

High Fives at LinkedIn in the Wall Street Journal Blog - rjurney
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/06/10/after-first-year-as-linkedins-ceo-jeff-weiner-talks-shop/

======
exit
> _Anyone who walks through the square, which is nearly impossible to avoid,
> must give a high five to others nearby, the sign declares._

i wonder what the function of this is. to me it's just incredibly oppressive
and motivates passive aggressiveness. but maybe the idea is precisely to
exclude people like me.

~~~
rjurney
Would you care to clarify how shenanigans can be oppressive?

The signs are extremely formal, listing many regulations to the High Five
Incentive Program. The zone is huge and unavoidable. The universal reaction is
laughter.

~~~
pvdm
It is oppressive just like Hawaiian shirt days are oppressive. Pasted-up fake
smiles demotivates.

~~~
rjurney
These smiles aren't fake. People are excited every day at LinkedIn, or the
high five program would suck.

------
petewarden
I have to say, I was amazed at how nice an atmosphere there was when I visited
LinkedIn a couple of months back. I was expecting something a bit stuffy,
considering their market and somewhat conservative approach to innovation, but
the people in the hallways and lunch room seemed genuinely relaxed and happy.
It especially struck me after visiting Facebook a few hours earlier and
finding it somewhat grim. All very subjective of course, but it makes me think
this is a bit of real fun, not a horrific corporate attempt at 'flair'.

~~~
strlen
The high-five thing started completely from the bottom up, by Russell Jurney
(rjurney here and on Twitter). Jeff was over in analytics area (on an
unrelated matter, iirc) and happened to step into an impromptu-created high-
five zone and has adopted it.

The atmosphere surprised me as well (given the fact LinkedIn's a professional
network) when I first interviewed and later joined. Another fun thing I
noticed, check out the company guid for LinkedIn:

<http://www.linkedin.com/companies/1337>

------
blizkreeg
Ugh. This sounds like something that would be done at Yahoo than LinkedIn.
Like that ad campaign they ran: It's Y!ou or something of that sort.

------
zavulon
Wow. If LinkedIn was public, I would SO short them after reading that.

~~~
strlen
I'm sure many have done so with Google stock after reading about free lunches,
bean bag chairs and noticing the April Fool's pranks.

------
howradical
Oh wow...

