LinkedIn

Not what it used to be.

Although the diverse and strong culture at LinkedIn is limping after the layoffs, most people, including Indian employees, tend to be more progressive and appear humanistic than other Bay Area companies elsewhere. This is nice, but could you say this is expected at this day and age?

You might find a bit of cultural shock elsewhere, which is typical of the Bay Area.

On the engineering side, there is slow feature shipping, a weird culture of collaboration with overlapping teams, and conflicting demands. Some engineers seem to be more interested in preserving their status as "smart," "great speakers," or "impactful" than being rewarded for their true effort.

For the generous amount of unofficial "time off" each LinkedIn employee could take advantage of—which I see at the staff levels—it is simply not possible for everyone to put in the amount of effort every day. This seems like something I'd expect from a schoolboy whose ego was challenged, not really what I'd want to see in a place I just want to work at in peace.

I'd say those people were not a good cultural fit to begin with. Not very common to see them. The individual examples were rare and not worth too much time delving into, but they are older, chatty men.

While generally the employees here overall value conscientiousness, some managers seem to be very narcissistic. When some of the empowerment should go to upgrading employees, it is instead used as song and dance for the ones who you see fumble your 1-1s, yet go on to post on their LinkedIn page about how well they did.

This seems to be a result of an unofficial up-or-out culture. It seems to attract either a certain kind of manager who does not have the best interest of their employee in mind, or good (people and engineering) managers exasperated by lots of senior managers who do not seem to have a strong track record of success and distinction in their function. Some do not seem to provide additional value besides serving as a placeholder for this particular level on the management side.

I do not feel like they were the typical kind of "skip-level" you could go to in other companies, whereby fast, candid feedback are more of a result of those structures inherent to the system of accountability. Surprisingly, at LinkedIn, having to talk to my "skip-level" for advice evoked the fear of being seen as playing political games or going behind/beyond your line manager, which is frowned upon in India. This is something that is cognitively dissonant from the apparent values you hear at LinkedIn.

I fully expect to like it here, but I actually don't enjoy the experience. It is a place to get skills and build character from these strong or even overt displays of politics that some seem to sugarcoat as "learning experiences" for your "career", but I would not recommend a real friend to work here.

People here put in long hours and are available all the time. There is strong pressure to over-communicate excessively, with endless Slack pings. Lots of it is for show, as management struggled to adapt to a hybrid environment.

Take visible accountability. Do not make grand promises on projects that seem to be in an exploratory phase. Try not to fit everything into "Will this get me a promotion?" The recent moves to cut staff after strong years of revenue seem more like management consulting work than a thoughtful, mature company. I fully expected to come out. Met many people on leave now to relieve stress. Not sure if they need to deal with pressure yet, but it seems genuine. Would be disappointed and give a strong "Do not recommend" if the culture continues to decline to the point of serious disregard of employee well-being and them as people.