As confirmed by a company spokeswoman on Friday, LinkedIn’s key executive, Eduardo Vivas plans to leave the enterprise-focused social platform by the end of 2017. Presently, Eduardo heads the product category for LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions business. The said division amasses major revenues for LinkedIn and includes paid tools for corporate recruiters.
Eduardo has been with LinkedIn since 2014, post the company acquired his human resources software startup Bright for a whopping deal of $120 million. After the departure of Vivas, the responsibilities will be handled by Dan Shapero. He’ll supervise the company’s offerings for job seekers and will directly report to Ryan Roslansky, Head of Product at LinkedIn.
As for Eduardo, he is quitting LinkedIn to take some time off from work to travel but prior to that will ensure a smooth transition of his responsibilities to Dan Shapero.
The exit of Eduardo comes at a time when the company is facing internal churning at the top management. In January, Roslansky was promoted to oversee all LinkedIn products, who previously assisted CEO Jeff Weiner on the consumer side. While David Thacker to whom Roslansky reported remained at the same position. Thacker not only assisted Vivas with his operations but also helped Weiner oversee business products. The pure biases witnessed at the key roles hint towards Eduardo’sudden choice, but the spokeswoman has denied any such connection.
It may also be possible that the massive losses bored by the company following the Microsoft acquisition inclined him to do so. As per the company, while LinkedIn brought almost $228 million in revenue to the table, it also managed to incur losses to the tune of $100 million in net income, as a part of Microsoft’s second quarter earnings report.
With that said, LinkedIn’s own reports brought out earlier had pegged net revenue at over $900 million and had out losses at $118 million. With Microsoft, however, the professional social network is a part of their productivity and business processes division — which managed in bringing in a net sum of $7.4 billion in the previous quarter.
