emily: he never aspired to be ceo. leaving a public company, determined to prove wall street wrong. jeff weiner rose through the ranks of warner bros. and yahoo! before linkedin cofounder reid hoffman made him a proposition to help run the professional social network. it was a match made in silicon valley heaven. weiner became the ceo he never expected to be and hoffman stayed on as chairman. linkedin has over 400 million members in 200 countries but faces its biggest challenge yet. so big, jeff weiner donated $14 million stock bonus to his

employees. joining me today on "studio 1.0," jeff weiner. thank you so much for being here. we will start with the elephant in the room. after the first quarter earnings report, stocks plummeted 40+%. it still has not recovered. is the magnitude of that market reaction fair? jeff: who's to say whether or not it is fair. that's what markets do. they determine the day-to-day price. i think it was a surprise. we were not expecting that kind of response. when you look at the core elements of our business, they remain healthy. if you look at north american fuel cells for our flagship recruiter product, growth there has remained consistent. marketing solutions, business-wise, it'ss the fastest-growing business.

and post-launch of our reimagined flagship application on mobile, you have seen an acceleration in engagement on both mobile and desktop. the core elements remain healthy. emily: analysts went so far as to say "we are sorry, he got it wrong." is there something they did not get? jeff: i think it's expectations. companies that experience hypergrowth for sustained periods of time, there is a natural inclination at times to extrapolate growth rates over a long amount of time. in the history of every hypergrowth company, literally, it becomes an inflection point where the expectation of analysts and investors outstrip the fundamentals of the business. the question is not when that will happen, it's how companies execute through that. emily: they're very confused about what linkedin is. they cut your fast growth, but you are more slow growth-like, operating at a slow growth rate.

jeff: i think it is relative, growing 30% and in the 20's is still healthy by virtually any standard. emily: you gave a rousing speech to employees at an all hands meeting and you said, "linkedin is the same company it was before this happened. i'm the same ceo and your the same team." how does jeff weiner, the person, feel about this? not the ceo but you. does it sting a little? jeff: i wouldn't say it stings, there was some surprise. you want to make sure you're there for the people that matter most. are we still able to create value for members and customers? we need to make sure our employees are ok, especially those that have not experienced things like this. there are members of the leadership team that have worked with companies that have gone through similar times. some of the most valuable companies in the world have gone through significant corrections.

a few have gone through multiple. they never lose sight of their long-term sense of purpose or vision. it's about continuing to execute. that's where we want to remain focused. emily: techcrunch published that linkedin's problems run deeper than valuation, it is at best a business card holder and at worst a delivery service for spam. jeff: everyone has their opinions and it will not defocus us. it's also interesting to see those comments. the company is the exact same it was before earnings. i think our core product offering has never been stronger. we have the best roadmap in the seven years i've been at the company. we continue to see gains and engagement. that's what it's about. creating value for members and customers. emily: can you accelerate growth? jeff: as we continue to execute, you want to build into what remains: a large, addressable opportunity. emily: has this impacted morale?

jeff: if anything, it brings people closer together. the more you go through these kinds of challenges, you meet these head-on and you are successful in recognizing nothing fundamental has changed. the stronger the team becomes, the stronger we become as a company. emily: you've written and spoken extensively on compassionate management. give me an example. jeff: i try to apply it in every interaction. compassionate management is putting yourself in the other person's shoes and understanding perspective. classically defined, you do that to alleviate some of the suffering. but more broadly, within a work environment, it does not need to be limited to alleviating suffering. it can be whenever you're in a position that i can help. when we are working together, all too often you probably experience it like everyone else. you will be in discussions through the day with your coworkers and colleagues and people outside the company. you will disagree.

more often than not, when people find themselves in this situation, they assume nefarious intentions. "are they being political?" "it's a zero-sum game." that may be the furthest thing from the person's mind. they may be having a bad day. you may have triggered something that happened long before they met you. you may be talking about something they are not as knowledgeable about. they don't want to show vulnerability. there are a host of reasons there may be tension. emily: some of the most successful ceos have been pretty ruthless. like steve jobs or elon musk. they are known for being completely uncompassionate. why is that the best way? jeff: different styles work for different people and companies and situations. i think the worst thing somebody could do is try to emulate what some of they've done because of their success. and what works for steve jobs or what works for elon, and people might like that, may not work

