LinkedIn probably has a net benefit for your career by keeping up to date and checking the messages once a week, but I cannot get over the awkwardness of seeing total BS stories and thousands of replies saying "YES! AMEN!".<p>"I was running late to an interview this morning but stopped to help a man who fell off of his bike and fixed it up for him. Afterwards I bought him a coffee and talked about life. He mentioned how he had to go to work but was touched by meeting me, he said we had a real connection. I go to the interview and guess what! The man was my interviewer! He immediately offered me a job at 1.5m a year plus bonuses and is fast tracking me to become a regional director. Remember to be a nice human #Hashtag #Human #WEAREPEOPLE #ConnectWithMe"<p>It's just a giant circle jerk.
I never understood why I always got so depressed reading LinkedIn, until I read The Gervais Principle by Venkatesh Rao. And then I saw that LinkedIn consists almost entirely of clueless people talking to other clueless people, and exclusively in posturetalk (these are Rao’s terms - “clueless” means something specific). And if you haven’t read The Gervais Principle, I highly recommend it, although it may bum you out.
The thing that's been around the longest that always bugged me was:<p>Getting endorsed for skills by people who have no ability to evaluate my competency at those skills.<p>It's so shallow and badly designed at its job. But like every social network out there, it's buoyed by its inertia and network effects, and will last far longer than it should given its quality beyond the size of its network of users.
Having office-shared with a recruiting firm, and having worked in several startups that have a "long-sales"/"closer" department.. I can attest that LinkedIn is exactly what it is like in the day-to-day jobs in the flesh, too. Lots of gongs/bells/claxons, always followed by _so_ many high-fives and a round of applause.<p>Everyone knows it's bullshit, but this kind of toxic/fake positivity is demanded, and weirdly, it works even though everyone knows it's fake.
Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm just getting old and tired. Maybe I'm just sick of the constant trolling, yelling and generally lots of people trying to out-asshole one another on so, so much of the internet. But I don't mind LinkedIn. I find the cynicism on display here very sad. Sure, there are plenty of narcissists and vapid people posting on LinkedIn. So? At least they're posting "inspirational" stuff, and you know what - even if its BS - if the net emotional effect on other people is generally positive - well wtf is wrong with that? The right kind of BS can be inspirational and drive good behaviours (just as the wrong kind can drive terrible behaviours) - I offer as evidence every religion ever.<p>For me, I use LinkedIn as my work memory. I've been working since 1987 and have had gigs at so many companies, and worked with so many good people over that time that it's literally impossible for me to remember my own resume (let alone names and faces). It's how I stay in touch with the people who move around and may be the one to help me get my next gig.<p>A lot of people on HN often go on about freedom of speech, but it just seems to me that where people are happy to defend asshole's speech, no matter how terrible, the kind of saccharine, do-gooder, positivity found on LinkedIn gets torn to shreds. Live and let live. If it's not your cup of tea, please feel free to develop and use an alternative. I'd love to see it. Unless its full of people being total assholes. Then I'll stick with LinkedIn. And HN.
LinkedIn has the atmosphere of working at a 200K employee multinational that even the CEO isn't really energized by.<p>It's honestly amusing how similar it is. Whenever I go on there I think of a job I had once in which people tried to one up each other for "most robotic".<p><pre><code> Beep boop. The policy section 5 b says
you have used Beep 7 of your allotted holiday days.
Boop Please report your
time
sheet
</code></pre>
(my old manager, living being)
I feel like TeamBlind is the exact opposite of LinkedIn -- no positivity, no one cares about mission or whatever, the #1 thing is TC and WLB, and everyone is anonymous. And yet its posts are much more honest, candid and just overall useful than those of LinkedIn.
LinkedIn shares something with Facebook, in that it is a giant clusterfuck of additional bullshit on top of a few key features, and a critical mass of participants, that fulfill the promise of social networking.<p>100% owe my career to LinkedIn, despite having never posted or commented or liked or joined a damn thing.<p>The access to people and information is, alas, worth the cringe.
The only interesting thing I’ve gleaned from LinkedIn is how some fairly marginal, mediocre technical managers have gotten promotions and steady work over the years, simply by keeping their noses clean, diplomacy, and ‘good’ behavior. And how tempestuous the careers of the creative, talented people can be.<p>That was a useful observation, but alas, too late.
