Post by Gyanda Sachdeva

After 16 wonderful years, today is my last day at LinkedIn. I've been thinking about this post for months. Then my daughter solved the conundrum. A few weeks ago, I brought my kids to the office one last time. My older one, ever so practical, raised several acute questions about finances and suggested we enter some sort of austerity period for a while. My daughter sat down that evening and wrote 28 reasons that make LinkedIn special (from her perspective of course). Among them: it gave her mom friends, made her mom more confident, helped her mom file bugs (ahem ..), and my favorite (#8) - "it has always been a happy place." She also captured the reason behind my difficult choice in two simple lines: My mom does not want to leave. But she wants to spend time with her kids. She is eight years old, right on all accounts, and I am afraid to admit that her clarity is better than mine. My LinkedIn journey started with one of the most memorable interview experiences of my career, a story I still only tell off the record :) I signed the offer letter within seconds, and with zero hesitation. What followed was 16 years of something I can only call career privilege: building products that change how people find opportunity, working alongside people who are world-class human beings first and employees second, and seeing the full arc of 0 to 1, 1 to 100 over and over again. I am proud of what we built, and more proud of how we built it. Few places are truly mission-first, and LinkedIn is one of them. “Create economic opportunity for every professional in the global workforce” is something I’ve heard and said thousands of times, and it has always landed with the same weight because everyone here makes sure of that. I'll be taking a few months to step back, be with my family, and figure out my next play. But first, to every person I've had the honor of building with, and to every member who shared feedback to make the product better: thank you! You've shown me what great work and great teams look like, and I'll be chasing that standard for the rest of my career. ps: leaving my daughter's full list here. An unofficial submission to LinkedIn's marketing team, should they have an opening for a very motivated intern. Her name is Kavya, and she is ready to earn her keep.