and more often than not does not work for other people who try to employ that style and people just don't follow. i think it depends. for me, personally, i find that taking the time to understand what it is you're trying to accomplish and how i can help you works better than projecting my own worldview onto you. i think that's a mistake a lot of younger, less experienced executives make. that was one i made. i expected my team, 10, 12, 14 years ago at yahoo!, i expected them to do things the way i did. that will lead to nothing but frustration. emily: your relationship with reid hoffman has been called the happiest, one of the happiest partnerships in business history. jeff: superlatives, yeah. emily: what is it that works so well between the two of you? ♪

emily: your relationship with reid hoffman has been called the happiest, one of the happiest partnerships in business history. jeff: superlatives, yeah. emily: what is it that makes it work so well between the two of you? jeff: there's a lot of mutual respect. we were friends before this

happened. he will tell you if you ask him a question, it turns out he will tell you the story almost verbatim. there's something in how we see the relationship so similarly. one of the most frequently asked questions i got was what my relationship was like with him. i think that was code for what kind of drama is there. in the transition from the founder and former ceo to the newly hired professional, there was no drama. what people didn't realize was i didn't join linkedin in spite of reid. i joined largely because of him. and because of the opportunity to work together. he's one of the most thoughtful people i've ever had the chance to work with. emily: what happens when you disagree? jeff: we almost never do. we've disagreed on a couple of occasions and they are always related to personnel.

it's never related to objective things about the business. there was interesting learning that will remain between the two of us, but i think there was interesting learning. emily: it's interesting you said you never aspired to become ceo. how did that happen if you didn't aspire? jeff: not because of what i had seen in terms of ceos in publicly traded companies. that can be a rough ride. for me it was never about the title. it was about a sense of purpose. emily: you've given a lot of thought to the future of the workforce and how it's changing. i would love it if you could paint the picture for us. jeff: employment is a serious issue. in some european countries, you have unemployment hovering around 50%. that's the thing that tears apart society if it's allowed to be sustained for too long where people don't feel like they have access to opportunity and become disenfranchised.

they don't feel like they have a voice and that's when bad stuff starts to happen. you got increasing fragmentation at work by virtue of the shared economy and new marketplace environments where people can start to set their own hours. emily: how does linkedin plan to account for the 1099 economy, freelancers, delivery people, people freelancing or have multiple jobs? jeff: a lot of people have proposed on linkedin because that's how they have their identity being shown to the world. emily: you think it's a dangerous trend? this move toward freelancing? do you think completely uber should be thinking hard about making workers full-time or giving benefits? jeff: i don't think it's dangerous, but clearly, things are changing. we will have to revisit this as a society. the laws and regulations that govern the way companies used operate. when you are working, there should be benefits that are

afforded to individuals, the extent to which that's mandated and the company has to offer that in a formal basis or the extent to which there are third-party platforms that facilitate the way in which individuals are able to generate benefits. i think this will continue to evolve. what's clear is if we continue to think we can apply the legacy way of doing things in a new environment and a new economy, i think that will lead to pretty significant unintended consequences that will do damage. emily: you said creating economic opportunity is the greatest issue of our time. women are still incredibly underrepresented in technology. why is that? jeff: you have a pipeline issue where you may have had historically fewer graduates with specific degrees in engineering, per se. that now starts to improve, which is wonderful. hopefully we will see the gaps start to close. it is on all of us in the tech

industry to make sure we are casting as wide a net as possible for the best talent. with regard to what happens once the career has started, i think it's important to recognize unconscious bias. and where people are making choices in terms of promotions in terms of pay that are not explicitly being driven by any kind of objective in terms of treating people unfairly but by virtue of relating to people like a decision-maker. that creates unconscious biases and the more cognizant we become that we have a tendency to gravitate toward people like ourselves and the unintended consequences of that, i think the faster we can solve those issues. emily: women represent 20% of technical roles at linkedin and 30% of leadership. are you happy with that? jeff: no. is it moving in the right direction? yes. we want as diverse and

representative and inclusive a base of leadership and employees as we have for our membership. that is the goal. emily: would you advocate affirmative action or hiring women just to see what happens? jeff: i don't think we should hire people to see what happens. i don't think we should hire people in a way that reduces the bar. i think we should be hiring the best possible person for the role. one of the things we can all do to increase diversity is employ techniques like the rooney rule which the nfl has used to great effect. they are not mandating you have to hire these kinds of people, whether that is gender or ethnic-based. what they are mandating is you need to interview people that is representative of being more inclusive of the population your drawing from. they have had amazing success with regard to improvements in diversity. emily: how do you make sure

linkedin is not the next yahoo!? do you worry about the company being disrupted? ♪

emily: you spent a lot of years at yahoo! and i'm sure you've been following this situation closely. what's your take at what's going on there and have you see this playing out? jeff: turnarounds are the hardest thing you can do in

