17 ms·

Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

308 points by rapnie 5y ago

MattGaiser 5y ago
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_ 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    > How low can these people stoop? For 15 minutes of fame and potential fortune? Planck Length.
Inhibit 5y ago
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_ 5y ago
  > where you are the product Isn't this true for all major social media platforms?
  - Inhibit 5y ago
    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.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    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_ 5y ago
      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.
  - sprkwd 5y ago
    Not mastodon.
indiantinker 5y ago
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-eradicator-for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...
- simonswords82 5y ago
  Good find! I'll be installing that later today.
- indiantinker 5y ago
  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/id152022135?l=en&i=1000521308636 https://podcasts.apple.com/es/podcast/hbr-ideacast/id1520221...
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Those certificate postings actually attract recruiters. A former co-worker just got plucked to a new position from his posting of random K8s certs.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  I know what you mean but at least those certs are work related and fairly factual. I rather see that than people bragging about how amazing they are in contrived scenarios.
simonswords82 5y ago
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.
- gjvc 5y ago
  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 https://twitter.com/StateOfLinkedIn for evidence.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  Exactly. At some point ie. reviews were great until they became (black?) market themselves.
andrew_ 5y ago
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.
- takkiinvincible 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
- snowwrestler 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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?
anonytrary 5y ago
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 5y ago
https://twitter.com/StateOfLinkedIn https://twitter.com/StateOfLinkedIn also showcases some of these behaviours.
ForHackernews 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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).
Traubenfuchs 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
varjag 5y ago
A Medium blog chastising LinkedIn as hollow. Now I've seen it all.
- yoz-y 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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/item?id=27042151 https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=linkedin.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=linkedin.com
    - yoz-y 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        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.
dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
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.
alkonaut 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
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=24528438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23489785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23489785
- romanshrompsky 5y ago
  Thank you! I’ll make good use of this filter.
- Havoc 5y ago
  >>www.linkedin.com##div[class^="feed-shared-update"] Drop this one. Breaks linkedin for me
  - test123fff 5y ago
    It's not a bug, it's a feature.
truth_ 5y ago
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!
- k__ 5y ago
  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.
  - umeshunni 5y ago
    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).
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    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).
    - k__ 5y ago
ostenning 5y ago
I never understood why people use LinkedIn as a social media platform. No, I don’t care about your bullshit self indulging job title
Nursie 5y ago
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.
- foolfoolz 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    If I don't know you and you call or text me, I'm ignoring and blocking you.
  - Nursie 5y ago
    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.
- snowwrestler 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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...
mastazi 5y ago
https://archive.is/3ChG6 https://archive.is/3ChG6
fouc 5y ago
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 5y ago
  > 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!
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    That's a really good idea. Thanks for sharing, I'll try that.
  - fouc 5y ago
    Ah but I usually leave the browser running for a few weeks or a month on average
jacksonkmarley 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  "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 5y ago
    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.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    For me the ideal social media feed would look a lot like Hacker News. Literally every day I find something interesting here. Something technical I didn't know, something new I never heard of, something that makes me think. Rather than social media sites that keep trying to spiral me into their bubbles of things I looked at before. When in fact I come here to see stuff that I didn't know. I don't want more of the same but yet that seems to be considered the holy grail of engagement algorithms. It's amazing how free sharing works when it's not constantly fiddled with by algorithms. There is user voting of course but I read the 'new' page a lot too.
abhishekbasu 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
rcarmo 5y ago
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 5y ago
  How did you predict the best hashtags? That sounds interesting.
  - rcarmo 5y ago
    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.
lordnacho 5y ago
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.
- intricatedetail 5y ago
  It's a social ponzi scheme...
- beebeepka 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    Perfectly fine is understating it. You get paid more if you do it.
  - Frost1x 5y ago
    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.
    - harles 5y ago
      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.
JCDenton2052 5y ago
One of the more insightful articles I have read lately.
timdaub 5y ago
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.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  There was a time when bugmenot (credential sharing site) still worked and was amazing. But now such accounts get blocked instantly :'( But at least due to companies wanting free exposure on Google, paywall bypass tools are now a thing.
andresp 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
takkiinvincible 5y ago
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 5y ago
  For me it's easy. Remove public posts altogether. Have your network, your profile, and messaging. Nothing else.
  - thrower123 5y ago
    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.
baryphonic 5y ago
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).
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
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.
nickdothutton 5y ago
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/ https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/
ugh123 5y ago
The sub r/LinkedInLunatics on Reddit captures this well. https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics
- hughrr 5y ago
  Wow there’s some special stuff in there. I recently considered joining linked in. That has put me right off it instantly.
  - redisman 5y ago
    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
kthejoker2 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  What is the difference between the existing "I don't want to see this" button and a "dislike" button?
  - kthejoker2 5y ago
    In my mind, "I don't want to see this" is personal to you, dislike is " .. and also I don't think others should see this."
