Great company with potential but bad culture holding it back - Anonymous employee LinkedIn Employee Review

2.0
Sep 15, 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

LinkedIn is a great place to work for those who are just out of college, in the early years/ stages of their career. At this point, one enjoys the various benefits the company has to offer like InDays, days that are organized around a theme such as giving back to the community etc. Other benefits like Free food, gym etc. Other pros include: decent 401 K match at 50% of your annual contribution, which is 9K USD for 2015. Health care, dental, vision coverage etc. are what you would expect from a silicon valley employer of repute. Finally, you will get a look of admiration when you tell people you work at LinkedIn, generally good for your profile. Work life balance also manageable in some groups, it was crazy times in 2012, but 2015 is much better. You can work from home when you need, some people do more routinely than others, and it is fine.

Cons

People seem to think it is a nice place to work with an amazing culture, an opposite of Amazon, while really, it isn't. It is worse, because Amazon does not go around touting its great work culture ,where as for LinkedIn, there is a pretense of great culture, almost cult like, which starts the day of your interview. You will hear all the buzzwords and phrases from the very start. Things like "act like an owner", "relationships matter" etc. will roll off your tongue easier than your name! Pretty limited growth opportunities for those with 5+ years of experience. Also, hard to move up if you are not friends/ ex-colleagues with the boss or haven't gone to to a Ivy league school. Your senior management will likely not respect you unless you are a Ivy league or Top B school grad or have worked at McKinsey/ Bain etc. Very very true esp for the sales org. If you have worked for Google or such companies before, that helps too. There is a sense of insecurity among line managers and mid level managers, which prevents them from promoting the best talent and instead promoting the "yes men". Standing out is difficult. If you've drunk the kool aid and are not hugging every second person you see, you might not be able to move up. Also, the other review about the top leaders group being an "old boys club" - they couldn't have said it better. Spot on. It is a club that only takes people like itself. Another thing you need to do is to act like you are 18 and at your first party. You will see a lot of jumping around, dancing around in sales offsites etc. If you are not a party animal and not good at pretending to be one, be prepared to feel left out. Another issue is lack of collaboration across functions. Most leaders and groups are seeking success for themselves and in the process, the bigger goal does get overlooked many a times. It is hard to act like ONE linkedin, very hard. The culture seems to be better for some groups, so do check with someone on the internal side if you can before you accept an offer. I have heard of great leaders across all groups - sales, product, marketing etc. but also pretty bad ones. So, some research will do you good. Overall, it has been a positive learning experience, but can definitely do with better culture, which always starts top down.

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Cons

-Customer Success metrics lack clear ownership and actionable levers. Many CSMs do not have direct control over the outcomes they are measured against, and success narratives are often based on isolated or non-replicable examples rather than scalable processes. -Microsoft’s increased influence over LinkedIn has led to tighter promotion structures and more limited compensation growth pathways. -Product value within the LTS portfolio is inconsistent. LinkedIn Learning struggles with perceived differentiation and impact, while Recruiter’s market position relies heavily on legacy dominance rather than clear ongoing innovation or customer value expansion. -Metric design and performance management frameworks were created without a strong operational understanding of the CSM role, resulting in accountability for outcomes that CSMs cannot directly influence. -While many CSMs share these concerns, there is limited upward feedback or structured challenge to leadership regarding metric design and role effectiveness, which limits opportunities for meaningful reform. They prefer to lick the boots of senior leaders rather than tell AV and his team how they actually feel and see progress to better, more impactful metrics. For individuals who are comfortable with high call volumes (10+ customer interactions per week) and performance metrics that are influenced significantly by external factors rather than direct role ownership, LinkedIn LTS Customer Success can be a suitable environment.

3
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