The Executive Vice President of LinkedIn and Microsoft 365 is leaving and stays on as an advisor until the end of the year. The reason is in his own words: the next phase requires being in Redmond every day, and his family is in the Bay Area. His teams move to Charles Lamanna, Jacob Andreou and directly to Satya Nadella.
- Sumit Chauhan and Lan Ye report to Charles Lamanna; Jon Friedman to Jacob Andreou. Dan Shapero stays CEO of LinkedIn, Mohak Shroff stays in his role, both reporting to Satya Nadella.
- Nadella: Ryan leaves the organization in a strong position. Copilot is called "a new OS for work".
- Roslansky: "being in Redmond full time, every day" is the price of the next phase, and he is not paying it.
The rarest sentence in a corporate farewell is the real reason. Here it is, in the first person, and it is an address.
Read it again. No health reasons, no "new challenges", no startup fund. The man says the job wants him in Redmond every day and that he does not want that. On his floor, that is rarely admitted.
He stays on as an advisor until the end of the year. So nobody is pushing anybody out: the company wants the man in Redmond, the man wants his home in the Bay Area, and the two do not fit on one map.
For LinkedIn nothing moves on paper: Shapero continues as CEO, Shroff stays too. The change is on the floor above, where LinkedIn and Microsoft 365 had one person and now sit with Nadella, Lamanna and Andreou. Whether that is a temporary map or the new one, the text does not say.
Copilot is "a new OS for work", in Nadella's words. The operating system wants its people in the building, every day. That is the whole story, and it is not about software.