Kyle Sherman worked at Intel for 6 months and 2 years full time before joining LinkedIn's SlideShare team in 2013. At LinkedIn, he values that ideas can come from anywhere, employees act like owners over the features they work on, and there is a focus on open communication and delivering high quality work. LinkedIn also emphasizes collaboration across large teams to build major products while allowing flexibility to work on smaller teams, and places high importance on customer feedback and needs.

1. Working at LinkedIn
Kyle Sherman
iOS Developer (SlideShare)
Rutgers University '12
October 7, 2015

2. My Background
• B.S. Electrical & Computer Engineering
• Worked at Intel for a 6-month co-op and 2 years
full time
• Been with LinkedIn (SlideShare) since
December 2013

3. My Experiences @ LinkedIn
• Worked on SlideShare's first mobile app on
Android
• Working on SlideShare's first iOS app
• Currently helping out on LinkedIn flagship iOS
app
• Published LinkedIn Engineering Blog Post on
Swift
https://engineering.linkedin.com/ios/our-swift-experience-
slideshare

4. Values Throughout LinkedIn
• Ideas come from everywhere; not top down*
• Act like an owner
• Be open, honest, and constructive
• Demand Excellence
• Relationships Matter
• Members First

5. Ideas Come From Everywhere
• Many of our features have come from internal
hackdays or brainstorming sessions
• A major new feature of SlideShare, Clipping,
came from a brainstorming discussion
• Product team was formed; they planned and
implemented the feature
• Now there are millions of clips on SlideShare!

6. Act Like An Owner
• Developers at any level are given sizable
features to implement
• They own the development of that feature
• They communicate with Product Managers and
Designers
• The feature doesn’t ship until everyone agrees
it’s ready

7. Intern Project
• iOS code
• Ruby on Rails API
• Tested
• Found & Solved Edge cases

8. Be Open, Honest, &
Constructive
• Code reviews are very
important
• Engineers are encouraged to
stand up for what they believe
in
• Feel free to talk to anyone
about ideas or feedback

9. Demand Excellence
• Collectively decide if we feel the feature is ready
• If everyone does not agree or is convinced; it
doesn’t ship

10. Relationships Matter
• Fun events with your team
• People play games together
late on Friday night in the
office

12. Members First
• Conduct many user studies on all products
• Review member feedback and implement
changes

13. Culture of LinkedIn
• Humor
• Collaboration
• Results
• Transformation
• Integrity

14. http://www.slideshare.net/PatWadors/linked-in-culture-deck?
from_action=save

15. Humor

16. Formal Friday
SlideShare Style

17. Collaboration/Results
• LinkedIn has video
conferencing in every room
• Collaborate across teams
• No one person makes the
decision
• We ship products!

18. Transformation
• You are here to transform your career!
• We adopt the latest and greatest technologies
like Swift!
• LinkedIn is not afraid to change its tools and
technologies if developers aren’t satisfied

19. Preserving Culture
• LinkedIn has acquired many startups
• Culture has been preserved
• Both Small & Large teams

20. Working in a Small Team
• SlideShare mobile team was 4 developers, 1
engineering manager, 1 product manager, and 1
designer
• Currently 4 engineers on Android and 2 iOS
• No dedicated API developers

21. Pros vs Cons (Small Team)
• Can move fast
• Each member knows
more about everything
going on
• Developers own
features / product end
to end
• Can't do as much
simultaneously
• Focus on fewer things
• Less differing opinions
to help make product
better
ConsPros

22. Working in a Large Team
• Currently working on the flagship iOS team (~50
developers)
• Profile Edit team
• Dedicated API Development team
• Coordination to ensure consistency within each app
and across platforms

23. Pros vs Cons (Large Team)
• Can do more
simultaneously
• Focus on more than
one (few) things
• Greater output over a
short period of time
• More overhead for
coordination between
members
• Difficult to keep track
of everything
• Difficult to have a full
picture
Pros Cons

24. Best of Both Worlds
• Flexibility to work in both environments
• Switching teams is very easy and encouraged
• Your happiness is most important

25. What We Do

26. Connect the world’s professionals
to make them more productive
and successful
Our mission

27. Create economic opportunity
for every member of the global
workforce
Our vision

28. THE ECONOMIC GRAPH

29. Connecting talent with opportunity
at massive scale
Members Companies Jobs Skills Schools Updates

30. Cool Perks!
• Great tasting, healthy, free food
• Fully Equipped Music Room
• Free Exercise classes; Awesome Gym
• 50% match on 401K; No maximum!
• Unlimited Vacation Days!

31. InDay!
• 1 Day per month
• You can do anything you want
• LinkedIn sponsored volunteering events
• HackDay!
• Learn a new skill