Live data from Hacker News

Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

blog.interviewing.io

31–40 of 156 posts

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#31
Out of curiosity, why are the data manipulation controls (zoom/share) on the plot.ly charts explicitly disabled (specifically, no hover popovers which plot.ly sets by default + the parameters link=false and modebar=false)?

At that point, why not use static images for data visualizations instead?

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#32
post #12

I believe endorsements on LI are fake. I'm receiving endorsements for random things from my former and current co-workers and I know for sure they never sent any (either because I asked them or I know it's entirely outside their expertise).

Yes, I've seen this too. 4 people allegedly endorsed me for Clojure, and only one of them, when asked, even knew what it was. None could recall having clicked the button.

And I allegedly endorsed someone for "TeamCity" before I knew what it was!

Either they're faking the data or their UI design is negligent-to-malicious levels of bad.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#33
post #5

When writing LinkedIn profiles for my resume and coaching clients, I advise them to turn endorsements "off". Under the Skills section is a "Adjust Endorsement Settings" listing that you can click to turn it off. Endorsements tend to be just extra noise with all those pictures, and on many profiles there is rather important information (education, projects, etc.) below the skills section. You don't want your reader ge…

Serious question: what exactly does a resume coach do? Do they just maintain a good resume for me?

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#34

In their quest to copy Facebook's formula for professional networking, LI's growth/engagement team makes a huge effort in promoting users to endorse their connections. As a result, nearly all the endorsements on my LI have come from non-technical folks who just know buzzwords (e.g. python was my most-endorsed skill even even though this isn't my most used language by far, and any engineer taking a quick glance at my…

Hah, I agree, I think I removed some endorsements or something to the effect, maybe I just removed the skill the endorsements where aggregating under. Now LI keeps harassing me that I have pending endorsements to display or something to that effect. Endorsements do feel really phony to me so far, maybe in the long run endorsements at the end of a career would have a different look.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#35

In their quest to copy Facebook's formula for professional networking, LI's growth/engagement team makes a huge effort in promoting users to endorse their connections. As a result, nearly all the endorsements on my LI have come from non-technical folks who just know buzzwords (e.g. python was my most-endorsed skill even even though this isn't my most used language by far, and any engineer taking a quick glance at my…

We at NetIn take a different approach, we look at open source languages you've written your code in and what skills other engineers at your organization are known for before we rank you for a given skill.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#36
post #7

I wonder if they are useful at all just as: number of endorsements / number of connections. Even if the tag is wrong, that someone vouched for you in some minor way might be statistically significant. Of course, it could be that the UI encourages mindless tagging, therefore it's all cruft.

The UI definitely encourages mindless tagging. I'm endorsed for parallel algorithms by the manager of a very low-end car maintenance shop. Plural of anecodate, yada yada yada, but most of my endorsements are from people who really have no experience in that programming language or concept AT ALL.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#37
post #7

I wonder if they are useful at all just as: number of endorsements / number of connections. Even if the tag is wrong, that someone vouched for you in some minor way might be statistically significant. Of course, it could be that the UI encourages mindless tagging, therefore it's all cruft.

The UI definitely encourages mindless tagging. I'm endorsed for parallel algorithms by the manager of a very low-end car maintenance shop. Plural of anecodate, yada yada yada, but most of my endorsements are from people who really have no experience in that programming language or concept AT ALL.

A manager of a low end car maintenance shop with whom you've done no work for, correct?

If you have done work for him, I'd argue the tag at least means he liked the work. If not, then yeah, useless data.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#39
Without trying to blow my own horn too hard here, I've never really taken these all that seriously and have strongly thought that people who have more (serious) recommendations are often the most useless people.

Screenshot: http://m.imgur.com/uyXXEPl

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjohnmcgrath/ [my recommendations]

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#40
LinkedIn is highly focused on metrics of user engagement. Endorsements motivate a lot of engagement by providing a low-effort way for users to articulate generally positive information about each other. Although skill endorsements could be shaped into something more rigorous and useful, that conflicts with engagement/virality goals which call for easy ways to quickly message dozens of contacts.

In other words, no kidding endorsements are useless. That isn't the point.

Post reply on HN