Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

elliotcsmith.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 405 posts

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#291

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

lisbbb wrote: post #254
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife used Angie's List to find some really good, honest contractors. Many years ago, when it was still fairly new. I'd never recommend Angie's List, these days, though. It's pure garbage. She also used to rely on Amazon reviews. Again, it's a dumpster fire, these days. Absolutely worthless.

The whole Internet is like this now--it's a victim of its own success. "Dead Internet Theory" is correct, I believe. There must be some kind of sociological term for what happens with popular websites that become victims of their own success, like Craigslist, EBay, Facebook, all of them follow the same predictable pattern. When they are small and unknown, they are useless. Then they hit some critical mass and a wave…

Craigslist hasn't sold out ever and eBay is still useful for its original purpose if you look for genuinely used things. You're confusing them with the Etsy dumpsterfire.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#292

Post by glitchcrab »

HPMOR wrote: post #288
glitchcrab wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

LLMs have solved this at scale. Really you're just filtering for more technologically sophisticated recruiters at volume.

Yeah, it was never going to be a forever solution, but it's served me well for the last few years.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#293

Post by kentm »

simianwords wrote: post #238
ohdeargodno wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

You are completely exaggerating and pointing out edge cases. Sure sometimes advertising can be harmful and there are laws against false advertising. But in general it is helpful and provides value. For instance I personally like it when I 'm shown a relevant advertisement which actually convinces me to purchase it. Just recently I saw some advertisement on Instagram related to some concert near where I live. It was a…

The things they talked about are so common that I think it’s disingenuous to call them edge cases.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#294

Post by Tade0 »

boje wrote: post #213

Putting aside all logical arguments for and against Linkedin and other social media, when I do force myself to log in to my account, I find myself peering into the abyss of thousands upon thousands of people trying to game the system and "advance their careers", which they presumably do well. To me, it is the essence of the rat race that I try my best to ignore in my daily life while I try to balance time between my…

A while ago I had a recruiter try to, ahem, coach me on my CV, which apparently had too few details (apparently still enough to have this interview, but the irony was lost on her) and on my LinkedIn profile, which wasn't up to date and also had few details (deliberately BTW, as I was getting spam).

My gut feeling is that while there certainly are people who benefited from using LinkedIn, but for the majority it's just a vessel for being terminally online and a waste of time.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#295

Post by trinix912 »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #21
antihipocrat wrote: post #12

There is no benefit to be gained from disagreement or debate. Any such discourse looks problematic to a potential employer.

Agreed. The level of mediocrity and group-think on LI is freighting. It’s no wonder so many companies / brands struggle. Daily I see an OP based on myth / incomplete ideas (read: ultimately the originator is sharing bad advice)and then 95% of the replies to that mindlessly agree. The flaws are often obvious, and no one notices.

It probably gets that way because nobody wants to be the one to argue back, as it puts them in a bad light. So what's left are cheap platitudes and confirmations.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#296

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

mdale wrote: post #155
hliyan wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The phrase was originally "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM", which, ironically, did not save IBM once the cost effectiveness of alternatives was too overwhelming to ignore. The effect of mindshare isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#297

Post by notahacker »

torginus wrote: post #183
notahacker wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My impression was all 'content' that does well on LinkedIn (including the stuff I like), is because people want to engage with the creator in hopes they get in their good graces which will somehow help them land a job, or they're in a pact with others and like each others' content. Recommending others and getting recommended by folks whose word means something might be meaningful, but that's about it. Regular (and of…

I think you're quite right that most content gets likes and engagement from people promoting their company, their mates in the industry and people whose attention they want to attract, and usually doesn't spread much beyond that. That's the case whether it's genuinely interesting or generic promotions.

But the "viral" content seems to be something else entirely: as you point out a lot of the people are rubes running pre-product start-ups or consulting, and surely there are more people wanting to impress people with actual budgets and teams and products. Feels like they're successfully catering to an algorithm calibrated for bored but easily impressed scrollers (as well as other rubes and bot-operated accounts that want to share their equally unlikely takes on B2B sales) rather than their network.

Recently I saw a recruiter posting side by side screenshots of the engagement with a high effort collection of industry info she'd compiled with infographics and links, and a copy/paste of an unfunny meme with a tagline applying it to her industry. You'll never guess which one had 10x the engagement...

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#298

Post by aledalgrande »

godot wrote: post #287
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 agree, there seems to be a level of criticism of marketing bordering on irrational among devs, it's almost like it's trendy to hate on marketing. For devs who currently think this way, I suggest thinking about it more deeply from the perspective of a developer: Let's say you want to start a company/startup from a passionate idea you had. What do you think happens when you build it? In reality, do you truly expect "…

> Posting it on a Show HN or Product Hunt

and funnily enough, this is still marketing

"build it and they will come" doesn't work

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#299

Post by bartread »

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…

That's a pretty exhaustive list, but I think you forgot, "What X taught me about B2B sales..." type posts. These do seem to have died down but 2 - 3 years ago my feed was absolutely awash with them. They were like a really beige version of those daft TikTok crazes you see. Very much good riddance.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#300

Post by oytis »

godot wrote: post #287
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 agree, there seems to be a level of criticism of marketing bordering on irrational among devs, it's almost like it's trendy to hate on marketing. For devs who currently think this way, I suggest thinking about it more deeply from the perspective of a developer: Let's say you want to start a company/startup from a passionate idea you had. What do you think happens when you build it? In reality, do you truly expect "…

I can agree that marketing is necessary, but it's not irrational to resent that one's attention is being manipulated with or that internet - which is an amazing technology by itself - has become a lot less useful than it could be basically because so many people decided to do marketing and sales on it.
Post reply on HN