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

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#261

Post by Imustaskforhelp » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 5:12 PM UTC

hk__2 wrote: post #159

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

I didn't want it to sound intelligent but I mean I was mentioning a quote so we do need to place a quote inside quotes afterall lol.

I was just sharing something that I felt relevant to the discussion in the sense that greed is one of the most major causes of suffering, and it is our greed that we are ready to write linkedin mediocrity slop.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#262

Post by bluedino » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 5:16 PM UTC

LinkedIn is decent for jobs/searching/applying. That's all I really find it useful for.

Things I don't find it useful for:

Salespeople trying to sell me some enterprise product when I don't have anything to do with selection/purchasing those items. Everything from IP phones to enterprise storage to whatever SaSS is hot

Low-effort recruiter spam. Jobs I'm not interested in, qualified for, over-qualified for, want me to go into the office but it's 2 hours away, "I am impressed by your profile...."

Former co-workers posting about how much they learned at some conference or seminar or the pizza part for Jerry who finally retired

Cheatsheet/tutorial spam since my job is developer/linux adjacent.

"Freshers" not in my network, spamming looking for jobs.

Typical motivational/marketing stuff from Seth Godin and wannabe influencers.

Awww cute videos with a baby or small animal.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#263

Post by _swfb » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 5:16 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…

I suppose what you're saying isn't "wrong" but can we agree that this sucks?

Now every asshole has to try and co-opt "influencer" tactics and if you're not constantly writing bullshit that talks about how hard of a worker you are and ever push back on any corporate lies, now you have that attached to your resume.

I wouldn't write "Told someone that they probably didn't actually create ten billion dollars of value in a Fortune 10 company by age three" directly on my resume, but that's what happens on LinkedIn. It's terrible, and no one should defend it.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#264

Post by flkiwi » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 5:17 PM UTC

I'm sure someone else has said this, but Corporate America (I cannot speak to Corporate $AnywhereElse with any depth) and large parts of the entrepreneur ecosystem reward mediocrity. In this sense, LinkedIn is just a symptom of a larger disease.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#265

Post by zelphirkalt » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 5:19 PM UTC

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #202

This thread is headed by defensive comments alleging that they have benefitted financially from LinkedIn. These comments only strengthen the premise of the OP that "toxic mediocrity" is rewarded. It is like a submission that is critical of multi-level marketing that generates a stream of defensive comments from marketers alleging that MLM "is responsible for millions of dollars in revenue". Of course it is, but that…

Unfortunately, however, people at many companies, who are responsible for hiring people, are running around on LinkedIn and believe things of value being communicated there, living this strange parallel world or bubble of self-marketers and make believe that is LinkedIn, becoming part of it themselves with their mediocrity. The signal of excellence entirely drowns in a stream of mediocrity on LinkedIn.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#266

Post by glitchcrab » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 5:23 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #262

LinkedIn is decent for jobs/searching/applying. That's all I really find it useful for. Things I don't find it useful for: Salespeople trying to sell me some enterprise product when I don't have anything to do with selection/purchasing those items. Everything from IP phones to enterprise storage to whatever SaSS is hot Low-effort recruiter spam. Jobs I'm not interested in, qualified for, over-qualified for, want me t…

A really good way of weeding out the recruiter spam is to change your first name to an emoji (I use the waving hand) and then put first name and last name in the last name field. That way when a DM opens with 'hello %waving hand emoji%' you know it's just scripted bulk crap.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#267

Post by _swfb » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 5:27 PM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #138

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…

> Many devs don't like "bullshitting” In my experience they seem to love this but will call it “thinking from first principles” or something else to make sure they don’t sound like (gag) marketing people.

I have noticed that, at least in the Java world, people lie a lot about stuff going "faster", and I think it's just justification to not fix their terrible code.

I have written a lot of JMH benchmarks in the last year to test out claims from developers (some are on my blog, a lot I haven't written about yet), and so much shit that's supposedly "faster" simply isn't.

For example, I had a coworker who would write all this logic into tons of nested and sequential `for` loops, and the logic was disgusting but lent itself well enough to the Java streams API. I brought this up to this coworker, and he said he wouldn't do that because the streams are "slower" and that he "benchmarked to check". I wrote my own JMH benchmark to check and it turns out that the streams (at least for an application like this) are not actually slower than the loops; the two versions ran within about 3% of each other's. I don't think he actually wrote benchmarks, I think he was just lying and wanted me to stop interrogating.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#268

Post by mpeg » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

cootsnuck wrote: post #216

apwell23 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ?

Y'all must live in a bubble. There are quite a lot of people who work for themselves and sell their expertise and skills to other businesses. And there are plenty of folks who have been doing that for awhile and mainly have client engagements in the six figure and seven figure range. (In those scenarios they may only do a handful of engagements each year of course.) So yes, for some people, if they have decided to fo…

I have a bunch of LinkedIn connections claiming they get those fabled six and seven figure client engagements where the client “doesn’t care about the code, they just care about business results” and a lot of other buzzwords.

I do data consulting part time, I do very much provide business centric solutions and measurable results (alongside code that your tech team won’t hate) and am an expert in marketing technology, applied AI and a bunch of other “hot” subjects like that.

In my work with huge, billion dollar companies, the consulting dream that LI influencers sell feels like a fantasy world. I have to provide and justify a day rate, and when my clients do have a big CAPEX project I’m bidding against Accenture, Palantir, etc. and I don’t expect to win it.

If anyone really consistently lands these amazing, big pocket clients, please let me be your intern.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#269

Post by samiv » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

ohdeargodno wrote: post #229

simianwords wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if your product is good and you want people to purchase it? Why not let the customers decide what is good and bad - they have agency.

>Why not let the customers decide what is good and bad - they have agency. They can't. Your shit blogspam is all over the internet. You've been using LLMs to advertise it everywhere. You've been using bots to post fake reviews online. You've been selling them on platforms that don't give a shit about customers and will never take returns. Either by being first or having more money, or time to blow into it, you can ea…

"When an incompetent developer stumbles onto a successful idea an infinity of shit is created."

I agree with you. Sometimes simply being the first mover businesses/solutions/software get name recognition and an unfair(?) advantage that greatly diminishes overall value by blocking better products from emerging.

To put if fairly, some things are so bad it'd be an improvement NOT to have them, so someone else could do a better job and everyone would be better off. Examples.. Emscripten, Python, Bluetooth, Chromecast, any IoT device so far created..

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#270

Post by nickfromseattle » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

melvinroest wrote: post #37

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…

> This reads like it was written by a developer 'who doesn't get marketing'. I'm a dev, and I'm interested in marketing. I'm currently working as a data analyst in a marketing team (and a secret software engineer - don't tell the marketers, haha). While I do learn a thing or two, mostly by automating some of their things, I would like to know how to go from 0 to 100K users. I work for a corporate and I really notice…

I don't have any info on your product, product category or skillset / interests to give you actionable advice.

But I have put together a list of marketing communities, blogs, and people that have a high signal / noise ratio for my coworkers and friends, perhaps it could be useful for you. [0]

[0] https://contentdistribution.slite.page/p/BFMS0Lg1Yz/Our-Favo...