[HN Gopher] Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn
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Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn
Author : rapnie
Score : 266 points
Date : 2021-05-29 08:55 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (index.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (index.medium.com)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The post is absolutely correct, but this is one of those "let 'em
| whirl" things for me (inside joke -it just means that if it's
| none of my business, I am under no obligation to make it my
| business).
|
| I have a LinkedIn profile. It's minimally active. I post links to
| some of my GitHub repos, and dust off the mantlepiece, every now
| and then. I make sure it's up to date and accurate.
|
| I can't even _imagine_ using it like Facebook. The main reason I
| keep it, is so that I can direct people to a fairly bland place
| to find out about me, professionally. I 'm not really looking for
| work, but it helps people to take me seriously.
|
| If I want them to find out more about me personally, I'll give
| 'em my phone number, and we'll do lunch.
|
| I seem to be in the minority, there. I have seen honest-to-God
| disinformation and rancor trolls on LinkedIn; just like on
| Facebook and Twitter. They are quite transparent, but they also
| generate _thousands_ of "likes," and comments.
|
| Um...no thanks. I don't think I want to go on record liking
| something like that.
|
| The rather disturbing things, are people sharing about personal
| emotional traumas, and 12-step recovery anniversaries. Unless
| they work in the therapeutic/rehabilitation field, that's
| irrelevant (and probably quite harmful -not everyone is forgiving
| or understanding).
|
| Those stories can be deeply motivating and helpful, but not on
| LinkedIn.
|
| The past year has been interesting. The way we interact with each
| other IRL seems to have been affected.
|
| I've noticed a _huge_ uptick in people _minding other peoples '
| business_. Things like chiming into overheard conversations
| between strangers, offering advice or criticism; despite never
| being asked for it, etc.
|
| This has always been an issue, but it has become exponentially
| worse, over this last year. I'm really noticing it, recently,
| with people emerging from their caves, like the final scene of
| _Surrogates_.
|
| I suspect that one reason might be that the principal medium for
| personal interaction for many of us has been online communities,
| this last year, and the rules are quite different online, than
| IRL.
|
| For example, I would not say what I am writing right now, in most
| IRL interactions.
|
| I think we may have some adjusting to do over the next few
| months.
| perl4ever wrote:
| >rancor trolls
|
| This is not a term I'm familiar with.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Trolls that are only there to create fights. They don't pick
| a side.
|
| 2016 saw plenty of them, and they were effective.
|
| These days, they don't really need to do anything. We got
| this.
| arbuge wrote:
| They seem to be all over Twitter too. This doesn't seem to be an
| issue specific to one social media site.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| There's a really simple solution to this problem: Never sign in
| to to LinkedIn except for a month or two every N years when
| looking for a job.
| ta988 wrote:
| In my case I need to build a network to find jobs as it is more
| niche and I refuse to work for fin-tech or ad sellers (for now,
| this may clearly change if I need money).
| happynacho wrote:
| Linkedin became cancer. Facebook-level. Why does a "professional
| networking" need posts with reactions? Why does the algo
| recommend me things of other people which I don't follow at at??
| gumby wrote:
| I love this piece, but really:
|
| > getting hired via LinkedIn has, inevitably, become more about
| getting attention than being qualified for a given job.
|
| Does anyone actually get hired via LinkedIn?
|
| I have always assumed that the majority, and most extreme, of the
| performative LinkedIn "actors" are really simply wasting their
| time.
|
| I find LinkedIn really useful for two things: looking someone up
| before meeting with them to see why we have in commmon, and using
| it as a candidate's resume). I only really see the "feed" when
| some friend posts something and those tend to be things they have
| posted elsewhere.
|
| Now my gf used to work there and she is an enormous fan
| yet...despite that she doesn't post in the feed either.
|
| So the rest of the piece is great, but is there actually hiring
| going on as a result of the feed?
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Is anyone who isn't doing it for work (recruiting, PR, ...) or
| looking for jobs/work/employers/employees even unironically using
| this pathetic shitshow mix of early facebook culture and
| corporate-lies-fake-feelgood-culture bullshit?
| jptech wrote:
| Many use it to just peek into other people's lives and get
| background info - where they work at, where they're from and
| where they had studied, etc. Worst case, even stalk.
| raymondgh wrote:
| Do LinkedIn influencers get hired more than the rest of us? The
| article seems to make that assumption. But if recruiters and
| hiring managers don't like this influencer content either, maybe
| none of this matters and we can all just relax and ignore the
| LinkedIn newsfeed.
| nexuist wrote:
| Recruiters and hiring managers _are_ the influencers. LinkedIn
| is a social network for HR first and everyone else second.
| naravara wrote:
| Yeah. LinkedIn tries to encourage this sort of behavior for
| engagement but I haven't found my lack of engagement with it to
| staunch the recruiter outreach.
|
| If anything, when on the recruiting side as I review
| applications I use engagement with that pabulum as an indicator
| that this person is a BS-artist and probably wouldn't be a good
| culture fit for my team. These really attention-seeking
| personality types tend to stir up a lot of inter-team drama in
| my experience. Maybe bigger companies have enough slack in the
| system and outlets for people to blow off steam to absorb it,
| but in small teams they can wreak havoc with morale.
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| All social media platforms without a "dislike" button are trash,
| precisely because I am the product.
|
| Today I use my RSS feed to find interesting, novel content.
|
| The ideal LinkedIn would have some kind of metamoderated, highly
| curated (and filtered!) "most interesting professional content
| for you" and the weight of "a friend of a friend shared this
| really popular thing" would be super small because that's a
| crappy signal.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Linkedin has a button to "make my feed better", but it only
| allow me to add stuff. One of the Danish political parties is
| VERY active on LinkedIn, but it's just populist garbage aimed
| at small business owner. They refuse to answer critical
| question, of cause.
|
| My feed would much better could I tell LinkedIn to only show my
| post made directly by people in my network, and not shared
| posts.
| jpindar wrote:
| What is the difference between the existing "I don't want to
| see this" button and a "dislike" button?
| hliyan wrote:
| Counterpoint: as it is with Facebook, the quality of your feed
| depends entirely on your connections and who among those
| connections you have chosen to mute/unfollow. I have over a 1000
| connections and I've assiduously unfollowed/muted anyone in my
| network or adjacent to my network who posts anything that I feel
| is not substantial.
|
| A sample of interactions I had recently:
|
| Discussing cost/benefit of going for hybrid/private cloud
| deployments while discussing this article with another company's
| VP Eng: https://a16z.com/2021/05/27/cost-of-cloud-paradox-market-
| cap...
|
| Reminiscing over (paper) mechanical drawings from university days
| and reconnecting with a few colleagues I've lost touch with in
| the intervening 20 years.
|
| Interior designs of some of the newer office spaces in the city
| that are aimed at tech startups.
|
| Comparing notes on the "Messy Middle" of startups with another
| founder.
