Los Angeles — How would you respond to a wonderful gift, especially when your employer bestows you with surprised gadgets for free? Well, Jeff Weiner, chief executive at professional networking outfit LinkedIn, expressed his affection by handing out an iPad Minis to each of his 3,500 full-time employees on Wednesday in recognition of their contributions to the company.
CEO Weiner surprised the company’s 3,458 full-time employees Wednesday when he disclosed at an all-hands meeting that they were all getting iPad Minis. That is right: If you work at LinkedIn, you got an iPad mini today, as Wiener (seen below) passed them out to everyone in the office.
According to several media reports, “Jeff ‘Winfrey’ Weiner decided to give every [LinkedIn] employee an iPad Mini today as a special reward for our recent results,” Mike Grishaver, a product manager who works on the company’s marketing solutions team, posted on the business social network.
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner addresses employees next to stacks of iPad minis… Source: TechCrunch
Of course, that is pretty cool, and these probably would not just be used to play Angry Birds or Super Hexagon: The iPad is well-documented to help out in the workplace, and with every employee having an iPad mini, LinkedIn can now seamlessly distribute documents digitally on the Apple devices, or possibly even come to rely on an iOS app for some office functions.
However, rather the going for the cheapest $329 16GB model, LinkedIn chose to step up to the $429 32GB version, costing the company some $1.5 million, reports Business Insider.
Employees are getting 32GB iPad Mini models in white or black. Krista Canfield, LinkedIn’s senior manager of corporate communications, confirmed the giveaway, which she called a “small gesture of the company’s gratitude.”
“We wanted to acknowledge the hard work and accomplishments of all of our employees in 2012,” Canfield said in a prepared statement. “During today’s biweekly All Hands meeting, we surprised our employees with iPad Minis as a small gesture of the company’s gratitude for their contributions.”
LinkedIn employees celebrate the professional social network’s recent milestone of 200 million members… (Credit: LinkedIn)
As a matter of fact, employee enthusiasm flowed over to Twitter, where some wasted no time in tweeting about their new toys.
That awesome moment when your CEO dishes out iPad minis to EVERY employee @linkedin @jeffweiner
— Darain Faraz (@darainfaraz) February 13, 2013
LinkedIn, currently a hotbed of affection for investors, last week reported fourth-quarter adjusted earnings per share of 35 cents, revenue of $303.6 million, and net income of $11.5 million. The results conveniently beat expectations and the company’s share price has been on a run ever since.
Nevertheless, LinkedIn is not the only company that has done this, either — Weiner used to work at Yahoo! with Brad Garlinghouse, who is now the current CEO of YouSendIt. And Garlinghouse had the same idea: He gave iPad minis to every one of his employees over last year’s holidays as well.