LinkedIn Ireland chief Sue Duke: ‘The future of work is happening and being shaped by AI’

It is a Friday afternoon and the Dublin office of the company dubbed “Facebook for suits” is busier than you might expect.

The new boss of LinkedIn Ireland, Sue Duke, says she has seen more and more people attending the office in recent months. But unlike some big tech companies, LinkedIn hasn’t issued a blanket order to return to the office for a prescribed number of days per week.

“We’ve really left it up to individual teams to figure out what’s going to work best for them,” she says. “We are increasingly seeing workers and teams coming in to do that stuff that you can only really do in person – building that really deep connection with team-mates.”

Dublin-born Duke may be relatively new in the job – she was appointed in June of last year – but she has worked with LinkedIn for almost a decade. She joined the company in 2014 to head its relationships with governments and policymakers around the world, working closely with Sharon McCooey, the then-head of LinkedIn Ireland, on a number of initiatives.

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So when the subject of her taking over was broached, Duke says, she was “thrilled” and keen to build on McCooey’s legacy. “I’m thinking about those key areas that I want to focus on. When we look to this next phase of the future of work, how is it that we at LinkedIn Ireland can help break down those barriers?”

‘The platform itself updates over 5 million times a minute. That gives you a real sense that people are coming to the platform, if they’re looking for a new job, if they’re adding a skill that they’ve learned, if they’re looking to ask a question about a work problem’

—  Sue Duke

McCooey had led the company since it was established here in 2010, seven years after the service officially launched. Initially, there were just three staff representing LinkedIn Ireland but it grew quickly, reaching around 1,200 by 2017, when it opened its new EMEA regional headquarters.

By 2019, LinkedIn had plans to increase that figure to 2,000 over the following year, making the grand announcement as it hit the two million membership mark in Ireland. These days, the Dublin office looks after a number of different areas, from recruitment and online learning to advertising and LinkedIn’s premium subscription business. It employs almost 2,200 people from about 70 countries.

“We’ve just hit over a billion members across the world and engagement is at record highs. The platform itself updates over 5 million times a minute. That gives you a real sense that people are coming to the platform, if they’re looking for a new job, if they’re adding a skill that they’ve learned, if they’re looking to ask a question about a work problem they have, if they’re looking to build their network. We see all of that happening on the platform at a record rate right now.”

That LinkedIn is not only still around but thriving may come as a surprise to some who were confidently predicting its decline not too long ago. In the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, the website cut almost a thousand jobs globally and it was hit by the tech lay-offs last year, when parent company Microsoft also let go thousands of staff globally.

Changes are always difficult, Duke says, and the lay-offs were “challenging”.

“When there’s any changes like that, our focus is on those individuals who are impacted, on helping them and supporting them through that process. And honestly, it’s one of those times where you really see the power of the LinkedIn network, where you see people’s colleagues and community and contacts really coming together on the platform and helping people find new opportunities and new jobs.”

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LinkedIn was one of a number of tech companies to scale back plans for grand campuses here. It originally planned a European headquarters campus at Wilton Park, signing a lease for around 40,000 sq m of space. But that was in January 2020, before the pandemic prompted a shift to hybrid working. And even though there has been some return to the office, with continued hybrid working LinkedIn no longer needs the same amount of space that it once thought, leading to the decision to let go of Two and Three Wilton Park.

Its office at One Wilton Park, which it now occupies, has something of a new building feel to it despite being open for almost a year. The second building it will occupy is expected to be finished in 2025.

So there have been a series of disappointments, but Duke is optimistic for the future.

‘Unsurprisingly, we’re seeing an enormous increase in conversations around Gen AI, we’re seeing record numbers of members adding new generative AI skills like ChatGPT, prompt engineering, natural language processing’

—  Sue Duke

“It has been a period of quite a lot of change for the sector, I would say, across Ireland,” she says. “But that said, I think despite the impacts that we’ve seen, I think there’s still a lot of energy and excitement and buoyancy across the sector, and really a lot of enthusiasm for what’s to come next.”

That is a future in which artificial intelligence is likely to feature heavily. Eighteen months ago, generative AI wasn’t a phrase you heard uttered too often. These days, almost everyone is an expert in ChatGPT and Bard.

“This future of work is happening and being shaped by AI,” says Duke. “Unsurprisingly, we’re seeing an enormous increase in conversations around Gen AI, we’re seeing record numbers of members adding new generative AI skills like ChatGPT, prompt engineering, natural language processing. And of course, we’re really seeing businesses looking for these new skills across all sectors, not just in the technology sector but from retail to manufacturing, construction.”

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But it will certainly mean change for the workforce, including LinkedIn. The company has introduced a number of pilots using AI to help free up its members’ time, from writing summaries and answering career questions, to composing campaigns for recruiters.

