Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO of Snowflake, encourages young professionals to embrace challenges and pursue opportunities, even without full qualifications, as essential for career growth. In a recent interview, he highlighted his own success, citing instances where he was given roles he felt unqualified for. Ramaswamy’s career includes pivotal work on Google Search and co-founding the AI-driven search engine Neeva. After Snowflake acquired Neeva in 2023, he became Senior Vice President of AI and later CEO. He emphasizes that while ambitious thinking doesn’t guarantee success, taking on bold challenges increases the likelihood of favorable outcomes in career advancement.
Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO of Snowflake, promotes the importance of tackling challenges even when one doesn’t feel entirely ready. He encourages young professionals to seize volunteer opportunities and take on tasks, even lacking full qualifications, as an essential approach to career and personal advancement.
In a recent discussion for LinkedIn’s “This Is Working” series, he remarked, “All of my success in my life has come from people giving me jobs that I didn’t think I deserved or qualified for.” He highlighted that by taking initiative and embracing a broad interpretation of ‘team’ and ‘success’, one enhances their chances of being selected for leadership roles within an organization.
An alumnus of IIT Madras and Brown University, Mr. Ramaswamy played a crucial role in developing Google Search, having joined the company in 2003 as a software engineer. He swiftly rose to the position of Senior Vice President within eight years. In 2019, he co-founded Neeva, an AI-driven search engine intended to compete with Google. After Snowflake acquired Neeva in May 2023, Mr. Ramaswamy was appointed as Senior Vice President of AI and subsequently promoted to CEO in February 2024.
Looking back on his career, Mr. Ramaswamy attributed his accomplishments to continually embracing new roles and responsibilities. He acknowledged that while having bold aspirations doesn’t guarantee success, engaging in enough daring ventures significantly enhances the likelihood of positive results. He shared, “Sometimes you can say: ‘Think ridiculously ambitious.’ It doesn’t work everywhere, and sometimes you fall flat on your face. You’ve got to play the game of averages. If you try enough ambitious things, many of them work out.”
Under Mr. Ramaswamy’s guidance, Snowflake has concentrated on incorporating AI technologies to improve its cloud-based data warehousing offerings. This strategic initiative is intended to place the company at the leading edge of data and AI innovation.