While companies have been getting stingier with promotions in recent years, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski’s philosophy has been quite the opposite.
Siemiatkowski said on a podcast episode of “The Logan Bartlett Show” on June 28 that after cofounder Niklas Adalberth left the company in 2015, he wanted to create a new management team through internal promotions.
The buy now, pay later fintech was a decade old at that point, which allowed him to raise people into upper management positions despite cautionary warnings.
“Everyone had advised me, oh, these people are too young for that,” he said. “You know, kind of typical startup advice, and it was the opposite. It was the right thing — these were proven individuals.”
And many of them are still with Klarna.
Current CTO Yaron Shaer was promoted from senior engineering manager to director of engineering despite only being with the company for just under two years at that point. David Fock, who joined in 2010, …