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| That isn't really a counterpoint. If you have to assiduously
| pick through a thousand connections to prevent a tide of spam
| from taking over your feed, it's not a very useful tool.
|
| You could technically dig a trench with a spoon, but why would
| you?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| To get the most career-inspiring worms
| entropic88 wrote:
| This is great have you considered writing a LinkedIn article
| about it?
| catillac wrote:
| I actually read a short post on HN about this recently. It's
| here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27325735
| sosodev wrote:
| Except LinkedIn shares anything that people interact with. It's
| almost impossible to avoid the cruft imo
| swyx wrote:
| "You've read all your free member-only stories. Become a member
| to get unlimited access and support the voices you want to hear
| more from."
|
| Shameless Medium loginwalling is the Bane of Hacker News.
| varjag wrote:
| A Medium blog chastising LinkedIn as hollow. Now I've seen it
| all.
| yoz-y wrote:
| Hm. Medium is just that, a medium. FWIW, it's quite common to
| see a Medium blog reach the homepage of HN. I've never seen a
| LinkedIn post here though.
| varjag wrote:
| The Medium is the message, and the message is "it's time we
| make this official".
|
| There's plenty going for LinkedIn here, given how unhip it
| is. Including some reasonably popular threads.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27042151
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=linkedin.com
| yoz-y wrote:
| I stand corrected for LinkedIn not being here.
|
| > The Medium is the message, and the message is "it's time
| we make this official".
|
| I'm not sure I understand. To me medium is just an easy way
| to get a blog started. Nothing more to it. People often
| complain about their business model, but then people here
| always complain about any business model, or lack of a
| business model.
| varjag wrote:
| Sure it's a platform, just like LikedIn is. Often the
| content published on these is seen as rather shallow, no
| doubt due to their popularity.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think the news feed on LinkedIn is an absolute cesspool, but
| it's not hard to see why. It has the same "look at me!" dynamics
| of any social network, and in addition it has the "any present or
| potential future employer, look at how great I am", too.
|
| So you end up with a combination of sappy "look at this
| insightful business anecdote I have!" combined with then lots of
| over-congratulatory posts because nobody wants to offend a
| potential job contact. Never have so many words been said that
| say so little.
|
| Still, I feel that for its core purpose, connecting with known
| business contacts and job hunting, LinkedIn does a fine job. They
| just have to layer on all this other useless functionality to
| give legions of product people, designers and engineers something
| to do.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| Why would you even want to use it? Seriously, the only time
| people are using it is when they are looking for a new job, and
| this is usually a relatively a short time. After that you just
| turn off all notifications and basically mute the site for the
| next few years. I have to admit I created an inbox rule for
| automatically archiving all LI mails without reading as they were
| using all dirty tricks to send mails even after telling them not
| to (I hope this changed after the GDPR, but I'm not removing my
| rule just in case).
| Inhibit wrote:
| Likewise. I've black-holed all the linked in e-mails to their
| own folder. And are there ever a lot when I glance in there
| (currently).
| joefife wrote:
| My favourites are the posts by those who have had accidental
| success, who feel qualified to hold court as though they have
| some magic technique.
|
| I say this as someone who had accidental success, and ran that
| successful business for over a decade, completely aware that luck
| and timing played a far larger part than quality.
| [deleted]
| alkonaut wrote:
| Just like Facebook: ignore the "newsfeed" part, and the rest of
| the service is pretty decent.
|
| For Facebook that means e.g using the events functionality. For
| LinkedIn that's private messages and network graphs ("do I know
| someone at X company").
|
| The "feeds" that are front and center on both sites is the worst
| feature and in no way necessary for using the service. It's their
| easiest method of ad delivery though, which is why they want you
| to view it.
|
| For Facebook the newsfeed is full of viral crap, ads, and if you
| are unlucky, toxicity. On LinkedIn it's recruiters and
| workfluencers pushing posts that seem like parody but isn't.
| unishark wrote:
| Every time I try to use Twitter to follow interesting companies
| I get annoyed and quit because of the same garbage. I've been
| thinking it's an age thing, where people with better eyesight
| than me or who grew up looking at low SNR information like that
| can filter through it more easily. They need to put ads and
| suggestions and such nonsense off to the side and attract your
| eye by being worth looking at, not inline pretending to be part
| of your desired info feed.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Don't follow companies. Follow people. Also I recommend using
| an ad-free client even though they are hard to find I have
| learned.
| throw_some wrote:
| My uBlock Origin filters for linkedin which completely cut feeds
| and all sort of distracting things out (some filters might be
| outdated, but things work):
|
| www.linkedin.com##.feed-follows-module
|
| www.linkedin.com##.ember-view.feed-shared-navigation-
| module.overflow-hidden.Elevation-2dp.left-rail-container
|
| www.linkedin.com##.ember-view.pv3.feed-shared-news-module
|
| www.linkedin.com###launchpad-wormhole
|
| www.linkedin.com##.right-rail
|
| www.linkedin.com##.artdeco-card.share-box-feed-entry__wrapper
|
| www.linkedin.com##div[class^="feed-shared-update"]
|
| www.linkedin.com##.ember-view.community-panel.mb2.artdeco-card
|
| www.linkedin.com##.ember-view.mn-abi-form
|
| www.linkedin.com##.ember-view.app-aware-link.text-align-
| left.link-without-hover-state.t-bold.t-black.t-12.feed-identity-
| module__anchored-widget--premium-upsell.feed-identity-
| module__anchored-widget.link-without-visited-state
|
| www.linkedin.com##.Elevation-2dp.share-box-feed-entry__wrapper
|
| www.linkedin.com##.ember-view.artdeco-dropdown--justification-
| right.artdeco-dropdown--placement-bottom.artdeco-dropdown.mb2
|
| www.linkedin.com##.scaffold-layout__aside
|
| www.linkedin.com##.artdeco-card.feed-usher-header
|
| www.linkedin.com##.artdeco-card.share-box-feed-entry__closed-
| share-box
|
| All this leaves out is the leftmost side (where your number of
| connections are seen), and the top blue row. The feed is entirely
| gone. You can still read and message people, see your
| connections, etc. But no more viewing the feed. It's made my
| linkedin visits so much easier to bear.
|
| Edit:
|
| Some HN searching shows a single filter which blocks out most of
| the home page, and is probably cleaner:
|
| www.linkedin.com###voyager-feed
|
| Sources:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24528438
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23489785
| romanshrompsky wrote:
| Thank you! I'll make good use of this filter.
| Havoc wrote:
| >>www.linkedin.com##div[class^="feed-shared-update"]
|
| Drop this one. Breaks linkedin for me
| test123fff wrote:
| It's not a bug, it's a feature.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| > _www.linkedin.com###voyager-feed_
|
| This filter is absolutely perfect! I NEED LinkedIn as I
| actually get job offers via it, but all the other crap on there
| can go to hell.
