What I will miss about LinkedIn

Tomorrow I conclude 991 days of employment at LinkedIn.

(more details are coming tomorrow...stay tuned :-))

55% of the company is newer than me - 60% of my team is newer than me. And while that doesn't make me an old fogey, it definitely means I have spent a lot of time here. And it made me think about all of the things I will miss. Here's just a small sample, and in no particular order:

• Congee breakfast in the San Francisco Office
• The spirit of next play, introduced at onboarding and imbued into everything we do
• Bringing the Perspectives speaker series to life and educating the members of the LinkedIn Asian Alliance (LIAA)
• Jeff's wise words and ability to compel a room with his vast knowledge of our business
• Dan Shapero's infamous and beautifully bright suits at Sales Kickoff
• Never being able to find a conference room on short notice in the New York office
• Sitting on the 17th floor sun deck in San Francisco sipping a coffee while soaking up the morning sun
• Saying good morning to the friendliest, most cheerful security team member in San Francisco whose name I sadly never asked for (but he knows who he is!)
• Meeting people in our employee resource groups whose commitment to diversity, allyship, inclusion, productive conversations, belonging, and pure decency made me a believer in the human spirit
• The views from the LinkedIn office at Hysan Place in Hong Kong
• Sharing ideas with teammates from Sydney and London about talent brand strategies that work (or don't) in our respective countries
• Organizing a client dinner, planning a team gathering, and running around like mad at Talent Connect in Nashville in 2017
• Introducing four colleagues from New York, London, and Paris to my favorite Chinese restaurant in San Francisco during our LMS onboarding
• Winning a shark bobblehead trophy during my LSS onboarding (thank you Mark Lederer!)
• Having a mind-blowing realization about how to help In N Out Burger recruit talent in its stores with Nathalie Marchino
• Closing record-setting deals in LTS high growth with and being driven completely mad by the incomparable Amina Zamani
• Teaching American idioms and slang to my teammates Gui and Laura from our Sao Paulo office and learning professional grade Spanish in return
• Getting time for coffee with or advice from senior leaders like Mike Gamson (even on his last week in Chicago)
• Having Mark Lobosco remember that I had been on paternity leave even after I moved cross-country and saw him in Chicago
• Access to industry leading data, insights, and information with which I helped educate 15 of LinkedIn's biggest customers
• Showing clients how to turn on their bluetooth tracking feature to connect with every person in a room
• Coming to work dressed up as Chewbacca and having it not only be okay but encouraged by all of my peers
• Rocking peoples' profile and showing them that LinkedIn is so much more than a social network or job board
• Leading 30 Guitar Center employees and three members of the C-suite in one of the best meetings of my life to find and capture brilliant employer branding stories
• Listening to Irish, French, Singaporean, Australian, Japanese, Korean and British points of view in one of our world-class global onboardings
• Mentoring my younger colleagues on the intricacies of talent media
• Pitching business ideas to Ariel Eckstein
• Sitting in client meetings with Brad Wilson and Adrian Reyes and learning how to deftly handle client requests, objections, and questions from the jedi masters
• Taking my full paternity leave with my son Cooper
• Directly challenging a client in our London office and having them respect us more for it
• Having LIAA members tell me that the event I put on was one of the best they'd ever attended (and also highly offensive)
• Cruising around New York with my Solutions teammates only to end up eating the best Cuban meal of my life with Sara and Stephen
• Teaching teammates and sales reps on the nuances of diversity and inclusion topics and workforce planning
• Seeing Dan Roth or Jeff Weiner in the elevators of the New York office and having to resist the urge to say “Oh my god I am a huuuuuge fan!”
• Getting nearly stranded at a client meeting in southern New Jersey with no cell signal
• Teaching members of Citi's women's network about LinkedIn while wearing my infant son on my chest
• Leading one section of an executive briefing with the Spanish telco giant Telefonica…in Spanish
• Taking my entire MegaSeg team on my Aunt's Chinatown walking tour in San Francisco and having her humiliate me with memories of how annoying I was as a kid
• Teaching our Detroit colleagues about talent media and earning my "Detroit Hustles Harder" sticker in the process
• Getting knocked out of the 2018 Solutions fantasy football league only to come roaring back and win it all in 2019! (take that Vipul and Nisha)
• Discussing intracacies of talent brand survey data with Jesus Campos
• Nerding out on talent brand strategy with Lauren Saunders
• Giving one large global technology firm a set of ambitious recommendations on how to attract diverse talent, being told that one message (if chosen) would have to come from the CEO himself, and responding - "yes, that's correct. it should come from him."

As you can imagine, this is a far from comprehensive list. But in a world where gratitude is seemingly spare, it's important to remember the things you're thankful for. I have many more which I may add to this post over time. If you have things you're grateful to LinkedIn for, please add them in the comments below!

-Aaron