LinkedIn has the atmosphere of working at a 200K employee multinational that even the CEO isn't really energized by.
It's honestly amusing how similar it is. Whenever I go on there I think of a job I had once in which people tried to one up each other for "most robotic".
Beep boop. The policy section 5 b says
you have used Beep 7 of your allotted holiday days.
Boop Please report your
time
sheet
I never understood why I always got so depressed reading LinkedIn, until I read The Gervais Principle by Venkatesh Rao. And then I saw that LinkedIn consists almost entirely of clueless people talking to other clueless people, and exclusively in posturetalk (these are Rao’s terms - “clueless” means something specific). And if you haven’t read The Gervais Principle, I highly recommend it, although it may bum you out.
I love the Gervais Principle, but only as a cynical joke that can sometimes be applied to real life. There's really no need to read the book. If you're interested in a laugh, just see the blog post [1].
The gist of it is that there are only three types of people who work in organizations:
1. At the top of the food chain are the sociopaths. Executives.
2. Below it are the clueless, the mid-manager who works nights and weekends out of a sense of loyalty to the company. Unlike the sociopaths and the losers (explained below), they don't have it within themselves to straight up leave the company for something better. To them, this is life.
3. And below that, are the losers. That's everyone else. The pawns in this little corporate game designed by the sociopaths and coordinated by the clueless. They won't be promoted. But unlike the clueless, they have a sense of freedom. They can go work for a competitor if it pays more. Or they'll have a real work-life balance, etc..
It (should be) no more than a humorous take on corporate culture. Don't try to take away any life lessons from this.
I know the book is a bit silly, but I only partially agree with your assessment, because I haven’t ever read anything that better describes existence within most large corporations. Would you be willing to elaborate on what you think it gets wrong?
I don't think he gets anything wrong after the first essay. Everything after just sounded like a way to make a mountain out of a molehill in terms of an interesting essay.
The first blog post about the principle was amusing and offered some basic structure to the disorganized quality of work life, but it was the application of the principle that started to lose me. The machinations of striving to move from one position to the next started to feel rather nihilistic and cynical, even for me.
I guess it turned out to be reasonable life lesson for me. Now to be clear I am not gonna go crazy at work and tell every colleague "hey I learned the deep secret of how this company works"
Even before reading this I had this vague idea about my own 'checked out' existence that he describes as loser.
I agree though, to not take life lessons specially when people take these things very literally. Because they can really come up with statement "I have worked with some of the smartest 'clued in' managers. So on the face of it 'Gervais principle is bullshit."
it's loosely based on another book, The Organization Man. I think it's loosely accurate in that there are archetypes around the worker, manager and executive, but it's certainly not as clean cut as Venkatesh makes out. I've met and worked with plenty of Loser and Sociopath types; it's the Clueless that I haven't found to exist, but maybe it's an American thing (I'm from the UK).
I think the Sociopath one is most accurate to life but that's just because "executives/investors are profit-seeking goal-maximisers" is both a common trope and pretty realistic - that's their incentive structure after all.
Say what you want, the smartest people I know as a professional are on LinkedIn, however they, like me, never post anything, it's just a profile to point people at for a quick overview of your professional experience. However the people that post on there all the time, okay I'll agree with you just don't throw everyone in the same dumpster fire please.
I would guess that way more people are on LinkedIn than Twitter. Most of the work-force is on the former, mostly only technologists, journalists, and artists on the latter.
I have friends in the traditional London banking community who absolutely don't know how to engage genuinely with social media and probably aren't interested in learning, but they're there on LinkedIn, talking in the traditional corporate language that they live in.
LinkedIn probably has a net benefit for your career by keeping up to date and checking the messages once a week, but I cannot get over the awkwardness of seeing total BS stories and thousands of replies saying "YES! AMEN!".
