19 ms·

Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

473 points by smitec 1y ago

PaulHoule 1y ago
Why Mastodon is so much better: https://mas.to/@skeletor https://mas.to/@skeletor
- cpursley 1y ago
  My customers and market are not in these obscure channels, they are on LinkedIn (and Facebook). None are on reddit or x.
nottorp 1y ago
Random bit of info: I cannot log in to Linkedin any more on my default browser, which is Firefox with the built in privacy protections on and uBlock Origin (that one on the default settings). The front page redirects me to the cookie dialog which goes to the front page which goes to the cookie dialog again ad infinitum. I suppose it would work if i accepted, but they shouldn't even ask me for the cookies absolutely required for the site to function so I'm viewing the rest as something optional that I should deny.
kornas1 1y ago
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shark1 1y ago
My Linkedin feed is very bad. I am ok in reading about interesting companies milestones or my contacts sharing opportunities or work related opinions. What I get is endless self-promotion and corporate bullshit. A place where everybody is the opposite of authentic, acting weirdly and cringe as they were being watched by co-workers and possible recruiters (and actually they are).
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
joshcanhelp 1y ago
I don’t love spending time on LinkedIn but I do love that you know what you’re going to get when you go there. There’s not some fake underlaying goal like “keeping people connected.” You’re there to promote yourself and your company, find a job, or hire a person. If you’re not doing any of those things you can just not go there and you won’t miss a thing. If you need a job after 2 years, get back in there, play the game, then log off when you’re done. IMHO it’s about as honest as a large online social network can get.
cranberryturkey 1y ago
[flagged]
- incone123 1y ago
  Might be an effect of your location, field and 3rd order connections. Also India is a big place with a lot of people in or looking for white collar jobs. Granted so is China so I guess the difference is LinkedIn is not so popular in China.
  - dep_b 1y ago
    They shot it down a while ago, but it was always something separated from the main LinkedIn population I think.
- ycombinete 1y ago
  India probably represents the largest “homogenous” block of the English speaking world. I think the internet is coming to reflect that more and more as it develops and more of the population comes online. Edit: apparently it’s 2nd in number of English speakers to the USA.
  - cranberryturkey 1y ago
    [flagged]
- Disposal8433 1y ago
  0 indians for me. I only see French people because I'm French. And I also see only my friends because I'm not in a following frenzy.
  - seattle_spring 1y ago
    > because I'm not in a following frenzy. I sure with that affected my feed. I'm only connected to people I've met in person, and have never followed anyone beyond that ever, yet my feed is chock full of "Top INfluencer voices"/"you might be interested in ..."
cheschire 1y ago
I wish LinkedIn wasn’t seen as a valid background check tool. Now that we have HR going whole hog on AI processing of job applications, up to and including the first round interview, can we please get rid of LinkedIn? Instead, I would much rather see job applications come in three parts. A cover letter, a human resume overview page, and then the deeper multi page CV that is primarily for AI processing.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  That makes a lot of sense, but the inevitable result is an AI arms race, with AI tools for writing these, feeding AI tools for reading them. I really feel as if I retired at the best time possible.
- reactordev 1y ago
  This is precisely why I deleted my LinkedIn profile all together. While it's nice to have a cover letter. I've never included one myself, just a beefier resume with a strong opening statement. I'll read a cover letter if you send one but to me it's not required. Just your resume and your person is all that I need. Anything more is just pandering to indecision and wasteful spend.
- mr_toad 1y ago
  I don’t think anyone bothers to read cover letters anymore. Recruiters don’t even seem to read resumes very closely, judging by the number of times I’ve been asked questions that are literally in the first paragraph of my resume.
nickfromseattle 1y ago
This reads like it was written by a developer 'who doesn't get marketing'. > Nothing you post there is going to change your career. I can attribute millions of dollars in revenue to LinkedIn, as can a lot of my 'LinkedIn friends' > Doing work that matters might. This is a pre-requisite for winning on LinkedIn. The kind of content that performs best are strong opinions informed by actual expertise. > Go for depth over frequency. Unfortunately that's not the way marketing works. 95% of your audience is not 'in-market' and ready to buy when they see your content. Sometime over the next 3-5 years they may move into a buying lifecycle, and they are much more likely to trust you, and therefore buy from you, if they've seen your content 1,000x vs a couple of long reads. > If writing online matters to you, you’re probably better off starting a blog and building things there. Your long form, in-depth content lives on your blog, and your LinkedIn profile should act as a funnel, moving people from newsfeed --> your profile --> the most important piece of content you want them to read. From there, you can capture their email to touch them on another channel (inbox), push them to your YouTube / Twitter / community, etc. With that said, while LinkedIn is responsible for a significant % of my total revenue, it's also responsible for a significant % of my anxiety. Building in public invites folks to publicly blast you if they don't agree with your ideas. 'Getting ratio'd' happens. LinkedIn eventually becomes a mentally exhausting slog. But as a career driven individual the upside has been very high and I think the trade off was worth it. I would do it again knowing everything I know now.
- baq 1y ago
  Are you an employer or an employee?
- zwnow 1y ago
  LinkedIn is basically a marketplace for boomers. Facebook but for jobs pretty much. Im sorry to hear u think this highly of it, as its just a gathering of pretentious people.
  - fnord77 1y ago
    where are the non-boomers looking for jobs these days?
user568439 1y ago
Full of people sucking each other BS. And then recruiters unable to understand the most basics of a profile. Nevertheless I update my own from time to time, it can still be useful if you navigate through the garbage. Also it helps me to cross-check a bit some people if they have a contact that you both know and you trust. More than once I encountered people with 100% fake profile and fake work history. Maybe LinkedIn should only allow to add that you worked somewhere doing something with some kind of verification process.
- seattle_spring 1y ago
  I've lost count how many first-line engineering managers I've actively worked alongside change their LinkedIn title to "Engineering Leader" or something like that. They'll be a manager of 6 ICs in Org X, which itself is comprised of 400 people, but on their profile they'll put "leading Org X". It's some of the clearest evidence I've seen that LinkedIn is toxic sludge.
lloydjones 1y ago
Exactly — depth is the new authenticity . #Reflecting #ThoughtLeader
- lloydjones 1y ago
  Damn — HN strips emojis, putting my pastiche in danger of looking sincere
  - bootsmann 1y ago
    I think the hashtags save you from looking pretentious
    - lloydjones 1y ago
      In a sea of down to earth people, strive to stand out with pretentiousness #differentiate
HPsquared 1y ago
Mediocrity can be measured.
antihipocrat 1y ago
There is no benefit to be gained from disagreement or debate. Any such discourse looks problematic to a potential employer.
- RA_Fisher 1y ago
  True, aside from the exceptional employers that’ll actually provide a good career.
- chiefalchemist 1y ago
  Agreed. The level of mediocrity and group-think on LI is freighting. It’s no wonder so many companies / brands struggle. Daily I see an OP based on myth / incomplete ideas (read: ultimately the originator is sharing bad advice)and then 95% of the replies to that mindlessly agree. The flaws are often obvious, and no one notices.
  - trinix912 1y ago
    It probably gets that way because nobody wants to be the one to argue back, as it puts them in a bad light. So what's left are cheap platitudes and confirmations.
    - chiefalchemist 1y ago
      I understand the unwillingness to argue. But we’re talking foundational flaws in the advice being offered. Even passive aggressive “Are you sure about… ?” Would be 10x better than shameless group-think.
- bravesoul2 1y ago
  Unless its a safe enough disagreement. Lynching on an overconfident but incorrect post for example. As long as correcting it makes you look smart, hard working, a leader.
WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago
It reflects society, everything rewards mediocrity and deception
TrackerFF 1y ago
r/LinkedInLunatics for the best of hits.
Shacklz 1y ago
> if they've seen your content 1,000x vs a couple of long reads. [..] From there, you can capture their email to touch them on another channel (inbox), push them to your YouTube / Twitter / community, etc. The endless game of catching people's attention. Focus on actual value creation? Nah, let's just mind-hack everyone into buying the product. It works, it's obviously a game worth billions, but I find it deeply depressing.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- inopinatus 1y ago
  It took a while for their sector to become a mainstream byword for snake oil, but when it did, the SEO touts switched to peddling "content marketing" services instead. Not surprising that the internet's most insipid forum remains their favourite target-rich environment.
- nathanaldensr 1y ago
  It is depressing. There's nothing spiritual in it--nothing grander than just base greed and psychological manipulation.
  - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
    To me what is _spiritually_disturbing (in the sense that it hurts my spirit) is the fact that I think that such behaviour is going to keep on happen and the world would get EVEN more polarized, less trustworthy overall. Greed and psychological manipulation to me feels like they will always continue and I am a pessimist in that sense. There is good, and then there is greed and greed creates psychological manipulation in most cases. The most fundamental issues in our society stems from greed imo and this cycle will perpetuate like a cancer. Greed is cancerous. I don't know if I even can bring a change in this greedy world at a scale which can matter.
- simianwords 1y ago
  Convincing people to buy your product _is_ value creation.
democracy 1y ago
LinkedIn is a vanity fair, and I'm not sure why it even matters in 2025 — it's just a job board when you need it.
- __loam 1y ago
  LinkedIn is a great place to talk to recruiters still. If you're not picky about where you work, you can find a job pretty fast by working with recruiters directly and skipping the cold apply.
- giantg2 1y ago
  It's not even a good job board anymore because it's filled with junk and evergreen postings.
  - hn8726 1y ago
    Can't agree. While there are some evergreen postings, LinkedIn job applications still landed me a couple of interviews (and much more compared to cold applying on the company website). And then there's recruiters reaching out which landed me even more interviews + my current - genuinely great - job.
    - giantg2 1y ago
      The recruiters reaching out to me are all for terrible companies or for non-remote roles in other areas of the country. It seems Glassdoor and others have better job boards than LinkedIn.
- bgribble 1y ago
  How else are you going to liquidity-stalk that company you left with some options or even shares? I take my first cup of coffee with a little tea-leaf reading based on the activity of the CEO and my former coworkers. If you ever see more than 5 connections reacting/liking the same thing you know that HR or marketing sent out an email about it.
hubraumhugo 1y ago
[deleted]
- Disposal8433 1y ago
  > My feed is mostly AI-generated slop I see zero slop on my feed. Maybe because I only follow friends and former coworkers that I liked. How many people are you following?
- nicksbg 1y ago
  The posts section always basically goes like: We did X but then what surprised us with X is something we did not see coming.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
5350-uiop-1130 1y ago
linkedin is training data for tuning the corpo-speak, sycophancy and sociopathy tokens on microsofts AI models
varispeed 1y ago
LinkedIn isn’t a professional network, it’s a slave auction with a newsfeed. Workers line up to show their teeth - “failure is just learning in disguise”, “kindness is leadership”, all that drivel - while hoping to be picked by a master who won’t beat them too hard. The algorithm is the overseer. It doesn’t want insight, it wants compliance: claps, congratulations, and endless oatmeal platitudes that prove you’ll play the game. That’s why your feed is full of garbage. The mediocrity isn’t a flaw, it’s the commodity being traded. Anyone looking for substance is in the wrong marketplace. LinkedIn is about teaching people how to smile wider while the chain gets tighter.
- enemyz0r 1y ago
  You manage to see through the bs
adidoit 1y ago
Because LinkedIn makes your employment front and center it encourages status games . The way to understand LinkedIn is no one is actually trying to engage in good faith. Everyone is seeking status points in a game they're playing. And that status depends on their endowment (people they know, institutions they are part of) Status conferred from their boss, their peers, their underlings, people in similar roles - It's why LinkedIn feels like a lot of thought-leadering, because the only way to get status is to post something that gets likes within the status game you are playing Forums like this one and even to some extent Twitter are more evolutionary in that you will likely see higher quality ideas get conferred status. I use LinkedIn (getting traction for my product). I don't enjoy it but I do understand the game being played.
- lloydjones 1y ago