“The pandemic brought this unprecedented change and upheaval in the world of work where we were all suddenly trying to figure out where am I going to work, how am I going to work and even why am I working?” says Duke. “I think we’re headed into another period of enormous change with things like technological change, obviously Generative AI being at the forefront of that, environmental challenges and how we’re going to get the workforce set up to meet that and demographic shifts.”

At the start of the pandemic, Duke found herself at home with her two young children. It was a steep learning curve, she says, trying to figure out how to juggle everything.

Despite heading a digital network. Duke is one of those people who thrives on in-person interaction.

“I get a ton of energy from being around people,” she says. “With the diversity and scale of the employees that we have here, I always walk away from interactions with the teams filled with optimism and energy about what we’re doing, where we’re going.”

LinkedIn may have other obstacles to navigate. Most social media companies, including Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) have been mired in controversy in recent years. Where companies once sought to connect people, it hasn’t always gone to plan. Sometimes the connections have been less wholesome than reuniting long lost family members: bot farms spreading disinformation, people attempting an insurrection, a general negative impact on the mental health of a generation.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, has found itself parodied for the relentless upbeat yet simultaneously dispiriting posts of members. It has spawned parodies accounts on other social media platforms – The State of LinkedIn on X, for example – cataloguing some of the biggest offenders.

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The boss who thought workers should be grateful they managed to carve out two days for a weekend or an hour away from their screen; the well-meaning advice that always seems to end with an endorsement of the “hard-core work ethic” that Twitter owner Elon Musk insisted his staff embrace or leave; and the earnest posts with a moral, evidence that life is one long teaching moment that should be catalogued in detail for social networks.

Toxic positivity aside, LinkedIn has largely sidestepped the issues that continue to dog other platforms. It has had to deal with ongoing issues such as sexual harassment of its members, putting a number of systems in place to try to stamp it out as much as possible.

As a professional network, and one that charges a hefty subscription fee for access to its premium products, its focus has been less on engagement at all costs and more on sticking to the professional part of its remit.

“People – workers, companies – they come to LinkedIn for very different reasons. It’s a very different kind of network focused on the world of work, focused on professionals, focused on conversations about careers,” says Duke. “The content that we see do really well on LinkedIn is focused precisely on that area.”

However, LinkedIn will need to stay on top of things if it wants to avoid being dragged down the toxic engagement route. Industry watchers have noted a shift in tone on the platform in recent years, particularly post-pandemic, when the lines between professional lives and personal ones have been eroded somewhat.

These days you are as likely to see someone sharing an anecdote about their young child as you are to see someone celebrating a work anniversary or career move. It is all under the guise of authenticity and connecting with an increasingly cynical audience.

‘Communication, the importance of simplicity and directness in a message, is certainly one thing you learn all the time in these jobs, but one that I see more and more that is absolutely critical’

—  Sue Duke

For Duke, good communication skills can be applied universally across all areas of life. She has two young children – aged five and seven – who keep her on her toes and have taught her the importance of communication.

“Being able to get a message across – especially true with kids – in a simple and compelling way and the more you can strip it back to the essentials of what it is that you’re trying to say, what it is that you would like to see happen, the more impactful that’s going to be. Communication, the importance of simplicity and directness in a message, is certainly one thing you learn all the time in these jobs, but one that I see more and more that is absolutely critical.”

Family aside, comedy is her other love. When she gets some free time – a precious commodity at this point – she likes to spend it going to comedy gigs. “There’s just something about sitting down for an hour and a half and just laughing out loud the whole time, in company, surrounded by people,” she says.

However, don’t expect to see her trying her hand at stand-up, a route other business leaders have sworn by as a learning experience. “I don’t think it’s something that I do myself. I’m very happy to sit there and laugh at the joke, I’ve an enormous respect for what they do and how they do it.”

In fact, Duke hasn’t embraced too much of the lifestyle you usually associate with tech executives. She isn’t a sea swimmer, for example. “I’m a bit of a big toe in the water and run back up the strand person, so I have not been brave enough to do that yet,” she says. “I have a couple of friends who really love it. But I’m happy to sit in bed, have a warm cup of coffee and encourage them.”

Which brings us back to another of Duke’s takeaways from her work life: focusing on the important things. Prioritising what matters most, a skill that some business leaders can spend their careers trying and failing to master.

But for Duke, it is a crucial skill.

“You can’t do everything,” she says. “Figure out what’s the most important, what’s the most impactful stuff and focus on that.”

CV

Name: Sue Duke

Job: Country manager for LinkedIn Ireland

Something you would expect: She is choosy about her professional network on LinkedIn and doesn’t accept every request that comes her way. “It’s about quality over quantity.”

Something that would surprise: She has tried extreme sports. White water rafting on the Nile that she was hesitant about. And with good reason, as it turns out. The raft flipped and the experience ended with a gashed leg. “I’ve stepped back from extreme sports since that experience.”

Business hero: Dr Patricia Scanlan, founder of Soapbox Labs. “I’ve admired her from afar. She’s super impressive.”

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