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LinkedIn is laying off nearly 700 employees

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Re: LinkedIn is laying off nearly 700 employees

#81

I really admire the creative bullshit these execs come up with, AI can't compete: "This means adapting our organizational structures to improve agility and accountability, establishing unambiguous ownership and driving improved efficiency and transparency through reduced layering".

I love how the "leveraging resource to add value using laser-focused synergistic..." business double-speak euphamisms can also be used to fire people, not just take up air during management meetings.

Re: LinkedIn is laying off nearly 700 employees

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naah. C# and .NET is solid. I am doubling down on it even for startups. Doing my next product in it.

I think his point is valid though. While I see C# listed all the time on normal job posting sites, on HN it's always the sexy meme languages like Rust and Python.

None of those are “meme” languages.

I appreciate Python started-off as a toy-like language - but its utility as a glue-language for serious number-crunching (see: how almost all ML projects involve Python somehow) and the admirable community surrounding it means its credibility is established. The worst thing anyone can say about Python is that it’s the new VBA.

Rust is the new C++ - Microsoft wouldn’t be investing tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars in enabling Rust for Windows drivers if it wasn’t serious. (Whereas it’s Zig and Carbon where I have concerns about adoption and longevity: the post-C ecosystem isn’t large enough to sustain three languages that overlap each other so much)

Re: LinkedIn is laying off nearly 700 employees

#83
I agree with all the takes about LinkedIn turning into a bad social network, but is that intrinsic to its design or is it something that happens no matter what?

Is there a way to design a site--at the UI/policy level--to end up with a community that doesn't suck?

For Hacker News, for example, is what we like about it just a consequence of the current set of members (in which, case, it might change eventually), or is it the moderation that keeps it good? If the latter, is there some way to automate the moderation (to make it scalable to LinkedIn-sized networks)?

I'm also thinking of Quora, which was once an amazing community, but eventually (though it took years) degraded into just another meme-fest/click-bait social network.

Re: LinkedIn is laying off nearly 700 employees

#84
post #39

Has anyone else noticed that LinkedIn is turning into a shitty social media platform? Memes and videos are now being posted. I used to get decent use from it but stopped updating my profile because the site is cancer. Full of self patting on the back and people adding me to “grow their network”. Recruiters contacting me with “perfect fit” position in languages not on my profile. Can someone please develop hacker news…

I made the mistake of answering to an antivax post (something like “yeah “we” survived the Spanish flu and other pandemics but always at a horrible cost.” And my feed turned awful, I report posts on a regular basis now. Other than that, it’s still the way to contact anyone, I mean anyone I remotely know or knew.

>it’s still the way to contact anyone

Yeah. I usually try other means first but if I don't have or can't find what seems like a reliable email address, LinkedIn is a pretty good avenue--especially with so many people having largely migrated asway from Twitter and Facebook.

Re: LinkedIn is laying off nearly 700 employees

#85
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or this: https://d2u3dcdbebyaiu.cloudfront.net/uploads/atch_img/442/f...

Is there a name for the specific kind of moderate-level of mental anguish I felt when reading that?

In german and spanish there is an expression for shaming for others. Fremdschāmen / Verguenza ajena. In english cringe, maybe?

Re: LinkedIn is laying off nearly 700 employees

#86

Has anyone else noticed that LinkedIn is turning into a shitty social media platform? Memes and videos are now being posted. I used to get decent use from it but stopped updating my profile because the site is cancer. Full of self patting on the back and people adding me to “grow their network”. Recruiters contacting me with “perfect fit” position in languages not on my profile. Can someone please develop hacker news…

It’s been like this for many years now. I can’t really remember it otherwise. I’ve lost respect for some colleagues after seeing all the self congratulatory posting that exaggerates what happened and long-winded work stories on their profiles. I’m done with giving folks a pass at this stage on their Linkedin ladder climbing nonsense. Like most social media it’s a giant circlejerk just with a white collar lean.

Re: LinkedIn is laying off nearly 700 employees

#88

Has anyone else noticed that LinkedIn is turning into a shitty social media platform? Memes and videos are now being posted. I used to get decent use from it but stopped updating my profile because the site is cancer. Full of self patting on the back and people adding me to “grow their network”. Recruiters contacting me with “perfect fit” position in languages not on my profile. Can someone please develop hacker news…

always has been :)

Re: LinkedIn is laying off nearly 700 employees

#89

I really admire the creative bullshit these execs come up with, AI can't compete: "This means adapting our organizational structures to improve agility and accountability, establishing unambiguous ownership and driving improved efficiency and transparency through reduced layering".

I'm all for criticizing empty corpo talk, but that quote is actually pretty reasonable and not empty. They are just saying that they are simplifying their organizational chart so that they don't have teams with overlapping responsabilities.

It's just a polite way to say "we noticed that we had 2 teams doing the same thing so we merged them and dropped the resulting excess headcount".

Re: LinkedIn is laying off nearly 700 employees

#90
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft (who owns LinkedIn) reports quarterly earnings in ~1 week. For public companies, timing it around an earnings call can help control the narrative since the company will have a chance to explain to investors why the action wwill increase shareholder value.

When I read these stories, all I really hear is that these companies have lost all ability to innovate and invent. They've spent a fortune on these people, carefully choosing and then tuning them to be experts in the business and now they can't think of anything for them to do? They should be embarrassed.

That’s one way to look at it. Or, it could just be that, during the covid boom years they overhired to support growth that never materialized, and now they’re stuck with a bunch of overpaid freeloaders (sitting at the top of each salary band) who are neither experts in the business nor uniquely talented/useful/needed.
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