  Yes — I (as somebody who posts to promote my startup) wonder what the true goal is sometimes, as it’s ambiguous. Certainly target customers and industry peers, but probably recruiters and VCs too. My interpretation of how a very experienced recruiter once explained it to me is: It’s “public life” online, and your public persona (in a “The Fall of Public Man” sense), and if you have no presence or a minimal one, when the time comes that you NEED attention (job seeking; shilling your business) you won’t have any listeners due to the algorithm. Therefore one must constantly be telling the LI gods that they are an active user by posting perfunctory mediocrity. It’s algorithm-gaming and cosplaying as a table-stakes activity for being “seen” or acknowledged to exist.
  - adidoit 1y ago
    You nailed it. And of course the platform solving for engagement then enshittifies but we have no alternative... back to posting on LinkedIn I guess..
- fred_is_fred 1y ago
  "it encourages status games". I think most social media does this. Read a Facebook feed and everyone is either on a beach, had a baby, or got promoted. Nobody is home sick or doing laundry or dealing with a terrible boss.
YetAnotherNick 1y ago
Ironically, this post and comments here feels like it could be on Linkedin. Catchy title with low effort content. Nowhere in the blog he answers this question and the comments here just go with the title and common hate against Linkedin and "owned by Microsoft" as author calls it.
anonreeeeplor 1y ago
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merksittich 1y ago
What annoys me the most in my LinkedIn feed is low-effort visual AI slop, in particular based on fads such as the bland 4o comic style with text bubbles. As a "visual animal", I find it very hard to tune out this kind of noise. I consequently try to hide such content from my feed, but the LinkedIn algorithm will not budge. I did an Ask HN a while ago trying to find browser add-ons which will hide (or blur) such images (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43833961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43833961), which turned out fruitless.
tornikeo 1y ago
Use the best tool for the job. I look at LinkedIn as a purpose-built tool for marketing my brand (my dev experience). It works well. Just like any tool LinkedIn has some problems. But it is the best in that niche.
lbyaus 1y ago
Couldn't agree more
adidoit 1y ago
1. Self-Aggrandizement-as-a-Service 2. Tied to corporate status games 3. Delivered as an algorithmic feed I'm obviously being provocative but those are the dynamics
lazarus01 1y ago
I'm a data scientist and ml engineer, used to be in tech sales before transitioning to a technical role. I've spent most of my adult life using using linkedin for business development and job search. What people don't realize, it's the worlds most accurate business database. Highly effective for networking, where you can see peoples interests and interaction and match up with like minded peers and contemporaries. I agree that the user generated content is indeed mediocre. When it comes to posting content, I subscribe to Cal Newport's theory, if you produce something that is valuable and rare, people will find you. People spending their time posting large amounts of content are not creating anything valuable or rare.
y42 1y ago
He as point. And it's probably annyoing because: One wants to post "substantial content" and being acknowledge, but one cannot rise against this "flood" of nonsense. Question is: What can you do? We can't stop this trend. People are looking for "reach". And you can achieve that using differet approaches. What we experience at LinkedIn is the simplest approach: Spam the system with your AI generated "nonsense" posts, add a selfie and people will follow. It's not even bad content, it's positive content, emotional content, touching content. But first it's way easier to create than writing long technical articles or analysis. And seconds it's easiere to consume - people want short messages. And it's not only LinkedIN, it's everywhere. Medium, Facebook, you name it. Sad for everyone trying to communicatae more than just "calendar mottos". But true.
sometimes_all 1y ago
> I log in and see constant posting that I can only describe as toxic mediocrity. A seemingly endless stream of posts that are over fluffed, over produced and ultimately say nothing. It took me approximately 5 minutes to install uBlock Origin and create a filter that removes the feed. No more toxic mediocrity to see because there are no posts to see. It makes Linkedin a lot more bearable for me.
- redeyedtreefrog 1y ago
  ah cool great idea, I've now done the same www.linkedin.com##[aria-label="Main Feed"]
mglvsky 1y ago
Another small annoying thing in LinkedIn are posts with different fonts. They look so lame, that I have "banner blindness" for such posts Edit: grammar
wchandler 1y ago
I found it best to stay Linked-Out.
Havoc 1y ago
People read linkedin? Everyone I know just use it as a glorified Rolodex
senko 1y ago
The mediocrity (and "hacks" like LinkedIn broetry[0]) make it super-easy to stand out just by talking plainly about interesting stuff! I have a (subjectively) high (self-imposed) bar for posting on my blog, but my bar is much lower for LinkedIn. I also have a much larger audience there. I sometimes turn the LI posts I'm really happy with into blog articles, so they also serve as a kind of preprint for me. Basically, I use it like I'd use Twitter if it still existed and allowed for somewhat longer posts, and BlueSky if it had any users. [0] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/why-are-these-posts-taking-over-your-linkedin-feed-because https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/why-are-these-p...
nis0s 1y ago
The only reason to have a LI is to have an online resume, but if that’s the only reason then make a website. You’re better off interacting socially or blogging on your own site, which may have a commenting feature. You can use agents to post your blogs to various places for exposure.
etra0 1y ago
LinkedIn posts really read like an alternative reality (which I would not like to be a part of, lol). I cannot take seriously most of what I read over there. The comments are also often toxic, the whole business is... just weird. What's funny as a personal anecdote, I've found more jobs through Twitter (pre-X) than through LinkedIn. Seriously. And I've tried using LinkedIn for job hunt.
- deepsquirrelnet 1y ago
  I’m pretty sure it is an alternate reality, fueled mostly by bot interaction. If you look at the comment history on a post, much of the time it appears to be flocks of bots posting “Very Insightful”, and often identically duplicated comments. The posts themselves are usually strawmen meme-level content trying to fuel the attention economy. I can only figure that there’s a lot of fake accounts trying to score remote jobs from North Korea or something.
  - grues-dinner 1y ago
    Or worse, it's a biobot using the little palette of cringey prebaked replies you can post: "very insightful, thanks for posting", "interesting thought", etc.
- _fat_santa 1y ago
  LinkedIn I found has two very different purposes that often get mixed up. 1. Getting in contact with recruiters. Here you're basically inside the chat window 100% of the time, the only time you leave this is to connect with recruiters. I can speak from experience that this works, and will get you jobs. 2. Marketing. This is where you see the incessant posts from folks building "personal brands" but also folks marketing various products. While I haven't waded into that territory yet, I've spoken to many really good salespeople that have all said that LinkedIn drives leads for them like no other. My takeaway from both of these is: "man LinkedIn is a goofy ass place but it works"
  - parpfish 1y ago
    I like it as a “place that hosts resumes in a standardized format that can be imported to other applications correctly”
senfiaj 1y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9aDtJWW2qs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9aDtJWW2qs
Ozzie_osman 1y ago
LinkedIn borrowed all the growth and engagement tactics from modern social media, becoming more of an engagement product and less of a professional network.
jongjong 1y ago
In a corporation-dominated economy, LinkedIn can't produce anything different... People are limited in what they can say. On LI, you are representing your employer to some extent. You can't just post all your juicy gossip or crazy takes. At best, you can nerd-out in your subject area, but even that's limited as you risk being seen as either a show-off or you may make a mistake one day and be shuned for it. It's kind of high-stakes. It's like social networking but with your employer potentially scrutinizing your posts. On LI, people are always one bad post away from losing their income. You're never going to get fully honest takes in such environment. The only people who can share everything honestly on LI are people who are very predictable and basically don't have any opinion about anything... Not the most exciting kinds of people. Though at least this self-censorship boringness ceiling does make it easier to get eyeballs for your content if you're willing to get risky. It's easier for content to stand out.
fredgrott 1y ago
This reads like a developer trying to make a GUI be less effective....kind of like some maligned GIT client and other dev production tools...
SMAAART 1y ago
It has been like that for quite a while, people talk a lot and say nothing; and get rewarded for it.
jackdawed 1y ago
To combat LinkedIn spam, I exclusively write wizard-themed LinkedIn posts: https://dungeonengineering.com/i-could-have-cursed-him-instead-i-changed-his-life-forever/ https://dungeonengineering.com/i-could-have-cursed-him-inste...
- lloydjones 1y ago
  This is fantastic! Sorry, ahem: #Inspiring #CastTogether
- toddmorey 1y ago
  I did laugh at loud at "They lift others up. Literally, in my case."
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
  Well that made my day. Fantastic satire. To be a nit picky well acktually…one of your articles opens with, “ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was import this, spoken by Guido van Rossum…” I believe ‘import this’ was actually penned by Tim Peters.
- wltr 1y ago
  Well done, sir!
phyzome 1y ago
[flagged]
- motorest 1y ago
  Some of the actual posts on wikipedia are more outlandish than the parody ones. It's entertaining.
- AndrewKemendo 1y ago
  I was not expecting that to be the top response but here we are I’m more interested in what their content actually looks like if it’s that “successful”
- tomhow 1y ago
  Please don't post shallow dismissals like this on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
mehulashah 1y ago
LinkedIn is a long-form billboard not a blogging site. It’s meant for getting attention, not for thought provoking discussion. Or at least, I’ve not really seen honest discourse on any recent social platform. There are plenty of reasons to be on a billboard, but most billboards are boring.
felineflock 1y ago
He simply doesn't know how to use social networks. I get a lot of useful information from LinkedIn because I choose who to follow and block.
yusege 1y ago
Mediocrity is everywhere—on every platform. Even on blogs. Even in scientific publications. But if you’re creating something worth reading, why hesitate to post it on LinkedIn or anywhere else? Valuable content doesn’t lose its quality just because of where it’s published. Dumb comments don’t change that either. I actually think creators who produce valuable work should be just as visible as the mediocre ones, so that over time, the difference becomes clear and mediocrity slowly fades. Sure, the marketing and self-promotion side of things might feel uncomfortable, especially for developers. But in a society where the ignorant are bold, if the thoughtful and knowledgeable don’t show the same courage, that society is doomed. No matter what kind of nonsense you come across, let science and reason be your guide—and keep creating and sharing.
paulcole 1y ago
> I, like many people, find LinkedIn particularly annoying Oh wow, I’m sure this isn’t going to be an evenhanded look at the situation.
apwheele 1y ago
I don't disagree with the fundamentals of the post (most stuff is vapid, not just on LinkedIn but other platforms as well). But I still personally have benefitted the most from LinkedIn for grass roots for my business most recently, https://andrewpwheeler.com/2025/02/20/linkedin-is-the-best-social-media-site/ https://andrewpwheeler.com/2025/02/20/linkedin-is-the-best-s.... It is higher quality referrals than I ever got from X for example.
toddmorey 1y ago
The content that feels so vapid (and unfortunately makes a high percentage of what's on there) are the ones where the post itself is the entire body of work. The Photoshop a quote on the wall types. But there actually IS good content on LinkedIn. It's professionals doing interesting work and posting about it. One user that springs to mind for me does UX for the automotive industry and posts concepts, designs, and experimentations. Its fun and fascinating to watch. And I think it has much more traction to the folks that matter than any post he could do about what his weekly grocery trip taught him about the creative process. Maybe put another way, build a content brand and not a personality brand. You can still get meaningful, career changing traction. Or do what this author does and just set up your own small tent miles outside the fairground because that's what makes your soul happy. I love the indie web.
Oras 1y ago
>There’s some decent stuff on there in amongst all the noise. But, for whatever reason, that good stuff gets lost amongst a million posts of washed out nonsense. That's the problem with all social networks anyway. The algorithm would encourage content that reaches a wider audience, not target niches. Also add the LinkedIn pods (which is a group of people that will like and comment nonsense on posts to boost), same concept of bots in other social networks. That said, LinkedIn is still the only social network where I have real people that I know and have done business with.
JCM9 1y ago
LinkedIn is useful to check someone’s career history. Beyond that it’s mostly a bunch of folks spending time on LinkedIn trying to impress people that aren’t spending their time on LinkedIn. Which ironically drives away the people folks seem to be trying to impress. Spend time there if you wish, but you’re “marketing” to people that mostly aren’t there. The whole “influencer” thing on LinkedIn is mostly full of grifters claiming to be experts at things they’re not really experts at. When someone starts off by saying they’re a “top influencer” on LinkedIn I run the other way, quickly. If you have to market yourself as an influencer then newsflash you’re probably not. If you are, you just are.