major505 5y ago
Influencesr are a curse in any thing. A new plague in a new time, brought to light by the curse of social networks.
iainctduncan 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    Is there anyone eating that crap or people are just mimicking whatever others are doing?
    - iainctduncan 5y ago
      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 5y ago
    That mute and unfollow button though. I do about 10 a day.
    - isoskeles 5y ago
      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.
Pxtl 5y ago
LinkedIn is the bane of LinkedIn.
hliyan 5y ago
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-cloud-lifecycle-scale-growth-repatriation-optimization/ 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.
- entropic88 5y ago
  This is great have you considered writing a LinkedIn article about it?
  - catillac 5y ago
    I actually read a short post on HN about this recently. It’s here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27325735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27325735
- freewilly1040 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    To get the most career-inspiring worms
- 5y ago
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
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.
cafard 5y ago
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.
etxm 5y ago
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 https://joshdata.me/iceberger.html
snowwrestler 5y ago
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.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  I think these algorithms should just die. Facebook was actually good when the feed was just all the things my friends had posted, nothing more nothing less. But then they started tinkering with algorithms and trying to find stuff I liked. Well they don't know me yhat's for sure. I had to weed through pages of crap to find one interesting bit. Glad to be off it now but LinkedIn is harder to let go.
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
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.
lazyant 5y ago
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.
nvmletsdoit 5y ago
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.
durnygbur 5y ago
"Here is my MBA, cloud certification, and a nano-degree... oh hi Steve! congrats on your anniversary made up by LinkedIn...".
raymondgh 5y ago
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.
- naravara 5y ago
  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.
  - type0 5y ago
    > Maybe bigger companies have enough slack in the system and outlets for people to blow off steam to absorb it They achieve this by wearing avacado costumes https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics/comments/nneex4/flexing_about_returning_to_work_to_party_with/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics/comments/nneex4/fl...
- nexuist 5y ago
  Recruiters and hiring managers are the influencers. LinkedIn is a social network for HR first and everyone else second.
swyx 5y ago
"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.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  I don't have the link now but search for bypass-paywalls-chrome from iamadamdev IIRC. Works on Firefox too. It's amazing for this :)
  - swyx 5y ago
    yeah i know ive been avoiding it on principle... like, if i see the post is on medium, well then, you've saved me reading any further because you're the type of person that cares so little about reader experience that you write on medium. just trying to do my part for a slightly more open web.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      Good point, I don't like medium at all either. There's a few good bloggers on there but most are just people who think they're great.
dhosek 5y ago
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).
bastardoperator 5y ago
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.
- type0 5y ago
  > I think it’s a decent tool given the price. What is the price?
  - bastardoperator 5y ago
    Free...
sosodev 5y ago
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 5y ago
  I agree. Reporting the same to LinkedIn and their response usually is dismissive.
benjaminwootton 5y ago
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.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
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 5y ago
  >rancor trolls This is not a term I'm familiar with.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
luord 5y ago
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 5y ago
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.
vmception 5y ago
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.
arbuge 5y ago
They seem to be all over Twitter too. This doesn't seem to be an issue specific to one social media site.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
happynacho 5y ago
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??
takkiinvincible 5y ago
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?
- jpindar 5y ago
  I think a lot of people on HN just hate all social media so much that by definition there couldn't be any good content.
  - type0 5y ago
    I read one good article on LinkedIn Pulse once, and even that was probably copy pasted from Medium
guenthert 5y ago
"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.
iblaine 5y ago
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.
gumby 5y ago
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?
- magneticnorth 5y ago
  I once got hired via LinkedIn but have never posted a single thing there. I basically use it as an up to date and more extensive resume, and I assume I get attention from recruiters because of tech keywords in my work history and positively regarded companies and schools. If you're trying to get hired in marketing or communications, then the performance probably matters, but recruiters will reach out without your having to loudly pat yourself on the back in a thousand strangers' feeds.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
I don't really see any of this emotional divorce stuff mentioned in the article in my timeline on LinkedIn. Just the usual people reposting all the corporate PR bullshit about how the company loves the planet and blowing their own trumpets about how amazingly committed they are to making a difference on orphan secretary poodle day. It's a sickening mess of people stumbling over each other to be the most politically correct obedient corporate drone. People are even more fake than on Facebook. Of course the people who are actually good at their jobs are never seen there. They don't need to profile themselves because they're well-known to be good. And they don't have thousands of contacts because they only accept requests from people they actually work with. It's almost like an inverse proof of capability. The only reason I'm still on there is because it's handy when you need another job. The social part is a complete failure IMO.
JPKab 5y ago
If Google's executives didn't perennially have their heads up their asses they would have turned Google+ into a LinkedIn competitor, integrated with their search platform. They did have their heads up their asses, they didn't do anything because the company never innovates on new ways to make money that are actually simple and achievable. It's more interesting to go for things like self-driving cars and then fail at them. And now we are stuck with this awful awful platform that is LinkedIn. The influencers make me want to gouge my eyes out. It's just plain nauseating to read this empty drivel, and you can't escape it. The worst is the obvious performative social justice messaging. Seeing my former CEO, who makes 111 times what his average coder makes, prattling on about equity is just plain awful. Ditto for the regurgitated dozens of times stories of inspiration that are almost certainly fabricated or exaggerated. You see the same story over and over but it mutates and changes over time with little pictures added here and there......
ryeguy_24 5y ago
The best line from this article: But I am saying that teaching people how to do something online is often much more lucrative than actually doing that thing yourself.