| dhosek wrote:
| In all seriousness, people actually look at the newsfeed or
| whatever they call it on LinkedIn? The only thing I do with
| LinkedIn is keep my profile up to date in case I'm changing jobs.
| I've never posted anything other than my profile and I get a
| steady stream of recruiter emails (that I ignore if I'm not
| looking for work).
| truth_ wrote:
| I find LinkedIn really cringy. And I haven't seen ONE post there
| that actually added value to my life.
|
| It is also toxic as hell.
|
| But I know people who got employment offers from LinkedIn. So it
| adds value in that sense.
|
| I just mute and block those influencers. And check LinkedIn maybe
| twice a week.
|
| One of the things I cannot find any excuse for is how fake people
| are. They are behaving in a fake manner even when they don't have
| to.
|
| Like, someone makes an IoT project (usually copied from GitHub),
| and markets it like this- "I was having X problem. I though why
| not solve it with modern technology? So I made this innovative
| blah blah copy of something".
|
| Yuck. So cringy!
| takkiinvincible wrote:
| You say you haven't seen a single post there that added value
| to your life. Hypothetically, if you saw a post that DID add
| value to your life, what would that post(s) look like?
| praptak wrote:
| My bar for adding value to life might be lower than GP's but
| I do get value-adding posts in my feed. It's basically boring
| updates from people but made less boring because I know these
| people.
|
| A friend from a previous job now leads a project for company
| X. Someone else switched their tech stack to Y. Another
| person migrates from cloud back to on-prem.
|
| It might have to do with my policy of not adding random
| people as connections.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| Many post on HN added value to my life, and it happens on a
| regular basis. As for posts shared on LI, I mainly feel
| awkward reading them. You know that when someone suddenly got
| active on LI they either got fired or are looking for
| prospects. It's just a kind of weird game, more so that
| people basically have to use their real names and reveal
| their employment history in order to benefit from the site,
| so they're particularly vulnerable. Everybody knows this, so
| they refrain from poking fun at them.
| AJ007 wrote:
| It's amazing how antithetical this is to requiring real
| identity. Proponents say anonymity is the cause of spam and
| all sorts of unwanted content online. Yet using one's real
| identity can end up just being terribly inauthentic.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| I never say anything I really think or feel under my real
| name which isn't utterly benign and uncontroversial.
| There is a profound sense of unsafeness when you're in
| full public view like that. It seems almost unavoidable
| that the end result is almost entirely watered down
| blathering.
|
| I don't really see any antidote to this in our current
| environment other than operating as much as possible on
| platforms allowing pseudonymous accounts. If some
| unbalanced rando decides they really hate something I
| said, I'd prefer if they had to jump through at least a
| hoop or two before being able to tie it to my location or
| my family.
| dvdkon wrote:
| It's interesting to see some people feel this way. I
| don't really filter my views in posts on the web compared
| to conversations with (not very close) friends. It does
| feel like that could very well come back and bite me,
| maybe I'll lose jobs over "supporting hacktivism" or
| whatever. I guess it's a risk I'm willing to take to
| share my ideals.
| Frost1x wrote:
| I use LinkedIn as a professional identity placeholder and
| online resume for HR groups. I ignore pretty much all the
| posts because much of what I've sampled has been trash.
|
| I think anonymity is the real key here. It gives power
| back to those in leveraged positions to be critical when
| they otherwise wouldn't. Once you connect back to your
| real identify, you become as leveraged as you really are
| and act accordingly. You're not going to be as critical
| of information you really are because socially speaking,
| you may close off a bridge of opportunity. It becomes
| this ridiculous networking and social climbing game
| instead of focusing on content.
|
| Anonymity is a double edged sword because it can
| certainly be abused and give garbage but I feel like you
| get better information through anonymity than actual
| identity. Both require sorting and filtering, one just
| seems to have more insightful information.
|
| It's not unique to LinkedIn of course. LinkedIn posts
| often remind me of cringe worthy corporate meetings where
| you have disjoint groups in the same meeting or
| disconnected higher level people. It's often in your
| interest to say nothing at all than be critical, so you
| get all these sort of ridiculous discussions about
| nothing where everyone prices each other or some effort.
| LinkedIn posts embody this worthless grandstanding
| nothingness--that and just general advertising/marketing.
| We have a business culture problem, IMO.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I get a reasonable amount of value from LinkedIn from when
| people post innovation challenges or want to set up talks
| with people interested in X.
|
| But you are wading through a swamp to find those gold
| nuggets.
| smitty1e wrote:
| There is one former military bigwig on there that is
| interesting for international relations topics.
|
| Which mostly underscores your point.
| fakedang wrote:
| Jim Stavridis?
| smitty1e wrote:
| Ding ding ding. You follow him?
| kazen44 wrote:
| at $job (inside a NOC), we used to joke that linkedin was the
| worst professional network,and the local network operator group
| IRC channel was the best channel.
|
| It makes a ton of sense if you think about it, the people you
| want to connect with professionaly are people in the same
| workfield and their bosses. These people have A) far more
| intresting tidbits to share then recruitment and HR folk, and
| B) getting a job at their company is far easier if you they
| have some kind of clue of what you actually do during your
| previous job on a very fundemental level.
| k__ wrote:
| Guess, it's like Twitter. If you follow the right people you
| get good content.
|
| The only thing bothering me on LinkedIn are the recruiters and
| that got much better in the last years.
|
| Most of the time I use it to stay in touch with old co-workers
| and to syndicate my articles, which sometimes (2-5 times a
| year) leads to new clients.
| ghaff wrote:
| I find it pretty easy to skip past the recruiters and
| connection requests when I pop in from time to time. I just
| generally ignore all the random recruiter request that are
| way off target. (Though, in all fairness, my LinkedIn profile
| is very scanty.) And I'll _rarely_ respond--usually with a
| polite no--to on-target ones given that I 'm not really on
| the market. (And have never gotten a job since grad school
| decades ago that wasn't a personal contact.)
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| You can indeed curate, but I definitely get the vibe that
| cringe is the default mode on LinkedIn (which is still
| strictly better than Twitter's default mode, toxicity).
| whateveracct wrote:
| Curating LinkedIn is like curating the contents of my cats'
| litterbox.
| takkiinvincible wrote:
| What would a better social media platform look like in your
| opinion?