mostlystatic 1y ago
I love LinkedIn as a founder/developer. It's become my main social network after the Twitter acquisition. Your experience depends on what show up in your feed. For me, it's mostly developers talking about web performance optimization, small business owners talking about conferences they've been to, people sharing posts or videos they've released... and the occasional post from the local council or someone criticizing Facebook's AI features. Posting on LinkedIn doesn't necessarily mean bullshitting or low-value content. My two most popular posts are about single-page app performance [1] and TCP slow start [2]. And when I talk to people using our product they mention they have team members regularly sharing my posts in their company (but they might not "like" it on LinkedIn). I might not be getting thousands of engagements, but there's little point reaching random people who aren't interested in working on the same problems as me either. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mattzeunert_client-side-rendering-is-often-really-bad-activity-7298307367023112192-sAv2 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mattzeunert_client-side-rende... [2] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mattzeunert_resource-download-time-doesnt-just-depend-activity-7291076645879185410-ZPtx https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mattzeunert_resource-download...
- bravesoul2 1y ago
  If you say this it means you probably have tuned who you connect to and your settings well to avoid spammy content. I'm amazed it is possible.
akk0 1y ago
I wouldn't know what LinkedIn rewards, because they banned me the day after making my account for no stated reason and then rejected my appeal. I just complied with their request to see my passport for the third time earlier today. I suspect I triggered a flag originally verifying my identity because it took me two phones to realize their verification bullshit will never load without Play Services and a third, stock android phone to get through it.
nojs 1y ago
This is how you win on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickcollison https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickcollison > Dynamically communicate prospective opportunities and proactive technologies. Efficiently aggregate interactive materials before state of the art collaboration and idea-sharing. Credibly supply cross-media metrics via leading-edge solutions.
b0a04gl 1y ago
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fragmede 1y ago
is this the right Elliott Smith? https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliott-smith-29707136 https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliott-smith-29707136
Avicebron 1y ago
This post made me open linkedin.. The second thing I saw after I refreshed the feed was a person I don't know without a profile picture (open to work btw) posting "signs of a bad manager".. They have linked a tiktok style video, how fun, let's see, so the video starts with a women in a lab coat. She seems to have a problem, mounting her phone in the car, she starts with roll of tape that she hangs around the mirror, pulls a strip down and sticks her phone back to the tape. Seems like she's a bad manager. Obviously tape doesn't go over the mirror, well she's leveled up her skills in the next few seconds. She installs the brilliantly designed mirror-mount-phone-holder-multi-axis.png (TM). No she's a good manager, she's meeting her employees in the middle, both passenger and driver can pull the phone right next to their face in case they need to see the map. Good managing! Fractional leadership! I do wonder when the next car digs itself into a ditch, whether putting the phone in front of the drivers face was ideal. But hey, I'm just a lay-engineer struggling to form a sentence with an aw shucks look, far from the hallowed halls of what an MBA or fractional CTO could know. This seems emblematic of something...
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > This post made me open linkedin.. > The second thing I saw after I refreshed the feed was a person I don't know The two common failure points for developers using social media are getting triggered at the first instance of content they dislike in the feed and not following sources of content they want to read. Nobody should feel compelled to use any social media if they don’t want or have to. If you actually want to understand what other people see in the platform, though, you have to understand how they use it. Any social media with a feed requires an ability to skim and filter. If you stop and read the obviously low quality content to either hate-read or to get triggered then you won’t make it far on LinkedIn, Twitter, or even Hacker News comments. Second, you have to curate your sources. If you strongly dislike a post then use mechanisms to see less of it. If you want to see more of something then like it. Follow people who produce good content. Once you’ve given the algorithms some signal the content improves to your liking, even though it’s not perfect.
raghava 1y ago
Disaster stemming from the deadly combo of Dunning Kruger effect + network effect + recommendation algorithms floating similar BS up top. Most who post absolute BS on such "professional" forums as a way to gain a larger "network" easily attract similar ones with relatable mediocrity index. The network effect kicks in and mediocrity gets amplified. Everyone thus gets forced to either to act insanely ridiculous or just GTFO to retain whatever little sanity they have left in them. Most corporate jobs are just mediocrity-maxxing absolutely BS jobs. It is only natural that the most popular corporate SM amplifies and promotes BS and mediocrity at scale.
sssilver 1y ago
Semi-related — why don’t we create a service in which people make employment “claims” and other people (their managers/customers) sign these claims with their own keys, so these claims can be cryptographically verified by a third party in a distributed fashion? This way, Linkedins basic premise of being a centralized “CV as a service” would become obsolete, leaving just the social network, which I personally would gladly abandon.
- hahn-kev 1y ago
  If it works you'll have a bunch of people faking it for each other, and if it doesn't then it's no different than anything else.
  - sssilver 1y ago
    How would they fake it? Their own identity claims would need to be cryptographically signed.
    - immibis 1y ago
      Sign up an account with a randomly generated names to be the boss. Sign up other accounts with randomly generated names to be the employees. Have the boss vouch the employees work for him.
- snowwrestler 1y ago
  This is indeed in development although I’m not sure LinkedIn is involved yet. Look up: Learning and Employment Records (LERs)
wohoef 1y ago
Final sentence of this piece is missing a word.
pbreit 1y ago
It doesn’t seem that bad to me. Certainly not “toxic”. A lot of it is quite relevant to my industry. Perhaps because I am selective with who I link (only people I have worked with and could vouch for)).
toolslive 1y ago
What bothers me most is how "fake" it all is. I've seen companies upholding an image of success while they are scraping by and leave a wake of unpaid invoices. Companies with fake job posts that keep on getting recycled (clicking "report this job" does not help at all) aso aso. It's sort of a parallel universe where everything is nice and dandy... sort of a Barbie universe.
- danparsonson 1y ago
  > I've seen companies upholding an image of success while they are scraping by and leave a wake of unpaid invoices. Devil's advocate: what else are they going to say? They're trying to land new business so they can pay those invoices. "We're really struggling and desperately need your money now!" is unlikely to help...
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
This thread is headed by defensive comments alleging that they have benefitted financially from LinkedIn. These comments only strengthen the premise of the OP that "toxic mediocrity" is rewarded. It is like a submission that is critical of multi-level marketing that generates a stream of defensive comments from marketers alleging that MLM "is responsible for millions of dollars in revenue". Of course it is, but that is not why the author of the submission is bothered by it. Fortunately companies are comprised of more than just marketing departments. For many folks, the appeal of their employer, their job and their work is found in those other departments. IMHO. The OP is not trying to engage in LinkedIn marketing. He is complaining about being on the receiving end of self-made internet marketers. It would be one thing if the OP claimed "LinkedIn marketing is not effective". The OP does not do that. He claims LinkedIn marketing is "annoying". This thread (so far) contains zero replies rebutting that claim. Who is the company behind all this toxic, mediocre marketing and data collection about LinkedIn members to produce more internet advertising revenue, among other things. According to HN commenters, it's the "cool guys"^1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866666 That is but one example of many, many HN comments going back years (part of an ongoing HN meme) presuming that Microsoft has "changed" (I could choose any of them to illustrate, but this one has a nice ID number with lots of sixes) It's true. Microsoft has changed. It is even worse than it used to be when it was considered very bad HN commenters trying defend Microsoft may attempt to divert attention away from LinkedIn and blame self-marketers, i.e., computer users. That would be nothing new. But both the OP and the HN title specifically identify LinkedIn. The problem is the so-called "tech" company that acts as an unnecessary and irresponsible intermediary, not the www users they usurp and target for profit.
- zelphirkalt 1y ago
  Unfortunately, however, people at many companies, who are responsible for hiring people, are running around on LinkedIn and believe things of value being communicated there, living this strange parallel world or bubble of self-marketers and make believe that is LinkedIn, becoming part of it themselves with their mediocrity. The signal of excellence entirely drowns in a stream of mediocrity on LinkedIn.
btbytes 1y ago
For many years I went without looking at LinkedIn at all. I even deleted my LinkedIn account for couple of years in mid '10s. I have found a lot of value in LinkedIn recently after I started interacting with news, posts, and people that have something interesting to say. It is as if you tell the algorithm what you like, it will show more things like that. I also proactively flag things I don't like to see. That also helps a lot in improving my feed, I assume. Th "updates" feed with all the opentowork, hiring, promotions doesn't bother me much. it has it's uses, and its easy to just eyeball and move on. What I don't understand is the grandstanding about how LinkedIn and its users are all dumb. You can always timebox your interactions with LinkedIn and ignore it rest of the time if you cannot afford to NOT have a LinkedIn account. Oh! and learn to use the notification settings. Turn off email alerts etc.,
boje 1y ago
Putting aside all logical arguments for and against Linkedin and other social media, when I do force myself to log in to my account, I find myself peering into the abyss of thousands upon thousands of people trying to game the system and "advance their careers", which they presumably do well. To me, it is the essence of the rat race that I try my best to ignore in my daily life while I try to balance time between my hobbies and work. I know fully well that the rat race takes an interest in me too, but it is so, so incredibly devastating to me that so many people to engage in hours upon hours, days upon days of "grinding", smooth-talking and evangelizing just to sell what essentially amounts to metaphorical snake oil and rake in as much cash and favors as possible. People seem to either support and praise these acts to high heavens, or simply excuse it. They do it because "that's just how the world works" and "that's just how people and businesses are", and they're right. I feel like the answer the world gives me about my discontentment is "There's more to life than the rat race, idiot, but you better come up on top of the rat race or else you'll be a poor, irrelevant loser! It's what life is about!" - There is perhaps some truth to this statement. After all, grand structures and monuments are not built by people who "just want to have a quiet, peaceful life". It's even more true now that it's quickly becoming a de-facto prerequisite to having a career in the first place. My coping mechanism has been to shut myself off of all noise and simply focus on what matters to me and what matters most for my continued sustenance. One of the measures has been to basically access my Linkedin account only a few times a year, mostly to accept new connection requests. It has worked reasonably well, I'd say. Maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot by not having an entire large-double-digit-number-network of people that can hand me a job if and when I get booted, but it's a risk I'm willing to take for my mental health.
- gwbas1c 1y ago
  > I find myself peering into the abyss of thousands upon thousands of people trying to game the system and "advance their careers", which they presumably do well. I find LinkedIn is a career honeypot at best, and a dead-end at worst. I put as little time as possible into it; I stay on it "just enough" that recruiters can contact me, but otherwise I don't waste my time with it.
- Tade0 1y ago
  A while ago I had a recruiter try to, ahem, coach me on my CV, which apparently had too few details (apparently still enough to have this interview, but the irony was lost on her) and on my LinkedIn profile, which wasn't up to date and also had few details (deliberately BTW, as I was getting spam). My gut feeling is that while there certainly are people who benefited from using LinkedIn, but for the majority it's just a vessel for being terminally online and a waste of time.
jvorick 1y ago
Totally agree that LinkedIn rewards toxic mediocrity, but do believe there are ways to avoid those parts of the platforms. For example, stop following toxically mediocre connections. LinkedIn will show you things based on what you follow/like/engage with. In my experience, there's troves of real operators posting genuine and helpful advice.
rglover 1y ago