308 points by rapnie 5y ago

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_ 5y ago
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 5y ago
  > How low can these people stoop? For 15 minutes of fame and potential fortune? Planck Length.

Inhibit 5y ago

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_ 5y ago
> where you are the product Isn't this true for all major social media platforms?
- Inhibit 5y ago
  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.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  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_ 5y ago
    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.
- sprkwd 5y ago
  Not mastodon.

indiantinker 5y ago

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-eradicator-for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...

simonswords82 5y ago
Good find! I'll be installing that later today.
indiantinker 5y ago
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/id152022135?l=en&i=1000521308636 https://podcasts.apple.com/es/podcast/hbr-ideacast/id1520221...
MattGaiser 5y ago
Those certificate postings actually attract recruiters. A former co-worker just got plucked to a new position from his posting of random K8s certs.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
I know what you mean but at least those certs are work related and fairly factual. I rather see that than people bragging about how amazing they are in contrived scenarios.

simonswords82 5y ago

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.

gjvc 5y ago
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 https://twitter.com/StateOfLinkedIn for evidence.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
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 5y ago
Exactly. At some point ie. reviews were great until they became (black?) market themselves.

andrew_ 5y ago

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.

takkiinvincible 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
snowwrestler 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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?

anonytrary 5y ago

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 5y ago

https://twitter.com/StateOfLinkedIn https://twitter.com/StateOfLinkedIn also showcases some of these behaviours.

ForHackernews 5y ago

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 5y ago
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).

