Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity • Hacker News Board

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#151

Post by JCM9 » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:35 PM UTC

LinkedIn is useful to check someone’s career history.

Beyond that it’s mostly a bunch of folks spending time on LinkedIn trying to impress people that aren’t spending their time on LinkedIn. Which ironically drives away the people folks seem to be trying to impress. Spend time there if you wish, but you’re “marketing” to people that mostly aren’t there.

The whole “influencer” thing on LinkedIn is mostly full of grifters claiming to be experts at things they’re not really experts at. When someone starts off by saying they’re a “top influencer” on LinkedIn I run the other way, quickly. If you have to market yourself as an influencer then newsflash you’re probably not. If you are, you just are.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#152

Post by mostlystatic » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:35 PM UTC

I love LinkedIn as a founder/developer. It's become my main social network after the Twitter acquisition.

Your experience depends on what show up in your feed. For me, it's mostly developers talking about web performance optimization, small business owners talking about conferences they've been to, people sharing posts or videos they've released... and the occasional post from the local council or someone criticizing Facebook's AI features.

Posting on LinkedIn doesn't necessarily mean bullshitting or low-value content. My two most popular posts are about single-page app performance [1] and TCP slow start [2]. And when I talk to people using our product they mention they have team members regularly sharing my posts in their company (but they might not "like" it on LinkedIn).

I might not be getting thousands of engagements, but there's little point reaching random people who aren't interested in working on the same problems as me either.

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mattzeunert_client-side-rende... [2] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mattzeunert_resource-download...

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#153

Post by throwawaybob420 » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:36 PM UTC

apwell23 wrote: post #115

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 can attribute millions of dollars in revenue to LinkedIn, as can a lot of my 'LinkedIn friends' I think you are BS-ing ( like you probably do on linkedin). What is the name of your company ?

Yeah that was my first thought as well.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#154

Post by woooooo » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:37 PM UTC

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…

Engineering leader | ex-something

...

Is that person more likely to be a leader or a follower and ass-kisser in your experience?

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#155

Post by mdale » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:39 PM UTC

hliyan wrote: post #118

fhd2 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think like that too, or at least used to. I got pretty far by just doing good work - or so I thought. Growing up in a rich country and getting a bit lucky to be found and promoted by the right people probably mattered as much, if not more, than my talents or skills. There's probably thousands of people better at anything I can do but less well off. I think the only reason I'm better off than them is that I had more…

The way I look at this is that the Adam Smith-ian free market makes the implicit assumption that market information (pricing, quality) disseminates via neutral, unbiased channels. However, the fact that influencing those channels is itself a commodity that is available on the market, paradoxically affects the operation of the market adversely. If supplier A has a product of quality Q at price P, and supplier B has a…

For an increasing set of product attracting attention and midshare is the product. Creator economy; open source projects that have many stars safer to use then ones that don't. AWS better to use than some small competitor because you know many others are in that same boat. "Not fired for using Microsoft" etc.

Widely used and viewed is value; less and less does a product evaluation work in isolation. So very difficult to evaluate products fairly in that sense. Something may be better but it's only in so far that your review agragation / index is a fair market for attention.

Think GitHub stars and amazon reviews for products or product hunt for new startups, or YouTube or LinkedIn views; all have their game of gathering attention / marketing that plays into products visibility and viability.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#156

Post by ndriscoll » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:39 PM UTC

hliyan wrote: post #118

fhd2 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think like that too, or at least used to. I got pretty far by just doing good work - or so I thought. Growing up in a rich country and getting a bit lucky to be found and promoted by the right people probably mattered as much, if not more, than my talents or skills. There's probably thousands of people better at anything I can do but less well off. I think the only reason I'm better off than them is that I had more…

The way I look at this is that the Adam Smith-ian free market makes the implicit assumption that market information (pricing, quality) disseminates via neutral, unbiased channels. However, the fact that influencing those channels is itself a commodity that is available on the market, paradoxically affects the operation of the market adversely. If supplier A has a product of quality Q at price P, and supplier B has a…

The problem is that even reviews from verified purchasers get gamed in the real world, and aggregated reviews can only cover simple information because people don't have the expertise for a proper review (e.g. try to find basic information like idle power consumption for computers. Or whether some part has working or broken pcie power management). So the problem is that you need morally unassailable competent reviewers.

In theory, you'd need consumers to fund such an organization only until they had so much sway that a review from them became essentially mandatory for anyone to consider your product, at which time they could charge a fee to review a product without becoming beholden to the companies paying the fees.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#157

Post by fragmede » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:47 PM UTC

sgnelson wrote: post #121

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.

> If you're in marketing, "kill yourself"

is not the insightful bit of wisdom you think it is, even if it did come from Bill Hicks

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#158

Post by parpfish » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:48 PM UTC

_fat_santa wrote: post #129

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 marketi…

I like it as a “place that hosts resumes in a standardized format that can be imported to other applications correctly”

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#159

Post by hk__2 » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:48 PM UTC

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #84

ohdeargodno wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Convincing people to buy your rotten meat is value creation! Convincing people to buy a bridge is value creation! Convincing people to buy your Teflon pan that will seep into the environment for centuries is value creation! Because after all, nothing else matters. Value creation. Value. Creation. Consequences ? Thoughtfulness ? That's for the dumbasses not creating _value_

I searched some greed quotes and here's one I'd like to share "As long as greed is stronger than compassion, there will always be suffering"

"Can you make a sentence look more intelligent if you surround it with quotes?"

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#160

Post by akk0 » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:48 PM UTC

I wouldn't know what LinkedIn rewards, because they banned me the day after making my account for no stated reason and then rejected my appeal. I just complied with their request to see my passport for the third time earlier today. I suspect I triggered a flag originally verifying my identity because it took me two phones to realize their verification bullshit will never load without Play Services and a third, stock android phone to get through it.