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Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

elliotcsmith.com

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Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#121

Post by sgnelson »

nickfromseattle wrote: post #5

This reads like it was written by a developer 'who doesn't get marketing'. > Nothing you post there is going to change your career. I can attribute millions of dollars in revenue to LinkedIn, as can a lot of my 'LinkedIn friends' > Doing work that matters might. This is a pre-requisite for winning on LinkedIn. The kind of content that performs best are strong opinions informed by actual expertise. > Go for depth over…

Just going to throw this out there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h9wStdPkQY

I do not fully endorse the message. However, there is very much some truth in there.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#122

Post by mehulashah »

LinkedIn is a long-form billboard not a blogging site. It’s meant for getting attention, not for thought provoking discussion. Or at least, I’ve not really seen honest discourse on any recent social platform. There are plenty of reasons to be on a billboard, but most billboards are boring.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#123

Post by 1oooqooq »

nickfromseattle wrote: post #5

This reads like it was written by a developer 'who doesn't get marketing'. > Nothing you post there is going to change your career. I can attribute millions of dollars in revenue to LinkedIn, as can a lot of my 'LinkedIn friends' > Doing work that matters might. This is a pre-requisite for winning on LinkedIn. The kind of content that performs best are strong opinions informed by actual expertise. > Go for depth over…

wow. you weaponized medicrity to save a few bucks on an actual marketing campaign. so unique. good for you.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#124

Post by [deleted] »

notahacker wrote: post #105
oytis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The kind of content that performs best are strong opinions informed by actual expertise. I agree on the strong opinions, but not that a real expertise is a prerequisite. You probably need to have a bit of understanding of what you are writing ragebaits about, but not necessarily be an expert - returning to the author's point about rewarding mediocrity

Judging by the content I get served, the kind of content that performs best is outsourced to ChatGPT And written in a very specific way Not like that. Like this. The aversion to conventional paragraph structures is as important as the bragging. And it's not that that opinions are strong, or genuinely held, or even that well-defined. It's just the AI favourite "not this, this" pattern you get when you ask it to write…

[deleted]

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#125

Post by oytis »

notahacker wrote: post #105
oytis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The kind of content that performs best are strong opinions informed by actual expertise. I agree on the strong opinions, but not that a real expertise is a prerequisite. You probably need to have a bit of understanding of what you are writing ragebaits about, but not necessarily be an expert - returning to the author's point about rewarding mediocrity

Judging by the content I get served, the kind of content that performs best is outsourced to ChatGPT And written in a very specific way Not like that. Like this. The aversion to conventional paragraph structures is as important as the bragging. And it's not that that opinions are strong, or genuinely held, or even that well-defined. It's just the AI favourite "not this, this" pattern you get when you ask it to write…

Engagement slop is next level, I wouldn't even call this mediocrity. I rather meant genuine thought leaders. E.g. in my area of expertise (embedded systems) there are a couple of people who dominate LinkedIn on advice in that area.

Their advice is not necessarily bad, but not particularly original either. They just beat their drums with half a dozen of opinions they paraphrase over and over. They seem to have certain experience as engineers, but I wouldn't expect them to be particularly good ones.

On the other hand, I know a couple of outstandingly good engineers I have worked with, who also have some mindshare on private blogs and conferences, but nowhere near the thought leaders, and definitely not on LinkedIn

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#126

Post by tomas789 »

nickfromseattle wrote: post #5

This reads like it was written by a developer 'who doesn't get marketing'. > Nothing you post there is going to change your career. I can attribute millions of dollars in revenue to LinkedIn, as can a lot of my 'LinkedIn friends' > Doing work that matters might. This is a pre-requisite for winning on LinkedIn. The kind of content that performs best are strong opinions informed by actual expertise. > Go for depth over…

I used to write actively on LinkedIn. Nothing big but still something. I couldn’t align with myself with the original post but I couldn’t tell why. This is aligned with my understanding of how LinkedIn works much more. Thank you for explaining that to me.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#127

Post by seattle_spring »

user568439 wrote: post #6

Full of people sucking each other BS. And then recruiters unable to understand the most basics of a profile. Nevertheless I update my own from time to time, it can still be useful if you navigate through the garbage. Also it helps me to cross-check a bit some people if they have a contact that you both know and you trust. More than once I encountered people with 100% fake profile and fake work history. Maybe LinkedIn…

I've lost count how many first-line engineering managers I've actively worked alongside change their LinkedIn title to "Engineering Leader" or something like that. They'll be a manager of 6 ICs in Org X, which itself is comprised of 400 people, but on their profile they'll put "leading Org X". It's some of the clearest evidence I've seen that LinkedIn is toxic sludge.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#128

Post by Henchman21 »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #97
makeitdouble wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This reads like it was written by a developer 'who doesn't get marketing'. That's spot on. And it will be a very common sentiment regarding marketing. Many devs don't like "bullshitting", it's the exact opposite of how we're supposed to do our job. And while it's understood marketing has a huge impact on sales, one can still take a healthy distance from it. I think this post is about linkedin moving from a generic…

As an aside, marketing isn’t bullshitting. Peddling non sense on LinkedIn mostly is bullshitting. It can be very lucrative bullshitting and I’m happy to fork the money to people devoid of any sort of ethics when I have to leverage it while sharing your overall opinions on LinkedIn influencers. But there is significantly more to marketing than that and some of it (pricing strategy, distribution, understanding your sal…

Marketing is lying. Convincing someone to buy something they don’t actually need? Thats a drain on society. It’s become so pervasive we go to great lengths to justify it. But at its core its fundamentally dishonest.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#129

Post by _fat_santa »

etra0 wrote: post #92

LinkedIn posts really read like an alternative reality (which I would not like to be a part of, lol). I cannot take seriously most of what I read over there. The comments are also often toxic, the whole business is... just weird. What's funny as a personal anecdote, I've found more jobs through Twitter (pre-X) than through LinkedIn. Seriously. And I've tried using LinkedIn for job hunt.

LinkedIn I found has two very different purposes that often get mixed up.

1. Getting in contact with recruiters. Here you're basically inside the chat window 100% of the time, the only time you leave this is to connect with recruiters. I can speak from experience that this works, and will get you jobs.

2. Marketing. This is where you see the incessant posts from folks building "personal brands" but also folks marketing various products. While I haven't waded into that territory yet, I've spoken to many really good salespeople that have all said that LinkedIn drives leads for them like no other.

My takeaway from both of these is: "man LinkedIn is a goofy ass place but it works"

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