Traubenfuchs 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.

varjag 5y ago

A Medium blog chastising LinkedIn as hollow. Now I've seen it all.

yoz-y 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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/item?id=27042151 https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=linkedin.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=linkedin.com
  - yoz-y 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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.

dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago

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.

alkonaut 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago

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=24528438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23489785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23489785

romanshrompsky 5y ago
Thank you! I’ll make good use of this filter.
Havoc 5y ago
>>www.linkedin.com##div[class^="feed-shared-update"] Drop this one. Breaks linkedin for me
- test123fff 5y ago
  It's not a bug, it's a feature.

truth_ 5y ago

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!

k__ 5y ago
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.
- umeshunni 5y ago
  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).
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  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).
  - k__ 5y ago

ostenning 5y ago

I never understood why people use LinkedIn as a social media platform. No, I don’t care about your bullshit self indulging job title

Nursie 5y ago

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.

foolfoolz 5y ago
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 5y ago
  If I don't know you and you call or text me, I'm ignoring and blocking you.
- Nursie 5y ago
  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.
snowwrestler 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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...

mastazi 5y ago

https://archive.is/3ChG6 https://archive.is/3ChG6

fouc 5y ago

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 5y ago
> 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!
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  That's a really good idea. Thanks for sharing, I'll try that.
- fouc 5y ago
  Ah but I usually leave the browser running for a few weeks or a month on average

jacksonkmarley 5y ago

> 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 5y ago
"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 5y ago
  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.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  For me the ideal social media feed would look a lot like Hacker News. Literally every day I find something interesting here. Something technical I didn't know, something new I never heard of, something that makes me think. Rather than social media sites that keep trying to spiral me into their bubbles of things I looked at before. When in fact I come here to see stuff that I didn't know. I don't want more of the same but yet that seems to be considered the holy grail of engagement algorithms. It's amazing how free sharing works when it's not constantly fiddled with by algorithms. There is user voting of course but I read the 'new' page a lot too.

abhishekbasu 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.

rcarmo 5y ago

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 5y ago
How did you predict the best hashtags? That sounds interesting.
- rcarmo 5y ago
  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.

lordnacho 5y ago

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.

intricatedetail 5y ago
It's a social ponzi scheme...
beebeepka 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  Perfectly fine is understating it. You get paid more if you do it.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  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.
  - harles 5y ago
    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.

JCDenton2052 5y ago

One of the more insightful articles I have read lately.

timdaub 5y ago

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.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
There was a time when bugmenot (credential sharing site) still worked and was amazing. But now such accounts get blocked instantly :'( But at least due to companies wanting free exposure on Google, paywall bypass tools are now a thing.

andresp 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.

takkiinvincible 5y ago

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 5y ago
For me it's easy. Remove public posts altogether. Have your network, your profile, and messaging. Nothing else.
- thrower123 5y ago
  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.

baryphonic 5y ago

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).

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

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.

nickdothutton 5y ago

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/ https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/

ugh123 5y ago

The sub r/LinkedInLunatics on Reddit captures this well. https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics

hughrr 5y ago
Wow there’s some special stuff in there. I recently considered joining linked in. That has put me right off it instantly.
- redisman 5y ago
  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

kthejoker2 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
What is the difference between the existing "I don't want to see this" button and a "dislike" button?
- kthejoker2 5y ago
  In my mind, "I don't want to see this" is personal to you, dislike is " .. and also I don't think others should see this."

major505 5y ago

Influencesr are a curse in any thing. A new plague in a new time, brought to light by the curse of social networks.

iainctduncan 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Is there anyone eating that crap or people are just mimicking whatever others are doing?
  - iainctduncan 5y ago
    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 5y ago
  That mute and unfollow button though. I do about 10 a day.
  - isoskeles 5y ago
    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.

Pxtl 5y ago

LinkedIn is the bane of LinkedIn.

hliyan 5y ago

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-cloud-lifecycle-scale-growth-repatriation-optimization/ 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.

entropic88 5y ago
This is great have you considered writing a LinkedIn article about it?
- catillac 5y ago
  I actually read a short post on HN about this recently. It’s here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27325735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27325735
freewilly1040 5y ago
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 5y ago
  To get the most career-inspiring worms
5y ago

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

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.

cafard 5y ago

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.

etxm 5y ago

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 https://joshdata.me/iceberger.html

snowwrestler 5y ago

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.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
I think these algorithms should just die. Facebook was actually good when the feed was just all the things my friends had posted, nothing more nothing less. But then they started tinkering with algorithms and trying to find stuff I liked. Well they don't know me yhat's for sure. I had to weed through pages of crap to find one interesting bit. Glad to be off it now but LinkedIn is harder to let go.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

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.

lazyant 5y ago

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.