I actually like the Linkedin vibe. It’s like an alternate reality where everyone is always congratulating everyone else on their accomplishments! And shipping stuff! And investing in their careers! Seriously though, for some reason all this “The Office” stuff would be awkward and cringey in real life, but in an online format it works? Somehow? It’s similar to how an internet argument can be often way more rage inducing than a real life one, but with positive emotions instead.
The hardest (or saddest) part of being on LinkedIn is not seeing cringe posts by half-strangers but seeing how people you know well in real life change their behaviour or tone drastically on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn would be so much better if it was just a web interface for your resume and a rolodex for your networking contacts. Like basically all other "social" sites, the feed is what makes the site awful and turns it into a "how can I promote myself" cringe-fest. Get rid of the feed (and messaging, and job board, and notifications, and news) and it would be great.
LinkedIn always feels to me like that awkward party I got invited to where I don't know anybody, they're all pretentious, and I'm just trying to find if there's a dog or cat I can play with in the kitchen.
The main cause behind Linkedin being cringe is because it's fake and phony. There's so much fake positivity, humbleness, appreciation, virtuousness and empathy from every part of the corporate world now. This used to be at least guarded amongst upper level management, who endured this garbage but at a great financial gain. Now this corporate cringe has penetrated the general public. People who are making peanuts are talking about "synergy", "innovation" and "disruption".
I deleted my profile a while back after a data leak and I was getting spammed on that email. The cringe factor of continually being "recommended" for crap was pathetic. That was even before the feed and the posts and the inspirational nonsense.<p>It's performative corporate wankery that HR people love because it lets them think that they're promoting their corporate owner's "triple bottom line" and "social stakeholders" and blah blah blah.<p>HR thinks that it needs to do this crap to motivate employees, it's like the "newsletters" and "employee of the month" etc.
Well the reason the posts are cringe, is because they're all written by the people who think posting to linkedin is a good idea.<p>A bit like Facebook - except you don't actually like any of them.
The cringiest thing is that they don't have laughing emoji response on posts. It's probably because someone at a meeting said that "<i>we must provide a safe place for everyone to feel empowered to share anything without being laughed at</i>".<p>What they didn't consider is that this also accelerates the toxic positivity that existed before emoji responses.
In my opinion, it's because a lot of work culture behaves like kingdoms and these people are either trying to pretend they have a kingdom, protect their kingdom, or signal that they'll be good servants.
Visit <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics</a>
to see how this really looks from the outside
I think linkedin, while it's always been pretty fake, is getting close to a point where it is either going to get overhauled or collapse completely into an empty wasteland going beyond embarrassing self promotion and into even more absurd cliches of what "professionals" should share.<p>It serves an important function, and I have used it to find work and connect with former colleagues. But I think by ratcheting up the social media style attention algorithms, the company has been strip mining their credibility, and there is not much left
Virtue signaling, culture that celebrates positivity-at-all-cost, and worshipping of executive leadership through emulation.<p>That's why that "i got pip'ed at Amazon" was such a breath of fresh air.<p>By far the best thing I've seen on Linkedin.
Can someone explain the people that post gushing thank you posts on their way out of the company?<p>I don't care what amazing next step of your journey awaits you, I want to know if you quit or if you were fired.
Once I'm a billionaire, it's the first thing I'll do after paying for WinRar: deleting my LinkedIn account.<p>I never respond to anything, just keeping it around for now for the connections. I recently checked the inbox and noticed something very weird. It showed a list of recruiters that had sent me a message and their profile picture. There were about 15 on screen. All 15 were hot white blond women in their mid twenties.<p>I'm not sure what to think of that. The odds seem impossible. I work in a boring sector, so that doesn't explain it. Attractive women as recruiters isn't a new tactic, but in this case I had a very strong feeling they're just fake pictures. It's probably just one guy controlling all those profiles.