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| Off the top of my head, it would have the tone of
| Facebook before they allowed public accounts outside of
| schools and right after they introduced news feed, it
| would be aggressively moderated, and it would cost enough
| money per month that people would think twice before
| engaging in a behavior that led to an account getting
| banned or using bots. There would be an initial setup fee
| of at least $100 along with a monthly subscription fee,
| and getting an account banned would result in a total
| loss of your payments and deletion of your profile.
|
| * Users would explicitly agree that their profile posts
| are subject to moderation.
|
| * Profiles would be private and users would be heavily
| discouraged from using a real name. Friending someone
| else would require an out of band secret key exchange. A
| new key would be required to add each person to a group
| and the entire group would be informed when a new user
| was added. The only people with real visibility would be
| the mods.
|
| * There would be no advertising or tracking.
|
| * The service would be located in a country that doesn't
| immediately bend over for Five Eyes, China, or Russia.
|
| * There would be no org pages or corp accounts.
|
| * Anyone holding public office, running for public
| office, or affiliated with a political campaign would be
| explicitly banned from using it at the EULA level. Group
| pages with more than X members would automatically be
| flagged for periodic review, and obvious attempts at
| political organizing for a campaign or movement such as
| BLM or the Proud Boys (chosen purely as examples of
| political movements) would result in a ban for all
| affiliated accounts.
|
| * Egregious (as in obviously intentionally hostile rather
| than ignorant or inadvertent) racism, sexism, bigotry,
| etc would result in a ban.
|
| * Any attempt at bullying would result in an immediate
| ban.
|
| * Any attempt at bulk data collection would result in
| your account being suspended and flagged for review.
|
| You get the idea. Social networks should be about sharing
| fun content with your real life social network. They
| should not be about self promotion, BS drama, politics,
| disinformation campaigns, advertising, influencing,
| branding, etc.
| eru wrote:
| Interesting ideas.
|
| > Any attempt at bullying would result in an immediate
| ban.
|
| Alas, that turns accusations of bullying into pretty
| effective bullying.
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| Yeah, I should have said any accusations of bullying
| would be reviewed by mods.
| Retric wrote:
| Hacker News.
|
| But for simplicity, moderation and downvote buttons would
| do a world of good.
| ta988 wrote:
| I don't think it would work on a platform on which people
| can organize to bully. That's an advantage of HN, it is
| hard to build such a community because of the lack of
| communication between users out of topics.
| andrey_utkin wrote:
| Nothing prevents hn users from getting to know each other
| and communicate.
|
| I attribute lack of evident destructive mobbing on hn to
| adequate moderation workforce.
| eru wrote:
| > Nothing prevents [...]
|
| Oh, the power of small inconveniences.
| mola wrote:
| A rolodex
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| In two words: "thoughtful" and "good-faith". Content
| should be interesting and thoughtful rather than
| optimizing for clicks (obviously this isn't compatible
| with an ad-based model). Dialog should be civil,
| charitable, kind, etc and strong norms for objectivity
| and neutrality. Low tolerance for overt ideological
| advocacy, authoritarian rhetoric, flame baiting, etc.
|
| That's "what it should look like". To get there, I expect
| it's "establish the right norms from the start and
| incentivize the right content and behaviors along the
| way". To monetize, I don't know and I don't especially
| care.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Real life.
| k__ wrote:
| Maybe, social media curation is a skill that not many
| people posess.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Maybe curating LinkedIn is a skill that not many people
| desire to possess. I have an account because it's
| expected when you're looking for a job. I'm not
| interested in articles about business or whatever the
| good content on LinkedIn is supposed to be.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| The default mode is unrelated to curation. Curation
| allows you to opt into a different mode, but it doesn't
| change the default mode.
| umeshunni wrote:
| Even if you're only connected with your acquaintances, the
| algorithm ensures that many of the posts your connections
| like or comment on will show up in your newsfeed.
|
| That's the bane of social media platforms where engagement is
| low (Twitter suffers from this too). There are very few
| content creators, and especial on a professional network,
| there isn't enough content generated to share daily, so to
| generate content, the platform needs to dig deeper into the
| bottom of the barrel and show you second-level engagement (ie
| friend of yours commented or liked some rando's content).
| catillac wrote:
| Well, one of the main recruiting tools we use when trying to
| find qualified candidates is LN. so we'll search for "design"
| or "engineering" and specific companies and then largely source
| from LN. So if you want to get in touch with people hiring I
| suspect LN is a good way. Their tooling for recruiters is
| pretty robust and sometimes works as you expect it to as well.
| conjectures wrote:
| Never really occurred to me to read the feed on LinkedIn. I've
| liked about 3 things ever from people I actually know.
|
| I get a fair number of interview requests through it though so
| it would have some value as a recruiting tool. Let's face it,
| CVs are a badly structured way of listing and distributing your
| employment history...
| specialist wrote:
| Late 2000s, I got a date thru LinkedIn. My romantic interest
| quipped "I'm glad LinkedIn's good for something." That was
| LinkedIn's high water mark for me.
|
| I eventually cleared my profile (along with my other social
| accounts). I'll delete it outright once I'm confident my
| abandoned nym can't be repurposed into a sockpuppet.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| It's useful to know what the ranges are in your location.
|
| I never got a job through it though, real life networking and
| personal connections generally yield higher salary
| opportunities than recruiter-sourced ones (if you're planning
| to stay outside of FAANG)
| iblaine wrote:
| LinkedIn influences are an upgrade over LinkedIn Groups, such
| that groups are overrun with spam from recruiters. Which is to
| say LinkedIn Influences are not as bad as some alternatives.
| lazyant wrote:
| LinkedIn is a matchmaking service for recruiters and resumes to
| find each other. As such it works pretty well, just ignore the
| feed which is mostly inspirational and self-serving crap.
| ostenning wrote:
| I never understood why people use LinkedIn as a social media
| platform. No, I don't care about your bullshit self indulging job
| title
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Through LinkedIn I've been recruited to three public companies
| and have done one successful IPO. I don't read the articles or
| interact with anyone really. If you ignore the social drama which
| I don't personally see a lot of, I think it's a decent tool given
| the price.
| cafard wrote:
| Several years ago, there was a burst of people telling stories
| that were recognizably copied from Somerset Maugham's story "The
| Verger". What had been lost was Maugham's irony, what was left
| was a pull-your-self-up-by-your-bootstraps story that could have
| been inspiring if true but instead was just dumb.
| baryphonic wrote:
| My experience has been that LinkedIn and other social media
| necessitates promoting influencers who are almost certainly
| between mediocre and above average at their fields, never the
| best. There are a few exceptions, but in general if some so-
| called expert's "job" involves them constantly tweeting, poasting
| on LinkedIn, writing daily blogs, instagramming and otherwise
| releasing a non-stop supply of YouTube videos, then they probably
| have little expertise. Usually, you can find what they're trying
| to sell without too much effort. Those who can't _do_ ,
| _influence_.
|
| There are of course meaningful people on social media who do have
| useful things to say. Some brilliant people in the tech world I
| know will post on their blogs every few weeks or post a few
| tweets each week. But they're spending the majority of their time
| actually creating things, not crafting tweets optimized to feed
| an algorithm.
|
| YouTube is an interesting one, since it's an immersive medium.
| Some of the people with the best tech tutorials or "content"
| there will rarely or never show their faces. I think this is
| probably a consequence of not wanting to waste time editing,
| since again, they have real things to do outside social media. If
| a tech person is just talking to the camera for 10 minutes, I can
| do without it, and, again, usually they're trying to sell
| something (often of dubious value).