"I was running late to an interview this morning but stopped to help a man who fell off of his bike and fixed it up for him. Afterwards I bought him a coffee and talked about life. He mentioned how he had to go to work but was touched by meeting me, he said we had a real connection. I go to the interview and guess what! The man was my interviewer! He immediately offered me a job at 1.5m a year plus bonuses and is fast tracking me to become a regional director. Remember to be a nice human #Hashtag #Human #WEAREPEOPLE #ConnectWithMe"
Every community slides into its own stereotype like becoming a caricature of itself, but it's not objectively a bad thing, just strange to outsiders while the regulars are just fine with HN as it is. Oops, I mean LinkedIn.
Shameless plug of my open source LinkedIn clone written in a custom Lisp dialect. it's free but we offer cost effective white glove support for businesses and cloud hosted solutions
Someone made a satirical front page of typical HN stories which is right along the lines of what you posted. It was really funny and still relevant even though a few years old now, I can't find it unfortunately
I think the combination of real identities and the fact that you expect past, current and future employers and colleagues to see you on LinkedIn means “positivity” and affirmation is essentially forced on you, lest you be seen as “negative” or not a “team player”.
No one will ever contradict anything on LinkedIn because of that, which is why it becomes such a circle jerk.
I commented on something on LinkedIn in 2013 and, while completely not relevant, out of context etc, I get it thrown at me by investors and partners to this day. It was a remark that was correct at the time for my situation; it doesn't apply anymore now, 8 years later, but seems that people are not very good with that. So yeah; be fake and positive only on LinkedIn if you care about that kind of crap.
Sometimes I feel like the mods' aggressive enforcement of, what basically amounts to, respectability politics might be hurting HN. The other day someone posted a link to a blog post titled "put bluntly - the effects of sleep deprivation" and someone who had struggled with sleep problems and who, I presume, was sick and tired of hearing people explain this to them like the problem was a lack of awareness. They started their response with "To put it bluntly, fuck you" following by a detailed explanation of their struggle with sleep and all the things they've tried and how they still have to put up with people trying to explain this shit to them.
The mods took the comment down right away of course. But it made me think about how much the enforcement of rules like these might just be reinforcing the echo chamber. Sometimes you need to be yelled at to realize how out of line you are. There was another post where a woman shared her experiences with sexism and having to face death threats and being doxxed because some incels didn't like how she responded to a man hitting on her. Half the comments were questioning her or blaming her for "seeking it out" or whatever. It was really painful to watch others try to respond to comments like that and sound "respectable" and trying to engage with their talking points. It made me wonder about people who post those comments and can go on being engaged with and never actually told how much of a fuckface they're being
Now that I think about it, I kinda feel like this is a major problem with LinkedIn as well. I don't believe in bullying, but I think socialization can be an important tool sometimes
"I was rushing to an interview still drunk from the night before. I hit a cyclist, but just turned on my wipers and got there in time.
After waiting 30 mins they told me my interviewer had been involved in a tragic accident, but as I was here would I like their CEO job?"
#KeepClimbing #PressureWashYourFender
Humor and corporations do not much but I always refused to fake the "how interesting, let me add some crap to this bullshit and look as if believe it"
Initially I was the village idiot, and gradually become free to actually say what I want to say. Since it is not really PC it was meet with terrified smiles or dedain. But what was said was said.
I like this situation very much because I can relieve some of the stress and straight lies, without confrontation.
This is true whenever your real identity is at stake tho? Almost everyone sanitizes their views in the public so much so there's no opinion in there anymore.
There's sanitizing, and then there's writing a parody of your life that's borderline low fantasy. If the joke is that everyone involved knows it's creative fiction, and I'm just the odd one out, then so be it. But if people reading those posts think it's anything more, I'm.... worried about people.
It reminds of the time I was going to a job interview, saw a homeless dude and went for a coffee with him. Turns out he wasn’t homeless, he was just CTO of a funded startup. The same startup I was interviewing for. We rebuilt the whole app over coffee and they named the company after me.
(It’s not directly named after me, but the company name and my name have vowels and consonants.)
Remember to ask homeless people for their three favourite programming languages before you give them anything.
I really was once in a meeting where a homeless guy had his face against the window peering in from the outside. While we were discussing what, if anything to do about it, someone recognized the homeless guy as our corporate lawyer. In fact, he wasn't homeless at all, just disheveled. We went outside and brought him in as he was supposed to be attending this meeting.
