4 ms·

I frequently post on LinkedIn, on topics related to AI, startups, open source, etc. I try to have a pragmatic and realistic take and don't use AI to write the p

by senko 2mo ago

I frequently post on LinkedIn, on topics related to AI, startups, open source, etc. I try to have a pragmatic and realistic take and don't use AI to write the posts. I find that just by not being cringe, obviously AI or obviously over the top sales-y makes the posts stand out and raise my (consulting) profile enough to land a meaningful number of clients, just as a second-order effect. Lately I've been even more annoyed at the walls of its walled garden being raised higher, eg. no way to export my own posts, or having to log in to open linkedin shortened urls, which breaks my firefox site containers workflow.

wildrhythms 2mo ago
Why are you engaging sincerely on a platform created for boot licking?
- idiotsecant 2mo ago
  Because parent post derives clients from it. It's in the post.
- senko 2mo ago
  Audience. With the Elonification of Twitter there has been a splittering of tech/biz audiences across different platforms, each with their own problems, and the split is different in different parts of the world. It so happens that LI continues to be popular with the audience segment and geographic location I'm primarily working with. Agree with all negative comments about the platform tho.
  - thenatureboy 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - ed_elliott_asc 2mo ago
      Can you elaborate? My personal niche was very popular on twitter until Elon bought it and everyone left, now I don’t know anyone still using twitter who was in that niche.
    - senko 2mo ago
      Indeed Twitter has seen a resurgence among the (serious) AI crowd in particular. For example Bluesky (not to mention the fediverse) can get aggressively negative towards authors posting what seem to be pro-AI posts. Ignoring the political issues, my problem with Twitter is more prosaic: the character limit is too short for basically anything of substance. I really don't like the thread style it effectively forces. (Oh, and the new name is unbelievably stupid. I ain't never calling it that.)
      - BoxOfRain 2mo ago
        That's pretty much my one gripe with the general culture of the Fediverse, a lot of people have made opposition to AI in general part of their identities and it can be a little tedious to have discussions at times because of it.
        breezybottom 2mo ago
        Yes it must be hard reading views that are different from your own.
        andsoitis 2mo ago
        > Yes it must be hard reading views that are different from your own. The other thing is the sarcasm and smugness.
        BoxOfRain 2mo ago
        You can't have a very good discussion with someone about something they've made part of their identity in my view. I'm not an instinctive AI booster but nor am I going to bother engaging with people who believe a tool I use is ontologically evil. It's a poor use of everyone's time since there's no debate to be had. This works both ways for what it's worth, I have parts of my identity which I simply don't see fit to make a discussion of since there is no ground to gain or concede.
        lokar 2mo ago
    - purerandomness 2mo ago
      I don't know which bubble you're in, but since Elon took over, Twitter became absolutely unusable. The decline happened with bots flooding the platform, with the "creator reward" program rewarding meaningless engagement bait, and with people who I respect in the Tech bubble leaving the platform, which led to an even faster decline. That was just not the case before the takeover; back then, you would enjoy scrolling through it, engage in authentic conversations, and learn a thing or two.
  - kakacik 2mo ago
    A professional answer, to the point, ignoring cheap flame attempt. I have no doubt you get more than enough work like that
  - lexandstuff 2mo ago
    Yep. LinkedIn is pretty much the only social network out there where the average person has a shot at a little reach for their posts. Even if it’s just past and present colleagues and various acquaintances, I actually have an audience of people who are sometimes interested in what I have to say. I can't say that for any other social network.
- NikolaNovak 2mo ago
  >> Why are you engaging sincerely on a platform created for boot licking? I think that's Kink.com :)
- IshKebab 2mo ago
  Just because a lot of cringe stuff happens there doesn't mean it is a useless platform. For me it's been the best way to get jobs - just by having a filled in profile and occasionally replying to recruiter spam when they have an interesting looking job. I got my current job which has an insane salary with that method. I also copy/paste non-cringe blog posts there occasionally. I think more people read them than on my actual blog.
cambaceres 2mo ago
I want to do this but I can't get myself to do it, I guess I'm too self-aware. Does this come naturally for you to do or did you have to push your self hard? How did you start?
- chrisjj 2mo ago
  > I guess I'm too self-aware The word you're looking for is self-respecting :)
  - wormpilled 2mo ago
    More like afraid of rejection.
    - cambaceres 2mo ago
      That’s probably it actually:)