| timdaub wrote:
| I'm starting to flag medium content now as I cannot read things
| anymore. They're paywalling me and I can't be asked to login or
| pay or whatever they want from me.
| Nursie wrote:
| LinkedIn is missing a major feature, different classes of
| connections. Your network is meaningless when it's full of
| recruiters as well as people you actually worked with.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I have rigorously only accepted connections from people I've
| actually worked with in some capacity.
|
| Makes for a nicer feed, but maybe that means I'm missing out on
| some recruiting opportunities? I thought recruiters could reach
| out to folks on LinkedIn without establishing a connection
| first.
| Nursie wrote:
| They can, but they seem to want to connect too.
|
| I've never taken much interest in the 'feed' part, and view
| the site mostly as a tool for finding work, though I've not
| had to look for the last few years due to non-LinkedIn
| networking...
| foolfoolz wrote:
| linked in doesn't solve the networking problem. maybe i'm
| different but i've never reached out to anyone over linked in
| to "network". if i needed to do that i would call, text, email.
| linked ins real purpose is a search engine for recruiters to
| contact you. your whole contact list could be recruiters and no
| colleagues and it would be the same website
| ghaff wrote:
| If I don't know you and you call or text me, I'm ignoring and
| blocking you.
| Nursie wrote:
| I infrequently exchange messages with old colleagues on
| there, people I have worked with but wouldn't have on
| Facebook, and I may not have a personal email address for
| them.
| takkiinvincible wrote:
| A lot of the comments seem to suggest that good quality content
| is missing from LinkedIn and other mainstream social media
| platforms.
|
| I wonder what people consider to be good quality content?
| mastazi wrote:
| https://archive.is/3ChG6
| fouc wrote:
| Medium seems more aggressive with their paywall lately, but
| clearing the cookies works fine.
|
| It occurs to me that a useful browser feature would have
| automatic "never save cookies ever" and then have a whitelist to
| add sites that I want to retain cookies on.
|
| The majority of random sites I visit have no need for cookies
| ultimately..
| quantumofalpha wrote:
| > It occurs to me that a useful browser feature would have
| automatic "never save cookies ever" and then have a whitelist
| to add sites that I want to retain cookies on.
|
| That's fairly easy to accomplish. I keep my ~/.mozilla in git
| and essentially git reset it on startup. Everything I didn't
| explicitly commit into it - gone!
| jacksonkmarley wrote:
| > a vast circle jerk in the cloud
|
| Well, that has the ring of truth, when applied to the newsfeed.
| And the final conclusion that you should just get on linkedin
| when job searching and then get off again is fine. I find it
| incredibly useful for job searching, to the point that I don't
| even bother with other sites.
|
| However, the job search experience is badly spoiled by secondary
| recruitment postings. These are especially annoying when the
| posting is cut off so that you have to follow an external link to
| get the full info. And having to apply from external sites is
| also a pain. Linkedin seems big enough to be able to enforce some
| rules on those sorts of things.
|
| I think the newsfeed stuff that this article focusses on really
| only affects people who buy into it. Personally, after reading a
| few posts of the type '5 reasons your boss should stop doing that
| thing you hate', I stopped paying attention to the newsfeed
| unless there was a robot video from boston dynamics at the top.
| And the secondary features don't really seem like they have
| enough meat to stick.
| takkiinvincible wrote:
| "a vast circle jerk in the cloud" is got to be one of the best
| descriptions of the LinkedIn feed I've heard!
|
| What do you think the ideal social media feed would look like?
| jacksonkmarley wrote:
| For me seeing pictures of what friends far away are up to, a
| la facebook, is actually pretty nice. And twitter is best
| when a quick thought is linked to a more in-depth article or
| post. Plus news links to some objective source. And no
| promoted content. I'm not holding my breath.
| ghaff wrote:
| I pretty much use LinkedIn as a self-updating Rolodex. I
| basically don't use it for recruiter-related stuff at all but
| then I haven't really been on the market for a very long time.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Great article.
|
| The worst thing is that these kinds of posts have a really
| negative effect on many people around them. So I think it's
| ultimately self-defeating for LinkedIn in the long run to foster
| this kind of environment. For me they just instigate a gag
| reflex, but for others it can just make them feel low and awful.
| And so they leave the site.
|
| My wife has been out of the job market for 10 years (had kids,
| mother got sick and passed away, we moved for my job, she went
| back to school, but used to be successful in design/marketing @ a
| FAANG, studying now for UX research.) Anyways, very tough to get
| back into the job market. And now she goes on linkedin to try to
| connect with old job aquaintances and look at jobs and the like
| and it's all these people puffing themselves up like peacocks and
| it's just confidence destroying. Amps up the inner critic and
| self-judging in many people, comparing yourself to these people,
| and for what? Half of what is posted isn't even fully... real?
|
| Work is work. It's great some people really love their jobs. But
| what I see on linkedin these days doesn't reflect a normal
| person's career focus.
| guenthert wrote:
| "But start scrolling through your newsfeed,"
|
| Why would you do that? I've posted my resume there, LinkedIn
| tricked me ("do you know these peoples") into "connecting" with
| former colleagues and recruiters can find me. That works well;
| the rest is rubbish and I don't know why they bother.
| sosodev wrote:
| You know what else I've seen on LinkedIn? Lots of people being
| openly racist in the comments of a post about a non-white
| experience.
|
| Sure that post was trying to farm interaction but I can't imagine
| associating your racism with your professional persona...
| abawany wrote:
| I agree. Reporting the same to LinkedIn and their response
| usually is dismissive.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| One thing I have noticed from influencers is shameless copy and
| pasting of what other influencers have said, or even more
| shamelessly, some influencers going around after seeing some
| trite bit of wisdom and claiming they were the original source
| and demanding credit.
|
| So they turn into sharks fighting over scraps.
| truth_ wrote:
| A shamelessly copied and posted post was circulating LinkedIn a
| few days ago, and someone shared screengrabs how these bottom-
| feeders are copying and posting content. The content of the
| post makes matter worse.
|
| A bunch of recruiters posted like this- "generic name was a
| recent college grad he/she was really talented. they asked for
| X amount of money. But I gave them Y (Y quite > X). This is the
| time for human solidarity and being honest and rewarding people
| for their talent, blah blah blah."
|
| In some screenshots, the name, tech stack, and amount of money
| were all same.
|
| How low can these people stoop?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > How low can these people stoop?
|
| For 15 minutes of fame and potential fortune? Planck Length.
| nvmletsdoit wrote:
| I didn't image there was ppl actually caring about anything but
| the "search" tab.
|
| I never felt to be engaged that far on LinkedIn, I used it to
| find job, and that's it.
| major505 wrote:
| Influencesr are a curse in any thing. A new plague in a new time,
| brought to light by the curse of social networks.
