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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

#311

Post by RugnirViking »

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 "…

It's literally an arms race. If nobody put effort into marketing; quality would bubble to the top. If everyone spends some amount of time optimising their seo, tweaking for the algorithm, etc, then in essence, nobody has (and thus, in theory, quality would bubble to the top). The situation we actually have is worse than both of these; bad actors spend the most on marketing, with the more marketing and the more effective marketing being for the worst products.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#313

Post by jmye »

olex wrote: post #120
cpursley wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it leads to someone purchasing a solution that solves a need, how is that zero value?

If someone has a legitimate need, they will look for a solution in appropriate locations (directories, search, magazines, what have you) and do not need someone to scream their marketing blurbs into the void in hopes of being noticed.

Right??? Why did Uber ever advertise! Everyone who needed a cab but was tired of cab companies could’ve just like, searched the internet for “service to connect me with normal people who will take me places in their own car” which was also obviously a solution that existed and everyone would’ve known to search for!

Brilliant.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#314

Post by commenter8 »

The nice thing about LinkedIn posts is that it’s clear that everything is an ad. Reddit, Facebook, etc started with people just posting to communicate and socialize, then were (mostly) taken over by ads / influencers pretending. With LinkedIn there’s no pretense and no wheat to sift from the chaff.

It’s just marketers marketing to each other. If that’s useful you can join a mutual promotion group and auto-comment on each others’ posts without damaging anything of value. If not you can stay away and completely ignore any posts when you come back for an occasional job search.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#315

Post by randcraw »

_swfb wrote: post #256

To paraphrase Hunter Thompson: we will never know for sure if there's a heaven or hell, but I do know for sure that if there is a hell then it's being stuck having to read through LinkedIn for eternity. LinkedIn is easily the worst "social media" on the internet that I've been on. So much shit is "inspiration porn" for anecdotes that clearly never actually happened so that the person can try and brand themselves as s…

LinkedIn seems like the natural home (origin?) of those oh-so-inane "Motivator" management posters that were so popular in the 1990s. Now if only there were also an outlet there for the "Demotivator" posters that followed. THOSE I liked.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#316

Post by anon7725 »

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…

Ironically, Facebook Marketplace is as or more useful than back-in-the-day Craigslist.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#317

Post by hk__2 »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #261
hk__2 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

This was more an humorous side comment than a critic, I’m sorry if it looked like this.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#318

Post by yojo »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #291
lisbbb wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Craigslist never sold out, but it went through a big scammer phase (and largely lost me). Looking for an apartment in SF in 2016 was a mix of property management co spam and outright fraudulent listings trying to scam you. Not sure if they ever corrected this.

I’ve since moved to Portland, OR, where Craigslist seems to get about 10% of the listings compared to FB marketplace.

I generally love Craigslist and want it to succeed, but it hasn’t been “thriving” anywhere I’ve lived in a loooooong time.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#319

Post by ethbr1 »

glitchcrab wrote: post #292
HPMOR wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Given the average LinkedIn recruiter, filtering for more technologically sophisticated recruiters is a decent value add.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#320

Post by Xymist »

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 factor (95% of "your audience" not being interested at the time) is the core of why all marketing is unavoidably scummy.

I don't want to hear about your product _ever_, except on the day I am looking for a product which provides the function your product does. On that day, I don't want to hear about it from you or anyone you have anything to do with; I want a list of products in that space, curated by an independent third party you have never spoken to and cannot influence in any way, with a clear featureset and upfront costs comparison table that does not have any variant on "talk to their sales team" anywhere near it.

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