I joined LinkedIn just over a year ago after burning out badly at my previous role. Came in specifically because the WLB reputation was good. Wanted to share what's actually true versus what's perception.
What's genuinely better than I expected:
The "InDays" (the monthly company-wide recharge Fridays) are real and people actually take them. My manager has never once sent me a Slack message on an InDay. That alone was a cultural signal I hadn't experienced in years.
Flex hours are real for IC roles. I routinely start at 9:30am or work a few hours in the evening instead. Zero comments. Meetings do cluster in the 10am-3pm window but that's fine.
Manager quality seems higher than my previous two big tech jobs. I've had exactly one skip-level conversation in 14 months that felt performative. The others were substantive.
Where it's more nuanced:
WLB is extremely team-dependent. My team ships a B2B product feature and has a fairly calm release cadence. A friend on the LinkedIn Learning side had a very different experience around their spring content refresh. Talk to people on the specific team before accepting, not just company-level averages.
Slack is always on. There's no explicit expectation to respond after hours, but the volume is high enough that you'll feel it. I had to deliberately configure my notification schedule and communicate that to my team. Nobody pushed back, but I had to be proactive.
The culture is... extremely positive. Sometimes too positive. Feedback rounds feel sanitized compared to other places I've worked. If you thrive on direct candid critique of your work, you might need to find that through other channels.
On mission: LinkedIn's internal culture is genuinely organized around the "economic opportunity for everyone" mission framing. It shows up in how decisions get framed in all-hands and team reviews. Some people find it meaningful. I do, mostly. Some people find it a bit much.
Net: if you're coming off a brutal stint and you need to remember that work can just be a job with reasonable hours, LinkedIn is actually a decent place to decompress. Just pick your team carefully.