6 years at Linkedin!

Today it will be 6 years that I have worked at Linkedin. It has truly been a transformational career experience.

My 6 years at LNKD are no different from anyone who joined the company in its hypergrowth years(2009-2011). Hyper growth, challenges to overcome and impact to make, work hard, play harder!

BEGINNING:
I joined the CORE team, in Nov 2009(the next few years being the best years to work there). In the third and final round of interview with David Henke, the then VP engg, I sat in his office. Someone came by asking Henke to make sure his engineers were at the company all hands and Henke explaining how they had been up previous night for release etc... I ignored him as he spoke to Henke, obviously hadn't researched the company leaders enough. Then Henke said, that's our CEO. I then turned around to look at the young man, who I would eventually come to admire for more than his good looks :). Jeff Weiner is a inspiring leader, it is not a coincidence that the company is successful, stock is high, the culture is great, and people voted him as the best CEO. I would venture to say that he is the reason many folks work at Linkedin.

GREAT BY CHOICE:
Avery Moon, my manager, my guide, my mentor -  I cannot thank you enough for the opportunity, the trust, the example you set and the many walking 1-1s. You may not have realized but every interaction with you has had an enormous impact on me. Once you left, Linkedin was never the same for me. People told me - "You started crying when Avery announced his resignation, in front of everyone, why? How unprofessional?". First, emotions are never unprofessional. They should be valued. And second, those tears were for what I was losing, what Linkedin was losing. Still miss your leadership, Avery!

CORE:
As CORE team, we worked on challenges and made huge impact to the company. We went through our first DR(disaster recovery). We did our first multi-colo data center. We also went IPO, a successful IPO. Together we had done it! From releases every 2 weeks to release when ready, to all nighters on release nights to couple of clicks for releases, from 65 million to 300 million members, from single to colo to now multi(countless)-colos :) so much accomplished in my years at Linkedin. Over time, I had owned the quality of different products - new member registrations, address book, profile/identity, higher education, contacts/relationships, presentation and infrastructure, china, home page, privacy and settings, in Engineering and applications built on top of SFDC in Sales Org....so many! After Avery left, CORE was re-organized many times, until there was no CORE, but for many of us, it will always be CORE :).

TEAM:
For everyone who worked in my team at any point- Thank you for the lessons, I learned from everyone of you:  Priyanka Salvi, Sherry, Shruthi, Vasu, Ragini, Aradhana, Sony, Yuriko, Yabin, James, Harini, Sujana, Priyanka John, Indraneel, Bhairavi, Sachin, Ronghua, Madhura, Guyong, Yi, Xiaomin, Kalyan, Sriram, Bharat, Ramaraju, Pani, Sireesha, Ajay, Viral, Satya, Seshendra, Manjusha, Pratheek, Devi, Sandeep - You all are the reason, I am and feel successful.

My peer team at one point: Venkat, Vinodh, Denis, Eran, Erica, Erran, Jim, Brent, Andrea. Avery had managed to create the best team at Linkedin! I hope I will be fortunate enough to work with each of you again.

SALES SYSTEM:
Andres, Angela - thank you for taking me in your fold in Sales System. I enjoyed my last year with you and your team!  You have a team that embodies Linkedin culture, hence I still have my faith in LNKD. Heather, if I know anything about Salesforce it is because of you, Thank you!

------------------------------------
Thank you all for making Linkedin a great experience for me.(I worked with so many bright and smart engineers, if I list them all here, it will be too long, but you know who you are!)