LinkedIn is the social platform on which people express themselves in the least authentic manner, because they are the most fearful of the consequences of honesty, and the inverse - are most aware of the benefits of duplicity. Even those of us who feel positive about the trajectory of human development, know that human society is a horrifying shit-show. However as a precondition of employment, we are expected to demonstrate that we can pretend that the companies we staff are not rapacious monstrosities. Even the more fervent capitalist will acknowledge in private opinions that are unacceptable in public e.g. capitalism works better than other systems only because we have repeatedly failed to organise our society around any principles other than fear any greed. But we don't say anything like that, because most of us on linkedin have found ourselves in a better than random spot within a violently unfair society.<p>If any one of us posted our true inner thoughts on linkedIn we would dramatically reduce our employment options in any industry other than the approved shamanic avenues - filmmaker, writer, comedian, and might find ourselves and our children descending to a less favourable spot in our grossly unfair societies<p>What we post on LinkedIn is a bloodless, pureed and filtered version of ourselves, a formal terrified curtsy before the mighty power of the employment market.<p>Fight club made 100 million at the box office, and you wouldn't know it from the positive motivational tripe we post, but I'd bet $20 'fight club is my favourite movie' is a damn good proxy for 'who pays for linked in premium?'
So forget about the feed. Really, who cares about that stuff?<p>I am not an apologist for LinkedIn but I got my last three jobs through recruiters that found me that way and think it is an awesome tool, for free.
LinkedIn shares something with Facebook, in that it is a giant clusterfuck of additional bullshit on top of a few key features, and a critical mass of participants, that fulfills the promise of social networking.<p>100% owe my career to LinkedIn, despite having never posted or commented or liked or joined a damn thing.<p>The access to people and information is, unfortunately, worth the cringe.
I just systematically unfollow everyone I connect with. My news feed is "blah blah blah was mentioned in the news" or a few posts in various game development groups I am a member of. Got so tired of the "Amens" and the "but the interviewer was the dog" and the "only 5% of the population can solve this" memes.<p>Oh, and I say "fuck" an awful lot. And I posted bad artwork of a bear fucking a gallon of orange juice, and a recruiter saying the word "no whore" with a duck swearing. And some blood spatter. And a programmer telling an entrepreneur that nobody gives a damn he got six column inches in the San Francisco Bee. But I didn't say damn, I said fuck. And a programmer fighting a mechanical octopus by stabbing it in the eye. I also posted a poem about entrepreneurial exploitation which I am currently illustrating.<p>Apparently this is unprofessional and would make me unhirable, but I like to think that really, I'm just a guy wearing a duck suit disrupting synergies in the meta or something.<p>Also, my standard reply to recruiters is "Thanks for making me aware of this opportunity. Sounds boring and exploitative. Good luck in your continuing candidate search."<p>Definitely am guilty of the "broetry" style of separating everything on a to a single line though, don't know what it is about the cluttered LinkedIn UI that makes a paragraph of text hard to read.<p>Guilty of a few "respect" posts though. Mostly around the "and then flipped the bird and hung up on the toxic interviewer" type of post. Was interviewing last year and just "got up and walked out" (or the Zoom/Meet/WebX/Skype equivalent) of the meeting. "Well would you look at the time, it's already I-don't-give-a-shit-anymore o'clock, thanks for your time today. Bye!"<p>Footnote: My colleagues tell me I am joy to work with and brighten up any team I am a part of.
I like the <i>idea</i> of linkedin. In that, I like to have business focused discussions/news.<p>It does tend to veer into this weird territory of everyone marketing to each other.<p>Anyway add me on linkedin.
Thank you for posting this, it is absolutely hilarious and spot on.<p>I wouldn't even mind some of the cringe posts, if they at least came from people I knew. But, the majority of my feed is posts from people I've never heard of, shown to me because a mutual connection "liked" them. No, I'm not going to congratulate a total stranger on their new job ... or try to comfort them after their dog died, etc.<p>By comparison, my Facebook feed is currently the worst it's ever been since I started using it in like 2007 or something, but it's still light years better than this.<p>I do occasionally enjoy some of the full-length articles posted on LinkedIn by public figures (e.g. Ray Dalio), but I have no freakin' idea why he only posts them there.