| andresp wrote:
| I unfollow everyone on LinkedIn and only see updates from the
| companies I follow. It would be great if they supported "Unfollow
| All" natively instead of having to mess with JS.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| I did the same. The offshore recruiters were very fond of the
| "fake positivity" posts i.e man doesn't hold elevator for
| someone or steals a parking space from a person while going to
| an interview just to find out that it was the CEO. Once I
| started following them, my feed cleaned up immensely taking on
| a more technical bent.
| abhishekbasu wrote:
| I often wonder if LI is trying to do too many things at once. At
| this point it hard not to come to the conclusion that it promotes
| certain types of behaviors. The problem is that if left laissez-
| faire, the feed will not attract folks who abhor work
| influencers. So, perhaps they need to ask who they are really
| targeting?
|
| For generic work-banter, an app like Blind seems to cut it
| better. Given the anonymity, it is able to (anecdotally) elicit
| truer depictions of one's workplace, and this helps folks get
| real value through what are in essence (unaggregated) reviews of
| companies and job roles.
|
| By using real profiles and establishing a set up of
| "professionalism", LI absolutely cuts/reduces the possibility of
| deriving real value for the layman (read non work influencer and
| non CXO). Apart from connecting with old colleagues and looking
| for a new job, why should the layman even bother logging into the
| platform on a fairly regular basis?
|
| Having said that, LI is great for some things even for the
| layman. It has been great for looking for new jobs as the article
| states. But it seems to have a crisis of identity, and it needs
| to figure out their core audience or differentiate product
| offerings before it deteriorates into a job board for the laymen
| like me, in which case it will be possible for a new and trendy
| job board to come along and replace it.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Blind would be great if it didn't attract and retain the most
| toxic and reactive folks (in my brief experience). That
| attribute makes it an undesirable place to be for someone who's
| well adjusted at their job, which I would say undercuts your
| assertion that it provides a more accurate view of the
| workplace. A counterbalance to the polished view you'd get
| through LinkedIn? Sure. But it's where people go to talk shit.
| Inhibit wrote:
| Linkedin is a marketing platform where you are the product. Use
| it as a tool if you need to but try not to forget that.
|
| If you feel something's horrible there it's likely by design and
| within that context.
|
| (edit: you're to you are)
| truth_ wrote:
| > where you are the product
|
| Isn't this true for _all_ major social media platforms?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Yes and no. On other media platforms your behaviour and
| activities(both posts and add clicks) are the product. On
| other hand on LinkedIn you yourself is the product. And not
| in the influencer way.
| truth_ wrote:
| Your point is fair.
|
| Your communication metadata, your choices, you age, gender,
| location, and many other things are indeed products of
| companies like Facebook. But in a way, you are, too.
| Because the mere presence of yours draws some other people
| to that platform.
|
| And celebrities who are famous outside of social media, are
| definitely more products themselves rather than the data
| associated with them.
|
| On the other hand, on dating apps like Tinder, you yourself
| are the product in addition to any other information they
| might monetize in numerous ways.
| Inhibit wrote:
| Mostly. But it still seems (to me) that people have the
| expectation that it provides utility of some sort first and
| marketing second.
|
| I'm unsure how other platforms being identical in that regard
| moderates the statement. I still feel a reminder is helpful.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Makes perfect sense. In one of my previous roles, we used to keep
| track of SSI (Social Selling Index), and we would be gently
| nudged into posting about a few things (events, launches, etc.)
|
| I decided to game the system and shot up to the top of the
| rankings by simply posting actual useful stuff (pretty much the
| same commentary I would post on my personal link blog, but with
| some bearing on work topics).
|
| I quit doing it after a while because I thought I had made my
| point, but not before I had reached the top three in our cohort.
|
| Going past #10 took some doing, though. By that time I had a
| JavaScript scraper and a Jupyter notebook to predict the best
| hashtags, and if the LinkedIn API was actually usable I'd
| probably have fully automated the whole thing.
| AznHisoka wrote:
| How did you predict the best hashtags? That sounds interesting.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I trained it by tokenizing my post history with nltk and
| using the number of likes (scraped via JS) as the target
| metric. Then I built a simple recommender that would take my
| draft and list the most interesting tags for it.
| iainctduncan wrote:
| I thought it was the virtue signalling humble brags that were the
| bane of linkedin. Am I the only one who thinks linkedin is like
| the looking glass version of Twitter?
|
| Twitter: "So and so is so awful, gnash, boycott shame! Have you
| read my blog?"
|
| LinkedIn: "That sooo resonates with me! You're such a insightful
| thought leader, have you read my blog?"
| kyleblarson wrote:
| Totally agree. The virtue signaling in my feed is so
| insufferable that I stopped reading it years ago. It has
| basically become twitter with the vitriol replaced by fake
| positivity.
| slig wrote:
| Is there anyone eating that crap or people are just mimicking
| whatever others are doing?
| iainctduncan wrote:
| Well, mimicking the higher ups is like 50% of climbing the
| corporate ladder in big, dysfunctional organizations....
|
| Yeah, I've always wondered the same. Maybe recruiters?
| LeCow wrote:
| That mute and unfollow button though.
|
| I do about 10 a day.
| isoskeles wrote:
| Can your connections find out if you unfollow them? This is
| the only thing preventing me from unfollowing.
|
| I've muted a ton of people I don't know at all because
| their rabid self-promotion or clickbait would keep showing
| up in my feed. But it is usually the same list of friends
| liking or sharing that content.
| indiantinker wrote:
| Nice article. Those "I passed some 2 min XYZ certificate" posts
| really get to my nerve. I usually use the news feed eradicator
| [0] on such websites. It is like jumping across the valley of the
| newsfeed attention river.
|
| [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-
| eradicat...
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Those certificate postings actually attract recruiters. A
| former co-worker just got plucked to a new position from his
| posting of random K8s certs.
| simonswords82 wrote:
| Good find! I'll be installing that later today.
| indiantinker wrote:
| There is this cool podcast [0] i heard on authenticity and
| bragging and how to not be shameless. Especially useful when
| you are an introvert (like me).
|
| [0] https://podcasts.apple.com/es/podcast/hbr-
| ideacast/id1520221...
| simonswords82 wrote:
| As with all things in life humans are programmed to work out how
| things work and then abuse them to maximise their upside.
|
| LinkedIn is the same as any social media. It can be gamed and if
| that's to the advantage of certain people then they will game it.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| This propensity for gaming everything is a very good and useful
| capability, when applied to the environment - to nature, to
| physics, to our own bodies. Roads and cars and boats exist
| because we've gamed our stamina. Planes and rockets exist
| because we've gamed gravity. Farming and drugs and vaccines
| exist because we've gamed microbiology.
|
| The problem starts when people are trying to game each other.
