- In today’s CEO Daily: Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy on building a team in the AI era.
- The big leadership story: How to justify SpaceX’s expected market cap.
- The markets: Down big in Asia as the Iran ceasefire frays.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. What does it mean to be a “tech worker” in the AI age? I had a conversation with Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy while moderating at the Snowflake Summit last week that got me thinking about that. His AI data cloud company recently reported what my colleague Sebastian Herrera described as a “blowout first quarter” that sent its stock price up more than 50%. Ramaswamy became CEO of Snowflake in 2024, several months after it acquired his search company Neeva that he’d formed as an alternative to Google’s advertising business that he’d helped build over 15 years. At Google, he saw how a singular focus on product could come at a cost to not only customers but employees.
“Google had at various times described itself as an engineering company or a product company and I felt that belittled and alienated a lot of people unnecessarily,” Ramaswamy told me. “One of the things that I try to do here is to make sure that everyone feels that they’re here for a reason, that the work that they do is valued and respected … We succeed by working well with each other.”
For a man who holds a PhD in computer science, who’s known for his ability to build, scale and manage breakthrough software products, that’s a profound statement. We’ve seen plenty of examples of Silicon Valley peers who talk glibly about player-coaches and view non-tech employees with visible disdain. It’s rare to find tech leaders like Ramaswamy or Cognizant’s Ravi Kumar S, who say that we’re on the cusp of an era where the ability to code will be table stakes and hiring those with other capabilities is also critical for success.
As Ramaswamy put it: “This belief in the current set of job specializations and job descriptions is a complete myth. There are many jobs that are simply not needed, and there are new ones that will be needed. Everyone conceptually understands this, except when it comes to the team that they are leading.”
“The most profound advantage that good young hires have is they have no good old days; they live in today,” he added, noting that the AI journey is still new for everyone. “The abstractions for what can be done are still early. That is what is going to reveal itself over the next few quarters.”
Ramaswamy will be joining my colleagues in Aspen for Fortune Brainstorm Tech, which starts today and can be watched via livestream. Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at [email protected]
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