Once upon a time I used Linkedin to keep track of my contact list, which seemed to be its purpose back in the day.<p>It doesn't be so useful for that these days; especially since you can't get your contact data back out of the system anymore.<p>So I ended up removing my profile.<p>I keep meaning to hand-extract contact data so I can leave linkedin completely. Possibly I'll do that when I need to change my email later this year.<p>Meanwhile, has anyone noticed that you can't actually scrub the feed to get it completely empty? Even if you unfollow everyone and everything, and tell linkedin you're not interested in any activity whatsoever.
There is a huge irony to Twitter using LinkedIn as a punching bag. Twitter is full of people pretending to be cool and popular and witty by doing things like making fun of LinkedIn posts for being fake.
Pretty good article, actually. It nailed a bunch of reasons I can't stand linked in but didn't realize it. It really comes down to a very odd version of phoniness. Yes, it exists in all social networks but the linked in version is more cringe. I love this fake Linked In status update:<p>> Yesterday was walking to an interview. There was a starving dog on the road. I stopped to feed him & missed the interview. The next day got a call asking to come in to do the interview. was surprised, but went. Then the interviewer came in. He was the dog.
I imagine it's kinda what it must be like living in the CCP: Everyone is self-censoring and putting forward a fake face in hopes of appealing to some nebulous authority that may or may not be watching. Facebook is becoming more and more like this which is why people are finally leaving en masse. Any network based on censorship is doomed to be replaced by one where people feel like they can be themselves.<p>Will something replace LinkedIn one day?
I would guess that way more people are on LinkedIn than Twitter. Most of the work-force is on the former, mostly only technologists, journalists, and artists on the latter.<p>I have friends in the traditional London banking community who absolutely don't know how to engage genuinely with social media and probably aren't interested in learning, but they're there on LinkedIn, talking in the traditional corporate language that they live in.
Company xyz is hiring, amazing place to work blah blah, you would be perfect! Then the email is CCed to 50 other students and you find out the guy sending it only started at the company last month and gets paid a large bonus for whatever sheeple he can bring in :)<p>Don't forget after joining you have to make that post telling everyone how this is your dream job and show off the company goodie bag! #WeAreHiring #ChiefJediFinder
I think I probably still have a linkedin account but it's been ignored for many years.<p>The most value I've got out of the brief period where I occasionally logged in was periodically threatening to endorse <good friend> for proficiency in <technology they hate>.<p>(obviously I never actually did it, but given how I relate to my friends the faux threat was absolutely funny to both of us every time)
Funny this was posted because I have been thinking the same recently, more so than normal.<p>LinkedIn is a good way to connect with my clients/friends/colleagues and establish what is a small network of people in my field, who know each other and often benefit from each other. I also think the ability for recruiters to see my experience + the people and clients I work with has meant that my job opportunities are far greater than if I didn't have LinkedIn.<p>But my god, some of the posts on there are absolutely cringe and I don't normally like using that term. Don't get me wrong if a colleague or a client I have worked with recently is promoted or changes positions I am genuinely happy for them and it deserves a like or a "congrats".<p>But don't go around preaching your corporate life story like your experiences are gods gift on earth, or go around preaching vague and ambiguous virtues that we all know. You don't need to make a story about everything that happens to you and the majority of your network couldn't care less.
I don't get what's the big deal. Just unfollow everyone you connect with, disable all notifications, and check it once a week. That's what I do, and I see no "cringe". This way LinkedIn becomes just an "instant" messenger with a job board attached.<p>You can't eliminate other people's "cringe" but you can shield yourself from it very easily.
<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Try-hard" rel="nofollow">https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Try-hard</a><p>"Try-hard: Somebody whose effort level and emotional investment is excessively high for the level of play in which they are competing."
What an excellent post. LinkedIn seems to be getting worse and worse, merging in the worst aspects of the every-photo-is-staged "influencer" culture from Instagram and the stupid/not-inspirational/definitely-not-true meme story posts from Facebook. It really is so cringe.
Because almost all of us are wage slaves terrified of (our socioeconomic background's version of) starving alone under a bridge, and the few of us who are neither independently wealthy nor terrified are either too cool to have any use for LinkedIn and/or too crazy to pass on there
My two cents.<p>I can't stand all the humble bragging.<p>"I came from nothing and now I'd like to announce that I've accepted a position at your favorite FAANG, and I am so humbled to make more money than you, and to have had a degree from a brand-name university. #betterthanyouall"
LinkedIn is cringe because it is a virtual environment for work culture, which is also cringe. Everyone on LinkedIn wants to be inspiring, and say something like "What you view as a negative, I view as a positive." That's not cool, that's corny.