| This is bad, because it turns what should be a PvE game into a
| PvP one. With the shitty cards nature/evolution gave us, we
| have plenty of external challenges left to overcome; it's
| really sad to see and deal with people who instead want to
| abuse others to get ahead.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Exactly. At some point ie. reviews were great until they became
| (black?) market themselves.
| gjvc wrote:
| That much is true, but the tragic comedy is in what people seem
| to think will actually be taken seriously / make others see
| them in a good light -- see https://twitter.com/StateOfLinkedIn
| for evidence.
| andrew_ wrote:
| The same exists on nearly every social media site, sadly. Natural
| progression I would assume. On Twitter, in dev circles, we have
| "Junior Dev Porn" where the same poll/questions are asked, the
| same anecdotes are recycled, and the same code snippets posted,
| all in the name of empowering junior developers. But at a high
| altitude it's glaringly obvious the majority are for engagement
| and follower gain. Especially so when those internet points are
| leveraged for favor.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Personally I don't have a problem with repetitive content that
| is overtly aimed at beginners and junior devs, since there is a
| constant flow of new beginners and junior devs joining social
| media.
|
| Seems like it could be a constructive exchange: newbies get
| useful basic content; posters get likes and followers. But,
| only if the content is actually good.
| howzitallworkeh wrote:
| Couldn't it be more useful to distill that repetitive content
| into a durable medium, instead of relying on the online
| equivalent of handing down an oral history of development
| practices?
| takkiinvincible wrote:
| I agree - it seems that all social media platforms suffer from
| this. Original/useful content seems to lose out in the battle
| for user engagement. I wonder if you could create a new type of
| social media platform that overcomes this problem?
| runawaybottle wrote:
| How are you going to overcome a problem that we are
| structurally ingraining into our youth? If the kids are on
| TikTok by 10 years old, you know, this is a losing fight. The
| next 3-4 generations will not even recognize that there is a
| severe vanity and narcissism problem.
| luord wrote:
| I removed all recruiters and similar, leaving only people I know
| and (mostly) other engineers... And even then I basically only
| check the notifications anyhow.
|
| So I consider myself fortunate; by not taking LinkedIn that
| seriously, I've avoided a lot of... awkwardness, to put it
| nicely.
| offtop5 wrote:
| Ironically I can't even read this due to the login wall.
|
| I hate the social media aspect of LinkedIn so much. I don't want
| to validate you , I don't think physical appearance was any role
| in the hiring process, but LinkedIn keeps telling me to upload a
| picture.
|
| It's still the best way to find a job, but I try to avoid the
| social aspects.
| Pxtl wrote:
| LinkedIn is the bane of LinkedIn.
| lordnacho wrote:
| It's the faux-thentic trope pieces on LinkedIn that annoy me. "I
| was working so hard I forgot to be me" or "after years of
| constant success my daughter showed me what success really
| means". Apparently it means getting likes from strangers.
|
| And then there's the business tall tales: "I hired a guy with no
| qualifications other than a big heart and now he's running a
| multinational". "I made 10k job applications and landed my dream
| job. You can too".
|
| I think the reason is alluded to in the article: it's not polite
| to call out BS, and if you do the work involved is OOM larger
| than creating it.
| gumby wrote:
| "faux-thentic" is truly a masterful word, my lord. Now I have
| learnt it I immediately see examples of it everywhere
| [deleted]
| bob33212 wrote:
| The awkward thing is that these people are projecting their
| insecurities.
|
| When they say "I really care about all the employees, here I am
| giving the janitor a $500 giftcard" I hear " I feel bad about
| letting several employees think they were getting big bonuses,
| so here I am looking for feedback on how great of a person I
| am"
| ycombinete wrote:
| A friend and I have a mini-hobby of sharing these with each
| other under the title of "Today in Thanking Myself". The
| highest level are the ones where people pimp out their own
| families for LinkedIn karma
| mattharney wrote:
| This Twitter account does a great job curating these:
|
| https://twitter.com/BestofLinkedin
| ycombinete wrote:
| Thank you! I was actually considering starting a blog to
| collect them, glad to see that someone has stepped up and
| done it already.
| throwaway24006 wrote:
| Thanks. I liked this one.
|
| https://twitter.com/BestofLinkedin/status/13917823378813296
| 6...
|
| And this:
|
| https://twitter.com/BestofLinkedin/status/13849132885223096
| 3...
| math-dev wrote:
| That's by far the worst. Something bad happens to their
| family and they make a post about it! I have seen examples
| too terrible to post as a comment (assume something very bad
| happened and the next day theres a post on jt)
| runawaybottle wrote:
| I do something similar by locating everyone's 'origin' story.
| It seems just because you are a mediocre person with income,
| suddenly you must have this comic book origin story that
| needs to be out in theaters.
|
| 'Eg, I was retarded in school and no one believed in me, and
| then one day blah blah blah, and look at me now' - Coming
| soon to streaming services and theaters, the story of just a
| normal person overcoming basic odds to get income like a
| normal person, but with a dramatic twist.
|
| And they are all shamelessly vain because they are more than
| willing to reboot their origin story at their next
| accomplishment.
|
| Particularly bad are women who absolutely cannot stop patting
| themselves on the back on LinkedIn.
| vmception wrote:
| Like the VCs Congratulating Themselves account
| [deleted]
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| OOM = ?
| Nihilartikel wrote:
| Probably 'order of magnitude' but I was amused by the initial
| reading of 'out of memory'.
| miohtama wrote:
| I have solved this problem by unfollowing people who post or
| like low quality content. My LinkedIn feed is now mostly filled
| with useful corporate news.
| papandada wrote:
| You should a LinkedIn post about that (but seriously great
| advice)
| intricatedetail wrote:
| It's a social ponzi scheme...
| beebeepka wrote:
| > it's not polite to call out BS
|
| But it's perfectly fine to spew BS if you do it politely. The
| "politeness" weapon has been used on me many times
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Perfectly fine is understating it. You get paid more if you
| do it.
| Frost1x wrote:
| You can use the same sort of polite etiquette in well crafted
| form to undermine these polite attacks. It takes quick
| thinking and usually works best in the form of an open ended
| question that sets the BS in its place. No one says anything
| explicitly but everyone internally acknowledges it. It may be
| a bit passive aggressive but such is most modern business
| culture and meetings.
| danaris wrote:
| The problem with this is well-stated in Brandolini's Law
| [0]: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an
| order of magnitude larger than to produce it."
|
| So, effectively, this means that given equivalent amounts
| of effort, you've got 10 people producing bullshit for
| every 1 refuting it effectively. Thus the bullshit
| continues to spread.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
| Frost1x wrote:
| The trick to that problem is to pass the burden of proof
| on the one producing the BS (as it should be), which is
| similar to what Bertrand Russell does in Russell's
| Teapot:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
| harles wrote:
| From why I've seen on LinkedIn, subtly doesn't work. Folks
| that pick up on it probably spotted the BS already. You
| really have to hit them over the head with a hammer to
| drive the point in.