  - edgyquant 2mo ago
    Every single self employed person must put themselves out there and market/advertise. It isn’t a lack of self respect that leads people trying tactics to bring inbound it’s quite the opposite
- senko 2mo ago
  I found the bad S/N ratio on LinkedIn to be freeing. I have a blog as well but often suffer from writer's block and trying to write really good content. On LI the majority of the stuff is so bad, I have zero self-awareness and just write whatever comes to mind (ie. an approach more like what you'd do in a comment like this one, than a "proper standalone post"). Many of my posts are just commentary on what's going on in the niche (eg. comments on a new AI model) which doesn't require a ton of extra research. I also try to have a weekly/monthly cadence: at least one LI post a week, and one blog post on my own domain per month.
- virgil_disgr4ce 2mo ago
  Hm? The self-awareness is the advantage. Instead of just regurgitating cringy bullshit, write something sincere, something you actually find interesting, something you liked writing and something you'd enjoy reading. Like any sincere creative work, it takes effort. You may have to push yourself hard, yes. But like most things, it does get easier with practice. I'd like to think that the era of AI slop will cause more people to become more sincere and thoughtful because it's a competitive advantage!
chanux 2mo ago
Do you also run a blog?
- senko 2mo ago
  Yup, two. A personal one at https://blog.senko.net/ https://blog.senko.net/ (general and more opinionated stuff) and more corpo oriented at https://senkorasic.com/articles/ https://senkorasic.com/articles/
  - animesh 2mo ago
    I planned to get into LI posting this half of the year, and I struggled to write drafts both for LI audience and me. Your blogs and their separation is inspiring. Sincere thanks.
  - douglaskayama 2mo ago
    Cool! I have just read (and shared with a friend who is a product manager) your "Code was never the hard part" post. That was a great read, thank you very much.
felineflock 2mo ago
You're a good follow there. To escape the walled garden, I've ran a script to download all posts (JS to scroll down my feed, wait for the lazy loading, click on all "more..." links, wait for the lazy loading again, everything in a loop, then download the entire thing when there are no more posts). Then ran another script to convert those to blog posts, then posted them on my personal site.
- senko 2mo ago
  Yeah I basically did that, just with Claude Code and Playwright. It's a fickle setup, LinkedIn keeps trying to block it so there's a bunch of manual work to re-login, Claude sometimes misses a few posts, etc. Doable but annoying.
liendolucas 2mo ago
Why are you putting content on such platforms? Honestly. Do you realize that you are giving content for free to an already enshittified and closed platform? Open a blog where everyone can read freely without to have an account in one of the worst platforms out there. Or is it to be popular that you post there?
- volkk 2mo ago
  because clients are on there? a blog requires endless marketing. LinkedIn actually surfaces your posts and gets eyeballs on them
  - liendolucas 2mo ago
    LinkedIn content is trash to be honest. If I were to put effort into a good post I would ever write it there, no matter how many eyeballs could I attract. The post could be good, but because I have been fed trash on LinkedIn for such a long time, I wouldn't spend a second trying to figure out if what someone wrote is worth reading. At least for me HN provides me with high quality posts, hence me coming back here for new sources of information. Not saying that all posts on HN are top quality but most of the time the situation is exactly the opposite to LinkedIn. So there's a lot of value to build up your own thing and put work on it.
    - volkk 2mo ago
      you do you. but plenty of people get clients/business on LI. that's just how it is whether you like it or not
- dylan604 2mo ago
  What's the percentage of people that will read a post embedded in the site vs clicking a link to another site? Sure, I think it strange that these posters are posting directly into a site rather than writing locally and then copy/paste into the site so that the data on the site is no longer the only copy. But YOLO is real I guess
- dewey 2mo ago
bradleyankrom 2mo ago
I think you can get your posts out as part of a data export, if you request one. I just did that and I can see my (very few) posts in the Shares csv.
- senko 2mo ago
  Nope. I tried both the data export (I'm in the EU) and looked at the API they provide. I was able to export articles (which I don't do), but not posts.
  - bradleyankrom 2mo ago
    Hm, that is strange. I'm in the US, but I would expect an export for an EU user to deliver more, if they differ at all.
ilamont 2mo ago
> I frequently post on LinkedIn I do, too. My rule of thumb for anything longer than two paragraphs is publish on my personal blog first and then use LinkedIn's scheduling feature to post it in the future (LinkedIn gives you a 3 month window, but you can reschedule indefinitely)
melicerte 2mo ago
[dead]

by senko 2mo ago

wildrhythms 2mo ago

Why are you engaging sincerely on a platform created for boot licking?