There was a homeless guy peering in. As a group you noticed his attention to detail, a skill important to a good lawyer. You unanimously agreed to invite him in and offer him a job as a corporate lawyer. He's now the CEO. His name? Jeff Bezos.
The biggest advantage of someone with no experience is they don't know what's scary, stupid, or impossible. So they end up doing magic.
heh i went to a Salesforce thing many years ago not knowing what to expect. I showed up in jeans, tshirt, and my backpack with a kind of confused and lost demeanor (this was also my first time to San Fran). One of the hosts opened the door for me and was like "come in come in, here get yourself something to eat" and walked me over to the breakfast spread. I'm pretty certain he thought i was homeless. When I said i was here for the event he said kinda sharply "oh. go over there and get a badge." and walked away haha.
Hey Newsbinator - I'm here live, I'm not a dog. On a side note to this thread, I saw your company MVP For SaaS and it's very much aligned with what I've wanted to do for a long time. How have you found client acquisition? I really like your idea of targeting marketing and design companies - that's super smart. Overall, excellent looking site :)
Author: In a position of power
Poor Schmuck: Desperate for a job so that they can keep their apt, eat food
Author: Takes pity on the poor schmuck
Poor Schmuck: Works like a slave to have basic necessities
Author: Gloats about how they unearthed a gem
Author: Lesson from this incident
You know the funniest thing about the story above is that after you remove the sarcasm it is plausible... just not in the countries where everything is a car ride away and 1.5m of a local currency is a lot of money.
What makes nonsense like this work is that there really is a percentage of people who actually completely buy into the nonsense and find it all very "inspiring".
To be fair -- any religion could be described the same way, even by religious people (describing a different religion than the "correct" one, of course).
Yesterday I was walking to an interview. There was a starving dog on the road. I stopped to feed him & missed the interview. The next day I got a call asking to come in to do the interview. I was surprised, but I went. Then the interviewer came in. He was the dog.
Yeah the changes over the last few years make it seem like facebook. hopefully the powers that be will notice and come up with some plan to limit such silly interactions on what should be a professional platform. I reported some overtly political posts on there more than once and nothing ever came of it.
LinkedIn is my guess, the social media platform with the most reshares and least amount of new content. Everything I see is just a reshare of the same CEO message, or "hustle life" post. I would expect to find posts about career questions and what's a solution to my business issue but it's really just a rebadged Facebook.
I have to have a LinkedIn profile but I try to keep my profile very close to my reality, which means I look like an underachiever compared to my connections.
> LinkedIn probably has a net benefit for your career by keeping up to date and checking the messages once a week
Yes. Ignore the whole post feed, there's no point to that.
But other than that LinkedIn is very valuable, keep your connections, see who knows who, hire people, get hired. It's the only social media (maybe should be called professional media) that I see any value in.
Both the comments on this thread would fit well on https://www.shlinkedin.com/, if you haven't seen it, it is basically the sarcastic version of linkedin that you all live in.
Personally, Linkedin has been incredible for staying in touch with a large range of business contacts over the last 10+ years. It's provided me far more value than any other social network -- but the feed is mostly a joke :).
Second that. I only add people I actually do know IRL and most of whom I have met. The feed is something I avoid although I do post occasionally with stuff I find interesting. Only look really at the posts of a very few other people I know. Is also a useful place to keep a record of learning and achievements.
I look at it about once every 2 weeks. That is more than enough. More often is torture.
> LinkedIn probably has a net benefit for your career by keeping up to date and checking the messages once a week, but I cannot get over the awkwardness of seeing total BS stories and thousands of replies saying "YES! AMEN!".
There are two ways of looking at linkedin:
* a) linkedin, the job listing service used by headhunters to fill positions,
* b) linkedin, the makeshift pseudo-facebook/myspace/instagram alternative used and abused by career-oriented attention-seekers.
This blog post focuses exclusively on b) while completely ignoring a).
I know people who landed jobs in FANGs just because they kept their linkedin profile up-to-date, even though they didn't even posted a single message and barely had any "like"-type interaction with any type of content. Personally, I've landed my past two or three tech jobs through linkedin, and I barely use it.