LinkedIn's social network is as necessary as Venmo's, which is to say just barely.<p>User engagement's siren song is irresistible to data-driven product orgs.<p>Is there a Law yet (like Zawinski's) that any app with enough users will attempt to become a social network?
If wee all worked in one global corporation and it had Yammer, that's LinkedIn. Except there is no asshole lady from marketing or HR who would delete without notice snarky or awkward posts. I sign in multiple times a day no idea why... anyways, yesterday I was strolling around downtown and noticed a homeless person, my son said "dad, look a homeless person", I stepped into chewing gum and noticed 5 euro note. Gave the note to the homeless and received in exchange American motivational book. I decided to share this with my manager and received another American motivational book.
I actually am working on a minimalist LinkedIn alternative because I was so fed up with it:
Learn more here!
<a href="https://leapful.dev/" rel="nofollow">https://leapful.dev/</a>
I don’t mind celebrating releases or blog posts which share something technical or meaningful. I hate that i will have to see the same posts under the ‘X liked/shared this article’. And then you see constant celebrations of new positions, the same job ads under people’s shares and likes, people praising others (i guess this is an automated thing) and endorse skills, etc. And then memes and random posts sharing personal details and stories make total sense and explain why all social media news feed are terrible and the same applies to LI.
For me, the worst cringe was when I was “recommended” for skills the recommenders didn’t understand. Being recommended by people even one level below you is cringe. Work is not like being a TA.
LinkedIn is one of the reasons I stopped trying to have any meaningful online conversations. And im guessing Im not alone. The cognitive dissonance and lack of any nuance is truly astounding. Im not sure if thats the real people self or they put on a show for clickbaits. Irrespective of the causal factors, the outcome is mindless statements that are just cringy. I only use LinkedIn to update profile for recruiters to contact me.
I mainly use LinkedIn to see how much better my former colleagues are now doing, compared to my career progress. When not stalking former colleagues I A/B test[1] my spam posts about my canvas library[2] to see which variants generate more views of my profile.<p>[1] Not proper A/B testing. The variants get posted once a month or so, making the results meaningless to anything beyond my ego.<p>[2] Link available on request.
This is funny. My LinkedIn is usually great. I opened it to demonstrate and it was full of my friends announcing their ProductHunt stuff, their new startup, etc.<p>So I closed it to come here and talk about that, and when I opened the front page again, it was all full of posts from a week ago with friends posting about awards their companies won and press releases and stuff.<p>Why did it get so boring on the second try? Weird...
As an aside, I find very interesting the story of how "cringe" became an adjective.<p><a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-did-we-get-so-cringe/ar-AASOaHX" rel="nofollow">https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-did-we-get-so-cring...</a>
LinkedIn is just a rolodex for ex colleagues for me, and a way to let recruiters know enough to contact me if necessary.<p>I once tried paid LinkedIn when I was job hunting, and all I could see were a bunch of unemployed people on there spending far too much time on it rather than looking for a job.
End it already. <a href="https://www.pcmaffey.com/finally-i-closed-my-linkedin" rel="nofollow">https://www.pcmaffey.com/finally-i-closed-my-linkedin</a>
Best advise I got for LinkedIn is.. remove connections ruthlessly based on content they are posting.<p>I guess this is applicable to most of the social networks out there. It really cleaned up my feed.
If you you call out any of the rampant self-aggrandizement, exaggeration, humble-brags, or in some case outright lies there's no real upside, and plenty of potential downside.
the only reason i still use linkedin is to follow chad profitz. a biting satirical take on the linkedin persona:<p>"SHARE if you think it’s about time that LinkedIn allowed British people to join the site!"
When you add a contact and they come to see your profile, that’s most likely because they came to unfollow you. Do the same. But all you are left with is an advert stream.
Just imagine a world where LinkedIn didn’t exist. Countless other companies could’ve formed to build something far better. But because of network effects we get stuck with whatever horrible design won because they were first and scaled up.