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Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?

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Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?

#51

Post by evbogue »

I gave LinkedIn a serious go five years ago and estimate I invested around ten hours a week interacting with spammers, fake jobs, and worse. And the in-app chat didn't work at all. I had to ctrl-r the website to receive a new message. Have they fixed that bug yet?

At one point I had followed all of the CEOs in India because they were claiming there were so many great jobs in India. Since they followed me back I started conversations with all of them in an attempt to get a work visa for India --- near the end of an entire year searching for a job in America on Linkedin I was pretty disillusioned with the local job market. All of these CEOs in India ghosted me! Finally a friend from India explained that there is no work visa for American programmers and that is why they were dropping the conversation.

After that I decided to delete the account since it seemed to be mostly wasting my time.

At local meetups everyone tells me to get on there, that it is the only way I'll find a job. Then I ask them: well, what job have you found on there? But they are looking for a job, so they explain to me that is why they are on Linkedin. After this the other party tends to offer to diagnose me with depression or autism if I do not find someone else to IRL network with.

Does anyone have professional networking site recommendations beyond LinkedIn and HN Who's Hiring? Leave recommendations below!

Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?

#52

Post by wg0 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #33

My favorite has to be the motivational gurus and hucksters, that just spout absolute nonsense. I saw one example, it was something like this: "You don't understand scale. Use $50 to buy 10 tomato plants. In 6 months you have 250 tomatoes. Plant those into 250 plants. 6 months you have 6250 plants. Plant them. 6 months you have 156k tomatoes. Plant them. 6 months you have 3.9MM tomatoes. Sell them for $1 each." Anothe…

These gurus. Very virtuous. Servant leaders. "I saw one of my team member in elevator. He was very down. I asked him. He said was worried about the last quarter's results. I told him how great he did in last quarter. He started to ease a bit. He thanked me and left the elevator smiling. His simle made my day. Compliment your coworkers. I think if we make it a habit, we can make the world a better place."

And such.

Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?

#53

Post by huevosabio »

Social networks tend converge, in my opinion.

It probably is because of the constant search for "engagement" so they either copy same dynamics or discover the same triggers.

Point is, given the same objective function you get similar solutions.

I wished it was otherwise, particularly for LinkedIn. The combo of a social graph with everyone's CV should be a treasure for say advising on career advancement, crafting educational programs, bypassing traditional hiring, and what not. Instead, we have the Nth iteration of MySpace.

Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?

#54

Post by alephnerd »

gnicholas wrote: post #37
alephnerd wrote: post #13

You need to tune the algorithm. Are you following people who are pushing politics on their LinkedIns? I've found following relevant VCs, PMs, Academics, and corporate leadership has drastically improved my LinkedIn with almost zero noise. Mute and unfollow people who post too much politics on LinkedIn, and engage with content that is more relevant to you. The algorithm will tune itself for you accordingly

I didn’t think there was a way to mute people, only to unfollow or disconnect entirely. I find it annoying that I can’t tell LinkedIn to show me less of this, like I can with other social networks.

On the top right of a post there is an X button. Click that. It will remove that content from your feed and offer less content like that.

Like content you find relevant and X out the content you find useless. In 1 week your LinkedIn will be completely tuned

Also, as someone who I think might be a 2nd or 3rd degree connect of yours, the Bay Area Asian American HS network has been fairly high quality. Leverage and optimize for the network of friends and alums who ended up becoming IBs, PEs, Engineers who deliver, VCs, Academics, etc. And then optimize to follow whoever they follow in turn.

Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?

#55

Post by serial_dev »

riffraff wrote: post #25

Maybe it's your circle? My LinkedIn feed is mostly self-promotion and various achievement notices, with the occasional deviation, i.e. what it always was.

Mine is both?

Self promotion partly via virtue signaling by "supporting the current thing" (war, politics), everyone's making their gender or race their whole identity even in work context, oh I'm a GDE now, wannabe influencers churning out "my top 20 books about coding interviews" posts twice a day, rehashing the landing page of a popular technology in a 10 page PDF, some fake house building technology (from 2004) that somehow will revolutionize housing, code snippets that do trivial things with 5 arrows on them, reposting poor quality work memes and cartoons from reddit with ten emojies and a caption "wdyt".

My LinkedIn experience is insufferable, and honestly, I don't even know what would make it better. Now that I'm happy at my workplace and extremely busy in my personal life, I check in once a month, scroll a minute, and feel somehow sick, so close the window immediately.

Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?

#56

Post by jmye »

randycupertino wrote: post #47

Intentional move by Linkedin. They wanted to make it more social to make it more "sticky" and boost engagement stats. So making it feel more like social media that people routinely visit vs a static career page you only look at when you're job hunting. Hence the feed and the algorithm and the self-promotional and random topic posts. I have a dude in my feed who routinely posts about his son and things they do on week…

Why are you still following him?

Obviously LI has an incentive to add engagement, and users want interaction, but LI provides tools to help you get rid of the garbage. I am amazed by how many people adamantly refuse to use those tools.

Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?

#57

Post by [deleted] »

epicureanideal wrote: post #28
mgillett54 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employee resource group, basically a group of employees that have some shared interest or background

Although as with most race, gender, or interest groups, it would be unwise to try to start one for specific combinations. Strangely, the same combinations that are labeled “oppressors”. I’m not saying I would want to, but I find that ERGs for every other combination starts to feel like a way for organized preferential treatment to happen for all those other combinations, and all their various interests to be promoted…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?

#58

Post by mongol »

kranke155 wrote: post #41

In Europe / London politics are very much off the table for LinkedIn. It would be crazy to talk about anything except some charity helping in place X.

I have seen quite a lot related to Gaza, and before that about CO2 / climate change. And also a lot about women empowerment. So many networks for women. Quite exclusionary, if you ask me.

Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?

#59

Post by anon7725 »

mongol wrote: post #50

I have sometimes considered to incorporate in my will that my family should post about my passing using my LinkedIn account. That will reach 95% of everyone in my circles of the last 20 years. Yes, it is disappointing...

“4 things I learned by leaning in to non-existence this year”

Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?

#60

Post by smolder »

gnicholas wrote: post #37
alephnerd wrote: post #13

You need to tune the algorithm. Are you following people who are pushing politics on their LinkedIns? I've found following relevant VCs, PMs, Academics, and corporate leadership has drastically improved my LinkedIn with almost zero noise. Mute and unfollow people who post too much politics on LinkedIn, and engage with content that is more relevant to you. The algorithm will tune itself for you accordingly

I didn’t think there was a way to mute people, only to unfollow or disconnect entirely. I find it annoying that I can’t tell LinkedIn to show me less of this, like I can with other social networks.

I find it annoying that other social networks offer "hide this" or "see less" features which are ineffective. E.g. Facebook won't stop putting clickbait "shorts" at the top, no matter what I do. YouTube keeps showing me ads for some kind of dating crap with suggestive pictures of women despite my best efforts (apart from adblock, which stopped the obnoxious and repetitive ads...)
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