idiotsecant 2mo ago
Because parent post derives clients from it. It's in the post.
senko 2mo ago
Audience. With the Elonification of Twitter there has been a splittering of tech/biz audiences across different platforms, each with their own problems, and the split is different in different parts of the world. It so happens that LI continues to be popular with the audience segment and geographic location I'm primarily working with. Agree with all negative comments about the platform tho.
- thenatureboy 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ed_elliott_asc 2mo ago
    Can you elaborate? My personal niche was very popular on twitter until Elon bought it and everyone left, now I don’t know anyone still using twitter who was in that niche.
  - senko 2mo ago
    Indeed Twitter has seen a resurgence among the (serious) AI crowd in particular. For example Bluesky (not to mention the fediverse) can get aggressively negative towards authors posting what seem to be pro-AI posts. Ignoring the political issues, my problem with Twitter is more prosaic: the character limit is too short for basically anything of substance. I really don't like the thread style it effectively forces. (Oh, and the new name is unbelievably stupid. I ain't never calling it that.)
    - BoxOfRain 2mo ago
      That's pretty much my one gripe with the general culture of the Fediverse, a lot of people have made opposition to AI in general part of their identities and it can be a little tedious to have discussions at times because of it.
      - breezybottom 2mo ago
        Yes it must be hard reading views that are different from your own.
        andsoitis 2mo ago
        > Yes it must be hard reading views that are different from your own. The other thing is the sarcasm and smugness.
        BoxOfRain 2mo ago
        You can't have a very good discussion with someone about something they've made part of their identity in my view. I'm not an instinctive AI booster but nor am I going to bother engaging with people who believe a tool I use is ontologically evil. It's a poor use of everyone's time since there's no debate to be had. This works both ways for what it's worth, I have parts of my identity which I simply don't see fit to make a discussion of since there is no ground to gain or concede.
        lokar 2mo ago
  - purerandomness 2mo ago
    I don't know which bubble you're in, but since Elon took over, Twitter became absolutely unusable. The decline happened with bots flooding the platform, with the "creator reward" program rewarding meaningless engagement bait, and with people who I respect in the Tech bubble leaving the platform, which led to an even faster decline. That was just not the case before the takeover; back then, you would enjoy scrolling through it, engage in authentic conversations, and learn a thing or two.
- kakacik 2mo ago
  A professional answer, to the point, ignoring cheap flame attempt. I have no doubt you get more than enough work like that
- lexandstuff 2mo ago
  Yep. LinkedIn is pretty much the only social network out there where the average person has a shot at a little reach for their posts. Even if it’s just past and present colleagues and various acquaintances, I actually have an audience of people who are sometimes interested in what I have to say. I can't say that for any other social network.
NikolaNovak 2mo ago
>> Why are you engaging sincerely on a platform created for boot licking? I think that's Kink.com :)
IshKebab 2mo ago
Just because a lot of cringe stuff happens there doesn't mean it is a useless platform. For me it's been the best way to get jobs - just by having a filled in profile and occasionally replying to recruiter spam when they have an interesting looking job. I got my current job which has an insane salary with that method. I also copy/paste non-cringe blog posts there occasionally. I think more people read them than on my actual blog.

cambaceres 2mo ago

I want to do this but I can't get myself to do it, I guess I'm too self-aware. Does this come naturally for you to do or did you have to push your self hard? How did you start?