I also tried other like-minded services like Glassdoor or stackoverflow jobs, but at least to me those are a dumpster fire when compared with linkedin. Specially Glassdoor.
You get cringe content if you're using it to produce and consume cringe content. Others like me are quite happy with the benefit we take from it.
The thing that's been around the longest that always bugged me was:
Getting endorsed for skills by people who have no ability to evaluate my competency at those skills.
It's so shallow and badly designed at its job. But like every social network out there, it's buoyed by its inertia and network effects, and will last far longer than it should given its quality beyond the size of its network of users.
One day linkedin proposed a test to me (it was Python) so I tried it because I was curious what kind of questions they ask. It was like 10 questions, with some random stuff about syntax, maybe how to use a dict for example. And then I got a badge. I have no idea how I would use that when hiring, it tells nothing about the candidates actual ability or experience with the "skill"
Off the top of my head, it was edge cases of code to process in your head and write down the exact result the computer would output. Things like “what is the result of 1 + ‘1’”. And of course there was some kind of “protection” to keep you from copy pasting the code into the console which can be circumvented a number of ways. Too bad that wasn’t part of the test, it would actually be a better signal than their trivia questions.
Yeah it makes little sense. I have my primary school teacher endorsing me as a derivatives expert. Seems to not bother LinkedIn, weighs the same as an actual colleague endorsing me.
I think nobody really cares though, they see it's a cheap signal and adjust accordingly.
The best is when the prompt is something like: "Who would you go to for a question about /mathematics/" and then shows me four people who all have a PhD related to math and science...
Forever ago, I created a Chrome extension that allowed you to annotate skills that had been endorsed by others with a "Hell No" label if you felt it was not deserved. For obvious reasons, it never got traction but got a few laughs on the podcast that inspired it, which was enough for me.
I mean unless it had a backend server no one would ever see the "hell no css styling" (and even then only others who also had the extension) so it doesn't really make much sense.
You're right re: needing a backend server, but that was kind of the point of it. You'd have to be "in the know" enough to install it and then you'd see the styling. It relied on Firebase storage for the backend piece. In the end, it was mostly for a joke in regards to ongoing discussion from an old Mule podcast. As such, it was just for fun anyways and never really intended to be more than that.
What an excellent post. LinkedIn seems to be getting worse and worse, merging in the worst aspects of the every-photo-is-staged "influencer" culture from Instagram and the stupid/not-inspirational/definitely-not-true meme story posts from Facebook. It really is so cringe.
LinkedIn has been doubling down on this though. In the past week I've been hearing this new podcast ad from them about how "LinkedIn helps you be you real self". It's pretty bad. Can't find it right now but I've been hearing it non stop for a few days now.
I think linkedin, while it's always been pretty fake, is getting close to a point where it is either going to get overhauled or collapse completely into an empty wasteland going beyond embarrassing self promotion and into even more absurd cliches of what "professionals" should share.
It serves an important function, and I have used it to find work and connect with former colleagues. But I think by ratcheting up the social media style attention algorithms, the company has been strip mining their credibility, and there is not much left
Having office-shared with a recruiting firm, and having worked in several startups that have a "long-sales"/"closer" department.. I can attest that LinkedIn is exactly what it is like in the day-to-day jobs in the flesh, too. Lots of gongs/bells/claxons, always followed by _so_ many high-fives and a round of applause.
Everyone knows it's bullshit, but this kind of toxic/fake positivity is demanded, and weirdly, it works even though everyone knows it's fake.
Reminded me of the emails we constantly got with the subject “BANG A GONG!!!” at my last work place. It was only for sales achievements, and I never saw an email like that for any other department. It was nice they used the same subject every time, so I could filter them out.
Heh. Reminds me of this time a startup I worked for got acquired by a big financial firm in New York City - we roll into work the first day and at like 10:00 AM this woman starts ringing an actual cowbell and shouting “Standup! Standup Everybody!” They would literally call the developers into the daily standup like they were a herd of cattle.
