Last Friday I had the opportunity to meet with Swati Popuri during my weekly 30 minute donut chat 🍩 .

Two amazing themes:
1️⃣ Our shared experience at Twitter during the Elon acquisition
2️⃣ The importance of LinkedIn personal branding career resilience and growth

-- 🐦 Twitter. There is a lot to unpack here. --

Swati and I were both there during the transition. To say it was chaotic is a massive understatement. Here's an interesting story which Swati and I both did not enjoy:

🤐 Immediately after the acquisition was formally closed, there was complete radio silence from any leader. Most of them had been let go immediately, but the ones who remained were completely silent. Including Elon.

😵 "Silence Kills", was the way Swati described it.

😖 It was unnerving. There was zero clarity whether we still had jobs, or if we were to continue working on the same initiative, etc.

The silence was broken after 10 days with the first round of layoffs. Ouch.

There's a lot more to that story, but that's where I'll stop for now.

--- 🌐🧍 LinkedIn Branding ---

🥅 At a minimum, building your LinkedIn brand creates a type of safety net for the ups and downs of your career. Its not LinkedIn that is the safety net, its the people you genuinely connect with.

🚀 At best, your LinkedIn brand is a rich and engaging experience that accelerates your professional growth and career trajectory through meaningful friendships and connections.

📈 I think of it like investing across a large time horizon.

Your 401k grows as you continually invest a small portion of your money.
Your LinkedIn brand grows as you continually invest a small portion of your time.

Experiment with how you want to express yourself on LinkedIn: writing, visuals, audio, video...everyone has different strengths.

I've been building my own LinkedIn brand for several years now. My mental model is more akin to a slow drip irrigation method rather than full-blast sprinklers intermittently.

When I was laid off from Twitter, I immediately had some good leads for job opportunities. Not everything worked out, but I only needed one which ended up being HashiCorp.

-- that's it! --

Thanks for the conversation Swati!

-- ⏭️ --
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