One of the most obnoxious things about LinkedIn are the games that people play. Fake engagement over a series of my posts only to drop their pitch in my messages. That, and it's so rare to find real content on the site that isn't just some mimetic rehash of the same thing other people are saying. Frankly, it's a very ominous network to interact with—it's very unsettling to see how quickly and deeply people have adopted a performative mask that's uniquely a "LinkedIn character." Endless droves of "think pieces" from people you can tell have never really been challenged in their field, have limited experience, and insist that they are the expert missing from your sheathe. The saddest part is that the mediocrity will only ever increase, not decrease, in a world that rewards mediocrity and punishes excellence.
rand17 1y ago
I don't need a reward from a beggar.
ChiMan 1y ago
Seems like a market has emerged for a LinkedIn-like service that does everything LinkedIn does, minus the public posts. Resumes and direct messages only.
joshdavham 1y ago
If you find reading posts on LinkedIn as annoying as I do, there’s actually a nice solution that will literally wipe your feed blank: 1) Change your preferred feed view to “Most Recent Posts” : https://www.linkedin.com/mypreferences/m/settings/preferred-view https://www.linkedin.com/mypreferences/m/settings/preferred-... 2) Unfollow all of your connections. You’ll stay connected but won’t see their annoying posts anymore. …and there you have it! Focused peace and zen on an otherwise excruciating website.
- modeless 1y ago
  Or just don't visit your feed?
  - joshdavham 1y ago
    I was using LinkedIn a couple months ago to look for jobs and the problem was that the feed was really hard to avoid and kept sucking me into wasting my time. When I did the above two things, it completely nerfed my feed so that I could just focus on jobs.
  - bravesoul2 1y ago
    Use an ad blocker!
- 0x0000000 1y ago
  > Unfollow all of your connections I hate that this is the only option available. I want to follow my connections, for their own posts, if any. What I don't want is to see everything they like, share, and comment on -- but LinkedIn won't let you turn that part off.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
WiggleGuy 1y ago
I have a user script that just hides the LinkedIn feed. It's quite blissful.
slowhadoken 1y ago
Social media rewards mediocrity, LinkedIn is just the most button down.
0898 1y ago
Unlikely as it sounds, being normal is a strategy that works on LinkedIn. The quality bar is very low. People post so much fluff and AI thought leadership that the algorithm has recently started rejecting it, and LinkedIn essentially ran out of content. For the past couple of months it's been showing people posts from two or three weeks ago due to the lack of suitable material. What I've found is that it's surprisingly easy to stand out and build an audience if you just post honestly and thoughtfully about the interesting little puzzles or dilemmas you face during your workday. Some posts of mine that have hit it off: > Why is it hard to find clothes for men? > Why do people think it's weird when I drink milk on Zoom? > Should I post on X, or do people still frown on it? Try posting about what you don't know, rather than what you do. People like that more.
- bravesoul2 1y ago
  That's too normal for me it makes LinkedIn sound like Facebook. If it were "why I didnt choose Kubernetes for my current project" then maybe.
- ambicapter 1y ago
  Hah, I would actually like to know why finding clothes for men is so hard.
_swfb 1y ago
To paraphrase Hunter Thompson: we will never know for sure if there's a heaven or hell, but I do know for sure that if there is a hell then it's being stuck having to read through LinkedIn for eternity. LinkedIn is easily the worst "social media" on the internet that I've been on. So much shit is "inspiration porn" for anecdotes that clearly never actually happened so that the person can try and brand themselves as some kind "corporate influencer". By itself this wouldn't bother me, except you pretty much have to have a LinkedIn now. I generally think it's actually really important to call out bullshit, even stuff that's seemingly harmless (for reasons that are probably far beyond the scope of this post), but I don't respond to comments on LinkedIn anymore, because it's effectively a resume and I don't want these kind of opinions to influence hiring decisions. And this makes me feel a bit conflicted, and it has led to a direct resentment of the entire platform. I kind of wish Microsoft would limit LinkedIn to purely resume stuff.
- randcraw 1y ago
  LinkedIn seems like the natural home (origin?) of those oh-so-inane "Motivator" management posters that were so popular in the 1990s. Now if only there were also an outlet there for the "Demotivator" posters that followed. THOSE I liked.
  - _swfb 1y ago
    Yeah, it's horrible; I deleted my Facebook a decade ago because I hated what social media interaction was becoming and it was doing a number on my mental health. I deleted my old Twitter a few days ago, and I haven't done anything on Bluesky in months and I never used it much. The only social media I use regularly now is HN and SomethingAwful. I would so love to just delete my LinkedIn, but you can't do that now. A lot of job applications require you give your LinkedIn. So I am stuck logging in occasionally. It's dystopian.
zem 1y ago
I think the key point is this one 8<------- What is frustrating though is that unless you’re being hired by someone else who posts this way I am strongly convinced this behavior doesn’t work in your favor. 8<------- in other words, linked in the resume hosting and career networking site doesn't reward the behaviour, linked in the random social network that happens to be hosted on the same site does. just ignore the latter.
bluedino 1y ago
LinkedIn is decent for jobs/searching/applying. That's all I really find it useful for. Things I don't find it useful for: Salespeople trying to sell me some enterprise product when I don't have anything to do with selection/purchasing those items. Everything from IP phones to enterprise storage to whatever SaSS is hot Low-effort recruiter spam. Jobs I'm not interested in, qualified for, over-qualified for, want me to go into the office but it's 2 hours away, "I am impressed by your profile...." Former co-workers posting about how much they learned at some conference or seminar or the pizza part for Jerry who finally retired Cheatsheet/tutorial spam since my job is developer/linux adjacent. "Freshers" not in my network, spamming looking for jobs. Typical motivational/marketing stuff from Seth Godin and wannabe influencers. Awww cute videos with a baby or small animal.
- Tier2Capital 1y ago
  that sounds a bit rough on graduates. we all start from the bottom and some people are not born with well connected parents or schools with wide networks. I actually think linkedin is a good way to pay it forward (although NOT for low effort graduates who send the same template spam message to everybody)
- glitchcrab 1y ago
  A really good way of weeding out the recruiter spam is to change your first name to an emoji (I use the waving hand) and then put first name and last name in the last name field. That way when a DM opens with 'hello %waving hand emoji%' you know it's just scripted bulk crap.
  - stalfosknight 1y ago
    Good idea! Thank you
  - HPMOR 1y ago
    LLMs have solved this at scale. Really you're just filtering for more technologically sophisticated recruiters at volume.
flkiwi 1y ago
I'm sure someone else has said this, but Corporate America (I cannot speak to Corporate $AnywhereElse with any depth) and large parts of the entrepreneur ecosystem reward mediocrity. In this sense, LinkedIn is just a symptom of a larger disease.
- bravesoul2 1y ago
  They also hustle theatre. For every startup job mentioning role impact there is one that doesn't but tries hard to get across how much of Saturday and Sunday you should be working to be consider moral enough to work for them. Then on LI pictures of staff on 24h+ working stints that might kill them.
ozim 1y ago
Oh so it is OK to post mediocre stuff on your own blog where no one reads. But trying to show it to people is not. I like „content guardians” everywhere saying „oh this does not belong to HN”, „oh this doesn’t belong to linked in. Fuck that - let people do what they want and express themselves even if it is mediocre shoveling of ideas
- spauldo 1y ago
  I hate when people tell me I can't piss in the street. "Go to a bathroom," they say. "That's not appropriate here." Screw that, my junk is rated E for Everybody. /s
wkat4242 1y ago
LinkedIn also rewards absolutely sickening PR spamming. All the corporate feelgood PR bullshit that people willingly repost, it makes me sick to my stomach. People must have no spine or self-worth to be reposting all their employer's hot air like that. But yeah Microsoft is all about mediocrity. Their game is becoming the biggest common denominator, not the best.
bryanrasmussen 1y ago
toxic mediocrity is clever, on the other not sure if it is clever enough that he has to describe coming up with the phrase twice. >I log in and see constant posting that I can only describe as toxic mediocrity four paragraphs later >The vast majority of it falls into a category I would describe as Toxic Mediocrity.
0xbadcafebee 1y ago
> Nothing you post there is going to change your career. I've gotten two good jobs from posting on LinkedIn. Mutual connections see your posts, and recruiters can find and contact you. When you list it on your resume, people do look at it. So yes it "changes" your career, by helping you get jobs. Yeah it's full of drivel. All social media is full of drivel. Stop paging through the drivel and use it as a tool. Collect good connections, keep up with old colleagues, network. That's what it's for.
btbuildem 1y ago
I think it's a perfect mirror of the corporate world, which in itself rewards and thrives on mediocrity. Mediocrity is safe and predictable. Sure, let's hear the counter-example of the noble startup, taking massive risks to build The Coolest Thing. Like the enthusiastic wiggly sperms, one in a million succeeds -- and the consequences of initial success are to grow mediocre over time. LinkedIn is marketing slop, aimed at the lowest common denominator, because that's the most numerous denomination of the walking wallet. Of course it is saturated with family friendly, inoffensive, endless streams of softcore corporate propaganda.
ramijames 1y ago
LinkedIn rewards mediocrity in the same way that the rest of the world does. It does so for the exact same reason: good networking is more often than not more important than being exceptional.
ngcazz 1y ago
I lurk LinkedIn for this guy's posts only https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-cheng-991849b6 https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-cheng-991849b6
commenter8 1y ago
The nice thing about LinkedIn posts is that it’s clear that everything is an ad. Reddit, Facebook, etc started with people just posting to communicate and socialize, then were (mostly) taken over by ads / influencers pretending. With LinkedIn there’s no pretense and no wheat to sift from the chaff. It’s just marketers marketing to each other. If that’s useful you can join a mutual promotion group and auto-comment on each others’ posts without damaging anything of value. If not you can stay away and completely ignore any posts when you come back for an occasional job search.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
janalsncm 1y ago
I see zero value in the LinkedIn feed. That’s ok, just ignore it. In the groups I’ve joined (naively thinking I’d learn something useful) it’s mostly infographics explaining things I already know or engagement bait “polls”. I update my job when necessary, and from time to time a recruiter sends me a decent job posting.
bilater 1y ago
I try not to fall into posting generic content. Instead, I focus on sharing real things I’ve built or done, hoping they’re actually useful for someone. For example, my last post was about a weekend app I put together, and I always try to include a link to the app or a github repo so people can try it out for themselves. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/biltahir_sometimes-i-get-into-a-rut-and-one-of-the-activity-7362588240186413056-PWbk?utm_source=share https://www.linkedin.com/posts/biltahir_sometimes-i-get-into...
DebtDeflation 1y ago
As a recently laid off tech worker, I was excited to have a recruiter contact me regarding what seemed like a dream job. After passing an initial phone screen, a face to face interview was scheduled. I spent several days preparing. On the day of the interview, I took the train into the city and had a 4 or 5 block walk to the new company's office. While walking, I noticed a scraggly dog laying in the alley. I was pressed for time, but stopped to get some food and water to give to the dog. He was very appreciative, barked playfully, and licked my face. I continued on my way. When I got to the office, I signed in, took the elevator to the 7th floor, and opened the door. Imagine my shock, the dog was the interviewer. <-- This is the kind of nonsense I generally see posted on LinkedIn, perhaps only slightly exaggerated.
Ms-J 1y ago
Linkedin is a dumpster fire of spam and aggressive, low intelligence/high effort marketing tactics. I would never use their site for anything, though I've seen coworkers apply for jobs using it. Personally I've found the other nonsocial platforms and email to be the best for getting a high paying position.
denkmoon 1y ago
If you don't like linkedin just don't use it. It's that easy. Hasn't hurt me so far.
alexchantavy 1y ago
> If writing online matters to you, you’re probably better off starting a blog and building things there. You’ll get less views and less engagement but there’s less temptation to post nonsense just for likes. You’re going to have a harder time getting people to stick around and read what you’re writing but that additional pressure raises the bar. Telling people to “raise the bar”, and then suggesting they should aim for less engagement just sounds strange. Who decides where the bar is, and why should hitting it require fewer people to see what you made? I agree that a lot of LinkedIn content is cookie-cutter garbage, but advising others to invest serious effort into thoughtful writing with the expectation of no reach feels deeply unhelpful. Instead, you could encourage others to write content on LinkedIn that sounds less "what X taught me about B2B sales" and improve the culture of "toxic mediocrity".