chrisjj 2mo ago
> I guess I'm too self-aware The word you're looking for is self-respecting :)
- wormpilled 2mo ago
  More like afraid of rejection.
  - cambaceres 2mo ago
    That’s probably it actually:)
- edgyquant 2mo ago
  Every single self employed person must put themselves out there and market/advertise. It isn’t a lack of self respect that leads people trying tactics to bring inbound it’s quite the opposite
senko 2mo ago
I found the bad S/N ratio on LinkedIn to be freeing. I have a blog as well but often suffer from writer's block and trying to write really good content. On LI the majority of the stuff is so bad, I have zero self-awareness and just write whatever comes to mind (ie. an approach more like what you'd do in a comment like this one, than a "proper standalone post"). Many of my posts are just commentary on what's going on in the niche (eg. comments on a new AI model) which doesn't require a ton of extra research. I also try to have a weekly/monthly cadence: at least one LI post a week, and one blog post on my own domain per month.
virgil_disgr4ce 2mo ago
Hm? The self-awareness is the advantage. Instead of just regurgitating cringy bullshit, write something sincere, something you actually find interesting, something you liked writing and something you'd enjoy reading. Like any sincere creative work, it takes effort. You may have to push yourself hard, yes. But like most things, it does get easier with practice. I'd like to think that the era of AI slop will cause more people to become more sincere and thoughtful because it's a competitive advantage!

chanux 2mo ago

Do you also run a blog?

senko 2mo ago
Yup, two. A personal one at https://blog.senko.net/ https://blog.senko.net/ (general and more opinionated stuff) and more corpo oriented at https://senkorasic.com/articles/ https://senkorasic.com/articles/
- animesh 2mo ago
  I planned to get into LI posting this half of the year, and I struggled to write drafts both for LI audience and me. Your blogs and their separation is inspiring. Sincere thanks.
- douglaskayama 2mo ago
  Cool! I have just read (and shared with a friend who is a product manager) your "Code was never the hard part" post. That was a great read, thank you very much.

felineflock 2mo ago

You're a good follow there. To escape the walled garden, I've ran a script to download all posts (JS to scroll down my feed, wait for the lazy loading, click on all "more..." links, wait for the lazy loading again, everything in a loop, then download the entire thing when there are no more posts). Then ran another script to convert those to blog posts, then posted them on my personal site.

senko 2mo ago
Yeah I basically did that, just with Claude Code and Playwright. It's a fickle setup, LinkedIn keeps trying to block it so there's a bunch of manual work to re-login, Claude sometimes misses a few posts, etc. Doable but annoying.

liendolucas 2mo ago

Why are you putting content on such platforms? Honestly. Do you realize that you are giving content for free to an already enshittified and closed platform? Open a blog where everyone can read freely without to have an account in one of the worst platforms out there. Or is it to be popular that you post there?

volkk 2mo ago
because clients are on there? a blog requires endless marketing. LinkedIn actually surfaces your posts and gets eyeballs on them
- liendolucas 2mo ago
  LinkedIn content is trash to be honest. If I were to put effort into a good post I would ever write it there, no matter how many eyeballs could I attract. The post could be good, but because I have been fed trash on LinkedIn for such a long time, I wouldn't spend a second trying to figure out if what someone wrote is worth reading. At least for me HN provides me with high quality posts, hence me coming back here for new sources of information. Not saying that all posts on HN are top quality but most of the time the situation is exactly the opposite to LinkedIn. So there's a lot of value to build up your own thing and put work on it.
  - volkk 2mo ago
    you do you. but plenty of people get clients/business on LI. that's just how it is whether you like it or not
dylan604 2mo ago
What's the percentage of people that will read a post embedded in the site vs clicking a link to another site? Sure, I think it strange that these posters are posting directly into a site rather than writing locally and then copy/paste into the site so that the data on the site is no longer the only copy. But YOLO is real I guess
dewey 2mo ago

bradleyankrom 2mo ago

I think you can get your posts out as part of a data export, if you request one. I just did that and I can see my (very few) posts in the Shares csv.

senko 2mo ago
Nope. I tried both the data export (I'm in the EU) and looked at the API they provide. I was able to export articles (which I don't do), but not posts.
- bradleyankrom 2mo ago
  Hm, that is strange. I'm in the US, but I would expect an export for an EU user to deliver more, if they differ at all.

ilamont 2mo ago

> I frequently post on LinkedIn I do, too. My rule of thumb for anything longer than two paragraphs is publish on my personal blog first and then use LinkedIn's scheduling feature to post it in the future (LinkedIn gives you a 3 month window, but you can reschedule indefinitely)

melicerte 2mo ago

[dead]