When I joined LinkedIn, I called up one of my interviewers. He had left LinkedIn just as I joined so that he could start a startup.   I had asked him for some advice on how to make the most of my time at LinkedIn.   After all, he had a few big operational wins...

You know, I listen to a lot of feedback from our users.   Several users have asked me “Aaron, why don’t you show ads in the task lists of your free users? That way the business earns more and you don’t have to charge users who can’t afford it.”   It’s coming from good intentions...

In tech, you hear the phrase “the one metric that matters” (OMTM) a lot. I certainly heard this at LinkedIn. Every year, we re-evaluated our “true north” metric to see if was still where we wanted to go. The idea is that OMTM simplifies where you focus your team’s time and energy. Since it’s a...

  I’m the CEO of a two-person startup. Before this, I spent five years at LinkedIn. When I was at LinkedIn, I got the impression that it was difficult to attract great talent. We had a compelling vision and mission, smart teammates, and a great brand… yet it still seemed like a coin flip on...