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Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

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Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#141

Post by PeterisP »

fnl wrote: post #63
mendicantB wrote: post #42

Your analysis is extremely flawed. I really appreciate your sharing the data with us and I like your service. But, this is a poorly done and a far from subtle plug of your business at the cost of LinkedIn. 1) Technical ability vs # of endorsements Jesus. Hiding stats that you don't like through aggregations? And please read up on Simspons Paradox, which is clearly the case here just by looking at your plot. Try a bas…

Here's another, even worse example: > It turns out that people’s interview language of choice matched their most endorsed language on LinkedIn just under 50% of the time, so, you know, just slightly worse than flipping a coin. A coin has 2 sides. How many programming languages are there, again?

And the variables are measuring different things - you'd expect the most endorsed language to mirror the language that you have the most experience in during your (possibly very long) career, and there's no reason to suppose that it should match your current language of choice (which quite likely is more modern than what you used 10 years ago) more than 50% of the time; no matter how (un)reliable endorsements are, this isn't a valid argument against them.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#142

Post by arcticfox »

pmiller2 wrote: post #66
mendicantB wrote: post #42

Your analysis is extremely flawed. I really appreciate your sharing the data with us and I like your service. But, this is a poorly done and a far from subtle plug of your business at the cost of LinkedIn. 1) Technical ability vs # of endorsements Jesus. Hiding stats that you don't like through aggregations? And please read up on Simspons Paradox, which is clearly the case here just by looking at your plot. Try a bas…

Does your little birdie have data?

Seriously, not sure how you can criticize someone for their methodology and then throw in a super weird appeal to authority with no support

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#143

Post by deftnerd »

jiaweihli wrote: post #140
anilgulecha wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wow, that's an ingenious hack that makes a lot of sense in hindsight. What was your thought process and how did it lead to that? Was it solving a similar problem in another domain? I've read your comment thrice and have not been able to understand it! It's starts out mildly reasonable, then drifts out into bot-territory

I'm mildly offended that you trivialized my comment. I'm even more confused because I believe my questions are completely valid, and you're not taking them at face value. To rephrase: Have you ever encountered a flash of insight that seemed to approach a challenge from a completely different angle? It could be something like someone solving a deeply technical problem in a non-technical way, or the first time you were…

Thank you for rephrasing your question. I'll admit that I didn't fully understand your query the first time either.

I am, by nature, a hacker. I often search for unconventional solutions to problems, even when conventional solutions are already available. It's a form of thought exercise.

I take great joy in brainstorming problems and not stopping even when the solution presents itself.

For example, housing for refugees might result in coming up with plans for flatpack structures, designing automated machinery to manufacture bricks, to research on genetically modifying gourds to grow large enough to be able to be harvested and turned into structures.

As a child, I hoped to work for a think tank one day but the opportunity never presented itself. Instead I attempt to build small automated micro-businesses whenever a new idea captures my interest.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#145

Post by ucho »

andy-x wrote: 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).

> know for sure

I am not sure about anything on LI page - it so full of dark patterns that spamming random people with invites is always at most 2 clicks away. It might be similar with endorsements.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#146

Post by sfink »

sebringj wrote: post #15

I remember making several comments over the years about that on LinkedIn asking why endorsements were relevant. Recruiters or IT companies looking for favors would randomly give me credit for skills they had no idea I was capable of or not. In the beginning I would message them back saying "You don't even know me, why are you endorsing me?" and people would be surprised like it was rude or something like they were do…

When the endorsement flood first hit, I thought it was a truly awful and intrusive idea. I created an Unwanted Endorsement Recipient... skill? I don't remember exactly how it works. I know I've been endorsed for it a few times now, though I long ago turned off endorsement emails so I'm not sure.

It's just an engagement growth hack by LI. I understand why they did it, but I think it's short term gain for long term risk of irrelevance (of LI itself; endorsements are already irrelevant). Which, for a social network, is the biggest existential threat.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#147

Post by leovonl »

My experience with endorsements tells they can be not only deceiving, but also a trap.

There's this guy which I used to work with that was not very good in the job and used to distract others at work very often, not being really productive most of the time - but he was generally nice to everyone, so nobody really disliked him.

He ended up leaving the company, and was hired by another company which we had business with. After some time, his new employer called our boss to tell he left, taking with him all the code of the project he was and starting a company by himself with this code.

This may seem bad already, but it was not the end: a few years later, the guy comes back asking me for recommendations on LinkedIn - when I checked his profile, I found he got a lot of code from the first company as well - where we used to work together - and put on his Github, with copyright headers stating he was the author. In fact, he did that with code I personally wrote.

Of course, I didn't endorse him - but if I go to his LinkedIn page today, there are tons of recommendations by ex-colleagues, including recommendations for things that he barely worked with.

And this is just one example. Most co-workers I have or had that were really good in what they do have zero to a few recommendations, and usually in very specific stuff that don't every start to cover their knowledge.

So, my advice is: if you use LinkedIn recommendations to anything serious, you are doing something wrong.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#148

Post by sebringj »

sfink wrote: post #146
sebringj wrote: post #15

I remember making several comments over the years about that on LinkedIn asking why endorsements were relevant. Recruiters or IT companies looking for favors would randomly give me credit for skills they had no idea I was capable of or not. In the beginning I would message them back saying "You don't even know me, why are you endorsing me?" and people would be surprised like it was rude or something like they were do…

When the endorsement flood first hit, I thought it was a truly awful and intrusive idea. I created an Unwanted Endorsement Recipient... skill? I don't remember exactly how it works. I know I've been endorsed for it a few times now, though I long ago turned off endorsement emails so I'm not sure. It's just an engagement growth hack by LI. I understand why they did it, but I think it's short term gain for long term ris…

Totally. Your comment is particularly relevant to me as I'm building my own social network and have to see blunders of others and avoid them like the plague.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#149

Post by leeny »

xapata wrote: post #104
leeny wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People overwhelmingly chose one language to interview in, so there wasn't much fo a distribution. Unless you mean which languages are most popular?

> which languages are most popular? Is there any other (reasonable) way to interpret that question?

Wasn't sure if you were asking that independently of endorsements.

Right now, the most heavily used languages on interviewing.io are Java, Python, JavaScript, and C++ (in that order).

Ruby, C#, and Go are in the middle.

At the bottom are Perl and PHP.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#150

Post by verelo »

bthallplz wrote: post #120
verelo wrote: post #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]

Thank you for posting this. I love this idea! It could demonstrate one's personality in an unexpected way.

You're welcome.

I want to say that is how it started, but honestly I think I was just annoyed at people who had never worked closely with me endorsing me for "The Cloud", so I intentionally added some stupid things in the hope they'd prove to me once and for all they actually didn't know anything about me.

My profile has been like this for years now...one day when I actually want to do something different, I look forward to it acting as an automatic filter against the people I don't want to work with :)

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