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.
Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?
41–50 of 85 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?
#42Maybe 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.
I am not sure anyone has an accurate idea of what's going on, including people running LinkedIn. Everyone just sees their own slice of the world.
Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?
#43Politics and war discussions have been increasingly common at work too. Companies have promoting ERGs in the hope of diversity and in the name of "bringing your authentic self to work", and these groups have become a hotbed of activism. I've witnessed flamewars in work channels on the topics of BLM, war in Gaza etc in the past two companies I've worked.
>> hotbed of activism
Funny that "activism" now just means arguing via text without any intention of convincing the other side of anything.
Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?
#44My 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…
I dunno, there’s a pretty convincing episode of Lovejoy about this.
Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?
#45About a decade ago, we’d refer to LinkedIn as “the network everyone has, but nobody is on.” Meaning, everyone has an account but there’s no reason to log in unless you’re seeking an employment change. Looks like they tripled-down on features to change it. Always seeking DAU.
> Looks like they tripled-down on features to change it. Always seeking DAU. The irony is that all the extra nonsense keeps a lot of us away even more. I think even the next time I want to change jobs, there are platforms I'll use before I go back to LinkedIn. I guess it's like any social media platform. Once you invite too many people, you dilute the original purpose and community, and just end up with memes and cat…
> I think even the next time I want to change jobs, there are platforms I'll use before I go back to LinkedIn.
Like what? I'm genuinely curious because I've found my last two jobs through LinkedIn recruiters and I would like to know if there's a better platform out there to be my digital resume / recruiter spam dumping ground
Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?
#46Politics and war discussions
This is true, they pull people in, but it's the why of it that counts.
LinkedIn, once it became the defacto job board, had no where to grow.
They need more users, more members, more engagement, so that their numbers look ever greater, and therefore their stock continues to rise.
A plateau is a horror to such companies. It's never enough to do a thing, and do it well.
Even if every person on the planet logged on daily, and spent 16 hours doing things, someone at LinkedIn would be going bananas because it wasn't 16.2 hrs.
And thus, it turns to trash.
Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?
#47Intentional 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 weekends. It's basically facebook now.
Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?
#48It feels like people want to be "though leaders" and boost their personal brand. Heck people are using to pick up dates. People are pushing a lot of political stuff too. It is kind of turning into facebook.
LinkedIn Lunatics https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics/
LinkedIn Cringe. That's whole genre on YouTube. And literally that.
Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?
#49In 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.
Not the European LinkedIn network I’m in. Plenty of Gaza posts and the usual energy political tribalism around. I try to restrict my engagement on that kind of content though
Re: Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?
#50I 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...