473 points by smitec 1y ago

PaulHoule 1y ago

Why Mastodon is so much better: https://mas.to/@skeletor https://mas.to/@skeletor

cpursley 1y ago
My customers and market are not in these obscure channels, they are on LinkedIn (and Facebook). None are on reddit or x.

nottorp 1y ago

Random bit of info: I cannot log in to Linkedin any more on my default browser, which is Firefox with the built in privacy protections on and uBlock Origin (that one on the default settings). The front page redirects me to the cookie dialog which goes to the front page which goes to the cookie dialog again ad infinitum. I suppose it would work if i accepted, but they shouldn't even ask me for the cookies absolutely required for the site to function so I'm viewing the rest as something optional that I should deny.

kornas1 1y ago

[dead]

shark1 1y ago

My Linkedin feed is very bad. I am ok in reading about interesting companies milestones or my contacts sharing opportunities or work related opinions. What I get is endless self-promotion and corporate bullshit. A place where everybody is the opposite of authentic, acting weirdly and cringe as they were being watched by co-workers and possible recruiters (and actually they are).

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

joshcanhelp 1y ago

I don’t love spending time on LinkedIn but I do love that you know what you’re going to get when you go there. There’s not some fake underlaying goal like “keeping people connected.” You’re there to promote yourself and your company, find a job, or hire a person. If you’re not doing any of those things you can just not go there and you won’t miss a thing. If you need a job after 2 years, get back in there, play the game, then log off when you’re done. IMHO it’s about as honest as a large online social network can get.

cranberryturkey 1y ago

[flagged]

incone123 1y ago
Might be an effect of your location, field and 3rd order connections. Also India is a big place with a lot of people in or looking for white collar jobs. Granted so is China so I guess the difference is LinkedIn is not so popular in China.
- dep_b 1y ago
  They shot it down a while ago, but it was always something separated from the main LinkedIn population I think.
ycombinete 1y ago
India probably represents the largest “homogenous” block of the English speaking world. I think the internet is coming to reflect that more and more as it develops and more of the population comes online. Edit: apparently it’s 2nd in number of English speakers to the USA.
- cranberryturkey 1y ago
  [flagged]
Disposal8433 1y ago
0 indians for me. I only see French people because I'm French. And I also see only my friends because I'm not in a following frenzy.
- seattle_spring 1y ago
  > because I'm not in a following frenzy. I sure with that affected my feed. I'm only connected to people I've met in person, and have never followed anyone beyond that ever, yet my feed is chock full of "Top INfluencer voices"/"you might be interested in ..."

cheschire 1y ago

I wish LinkedIn wasn’t seen as a valid background check tool. Now that we have HR going whole hog on AI processing of job applications, up to and including the first round interview, can we please get rid of LinkedIn? Instead, I would much rather see job applications come in three parts. A cover letter, a human resume overview page, and then the deeper multi page CV that is primarily for AI processing.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
That makes a lot of sense, but the inevitable result is an AI arms race, with AI tools for writing these, feeding AI tools for reading them. I really feel as if I retired at the best time possible.
reactordev 1y ago
This is precisely why I deleted my LinkedIn profile all together. While it's nice to have a cover letter. I've never included one myself, just a beefier resume with a strong opening statement. I'll read a cover letter if you send one but to me it's not required. Just your resume and your person is all that I need. Anything more is just pandering to indecision and wasteful spend.
mr_toad 1y ago
I don’t think anyone bothers to read cover letters anymore. Recruiters don’t even seem to read resumes very closely, judging by the number of times I’ve been asked questions that are literally in the first paragraph of my resume.

nickfromseattle 1y ago

This reads like it was written by a developer 'who doesn't get marketing'. > Nothing you post there is going to change your career. I can attribute millions of dollars in revenue to LinkedIn, as can a lot of my 'LinkedIn friends' > Doing work that matters might. This is a pre-requisite for winning on LinkedIn. The kind of content that performs best are strong opinions informed by actual expertise. > Go for depth over frequency. Unfortunately that's not the way marketing works. 95% of your audience is not 'in-market' and ready to buy when they see your content. Sometime over the next 3-5 years they may move into a buying lifecycle, and they are much more likely to trust you, and therefore buy from you, if they've seen your content 1,000x vs a couple of long reads. > If writing online matters to you, you’re probably better off starting a blog and building things there. Your long form, in-depth content lives on your blog, and your LinkedIn profile should act as a funnel, moving people from newsfeed --> your profile --> the most important piece of content you want them to read. From there, you can capture their email to touch them on another channel (inbox), push them to your YouTube / Twitter / community, etc. With that said, while LinkedIn is responsible for a significant % of my total revenue, it's also responsible for a significant % of my anxiety. Building in public invites folks to publicly blast you if they don't agree with your ideas. 'Getting ratio'd' happens. LinkedIn eventually becomes a mentally exhausting slog. But as a career driven individual the upside has been very high and I think the trade off was worth it. I would do it again knowing everything I know now.

baq 1y ago
Are you an employer or an employee?
zwnow 1y ago
LinkedIn is basically a marketplace for boomers. Facebook but for jobs pretty much. Im sorry to hear u think this highly of it, as its just a gathering of pretentious people.
- fnord77 1y ago
  where are the non-boomers looking for jobs these days?

user568439 1y ago

Full of people sucking each other BS. And then recruiters unable to understand the most basics of a profile. Nevertheless I update my own from time to time, it can still be useful if you navigate through the garbage. Also it helps me to cross-check a bit some people if they have a contact that you both know and you trust. More than once I encountered people with 100% fake profile and fake work history. Maybe LinkedIn should only allow to add that you worked somewhere doing something with some kind of verification process.

seattle_spring 1y ago
I've lost count how many first-line engineering managers I've actively worked alongside change their LinkedIn title to "Engineering Leader" or something like that. They'll be a manager of 6 ICs in Org X, which itself is comprised of 400 people, but on their profile they'll put "leading Org X". It's some of the clearest evidence I've seen that LinkedIn is toxic sludge.

lloydjones 1y ago

Exactly — depth is the new authenticity . #Reflecting #ThoughtLeader

lloydjones 1y ago
Damn — HN strips emojis, putting my pastiche in danger of looking sincere
- bootsmann 1y ago
  I think the hashtags save you from looking pretentious
  - lloydjones 1y ago
    In a sea of down to earth people, strive to stand out with pretentiousness #differentiate

HPsquared 1y ago

Mediocrity can be measured.

antihipocrat 1y ago

There is no benefit to be gained from disagreement or debate. Any such discourse looks problematic to a potential employer.

RA_Fisher 1y ago
True, aside from the exceptional employers that’ll actually provide a good career.
chiefalchemist 1y ago
Agreed. The level of mediocrity and group-think on LI is freighting. It’s no wonder so many companies / brands struggle. Daily I see an OP based on myth / incomplete ideas (read: ultimately the originator is sharing bad advice)and then 95% of the replies to that mindlessly agree. The flaws are often obvious, and no one notices.
- trinix912 1y ago
  It probably gets that way because nobody wants to be the one to argue back, as it puts them in a bad light. So what's left are cheap platitudes and confirmations.
  - chiefalchemist 1y ago
    I understand the unwillingness to argue. But we’re talking foundational flaws in the advice being offered. Even passive aggressive “Are you sure about… ?” Would be 10x better than shameless group-think.
bravesoul2 1y ago
Unless its a safe enough disagreement. Lynching on an overconfident but incorrect post for example. As long as correcting it makes you look smart, hard working, a leader.

WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago

It reflects society, everything rewards mediocrity and deception

TrackerFF 1y ago

r/LinkedInLunatics for the best of hits.

Shacklz 1y ago

> if they've seen your content 1,000x vs a couple of long reads. [..] From there, you can capture their email to touch them on another channel (inbox), push them to your YouTube / Twitter / community, etc. The endless game of catching people's attention. Focus on actual value creation? Nah, let's just mind-hack everyone into buying the product. It works, it's obviously a game worth billions, but I find it deeply depressing.

deleted 1y ago
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inopinatus 1y ago
It took a while for their sector to become a mainstream byword for snake oil, but when it did, the SEO touts switched to peddling "content marketing" services instead. Not surprising that the internet's most insipid forum remains their favourite target-rich environment.
nathanaldensr 1y ago
It is depressing. There's nothing spiritual in it--nothing grander than just base greed and psychological manipulation.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  To me what is _spiritually_disturbing (in the sense that it hurts my spirit) is the fact that I think that such behaviour is going to keep on happen and the world would get EVEN more polarized, less trustworthy overall. Greed and psychological manipulation to me feels like they will always continue and I am a pessimist in that sense. There is good, and then there is greed and greed creates psychological manipulation in most cases. The most fundamental issues in our society stems from greed imo and this cycle will perpetuate like a cancer. Greed is cancerous. I don't know if I even can bring a change in this greedy world at a scale which can matter.
simianwords 1y ago
Convincing people to buy your product _is_ value creation.

democracy 1y ago

LinkedIn is a vanity fair, and I'm not sure why it even matters in 2025 — it's just a job board when you need it.

__loam 1y ago
LinkedIn is a great place to talk to recruiters still. If you're not picky about where you work, you can find a job pretty fast by working with recruiters directly and skipping the cold apply.
giantg2 1y ago
It's not even a good job board anymore because it's filled with junk and evergreen postings.
- hn8726 1y ago
  Can't agree. While there are some evergreen postings, LinkedIn job applications still landed me a couple of interviews (and much more compared to cold applying on the company website). And then there's recruiters reaching out which landed me even more interviews + my current - genuinely great - job.
  - giantg2 1y ago
    The recruiters reaching out to me are all for terrible companies or for non-remote roles in other areas of the country. It seems Glassdoor and others have better job boards than LinkedIn.
bgribble 1y ago
How else are you going to liquidity-stalk that company you left with some options or even shares? I take my first cup of coffee with a little tea-leaf reading based on the activity of the CEO and my former coworkers. If you ever see more than 5 connections reacting/liking the same thing you know that HR or marketing sent out an email about it.

hubraumhugo 1y ago

[deleted]

Disposal8433 1y ago
> My feed is mostly AI-generated slop I see zero slop on my feed. Maybe because I only follow friends and former coworkers that I liked. How many people are you following?
nicksbg 1y ago
The posts section always basically goes like: We did X but then what surprised us with X is something we did not see coming.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

5350-uiop-1130 1y ago

linkedin is training data for tuning the corpo-speak, sycophancy and sociopathy tokens on microsofts AI models

varispeed 1y ago

LinkedIn isn’t a professional network, it’s a slave auction with a newsfeed. Workers line up to show their teeth - “failure is just learning in disguise”, “kindness is leadership”, all that drivel - while hoping to be picked by a master who won’t beat them too hard. The algorithm is the overseer. It doesn’t want insight, it wants compliance: claps, congratulations, and endless oatmeal platitudes that prove you’ll play the game. That’s why your feed is full of garbage. The mediocrity isn’t a flaw, it’s the commodity being traded. Anyone looking for substance is in the wrong marketplace. LinkedIn is about teaching people how to smile wider while the chain gets tighter.

enemyz0r 1y ago
You manage to see through the bs

adidoit 1y ago

Because LinkedIn makes your employment front and center it encourages status games . The way to understand LinkedIn is no one is actually trying to engage in good faith. Everyone is seeking status points in a game they're playing. And that status depends on their endowment (people they know, institutions they are part of) Status conferred from their boss, their peers, their underlings, people in similar roles - It's why LinkedIn feels like a lot of thought-leadering, because the only way to get status is to post something that gets likes within the status game you are playing Forums like this one and even to some extent Twitter are more evolutionary in that you will likely see higher quality ideas get conferred status. I use LinkedIn (getting traction for my product). I don't enjoy it but I do understand the game being played.

lloydjones 1y ago
Yes — I (as somebody who posts to promote my startup) wonder what the true goal is sometimes, as it’s ambiguous. Certainly target customers and industry peers, but probably recruiters and VCs too. My interpretation of how a very experienced recruiter once explained it to me is: It’s “public life” online, and your public persona (in a “The Fall of Public Man” sense), and if you have no presence or a minimal one, when the time comes that you NEED attention (job seeking; shilling your business) you won’t have any listeners due to the algorithm. Therefore one must constantly be telling the LI gods that they are an active user by posting perfunctory mediocrity. It’s algorithm-gaming and cosplaying as a table-stakes activity for being “seen” or acknowledged to exist.
- adidoit 1y ago
  You nailed it. And of course the platform solving for engagement then enshittifies but we have no alternative... back to posting on LinkedIn I guess..
fred_is_fred 1y ago
"it encourages status games". I think most social media does this. Read a Facebook feed and everyone is either on a beach, had a baby, or got promoted. Nobody is home sick or doing laundry or dealing with a terrible boss.

