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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

#301

Post by weinzierl »

glitchcrab wrote: post #266
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.

Cool idea. I used to have

"[crab emoji] positions only - or get blocked"

in my profile and it did not deter anyone from offering me Java positions.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#302

Post by simianwords »

alansammarone wrote: post #283
simianwords wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of marketing is to provide the signal - you can use your agency and decide whether that signal is valuable or not. If I'm shown an advertisement for a watch from a well known company with some detailed specs I'm inclined to believe it based on the brand reputation. This signal (the specifications) is valuable to me but not necessarily completely accurate. I'm better off with the signal than without. The rea…

Couldn't agree more with part of your comment, but only because of the fact that you used the word "specs". Assuming the specs are objective, thats the only true form of useful ad. Ads do work, yes. But not because they present true facts. It's because people tend to buy things that are from brands that they remember (a form of recency bias I guess, although not sure about that). So if you know nothing about which ic…

The specs are not objective in the correct sense. They are just signals that you can later verify.. like all things. Everything has an accuracy number beside it - what makes you think the specs are to be believed?

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#303

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

> Nothing you post there is going to change your career.

I've gotten two good jobs from posting on LinkedIn. Mutual connections see your posts, and recruiters can find and contact you. When you list it on your resume, people do look at it. So yes it "changes" your career, by helping you get jobs.

Yeah it's full of drivel. All social media is full of drivel. Stop paging through the drivel and use it as a tool. Collect good connections, keep up with old colleagues, network. That's what it's for.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#304

Post by filoleg »

_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…

Yup, agreed heavily with your take.

I have linkedin, but I never post anything (aside from occasional updates to my work experience section, whenever I switch employers, so once every ~4-6 years basically).

For me, the biggest use of LinkedIn is when recruiters reach out to me. My last 3 offers (a FAANG company, a very established publicly tradef “startup” dealing with storage, and a major hedge fund that was featured in the news a lot in the past few years) happened directly just due to a random recruiter reaching out to me in LinkedIn dms in the first place. Which has been extremely helpful to my career.

As for the other side of linkedin (the “marketing”/cringeposting one), i literally don’t need to even think about it, outside of just extracting pure entertainment value of it.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#305

Post by tayo42 »

alansammarone wrote: post #280
simianwords wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't trust advertising completely nor can you trust reviews completely but they are signals. Treating things as binary will not get you anywhere. Signals exist and are useful if not 100% accurate.

This is... an understatement. I would agree advertising is a useful signal, but I would say that not only can you not trust advertising, you should put negative weight on advertising - i.e. whenever you see an ad, that means the company is putting some amount of money into trying to convince you by means other than an honest comparison/spec table, and therefore is likely to have an inferior product. So personally, I…

You have to advertise to some degree otherwise no one will even know what your product is

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#306

Post by btbuildem »

I think it's a perfect mirror of the corporate world, which in itself rewards and thrives on mediocrity. Mediocrity is safe and predictable.

Sure, let's hear the counter-example of the noble startup, taking massive risks to build The Coolest Thing. Like the enthusiastic wiggly sperms, one in a million succeeds -- and the consequences of initial success are to grow mediocre over time.

LinkedIn is marketing slop, aimed at the lowest common denominator, because that's the most numerous denomination of the walking wallet. Of course it is saturated with family friendly, inoffensive, endless streams of softcore corporate propaganda.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#307

Post by [deleted] »

wohoef wrote: post #191
Aurornis wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The endless game of catching people's attention. Focus on actual value creation? Nah, let's just mind-hack everyone into buying the product. If people subscribe or follow it’s because they found some value in the content. Developers often start with the “if you build it, they will come” mindset. They might get lucky with some early leads that make it feel like it’s working. But marketing works. It’s not “mind hacks…

In my experience people subscribe and follow easy to digest content that makes them feel productive for consuming it.

[deleted]

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#309

Post by RugnirViking »

simianwords wrote: post #259
jayd16 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a pretty solid example of a flaw in free market economics. Marketing can increase and decrease knowledge and there's not a strong market force pushing things the right direction.

I thought about what you said and I think you are correct. But since we don't live in an ideal rational world do you agree that without advertisements the market can fail? How would new products even enter the limelight?

Without advertisements? Word of mouth, neutral databases of information (these are hard to create in practice without at least some gaming, but i think things like the yellow pages or government operated lists of services get close)

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#310

Post by jselysianeagle »

simianwords wrote: post #203
goodpoint wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of advertising is making the "free market agents" less rational. The most popular product is rarely the best.

No its about product discovery. It is in fact essential to a rational market. Imagine you create a really good product. You actually believe in it and you think people would want to buy it. Please tell me how you will practically get it noticed? I would like actual practical advice.

Product discovery is one facet of it, certainly. It’s also about pursuading people to buy a product / service they don’t really need, creating demand where none (or not as much) existed previously, of convincing people that their product / service is better than that of others when this might not in fact be the case.
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