If a Pulse blog post from a LinkedIn employee is correct – quoting a Senior Vice President in the company – the business and employment social network LinkedIn is about to open a Detroit office.
The post by Brian Araujo, who works on Talent Acquisition for the company as well as founded the Black Inclusion group for the company, quotes LinkedIn Senior Vice President of Sales Mike Gamson as announcing a Detroit location on August 1.
There is no indication of the new office in LinkedIn’s press room as of this writing and the location is not one of the ones listed on their site.
Sunnyvale, California based LinkedIn was founded in 2003 and now has about 10,000 employees and U.S. offices currently in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Omaha, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.
The post itself was very interesting in that it touched on people internally having questions about opening a Detroit office. Araujo quotes another coworker:
“I don’t know why we’d open an office there, how can you expect to find top talent when all of the rich white people left poor blacks in the inner city?”
Araujo, a Brooklyn, New York native, goes on to immediately call out the comment and then talk about how race relations broke Detroit and why Detroit is now the place to be. In full, it’s an interesting read.
We are closing social gaps faster than any other subgroup, see Black Progress. There’s a saying that we have to work 10x harder for 1/10th the recognition or visibility, Black people have grit. So, why wouldn’t you put an office in Detroit? Hell, I say double down on Detroit, because simply put, Detroit will be the ultimate comeback story of our country.
Our unemployment rate as a region, we reported just today as being the fastest dropping in the nation and is now lower than Los Angeles New York or Boston. The rate of unemployment in the city is dropping too, helping the numbers of the entire region.
Daily Detroit has reached out to LinkedIn for confirmation of the location as well as more information.