I cannot stop laughing! Was the standup even about stuff developers would care about, or did they force you to listen to entirely unrelated financial status updates?
One week at one of my jobs they went around the place with a megaphone shouting at everyone before a weekly company all-hands. "It's all hands time!" etc. I walked out the door instead.
It was only for sales achievements, and I never saw an email like that for any other department.
Sales people ringing a bell in the office when they make a sale is traditional in certain sales environments. When I worked in radio, the sales people did it. I've seen food truck operators and baristas do it when someone tips.
It's related to the expression "ringing your own bell," which means to be shamelessly boastful.
> Lots of gongs/bells/claxons, always followed by _so_ many high-fives and a round of applause.
I've seen exactly this in the Technology department at one of my employers... When the sprints ended the teams that shipped an increment would gather around the bell and each take a turn ringing it while everyone cheered them on. Sprint symposiums happened the following week.
I worked on a project with them that impacted our "shadow IT" team and received an email marked as mandatory attendance required at a meeting. It turns out the meeting involved all 1000 people in the office clapping and cheering for the teams that were involved in the project.
I have no idea what they are doing now it's all remote.
The main cause behind Linkedin being cringe is because it's fake and phony. There's so much fake positivity, humbleness, appreciation, virtuousness and empathy from every part of the corporate world now. This used to be at least guarded amongst upper level management, who endured this garbage but at a great financial gain. Now this corporate cringe has penetrated the general public. People who are making peanuts are talking about "synergy", "innovation" and "disruption".
The work world is a bloody mess today compared to the world I joined in 1979. It almost resembles an environment where you have to join a gang, but threats can come from anywhere.
And people wonder why old people, obviously closer to death, are happier.
For me, the worst cringe was when I was “recommended” for skills the recommenders didn’t understand. Being recommended by people even one level below you is cringe. Work is not like being a TA.
There is a huge irony to Twitter using LinkedIn as a punching bag. Twitter is full of people pretending to be cool and popular and witty by doing things like making fun of LinkedIn posts for being fake.
I'm playing the role of the the smart one who thinks they have it figured it all out, and you're playing the pedantic one, right?
I definitely adopt a Hacker News voice when commenting here. But in my experience both HN and Reddit are different from most social products because I engage in lots of disparate conversations rather than having to to present a consistent personality and be building a brand and set of followers.
The only interesting thing I’ve gleaned from LinkedIn is how some fairly marginal, mediocre technical managers have gotten promotions and steady work over the years, simply by keeping their noses clean, diplomacy, and ‘good’ behavior. And how tempestuous the careers of the creative, talented people can be.
That was a useful observation, but alas, too late.
Good observation and hits a little too close to home.
It is interesting to see the career graphs of people you know from "Real" life and map it to their retelling on LinkedIn. While some are legitimate salesmanship (you are allowed to present only your best face and exaggerate a little) others are downright fiction.
Used strictly as a "professional" network rather than a "general social" network LinkedIn does provide a lot of value. Just be moderate with your image projection and remember that most people can easily see through any obvious posturing.
289 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 263 ms ] threadIt's honestly amusing how similar it is. Whenever I go on there I think of a job I had once in which people tried to one up each other for "most robotic".
(my old manager, living being)https://i.imgur.com/dgGvgKF.png
Please report your time sheet was downright triggering
The gist of it is that there are only three types of people who work in organizations:
1. At the top of the food chain are the sociopaths. Executives.
2. Below it are the clueless, the mid-manager who works nights and weekends out of a sense of loyalty to the company. Unlike the sociopaths and the losers (explained below), they don't have it within themselves to straight up leave the company for something better. To them, this is life.
3. And below that, are the losers. That's everyone else. The pawns in this little corporate game designed by the sociopaths and coordinated by the clueless. They won't be promoted. But unlike the clueless, they have a sense of freedom. They can go work for a competitor if it pays more. Or they'll have a real work-life balance, etc..
It (should be) no more than a humorous take on corporate culture. Don't try to take away any life lessons from this.
[1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
Even before reading this I had this vague idea about my own 'checked out' existence that he describes as loser.