YetAnotherNick 1y ago

Ironically, this post and comments here feels like it could be on Linkedin. Catchy title with low effort content. Nowhere in the blog he answers this question and the comments here just go with the title and common hate against Linkedin and "owned by Microsoft" as author calls it.

anonreeeeplor 1y ago

[dead]

merksittich 1y ago

What annoys me the most in my LinkedIn feed is low-effort visual AI slop, in particular based on fads such as the bland 4o comic style with text bubbles. As a "visual animal", I find it very hard to tune out this kind of noise. I consequently try to hide such content from my feed, but the LinkedIn algorithm will not budge. I did an Ask HN a while ago trying to find browser add-ons which will hide (or blur) such images (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43833961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43833961), which turned out fruitless.

tornikeo 1y ago

Use the best tool for the job. I look at LinkedIn as a purpose-built tool for marketing my brand (my dev experience). It works well. Just like any tool LinkedIn has some problems. But it is the best in that niche.

lbyaus 1y ago

Couldn't agree more

adidoit 1y ago

1. Self-Aggrandizement-as-a-Service 2. Tied to corporate status games 3. Delivered as an algorithmic feed I'm obviously being provocative but those are the dynamics

lazarus01 1y ago

I'm a data scientist and ml engineer, used to be in tech sales before transitioning to a technical role. I've spent most of my adult life using using linkedin for business development and job search. What people don't realize, it's the worlds most accurate business database. Highly effective for networking, where you can see peoples interests and interaction and match up with like minded peers and contemporaries. I agree that the user generated content is indeed mediocre. When it comes to posting content, I subscribe to Cal Newport's theory, if you produce something that is valuable and rare, people will find you. People spending their time posting large amounts of content are not creating anything valuable or rare.

y42 1y ago

He as point. And it's probably annyoing because: One wants to post "substantial content" and being acknowledge, but one cannot rise against this "flood" of nonsense. Question is: What can you do? We can't stop this trend. People are looking for "reach". And you can achieve that using differet approaches. What we experience at LinkedIn is the simplest approach: Spam the system with your AI generated "nonsense" posts, add a selfie and people will follow. It's not even bad content, it's positive content, emotional content, touching content. But first it's way easier to create than writing long technical articles or analysis. And seconds it's easiere to consume - people want short messages. And it's not only LinkedIN, it's everywhere. Medium, Facebook, you name it. Sad for everyone trying to communicatae more than just "calendar mottos". But true.

sometimes_all 1y ago

> I log in and see constant posting that I can only describe as toxic mediocrity. A seemingly endless stream of posts that are over fluffed, over produced and ultimately say nothing. It took me approximately 5 minutes to install uBlock Origin and create a filter that removes the feed. No more toxic mediocrity to see because there are no posts to see. It makes Linkedin a lot more bearable for me.

redeyedtreefrog 1y ago
ah cool great idea, I've now done the same www.linkedin.com##[aria-label="Main Feed"]

mglvsky 1y ago

Another small annoying thing in LinkedIn are posts with different fonts. They look so lame, that I have "banner blindness" for such posts Edit: grammar

wchandler 1y ago

I found it best to stay Linked-Out.

Havoc 1y ago

People read linkedin? Everyone I know just use it as a glorified Rolodex

senko 1y ago

The mediocrity (and "hacks" like LinkedIn broetry[0]) make it super-easy to stand out just by talking plainly about interesting stuff! I have a (subjectively) high (self-imposed) bar for posting on my blog, but my bar is much lower for LinkedIn. I also have a much larger audience there. I sometimes turn the LI posts I'm really happy with into blog articles, so they also serve as a kind of preprint for me. Basically, I use it like I'd use Twitter if it still existed and allowed for somewhat longer posts, and BlueSky if it had any users. [0] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/why-are-these-posts-taking-over-your-linkedin-feed-because https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/why-are-these-p...

nis0s 1y ago

The only reason to have a LI is to have an online resume, but if that’s the only reason then make a website. You’re better off interacting socially or blogging on your own site, which may have a commenting feature. You can use agents to post your blogs to various places for exposure.

etra0 1y ago

LinkedIn posts really read like an alternative reality (which I would not like to be a part of, lol). I cannot take seriously most of what I read over there. The comments are also often toxic, the whole business is... just weird. What's funny as a personal anecdote, I've found more jobs through Twitter (pre-X) than through LinkedIn. Seriously. And I've tried using LinkedIn for job hunt.

deepsquirrelnet 1y ago
I’m pretty sure it is an alternate reality, fueled mostly by bot interaction. If you look at the comment history on a post, much of the time it appears to be flocks of bots posting “Very Insightful”, and often identically duplicated comments. The posts themselves are usually strawmen meme-level content trying to fuel the attention economy. I can only figure that there’s a lot of fake accounts trying to score remote jobs from North Korea or something.
- grues-dinner 1y ago
  Or worse, it's a biobot using the little palette of cringey prebaked replies you can post: "very insightful, thanks for posting", "interesting thought", etc.
_fat_santa 1y ago
LinkedIn I found has two very different purposes that often get mixed up. 1. Getting in contact with recruiters. Here you're basically inside the chat window 100% of the time, the only time you leave this is to connect with recruiters. I can speak from experience that this works, and will get you jobs. 2. Marketing. This is where you see the incessant posts from folks building "personal brands" but also folks marketing various products. While I haven't waded into that territory yet, I've spoken to many really good salespeople that have all said that LinkedIn drives leads for them like no other. My takeaway from both of these is: "man LinkedIn is a goofy ass place but it works"
- parpfish 1y ago
  I like it as a “place that hosts resumes in a standardized format that can be imported to other applications correctly”

senfiaj 1y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9aDtJWW2qs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9aDtJWW2qs

Ozzie_osman 1y ago

LinkedIn borrowed all the growth and engagement tactics from modern social media, becoming more of an engagement product and less of a professional network.

jongjong 1y ago

In a corporation-dominated economy, LinkedIn can't produce anything different... People are limited in what they can say. On LI, you are representing your employer to some extent. You can't just post all your juicy gossip or crazy takes. At best, you can nerd-out in your subject area, but even that's limited as you risk being seen as either a show-off or you may make a mistake one day and be shuned for it. It's kind of high-stakes. It's like social networking but with your employer potentially scrutinizing your posts. On LI, people are always one bad post away from losing their income. You're never going to get fully honest takes in such environment. The only people who can share everything honestly on LI are people who are very predictable and basically don't have any opinion about anything... Not the most exciting kinds of people. Though at least this self-censorship boringness ceiling does make it easier to get eyeballs for your content if you're willing to get risky. It's easier for content to stand out.

fredgrott 1y ago

This reads like a developer trying to make a GUI be less effective....kind of like some maligned GIT client and other dev production tools...

SMAAART 1y ago

It has been like that for quite a while, people talk a lot and say nothing; and get rewarded for it.

jackdawed 1y ago

To combat LinkedIn spam, I exclusively write wizard-themed LinkedIn posts: https://dungeonengineering.com/i-could-have-cursed-him-instead-i-changed-his-life-forever/ https://dungeonengineering.com/i-could-have-cursed-him-inste...

lloydjones 1y ago
This is fantastic! Sorry, ahem: #Inspiring #CastTogether
toddmorey 1y ago
I did laugh at loud at "They lift others up. Literally, in my case."
0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
Well that made my day. Fantastic satire. To be a nit picky well acktually…one of your articles opens with, “ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was import this, spoken by Guido van Rossum…” I believe ‘import this’ was actually penned by Tim Peters.
wltr 1y ago
Well done, sir!

phyzome 1y ago

[flagged]

motorest 1y ago
Some of the actual posts on wikipedia are more outlandish than the parody ones. It's entertaining.
AndrewKemendo 1y ago
I was not expecting that to be the top response but here we are I’m more interested in what their content actually looks like if it’s that “successful”
tomhow 1y ago
Please don't post shallow dismissals like this on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

mehulashah 1y ago

LinkedIn is a long-form billboard not a blogging site. It’s meant for getting attention, not for thought provoking discussion. Or at least, I’ve not really seen honest discourse on any recent social platform. There are plenty of reasons to be on a billboard, but most billboards are boring.

felineflock 1y ago

He simply doesn't know how to use social networks. I get a lot of useful information from LinkedIn because I choose who to follow and block.

yusege 1y ago

Mediocrity is everywhere—on every platform. Even on blogs. Even in scientific publications. But if you’re creating something worth reading, why hesitate to post it on LinkedIn or anywhere else? Valuable content doesn’t lose its quality just because of where it’s published. Dumb comments don’t change that either. I actually think creators who produce valuable work should be just as visible as the mediocre ones, so that over time, the difference becomes clear and mediocrity slowly fades. Sure, the marketing and self-promotion side of things might feel uncomfortable, especially for developers. But in a society where the ignorant are bold, if the thoughtful and knowledgeable don’t show the same courage, that society is doomed. No matter what kind of nonsense you come across, let science and reason be your guide—and keep creating and sharing.

paulcole 1y ago

> I, like many people, find LinkedIn particularly annoying Oh wow, I’m sure this isn’t going to be an evenhanded look at the situation.

apwheele 1y ago

I don't disagree with the fundamentals of the post (most stuff is vapid, not just on LinkedIn but other platforms as well). But I still personally have benefitted the most from LinkedIn for grass roots for my business most recently, https://andrewpwheeler.com/2025/02/20/linkedin-is-the-best-social-media-site/ https://andrewpwheeler.com/2025/02/20/linkedin-is-the-best-s.... It is higher quality referrals than I ever got from X for example.

toddmorey 1y ago

The content that feels so vapid (and unfortunately makes a high percentage of what's on there) are the ones where the post itself is the entire body of work. The Photoshop a quote on the wall types. But there actually IS good content on LinkedIn. It's professionals doing interesting work and posting about it. One user that springs to mind for me does UX for the automotive industry and posts concepts, designs, and experimentations. Its fun and fascinating to watch. And I think it has much more traction to the folks that matter than any post he could do about what his weekly grocery trip taught him about the creative process. Maybe put another way, build a content brand and not a personality brand. You can still get meaningful, career changing traction. Or do what this author does and just set up your own small tent miles outside the fairground because that's what makes your soul happy. I love the indie web.

Oras 1y ago

>There’s some decent stuff on there in amongst all the noise. But, for whatever reason, that good stuff gets lost amongst a million posts of washed out nonsense. That's the problem with all social networks anyway. The algorithm would encourage content that reaches a wider audience, not target niches. Also add the LinkedIn pods (which is a group of people that will like and comment nonsense on posts to boost), same concept of bots in other social networks. That said, LinkedIn is still the only social network where I have real people that I know and have done business with.