| SummerlyMars wrote:
| Can you elaborate a bit on what this would look like?
| Frost1x wrote:
| Someone passive aggressively gives you with a backhanded
| compliment to set you up for failure. They stroke your
| ego, build you up in front if people, then offer a trove
| of BS that needs to be accomplished that only you are
| capable of accomplishing and makes it difficult for you
| to refute.
|
| Instead of being pressured into saying yes, you quickly
| think about the information and ask a general question
| like, "well that might be possible, I'm personally not
| sure how, perhaps you had some ideas on how we can
| accomplish that in the proposed timeline?" and so forth.
|
| If someone is marketing you a BS solution, you can
| usually dip down to a kernel of truth and quickly form a
| well crafted open ended question to ask how they address
| some problem their solution clearly couldn't. "With our
| application, you can easily interface with _any_ platform
| " -- "that's awesome, how much effort is typically
| required to do that? Do you have example cases?" And so
| on.
|
| You could also use an even more general/vague question
| similar to the one you just posed: asking someone to
| elaborate on something that's clearly BS usually catches
| them off guard if they were just making up nonsense and
| had no thought behind their statement. If they had some
| thought, it's going to be pretty clear. All that's needed
| is to pepper on some politeness to make it: "that sounds
| intriguing and thought provoking, could you elaborate on
| that idea more?"
|
| These are benign on the surface but can be used
| offensively and without any clarity of the genuine intent
| to pass the BS baton around.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| LinkedIn is now just Facebook which opens at Work and China.
|
| It's sad because I did find some quality talent from LinkedIn
| during my recruitment drives for previous startup couple of
| years back, Also since someone looking for a job is de-facto
| expected to have a LinkedIn profile helped that.
|
| But now when I recently logged in, I saw something akin to
| sharing video status like in other social-media chat apps and
| my profile page is asking me to upload a '30 second video
| intro'; I feel this is going increase inequality as someone who
| was able to project their qualifications and experience first
| without distractions is now made to compete with someone who's
| good with TikToking.
| nradov wrote:
| Microsoft has suspended new Chinese accounts on LinkedIn. I
| expect that they'll eventually be forced to completely
| separate the Chinese LinkedIn from the rest of the world.
| Can't have anyone mentioning Tiananmen Square on June 4.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/11/tech/linkedin-china-
| microsoft...
| croes wrote:
| LinkedIn = Instagram for business people.
| Firebrand wrote:
| If I call out BS there's a risk of the influencer incensing
| their followers enough for them to go after my employer and
| colleagues and tell them that I'm bully.
|
| Best not to poke the bear.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Assuming* that scenario were to play out, it would be such a
| painful irony for an influencer to encourage their followers
| to harass an ordinary stranger under the accusation of the
| stranger being a "bully", of all things.
|
| * _" Assuming" because you won't risk it, not because it
| couldn't happen_
| rriepe wrote:
| It happens all the time and takes that exact form every
| time. Pretty much every internet dispute involves the drama
| triangle[0]. This rule gets more and more true as more
| people are involved in the dispute. (The viewer is invited
| to fill the third role)
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle
| harles wrote:
| Yes, and I assume my reply will also be broadcast to my
| network. Even folks that agree are likely to see this sort of
| calling out as petty.
| anonytrary wrote:
| LinkedIn has too much "advice" from "experts". Shut up and make
| me laugh instead. Everything they post is either self-
| congratulatory "advice" or just sycophantic worship.
| gjvc wrote:
| https://twitter.com/StateOfLinkedIn also showcases some of these
| behaviours.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| We built a fairly large consulting company 6 years ago, 50% of
| the business secured through working LinkedIn hard and doing the
| whole thought leader/influencer thing.
|
| Nowadays though it's a complete parody of itself and spammed to
| death. I closed my account with 40k followers as it had become a
| complete waste of time over the years.
| durnygbur wrote:
| "Here is my MBA, cloud certification, and a nano-degree... oh hi
| Steve! congrats on your anniversary made up by LinkedIn...".
| etxm wrote:
| I'd love to see metrics on how many linkedin posts have
| unrealistic icebergs physics.
|
| Almost every time I log in to check the same spam message someone
| is posting about success and illustrating it with an iceberg.
|
| Tangentially related and fun: https://joshdata.me/iceberger.html
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I'm not really a social or business media guy but even I know it
| could be so much better. I've been waiting for somebody to
| improve things and wrote this in frustration.
| https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/
| takkiinvincible wrote:
| I wonder if it would be possible to devise a different/better
| version of LinkedIn?
|
| Could you create a social media platform that takes the positive
| aspects of LinkedIn (large network of users that are, at least
| ostensibly, targeting ambition, hard work, and self-improvement)
| but that leaves behind the accompanying parade of inauthenticity,
| brand names, buzzwords, tropes, and recycled posts?
|
| I wonder what this would look like? Would it be possible?
|
| One idea... a social media platform where people promote, share,
| and encourage meaningful projects :)
|
| Thoughts?
| lucasyvas wrote:
| For me it's easy. Remove public posts altogether. Have your
| network, your profile, and messaging. Nothing else.
| thrower123 wrote:
| I'd hoped it might get better when Microsoft bought it;
| there'd really not be any need to actually turn a profit by
| resorting to scummy tactics and dark patterns. But it seems
| to be following more of the Yammer route, where it is still
| left to muddle along in benign neglect on the same path as
| pre-acquisition.
| JCDenton2052 wrote:
| One of the more insightful articles I have read lately.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| At least LinkedIn (the company) got over their initial love
| affair with video. There was a time when my LinkedIn feed was 80%
| videos of people sitting in their cars over-sharing directly to
| the camera... because that is what "the algorithm" wanted most to
| promote. I basically avoided LinkedIn for months (maybe years?
| can't remember) as that was going on.
|
| But yeah. Even without the videos, the LinkedIn timeline is a
| pretty soulless place.
| vmception wrote:
| I think the greatest privilege is actually being able to interact
| with LinkedIn posts consequence free
|
| Many employees have their speech chilled because commenting would
| not necessarily "align with their employers values", so they dont
|
| So you get some really odd takes from all founders and
| entreprenuers instead. Its more useful to network with those kind
| of people anyway.
| ugh123 wrote:
| The sub r/LinkedInLunatics on Reddit captures this well.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics
| hughrr wrote:
| Wow there's some special stuff in there. I recently considered
| joining linked in. That has put me right off it instantly.
| redisman wrote:
| I just treat it as a fancy resume and Rolodex for people I
| very rarely talk to but sometimes might need to
| professionally. There's no reason you ever need to interact
| with the news feed
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| LinkedIn is a sewer where all the shit is sprinkled with insight
| hustle glitter.
|
| The feeds are like one of those SEO robot sites instead of
| bullshitting search engines it's people hoping for some great
| career insight.
|
| Oh no... I'm doing it right now.
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