Snowflake’s CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy encourages taking career risks, ‘Think ridiculously ambitious’

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Posted by NewAdmin on 2025-02-27 09:04:24 |

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Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO of Snowflake, believes that waiting to feel fully prepared isn’t the ideal approach for career growth. Instead, he encourages professionals to take on new responsibilities even when they feel underqualified. In an interview with LinkedIn’s This Is Working series, he shared, “All of my success in life has come from people giving me jobs I didn’t think I deserved or was qualified for.” He emphasizes that broadening one’s definition of ‘team’ and ‘success’ increases the chances of leadership opportunities.

Ramaswamy’s career journey reflects this mindset. A graduate of IIT Madras and Brown University, he joined Google in 2003 as a software engineer and rose to Senior Vice President within eight years. In 2019, he took a bold step by co-founding Neeva, an AI-powered search engine. Although Neeva was later acquired by Snowflake in 2023, it led to his appointment as Senior Vice President of AI, and within a year, he became CEO—a role he had never held before. Under his leadership, Snowflake has placed a stronger focus on AI, incorporating cutting-edge machine learning into its cloud-based data solutions.

Despite his success, Ramaswamy acknowledges that ambition alone isn’t enough—persistence is key. “Sometimes you can say, ‘Think ridiculously ambitious,’” he said. “It doesn’t work everywhere, and sometimes you fall flat on your face. But you’ve got to play the game of averages. If you try enough ambitious things, a bunch of them work out.” His journey is a testament to the power of taking risks and embracing challenges before feeling completely ready, proving that success often comes from stepping into the unknown.

Go!