JCM9 1y ago

LinkedIn is useful to check someone’s career history. Beyond that it’s mostly a bunch of folks spending time on LinkedIn trying to impress people that aren’t spending their time on LinkedIn. Which ironically drives away the people folks seem to be trying to impress. Spend time there if you wish, but you’re “marketing” to people that mostly aren’t there. The whole “influencer” thing on LinkedIn is mostly full of grifters claiming to be experts at things they’re not really experts at. When someone starts off by saying they’re a “top influencer” on LinkedIn I run the other way, quickly. If you have to market yourself as an influencer then newsflash you’re probably not. If you are, you just are.

mostlystatic 1y ago

I love LinkedIn as a founder/developer. It's become my main social network after the Twitter acquisition. Your experience depends on what show up in your feed. For me, it's mostly developers talking about web performance optimization, small business owners talking about conferences they've been to, people sharing posts or videos they've released... and the occasional post from the local council or someone criticizing Facebook's AI features. Posting on LinkedIn doesn't necessarily mean bullshitting or low-value content. My two most popular posts are about single-page app performance [1] and TCP slow start [2]. And when I talk to people using our product they mention they have team members regularly sharing my posts in their company (but they might not "like" it on LinkedIn). I might not be getting thousands of engagements, but there's little point reaching random people who aren't interested in working on the same problems as me either. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mattzeunert_client-side-rendering-is-often-really-bad-activity-7298307367023112192-sAv2 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mattzeunert_client-side-rende... [2] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mattzeunert_resource-download-time-doesnt-just-depend-activity-7291076645879185410-ZPtx https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mattzeunert_resource-download...

bravesoul2 1y ago
If you say this it means you probably have tuned who you connect to and your settings well to avoid spammy content. I'm amazed it is possible.

akk0 1y ago

I wouldn't know what LinkedIn rewards, because they banned me the day after making my account for no stated reason and then rejected my appeal. I just complied with their request to see my passport for the third time earlier today. I suspect I triggered a flag originally verifying my identity because it took me two phones to realize their verification bullshit will never load without Play Services and a third, stock android phone to get through it.

nojs 1y ago

This is how you win on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickcollison https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickcollison > Dynamically communicate prospective opportunities and proactive technologies. Efficiently aggregate interactive materials before state of the art collaboration and idea-sharing. Credibly supply cross-media metrics via leading-edge solutions.

b0a04gl 1y ago

[dead]

fragmede 1y ago

is this the right Elliott Smith? https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliott-smith-29707136 https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliott-smith-29707136

Avicebron 1y ago

This post made me open linkedin.. The second thing I saw after I refreshed the feed was a person I don't know without a profile picture (open to work btw) posting "signs of a bad manager".. They have linked a tiktok style video, how fun, let's see, so the video starts with a women in a lab coat. She seems to have a problem, mounting her phone in the car, she starts with roll of tape that she hangs around the mirror, pulls a strip down and sticks her phone back to the tape. Seems like she's a bad manager. Obviously tape doesn't go over the mirror, well she's leveled up her skills in the next few seconds. She installs the brilliantly designed mirror-mount-phone-holder-multi-axis.png (TM). No she's a good manager, she's meeting her employees in the middle, both passenger and driver can pull the phone right next to their face in case they need to see the map. Good managing! Fractional leadership! I do wonder when the next car digs itself into a ditch, whether putting the phone in front of the drivers face was ideal. But hey, I'm just a lay-engineer struggling to form a sentence with an aw shucks look, far from the hallowed halls of what an MBA or fractional CTO could know. This seems emblematic of something...

Aurornis 1y ago
> This post made me open linkedin.. > The second thing I saw after I refreshed the feed was a person I don't know The two common failure points for developers using social media are getting triggered at the first instance of content they dislike in the feed and not following sources of content they want to read. Nobody should feel compelled to use any social media if they don’t want or have to. If you actually want to understand what other people see in the platform, though, you have to understand how they use it. Any social media with a feed requires an ability to skim and filter. If you stop and read the obviously low quality content to either hate-read or to get triggered then you won’t make it far on LinkedIn, Twitter, or even Hacker News comments. Second, you have to curate your sources. If you strongly dislike a post then use mechanisms to see less of it. If you want to see more of something then like it. Follow people who produce good content. Once you’ve given the algorithms some signal the content improves to your liking, even though it’s not perfect.

raghava 1y ago

Disaster stemming from the deadly combo of Dunning Kruger effect + network effect + recommendation algorithms floating similar BS up top. Most who post absolute BS on such "professional" forums as a way to gain a larger "network" easily attract similar ones with relatable mediocrity index. The network effect kicks in and mediocrity gets amplified. Everyone thus gets forced to either to act insanely ridiculous or just GTFO to retain whatever little sanity they have left in them. Most corporate jobs are just mediocrity-maxxing absolutely BS jobs. It is only natural that the most popular corporate SM amplifies and promotes BS and mediocrity at scale.

sssilver 1y ago

Semi-related — why don’t we create a service in which people make employment “claims” and other people (their managers/customers) sign these claims with their own keys, so these claims can be cryptographically verified by a third party in a distributed fashion? This way, Linkedins basic premise of being a centralized “CV as a service” would become obsolete, leaving just the social network, which I personally would gladly abandon.

hahn-kev 1y ago
If it works you'll have a bunch of people faking it for each other, and if it doesn't then it's no different than anything else.
- sssilver 1y ago
  How would they fake it? Their own identity claims would need to be cryptographically signed.
  - immibis 1y ago
    Sign up an account with a randomly generated names to be the boss. Sign up other accounts with randomly generated names to be the employees. Have the boss vouch the employees work for him.
snowwrestler 1y ago
This is indeed in development although I’m not sure LinkedIn is involved yet. Look up: Learning and Employment Records (LERs)

wohoef 1y ago

Final sentence of this piece is missing a word.

pbreit 1y ago

It doesn’t seem that bad to me. Certainly not “toxic”. A lot of it is quite relevant to my industry. Perhaps because I am selective with who I link (only people I have worked with and could vouch for)).

toolslive 1y ago

What bothers me most is how "fake" it all is. I've seen companies upholding an image of success while they are scraping by and leave a wake of unpaid invoices. Companies with fake job posts that keep on getting recycled (clicking "report this job" does not help at all) aso aso. It's sort of a parallel universe where everything is nice and dandy... sort of a Barbie universe.

danparsonson 1y ago
> I've seen companies upholding an image of success while they are scraping by and leave a wake of unpaid invoices. Devil's advocate: what else are they going to say? They're trying to land new business so they can pay those invoices. "We're really struggling and desperately need your money now!" is unlikely to help...

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago

This thread is headed by defensive comments alleging that they have benefitted financially from LinkedIn. These comments only strengthen the premise of the OP that "toxic mediocrity" is rewarded. It is like a submission that is critical of multi-level marketing that generates a stream of defensive comments from marketers alleging that MLM "is responsible for millions of dollars in revenue". Of course it is, but that is not why the author of the submission is bothered by it. Fortunately companies are comprised of more than just marketing departments. For many folks, the appeal of their employer, their job and their work is found in those other departments. IMHO. The OP is not trying to engage in LinkedIn marketing. He is complaining about being on the receiving end of self-made internet marketers. It would be one thing if the OP claimed "LinkedIn marketing is not effective". The OP does not do that. He claims LinkedIn marketing is "annoying". This thread (so far) contains zero replies rebutting that claim. Who is the company behind all this toxic, mediocre marketing and data collection about LinkedIn members to produce more internet advertising revenue, among other things. According to HN commenters, it's the "cool guys"^1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866666 That is but one example of many, many HN comments going back years (part of an ongoing HN meme) presuming that Microsoft has "changed" (I could choose any of them to illustrate, but this one has a nice ID number with lots of sixes) It's true. Microsoft has changed. It is even worse than it used to be when it was considered very bad HN commenters trying defend Microsoft may attempt to divert attention away from LinkedIn and blame self-marketers, i.e., computer users. That would be nothing new. But both the OP and the HN title specifically identify LinkedIn. The problem is the so-called "tech" company that acts as an unnecessary and irresponsible intermediary, not the www users they usurp and target for profit.

zelphirkalt 1y ago
Unfortunately, however, people at many companies, who are responsible for hiring people, are running around on LinkedIn and believe things of value being communicated there, living this strange parallel world or bubble of self-marketers and make believe that is LinkedIn, becoming part of it themselves with their mediocrity. The signal of excellence entirely drowns in a stream of mediocrity on LinkedIn.

btbytes 1y ago

For many years I went without looking at LinkedIn at all. I even deleted my LinkedIn account for couple of years in mid '10s. I have found a lot of value in LinkedIn recently after I started interacting with news, posts, and people that have something interesting to say. It is as if you tell the algorithm what you like, it will show more things like that. I also proactively flag things I don't like to see. That also helps a lot in improving my feed, I assume. Th "updates" feed with all the opentowork, hiring, promotions doesn't bother me much. it has it's uses, and its easy to just eyeball and move on. What I don't understand is the grandstanding about how LinkedIn and its users are all dumb. You can always timebox your interactions with LinkedIn and ignore it rest of the time if you cannot afford to NOT have a LinkedIn account. Oh! and learn to use the notification settings. Turn off email alerts etc.,

boje 1y ago

Putting aside all logical arguments for and against Linkedin and other social media, when I do force myself to log in to my account, I find myself peering into the abyss of thousands upon thousands of people trying to game the system and "advance their careers", which they presumably do well. To me, it is the essence of the rat race that I try my best to ignore in my daily life while I try to balance time between my hobbies and work. I know fully well that the rat race takes an interest in me too, but it is so, so incredibly devastating to me that so many people to engage in hours upon hours, days upon days of "grinding", smooth-talking and evangelizing just to sell what essentially amounts to metaphorical snake oil and rake in as much cash and favors as possible. People seem to either support and praise these acts to high heavens, or simply excuse it. They do it because "that's just how the world works" and "that's just how people and businesses are", and they're right. I feel like the answer the world gives me about my discontentment is "There's more to life than the rat race, idiot, but you better come up on top of the rat race or else you'll be a poor, irrelevant loser! It's what life is about!" - There is perhaps some truth to this statement. After all, grand structures and monuments are not built by people who "just want to have a quiet, peaceful life". It's even more true now that it's quickly becoming a de-facto prerequisite to having a career in the first place. My coping mechanism has been to shut myself off of all noise and simply focus on what matters to me and what matters most for my continued sustenance. One of the measures has been to basically access my Linkedin account only a few times a year, mostly to accept new connection requests. It has worked reasonably well, I'd say. Maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot by not having an entire large-double-digit-number-network of people that can hand me a job if and when I get booted, but it's a risk I'm willing to take for my mental health.

gwbas1c 1y ago
> I find myself peering into the abyss of thousands upon thousands of people trying to game the system and "advance their careers", which they presumably do well. I find LinkedIn is a career honeypot at best, and a dead-end at worst. I put as little time as possible into it; I stay on it "just enough" that recruiters can contact me, but otherwise I don't waste my time with it.
Tade0 1y ago
A while ago I had a recruiter try to, ahem, coach me on my CV, which apparently had too few details (apparently still enough to have this interview, but the irony was lost on her) and on my LinkedIn profile, which wasn't up to date and also had few details (deliberately BTW, as I was getting spam). My gut feeling is that while there certainly are people who benefited from using LinkedIn, but for the majority it's just a vessel for being terminally online and a waste of time.

jvorick 1y ago

Totally agree that LinkedIn rewards toxic mediocrity, but do believe there are ways to avoid those parts of the platforms. For example, stop following toxically mediocre connections. LinkedIn will show you things based on what you follow/like/engage with. In my experience, there's troves of real operators posting genuine and helpful advice.

rglover 1y ago

One of the most obnoxious things about LinkedIn are the games that people play. Fake engagement over a series of my posts only to drop their pitch in my messages. That, and it's so rare to find real content on the site that isn't just some mimetic rehash of the same thing other people are saying. Frankly, it's a very ominous network to interact with—it's very unsettling to see how quickly and deeply people have adopted a performative mask that's uniquely a "LinkedIn character." Endless droves of "think pieces" from people you can tell have never really been challenged in their field, have limited experience, and insist that they are the expert missing from your sheathe. The saddest part is that the mediocrity will only ever increase, not decrease, in a world that rewards mediocrity and punishes excellence.

rand17 1y ago

I don't need a reward from a beggar.

