This resonates so well because LinkedIn is great and terrible. To give it its due - both my current and previous role materialized because a determined interna

This resonates so well because LinkedIn is great and terrible. To give it its due - both my current and previous role materialized because a determined internal recruiter did a thoughtful search and found me on LinkedIn. So: really important career development milestones happened for me because of LinkedIn. Say it more bluntly - I make more money and have a broader skillset/experience because of LinkedIn. From that point of view it's the most valuable website I've ever visited. On the flip side, the social elements of LinkedIn feel bolted on and are absolutely horrific. The classic turd of LI is the "influencer" who crafts a virtue-signaling (I hate that term but it applies here) post of which the linked article has plenty of examples. It tends to be admonishment to either be kind or bold. Either "A man came for an interview. I could tell he was exhausted and said he had kids at home. So I hired him even though he had none of he qualifications" or "Don't be your own detractor - even if you know you aren't remotely qualified for a job, apply." The key thing here is it's terrible advice. If anyone actually did this, they'd go out of business or be black-listed as a candidate. Nobody actually does this shit but it somehow resonates as "feel good" with enough people. All of this is magnified by the worst feature LI could possibly have: when someone likes something, all of their network sees it - same as if they actually posed content. I guarantee you, when someone out of he kindness of their heart clicks "like" on the "I hired the unqualified dad" post, they aren't intending to broadcast that post to their hundreds/thousands of contacts, but that's what happens. There's actually a non-trivial group of my contacts that I want to maintain contact with (key to industry, good friends from b-school) who are terribly guilty of this behavior and there's nothing you can do to protect your feed. It's actually gross. I don't understand LI's strategy at all. LI is immensely valuable because it has a real deep, proven knowledge of real professionals, who leverage LinkedIn to recruit and be recruited - which are immensely valuable (see my example.) Similarly, it's strategic to be up to date on where my former colleagues are ending up etc, so I'd be a regular LI user for those reasons. I'd even pay. This bolted on social stuff MIGHT look good on some engagement metric, but it's clearly such low trashy engagement that it detracts from the value of the business, and it's so apparent to me as an outsider that I can't understand what they are thinking.