Daniel Shapero was named CEO of LinkedIn this week, stepping into the role long held by Ryan Roslansky. But after nearly two decades at the Microsoft-owned company, Shapero says he didn’t climb to the top by chasing titles—he did it by choosing the right people.
“The best career decisions that I’ve ever made have been about the people I got to work with,” he told Bloomberg last year.
“We’re all more malleable than we give ourselves credit for. We adapt to our environment. And so the best decision I’ve ever made was when I chose to work around people who were going to shape me into the person I wanted to be, as opposed to career decisions about the specifics of the job or the task.”
Early in his tenure, that philosophy meant staying put. During his first more than half-decade in sales, Shapero worked under the same manager—a stretch he credits with sharpening both his performance and his leadership instincts.
Rather than job hopping for faster promotions, he doubled down on mentorship, betting that the right environment would compound over time.
Shapero long had his eyes on the C-suite—but the path to the top required tough love from LinkedIn’s former CEO
After studying mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, Shapero dabbled in entrepreneurship—starting, and later selling, a high school athletic recruitment website. He eventually obtained his MBA from Harvard Business School in 2004, and worked in strategy consulting at Bain for nearly four years before joining LinkedIn in 2008.
But his ultimate career goal was always simpler: running a tech company.
“I’ve known probably since some of my entrepreneurial days that I aspired to be a great CEO one day of a tech company,” he recalled on Reveal: The Revenue AI Podcast by Gong in 2021. But getting there required a reality check—delivered by then-CEO Jeff Weiner.
After helping grow LinkedIn’s recruiting business from roughly $40 million to $1 billion in revenue over five years, Shapero expected validation. Instead, Weiner pointed out a gap: If he wanted to run a great tech company, he needed to understand the product—not just sales.
“It’s one of those moments where someone tells you a truth that isn’t necessarily comfortable in the moment,” Shapero said. “But upon reflection you realize is right—the cold water you needed splashed on your face a bit.”
So in 2014, he made an unusual move: stepping down from a senior sales leadership role to become an individual contributor on the product team.
“The only way to learn product is to do product,” he said. “You can’t learn it from afar. You can’t learn it by being connected to it. You need to build a product from the ground up.”
The bet eventually paid off. By 2019, he was named chief business officer, by 2021 chief operating officer—and now, CEO.
Fortune reached out to LinkedIn for further comment.
LinkedIn CEO’s advice for Gen Z on getting started
While Shapero has finally hit the top of the corporate ladder, if he had to do it all over again today, the path would likely be much more complicated. Traditional paths to entry-level work, especially in tech, are already being squeezed as companies automate routine work. But Shapero doesn’t think opportunities will necessarily outright disappear for Gen Z—instead they will just evolve.
“The bottleneck is unlikely to be the tech,” Shapero told Fortune last year. “The bottleneck is going to be how you teach people how to do it. That’s a talent challenge, not a tech challenge.”
In practice, that means the most valuable candidates won’t necessarily be the ones building AI systems—but the ones who know how to work alongside them and be adaptive. Moreover, pairing that tech approach with human skills, like communication and creativity, are likely to pay even greater dividends, Shapero said.
“You don’t necessarily need to be the one that invents the new way to do something,” he added. “But you do need to be aware of what others are doing, what the best practices are, and then be comfortable changing your habits.”