ChiMan 1y ago

Seems like a market has emerged for a LinkedIn-like service that does everything LinkedIn does, minus the public posts. Resumes and direct messages only.

joshdavham 1y ago

If you find reading posts on LinkedIn as annoying as I do, there’s actually a nice solution that will literally wipe your feed blank: 1) Change your preferred feed view to “Most Recent Posts” : https://www.linkedin.com/mypreferences/m/settings/preferred-view https://www.linkedin.com/mypreferences/m/settings/preferred-... 2) Unfollow all of your connections. You’ll stay connected but won’t see their annoying posts anymore. …and there you have it! Focused peace and zen on an otherwise excruciating website.

modeless 1y ago
Or just don't visit your feed?
- joshdavham 1y ago
  I was using LinkedIn a couple months ago to look for jobs and the problem was that the feed was really hard to avoid and kept sucking me into wasting my time. When I did the above two things, it completely nerfed my feed so that I could just focus on jobs.
- bravesoul2 1y ago
  Use an ad blocker!
0x0000000 1y ago
> Unfollow all of your connections I hate that this is the only option available. I want to follow my connections, for their own posts, if any. What I don't want is to see everything they like, share, and comment on -- but LinkedIn won't let you turn that part off.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

WiggleGuy 1y ago

I have a user script that just hides the LinkedIn feed. It's quite blissful.

slowhadoken 1y ago

Social media rewards mediocrity, LinkedIn is just the most button down.

0898 1y ago

Unlikely as it sounds, being normal is a strategy that works on LinkedIn. The quality bar is very low. People post so much fluff and AI thought leadership that the algorithm has recently started rejecting it, and LinkedIn essentially ran out of content. For the past couple of months it's been showing people posts from two or three weeks ago due to the lack of suitable material. What I've found is that it's surprisingly easy to stand out and build an audience if you just post honestly and thoughtfully about the interesting little puzzles or dilemmas you face during your workday. Some posts of mine that have hit it off: > Why is it hard to find clothes for men? > Why do people think it's weird when I drink milk on Zoom? > Should I post on X, or do people still frown on it? Try posting about what you don't know, rather than what you do. People like that more.

bravesoul2 1y ago
That's too normal for me it makes LinkedIn sound like Facebook. If it were "why I didnt choose Kubernetes for my current project" then maybe.
ambicapter 1y ago
Hah, I would actually like to know why finding clothes for men is so hard.

_swfb 1y ago

To paraphrase Hunter Thompson: we will never know for sure if there's a heaven or hell, but I do know for sure that if there is a hell then it's being stuck having to read through LinkedIn for eternity. LinkedIn is easily the worst "social media" on the internet that I've been on. So much shit is "inspiration porn" for anecdotes that clearly never actually happened so that the person can try and brand themselves as some kind "corporate influencer". By itself this wouldn't bother me, except you pretty much have to have a LinkedIn now. I generally think it's actually really important to call out bullshit, even stuff that's seemingly harmless (for reasons that are probably far beyond the scope of this post), but I don't respond to comments on LinkedIn anymore, because it's effectively a resume and I don't want these kind of opinions to influence hiring decisions. And this makes me feel a bit conflicted, and it has led to a direct resentment of the entire platform. I kind of wish Microsoft would limit LinkedIn to purely resume stuff.

randcraw 1y ago
LinkedIn seems like the natural home (origin?) of those oh-so-inane "Motivator" management posters that were so popular in the 1990s. Now if only there were also an outlet there for the "Demotivator" posters that followed. THOSE I liked.
- _swfb 1y ago
  Yeah, it's horrible; I deleted my Facebook a decade ago because I hated what social media interaction was becoming and it was doing a number on my mental health. I deleted my old Twitter a few days ago, and I haven't done anything on Bluesky in months and I never used it much. The only social media I use regularly now is HN and SomethingAwful. I would so love to just delete my LinkedIn, but you can't do that now. A lot of job applications require you give your LinkedIn. So I am stuck logging in occasionally. It's dystopian.

zem 1y ago

I think the key point is this one 8<------- What is frustrating though is that unless you’re being hired by someone else who posts this way I am strongly convinced this behavior doesn’t work in your favor. 8<------- in other words, linked in the resume hosting and career networking site doesn't reward the behaviour, linked in the random social network that happens to be hosted on the same site does. just ignore the latter.

bluedino 1y ago

LinkedIn is decent for jobs/searching/applying. That's all I really find it useful for. Things I don't find it useful for: Salespeople trying to sell me some enterprise product when I don't have anything to do with selection/purchasing those items. Everything from IP phones to enterprise storage to whatever SaSS is hot Low-effort recruiter spam. Jobs I'm not interested in, qualified for, over-qualified for, want me to go into the office but it's 2 hours away, "I am impressed by your profile...." Former co-workers posting about how much they learned at some conference or seminar or the pizza part for Jerry who finally retired Cheatsheet/tutorial spam since my job is developer/linux adjacent. "Freshers" not in my network, spamming looking for jobs. Typical motivational/marketing stuff from Seth Godin and wannabe influencers. Awww cute videos with a baby or small animal.

Tier2Capital 1y ago
that sounds a bit rough on graduates. we all start from the bottom and some people are not born with well connected parents or schools with wide networks. I actually think linkedin is a good way to pay it forward (although NOT for low effort graduates who send the same template spam message to everybody)
glitchcrab 1y ago
A really good way of weeding out the recruiter spam is to change your first name to an emoji (I use the waving hand) and then put first name and last name in the last name field. That way when a DM opens with 'hello %waving hand emoji%' you know it's just scripted bulk crap.
- stalfosknight 1y ago
  Good idea! Thank you
- HPMOR 1y ago
  LLMs have solved this at scale. Really you're just filtering for more technologically sophisticated recruiters at volume.

flkiwi 1y ago

I'm sure someone else has said this, but Corporate America (I cannot speak to Corporate $AnywhereElse with any depth) and large parts of the entrepreneur ecosystem reward mediocrity. In this sense, LinkedIn is just a symptom of a larger disease.

bravesoul2 1y ago
They also hustle theatre. For every startup job mentioning role impact there is one that doesn't but tries hard to get across how much of Saturday and Sunday you should be working to be consider moral enough to work for them. Then on LI pictures of staff on 24h+ working stints that might kill them.

ozim 1y ago

Oh so it is OK to post mediocre stuff on your own blog where no one reads. But trying to show it to people is not. I like „content guardians” everywhere saying „oh this does not belong to HN”, „oh this doesn’t belong to linked in. Fuck that - let people do what they want and express themselves even if it is mediocre shoveling of ideas

spauldo 1y ago
I hate when people tell me I can't piss in the street. "Go to a bathroom," they say. "That's not appropriate here." Screw that, my junk is rated E for Everybody. /s

wkat4242 1y ago

LinkedIn also rewards absolutely sickening PR spamming. All the corporate feelgood PR bullshit that people willingly repost, it makes me sick to my stomach. People must have no spine or self-worth to be reposting all their employer's hot air like that. But yeah Microsoft is all about mediocrity. Their game is becoming the biggest common denominator, not the best.

bryanrasmussen 1y ago

toxic mediocrity is clever, on the other not sure if it is clever enough that he has to describe coming up with the phrase twice. >I log in and see constant posting that I can only describe as toxic mediocrity four paragraphs later >The vast majority of it falls into a category I would describe as Toxic Mediocrity.

0xbadcafebee 1y ago

> Nothing you post there is going to change your career. I've gotten two good jobs from posting on LinkedIn. Mutual connections see your posts, and recruiters can find and contact you. When you list it on your resume, people do look at it. So yes it "changes" your career, by helping you get jobs. Yeah it's full of drivel. All social media is full of drivel. Stop paging through the drivel and use it as a tool. Collect good connections, keep up with old colleagues, network. That's what it's for.

btbuildem 1y ago

I think it's a perfect mirror of the corporate world, which in itself rewards and thrives on mediocrity. Mediocrity is safe and predictable. Sure, let's hear the counter-example of the noble startup, taking massive risks to build The Coolest Thing. Like the enthusiastic wiggly sperms, one in a million succeeds -- and the consequences of initial success are to grow mediocre over time. LinkedIn is marketing slop, aimed at the lowest common denominator, because that's the most numerous denomination of the walking wallet. Of course it is saturated with family friendly, inoffensive, endless streams of softcore corporate propaganda.

ramijames 1y ago

LinkedIn rewards mediocrity in the same way that the rest of the world does. It does so for the exact same reason: good networking is more often than not more important than being exceptional.

ngcazz 1y ago

I lurk LinkedIn for this guy's posts only https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-cheng-991849b6 https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-cheng-991849b6

commenter8 1y ago

The nice thing about LinkedIn posts is that it’s clear that everything is an ad. Reddit, Facebook, etc started with people just posting to communicate and socialize, then were (mostly) taken over by ads / influencers pretending. With LinkedIn there’s no pretense and no wheat to sift from the chaff. It’s just marketers marketing to each other. If that’s useful you can join a mutual promotion group and auto-comment on each others’ posts without damaging anything of value. If not you can stay away and completely ignore any posts when you come back for an occasional job search.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

janalsncm 1y ago

I see zero value in the LinkedIn feed. That’s ok, just ignore it. In the groups I’ve joined (naively thinking I’d learn something useful) it’s mostly infographics explaining things I already know or engagement bait “polls”. I update my job when necessary, and from time to time a recruiter sends me a decent job posting.

bilater 1y ago

I try not to fall into posting generic content. Instead, I focus on sharing real things I’ve built or done, hoping they’re actually useful for someone. For example, my last post was about a weekend app I put together, and I always try to include a link to the app or a github repo so people can try it out for themselves. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/biltahir_sometimes-i-get-into-a-rut-and-one-of-the-activity-7362588240186413056-PWbk?utm_source=share https://www.linkedin.com/posts/biltahir_sometimes-i-get-into...

DebtDeflation 1y ago

As a recently laid off tech worker, I was excited to have a recruiter contact me regarding what seemed like a dream job. After passing an initial phone screen, a face to face interview was scheduled. I spent several days preparing. On the day of the interview, I took the train into the city and had a 4 or 5 block walk to the new company's office. While walking, I noticed a scraggly dog laying in the alley. I was pressed for time, but stopped to get some food and water to give to the dog. He was very appreciative, barked playfully, and licked my face. I continued on my way. When I got to the office, I signed in, took the elevator to the 7th floor, and opened the door. Imagine my shock, the dog was the interviewer. <-- This is the kind of nonsense I generally see posted on LinkedIn, perhaps only slightly exaggerated.

Ms-J 1y ago

Linkedin is a dumpster fire of spam and aggressive, low intelligence/high effort marketing tactics. I would never use their site for anything, though I've seen coworkers apply for jobs using it. Personally I've found the other nonsocial platforms and email to be the best for getting a high paying position.

denkmoon 1y ago

If you don't like linkedin just don't use it. It's that easy. Hasn't hurt me so far.

alexchantavy 1y ago

> If writing online matters to you, you’re probably better off starting a blog and building things there. You’ll get less views and less engagement but there’s less temptation to post nonsense just for likes. You’re going to have a harder time getting people to stick around and read what you’re writing but that additional pressure raises the bar. Telling people to “raise the bar”, and then suggesting they should aim for less engagement just sounds strange. Who decides where the bar is, and why should hitting it require fewer people to see what you made? I agree that a lot of LinkedIn content is cookie-cutter garbage, but advising others to invest serious effort into thoughtful writing with the expectation of no reach feels deeply unhelpful. Instead, you could encourage others to write content on LinkedIn that sounds less "what X taught me about B2B sales" and improve the culture of "toxic mediocrity".