, marked the first day of the best job I’ve ever had. Jeff Weiner’s letter, commentary, and translationĮxcerpts below. At the end of this post, I provide my own version what this email should have said. Somewhere in Jeff Weiner’s 1700-word email to staff is the answer to that question, but it’s surrounded by birds chirping and Julie Andrews singing, so it’s hard to pick out. If you work there, you’re wondering what life will be like as part of Microsoft. LinkedIn has 10,000 employees, 433 million members, and no profits. His email is discursive, full of platitudes, and fails to answer the employee’s most important question: what’s going to happen to me? LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner emailed his staff when Microsoft bought the company.
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