I agree though, to not take life lessons specially when people take these things very literally. Because they can really come up with statement "I have worked with some of the smartest 'clued in' managers. So on the face of it 'Gervais principle is bullshit."
I think the Sociopath one is most accurate to life but that's just because "executives/investors are profit-seeking goal-maximisers" is both a common trope and pretty realistic - that's their incentive structure after all.
I have friends in the traditional London banking community who absolutely don't know how to engage genuinely with social media and probably aren't interested in learning, but they're there on LinkedIn, talking in the traditional corporate language that they live in.
Ah so that's why twitter is so insufferable
"I was running late to an interview this morning but stopped to help a man who fell off of his bike and fixed it up for him. Afterwards I bought him a coffee and talked about life. He mentioned how he had to go to work but was touched by meeting me, he said we had a real connection. I go to the interview and guess what! The man was my interviewer! He immediately offered me a job at 1.5m a year plus bonuses and is fast tracking me to become a regional director. Remember to be a nice human #Hashtag #Human #WEAREPEOPLE #ConnectWithMe"
It's just a giant circle jerk.
But you can't spell impossible without POSSIBLE.
#Influencer #Leader
Article to my free e-book on being a social media ninja in the comments :rocket:
Please provide your e-mail to access the link.
(I'll see myself out)
1. Shockingly accurate
2. Making me laugh loudly
Thanks!
;)
Agree?
#startup
The Holy Trinity
(page is just a rando blog post so yeah it doesn’t need it, and it uses JavaScript…)
No one will ever contradict anything on LinkedIn because of that, which is why it becomes such a circle jerk.
The mods took the comment down right away of course. But it made me think about how much the enforcement of rules like these might just be reinforcing the echo chamber. Sometimes you need to be yelled at to realize how out of line you are. There was another post where a woman shared her experiences with sexism and having to face death threats and being doxxed because some incels didn't like how she responded to a man hitting on her. Half the comments were questioning her or blaming her for "seeking it out" or whatever. It was really painful to watch others try to respond to comments like that and sound "respectable" and trying to engage with their talking points. It made me wonder about people who post those comments and can go on being engaged with and never actually told how much of a fuckface they're being
Now that I think about it, I kinda feel like this is a major problem with LinkedIn as well. I don't believe in bullying, but I think socialization can be an important tool sometimes
"I was rushing to an interview still drunk from the night before. I hit a cyclist, but just turned on my wipers and got there in time. After waiting 30 mins they told me my interviewer had been involved in a tragic accident, but as I was here would I like their CEO job?" #KeepClimbing #PressureWashYourFender
Humor and corporations do not much but I always refused to fake the "how interesting, let me add some crap to this bullshit and look as if believe it"
Initially I was the village idiot, and gradually become free to actually say what I want to say. Since it is not really PC it was meet with terrified smiles or dedain. But what was said was said.
I like this situation very much because I can relieve some of the stress and straight lies, without confrontation.
It reminds of the time I was going to a job interview, saw a homeless dude and went for a coffee with him. Turns out he wasn’t homeless, he was just CTO of a funded startup. The same startup I was interviewing for. We rebuilt the whole app over coffee and they named the company after me.
(It’s not directly named after me, but the company name and my name have vowels and consonants.)
Remember to ask homeless people for their three favourite programming languages before you give them anything.
#qualifyLeads #ROI #winning
The biggest advantage of someone with no experience is they don't know what's scary, stupid, or impossible. So they end up doing magic.
#HireNoExperience #TakeRisks #PoorNowLaw
Author: In a position of power Poor Schmuck: Desperate for a job so that they can keep their apt, eat food Author: Takes pity on the poor schmuck Poor Schmuck: Works like a slave to have basic necessities Author: Gloats about how they unearthed a gem Author: Lesson from this incident
Everything is so Saccharine.
The entire social media internet is either contrarian-trolls or vapid saccharine-sweet profiles.
Yesterday I was walking to an interview. There was a starving dog on the road. I stopped to feed him & missed the interview. The next day I got a call asking to come in to do the interview. I was surprised, but I went. Then the interviewer came in. He was the dog.