business. full stop. trying to change the culture of an organization is almost prohibitively difficult. marissa walked into a situation that she must've known was going to be challenging to the point where there was probably not a huge probability of being able to turn it around. and credit to her for still taking on the role. i think she was able to make some changes in terms of the culture and development and transition to mobile. but that is a really challenging situation in terms of not just the culture, but in terms of the legacy assets and value proposition. the way people use yahoo!, the world has evolved so dramatically from those days of the consumer web. trying to navigate that, it's tough and really hard. in terms of where they are now, it sounds like they are very seriously evaluating to sell the

company. emily: is that the right call? jeff: i'm not in her shoes. i can't see the indicators, i can't see what their future roadmap looks like, and that may be one of the reasons she has been reluctant to sell the company historically. because she may have been excited or confident in the plan, they have turned things around and created value. there's a host of values where it is easier when you are on the outside looking in to think you know best. you have to put yourself in her shoes to understand what's going on. emily: what is the best and worst case scenario? jeff: it needs to be in the hands of someone that recognizes it's being used by hundreds of millions on a global basis. if it is sold, it will be sold to an acquirer that recognizes the value not only yahoo! creates in the world today but that it can continue going forward. that is how she is assessing her options, trying to do what's best in terms of maximizing that kind of value.

emily: how do you make sure linkedin is not the next yahoo!? do you worry about the company being disrupted? jeff: if i didn't, i wouldn't be doing my job. only the paranoid survive. for us, it's about the right level of focus in terms of the broader landscape and never losing sight of the game that we are defining for ourselves. we start to expand too quickly, we leave the core vulnerable. to the extent we are drawing resources from the core to fuel potential growth in the future is when you become vulnerable. to the extent you start to drink your own kool-aid and you believe that you are mozart, impenetrable, that is when you invite significant disruptions. we want to remain focused on playing our own game and at the same time, paying close attention to the way technology continues to evolve in the competitive landscape and how it evolves. you never want to lose sight of your own game. emily: facebook seems to be chewing up all media ad dollars.

can linkedin drive significant ad revenue? jeff: absolutely. within our context, it's a large opportunity. tens of billions of dollars are being spent on b2b within an online capacity. it's highly fragmented. it can be highly inefficient and we are in a position by virtue of our audience and to help our marketing partners to target the right decision-makers. we will continue to focus aggressively on building up that part of our business. emily: one thing you have on facebook is china. you guys have found a way to penetrate china. how would you rate your progress in china? do you feel like you've cracked the code, do you feel like there's a lot more work to be done there?

jeff: i wouldn't highly suggest we've cracked the code. china is a challenging market. we were up to 18 million members we started, we had amassed roughly 4 million members in english over 10 years. we have seen that substantially grow by virtue of localizing our core offering. in terms of our core businesses, talents, solutions, etc., there is a lot of room for growth as well. we have been focusing on getting the membership experience right. we are pleased where we are but there's still a lot of work to be done. emily: you've mentioned you had to make comprises in china and ask users to censor themselves based on what the chinese government wants to see or hear. how do you navigate that? how often has that happened? jeff: it happens very seldom, thankfully. we started to navigate that process toward launch. we spent the better part of 18 months understanding who we were as a company, our culture, our values.

what operating in china would mean in terms of compliance. despite all those objections, the first time you're asked to censor a member or take down a profile, it's gutwrenching. those members and creating value for those members is why we do what we do. at the same time, we recognize that china plays an enormous role in the global economy and by virtue of our presence in china, we can not only help connect our chinese numbers to opportunity and enable them to live the kind of life they want to live but we can connect them with opportunities outside of china and other connect companies within china to the global economy. that will create more value for everybody. emily: do you think facebook and twitter have a chance in china or are they so different there's no way they will be able to make it work? jeff: the fundamental difference is we are a platform. the chinese are very focused on extending the ranks of their middle-class.

on twitter and facebook, you have platforms that are more oriented towards communication and facilitating the way in which people communicate with one another. it's different, it doesn't necessarily mean it's not possible. emily: what does linkedin look like five years from now? jeff: five years from now, you will continue to see us focus on these core pillars in terms of value propositions. one of the things we are tapping into is anticipatory computing. i can't tell you the number of times i wish i had done some homework in terms of the person i will be meeting with. if i'm walking into the meeting, we have the ability to suggest how you know this person. things you have in common. you can start to apply that across a whole host of ways in which people are working today. people increasingly use linkedin as their corporate directory. and so, how we can look leverage that, i think we've scratched

the surface. emily: thank you so much for joining us. ♪

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