nvmletsdoit 5y ago

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.

durnygbur 5y ago

"Here is my MBA, cloud certification, and a nano-degree... oh hi Steve! congrats on your anniversary made up by LinkedIn...".

raymondgh 5y ago

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.

naravara 5y ago
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.
- type0 5y ago
  > Maybe bigger companies have enough slack in the system and outlets for people to blow off steam to absorb it They achieve this by wearing avacado costumes https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics/comments/nneex4/flexing_about_returning_to_work_to_party_with/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics/comments/nneex4/fl...
nexuist 5y ago
Recruiters and hiring managers are the influencers. LinkedIn is a social network for HR first and everyone else second.

swyx 5y ago

"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.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
I don't have the link now but search for bypass-paywalls-chrome from iamadamdev IIRC. Works on Firefox too. It's amazing for this :)
- swyx 5y ago
  yeah i know ive been avoiding it on principle... like, if i see the post is on medium, well then, you've saved me reading any further because you're the type of person that cares so little about reader experience that you write on medium. just trying to do my part for a slightly more open web.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Good point, I don't like medium at all either. There's a few good bloggers on there but most are just people who think they're great.

dhosek 5y ago

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).

bastardoperator 5y ago

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.

type0 5y ago
> I think it’s a decent tool given the price. What is the price?
- bastardoperator 5y ago
  Free...

sosodev 5y ago

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 5y ago
I agree. Reporting the same to LinkedIn and their response usually is dismissive.

benjaminwootton 5y ago

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.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

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 5y ago
>rancor trolls This is not a term I'm familiar with.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

luord 5y ago

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 5y ago

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.

vmception 5y ago

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.

arbuge 5y ago

They seem to be all over Twitter too. This doesn't seem to be an issue specific to one social media site.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

happynacho 5y ago

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??

takkiinvincible 5y ago

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?

jpindar 5y ago
I think a lot of people on HN just hate all social media so much that by definition there couldn't be any good content.
- type0 5y ago
  I read one good article on LinkedIn Pulse once, and even that was probably copy pasted from Medium

guenthert 5y ago

"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.

iblaine 5y ago

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.

gumby 5y ago

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?

magneticnorth 5y ago
I once got hired via LinkedIn but have never posted a single thing there. I basically use it as an up to date and more extensive resume, and I assume I get attention from recruiters because of tech keywords in my work history and positively regarded companies and schools. If you're trying to get hired in marketing or communications, then the performance probably matters, but recruiters will reach out without your having to loudly pat yourself on the back in a thousand strangers' feeds.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

I don't really see any of this emotional divorce stuff mentioned in the article in my timeline on LinkedIn. Just the usual people reposting all the corporate PR bullshit about how the company loves the planet and blowing their own trumpets about how amazingly committed they are to making a difference on orphan secretary poodle day. It's a sickening mess of people stumbling over each other to be the most politically correct obedient corporate drone. People are even more fake than on Facebook. Of course the people who are actually good at their jobs are never seen there. They don't need to profile themselves because they're well-known to be good. And they don't have thousands of contacts because they only accept requests from people they actually work with. It's almost like an inverse proof of capability. The only reason I'm still on there is because it's handy when you need another job. The social part is a complete failure IMO.

JPKab 5y ago

If Google's executives didn't perennially have their heads up their asses they would have turned Google+ into a LinkedIn competitor, integrated with their search platform. They did have their heads up their asses, they didn't do anything because the company never innovates on new ways to make money that are actually simple and achievable. It's more interesting to go for things like self-driving cars and then fail at them. And now we are stuck with this awful awful platform that is LinkedIn. The influencers make me want to gouge my eyes out. It's just plain nauseating to read this empty drivel, and you can't escape it. The worst is the obvious performative social justice messaging. Seeing my former CEO, who makes 111 times what his average coder makes, prattling on about equity is just plain awful. Ditto for the regurgitated dozens of times stories of inspiration that are almost certainly fabricated or exaggerated. You see the same story over and over but it mutates and changes over time with little pictures added here and there......

ryeguy_24 5y ago

The best line from this article: But I am saying that teaching people how to do something online is often much more lucrative than actually doing that thing yourself.