The post would be written like this.
This insufferable style of two line breaks between short sentences.
Seems to be a requirement for LinkedIn viral content.
I have to have a LinkedIn profile but I try to keep my profile very close to my reality, which means I look like an underachiever compared to my connections.
Yes. Ignore the whole post feed, there's no point to that.
But other than that LinkedIn is very valuable, keep your connections, see who knows who, hire people, get hired. It's the only social media (maybe should be called professional media) that I see any value in.
Personally, Linkedin has been incredible for staying in touch with a large range of business contacts over the last 10+ years. It's provided me far more value than any other social network -- but the feed is mostly a joke :).
There are two ways of looking at linkedin:
* a) linkedin, the job listing service used by headhunters to fill positions,
* b) linkedin, the makeshift pseudo-facebook/myspace/instagram alternative used and abused by career-oriented attention-seekers.
This blog post focuses exclusively on b) while completely ignoring a).
I know people who landed jobs in FANGs just because they kept their linkedin profile up-to-date, even though they didn't even posted a single message and barely had any "like"-type interaction with any type of content. Personally, I've landed my past two or three tech jobs through linkedin, and I barely use it.
I also tried other like-minded services like Glassdoor or stackoverflow jobs, but at least to me those are a dumpster fire when compared with linkedin. Specially Glassdoor.
You get cringe content if you're using it to produce and consume cringe content. Others like me are quite happy with the benefit we take from it.
Oh wait, the people behind are corrupted themselves, it is human nature reflected in machines.
Getting endorsed for skills by people who have no ability to evaluate my competency at those skills.
It's so shallow and badly designed at its job. But like every social network out there, it's buoyed by its inertia and network effects, and will last far longer than it should given its quality beyond the size of its network of users.
I think nobody really cares though, they see it's a cheap signal and adjust accordingly.
https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C5103AQHf_hGI8go5Tg/p...
If pulled off correctly, its a powerful endorsement.
However, how does one really check if the endorsement is real or a favour for a reverse endorsement.
It does tend to veer into this weird territory of everyone marketing to each other.
Anyway add me on linkedin.
It serves an important function, and I have used it to find work and connect with former colleagues. But I think by ratcheting up the social media style attention algorithms, the company has been strip mining their credibility, and there is not much left
Everyone knows it's bullshit, but this kind of toxic/fake positivity is demanded, and weirdly, it works even though everyone knows it's fake.
Sales people ringing a bell in the office when they make a sale is traditional in certain sales environments. When I worked in radio, the sales people did it. I've seen food truck operators and baristas do it when someone tips.
It's related to the expression "ringing your own bell," which means to be shamelessly boastful.
I've seen exactly this in the Technology department at one of my employers... When the sprints ended the teams that shipped an increment would gather around the bell and each take a turn ringing it while everyone cheered them on. Sprint symposiums happened the following week.
I worked on a project with them that impacted our "shadow IT" team and received an email marked as mandatory attendance required at a meeting. It turns out the meeting involved all 1000 people in the office clapping and cheering for the teams that were involved in the project.
I have no idea what they are doing now it's all remote.
Edit: Nitter
https://nitter.net/BestofLinkedin
And people wonder why old people, obviously closer to death, are happier.
The company she represented? Fucking Boeing.
User engagement's siren song is irresistible to data-driven product orgs.
Is there a Law yet (like Zawinski's) that any app with enough users will attempt to become a social network?
(Or two if you're reading this)
I definitely adopt a Hacker News voice when commenting here. But in my experience both HN and Reddit are different from most social products because I engage in lots of disparate conversations rather than having to to present a consistent personality and be building a brand and set of followers.
A bit like Facebook - except you don't actually like any of them.
That was a useful observation, but alas, too late.
It is interesting to see the career graphs of people you know from "Real" life and map it to their retelling on LinkedIn. While some are legitimate salesmanship (you are allowed to present only your best face and exaggerate a little) others are downright fiction.
Used strictly as a "professional" network rather than a "general social" network LinkedIn does provide a lot of value. Just be moderate with your image projection and remember that most people can easily see through any obvious posturing.