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Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

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Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#71

Post by ghaff »

k__ wrote: post #24
truth_ wrote: post #22

I find LinkedIn really cringy. And I haven't seen ONE post there that actually added value to my life. It is also toxic as hell. But I know people who got employment offers from LinkedIn. So it adds value in that sense. I just mute and block those influencers. And check LinkedIn maybe twice a week. One of the things I cannot find any excuse for is how fake people are. They are behaving in a fake manner even when they…

Guess, it's like Twitter. If you follow the right people you get good content. The only thing bothering me on LinkedIn are the recruiters and that got much better in the last years. Most of the time I use it to stay in touch with old co-workers and to syndicate my articles, which sometimes (2-5 times a year) leads to new clients.

I find it pretty easy to skip past the recruiters and connection requests when I pop in from time to time. I just generally ignore all the random recruiter request that are way off target. (Though, in all fairness, my LinkedIn profile is very scanty.) And I'll rarely respond--usually with a polite no--to on-target ones given that I'm not really on the market. (And have never gotten a job since grad school decades ago that wasn't a personal contact.)

Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#72

Post by ycombinete »

lordnacho wrote: post #38

It's the faux-thentic trope pieces on LinkedIn that annoy me. "I was working so hard I forgot to be me" or "after years of constant success my daughter showed me what success really means". Apparently it means getting likes from strangers. And then there's the business tall tales: "I hired a guy with no qualifications other than a big heart and now he's running a multinational". "I made 10k job applications and lande…

A friend and I have a mini-hobby of sharing these with each other under the title of “Today in Thanking Myself”. The highest level are the ones where people pimp out their own families for LinkedIn karma

Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#73

Post by ghaff »

jacksonkmarley wrote: post #30

> a vast circle jerk in the cloud Well, that has the ring of truth, when applied to the newsfeed. And the final conclusion that you should just get on linkedin when job searching and then get off again is fine. I find it incredibly useful for job searching, to the point that I don't even bother with other sites. However, the job search experience is badly spoiled by secondary recruitment postings. These are especiall…

I pretty much use LinkedIn as a self-updating Rolodex. I basically don't use it for recruiter-related stuff at all but then I haven't really been on the market for a very long time.

Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#74

Post by baryphonic »

My experience has been that LinkedIn and other social media necessitates promoting influencers who are almost certainly between mediocre and above average at their fields, never the best. There are a few exceptions, but in general if some so-called expert's "job" involves them constantly tweeting, poasting on LinkedIn, writing daily blogs, instagramming and otherwise releasing a non-stop supply of YouTube videos, then they probably have little expertise. Usually, you can find what they're trying to sell without too much effort. Those who can't do, influence.

There are of course meaningful people on social media who do have useful things to say. Some brilliant people in the tech world I know will post on their blogs every few weeks or post a few tweets each week. But they're spending the majority of their time actually creating things, not crafting tweets optimized to feed an algorithm.

YouTube is an interesting one, since it's an immersive medium. Some of the people with the best tech tutorials or "content" there will rarely or never show their faces. I think this is probably a consequence of not wanting to waste time editing, since again, they have real things to do outside social media. If a tech person is just talking to the camera for 10 minutes, I can do without it, and, again, usually they're trying to sell something (often of dubious value).

Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#75

Post by jptech »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #14

Is anyone who isn‘t doing it for work (recruiting, PR, …) or looking for jobs/work/employers/employees even unironically using this pathetic shitshow mix of early facebook culture and corporate-lies-fake-feelgood-culture bullshit?

Many use it to just peek into other people's lives and get background info - where they work at, where they're from and where they had studied, etc. Worst case, even stalk.

Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#76

Post by cmrdporcupine »

Great article.

The worst thing is that these kinds of posts have a really negative effect on many people around them. So I think it's ultimately self-defeating for LinkedIn in the long run to foster this kind of environment. For me they just instigate a gag reflex, but for others it can just make them feel low and awful. And so they leave the site.

My wife has been out of the job market for 10 years (had kids, mother got sick and passed away, we moved for my job, she went back to school, but used to be successful in design/marketing @ a FAANG, studying now for UX research.) Anyways, very tough to get back into the job market. And now she goes on linkedin to try to connect with old job aquaintances and look at jobs and the like and it's all these people puffing themselves up like peacocks and it's just confidence destroying. Amps up the inner critic and self-judging in many people, comparing yourself to these people, and for what? Half of what is posted isn't even fully... real?

Work is work. It's great some people really love their jobs. But what I see on linkedin these days doesn't reflect a normal person's career focus.

Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#77

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

takkiinvincible wrote: post #47
truth_ wrote: post #22

I find LinkedIn really cringy. And I haven't seen ONE post there that actually added value to my life. It is also toxic as hell. But I know people who got employment offers from LinkedIn. So it adds value in that sense. I just mute and block those influencers. And check LinkedIn maybe twice a week. One of the things I cannot find any excuse for is how fake people are. They are behaving in a fake manner even when they…

You say you haven't seen a single post there that added value to your life. Hypothetically, if you saw a post that DID add value to your life, what would that post(s) look like?

Many post on HN added value to my life, and it happens on a regular basis. As for posts shared on LI, I mainly feel awkward reading them. You know that when someone suddenly got active on LI they either got fired or are looking for prospects. It's just a kind of weird game, more so that people basically have to use their real names and reveal their employment history in order to benefit from the site, so they're particularly vulnerable. Everybody knows this, so they refrain from poking fun at them.

Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#79

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

andresp wrote: post #61

I unfollow everyone on LinkedIn and only see updates from the companies I follow. It would be great if they supported "Unfollow All" natively instead of having to mess with JS.

I did the same. The offshore recruiters were very fond of the "fake positivity" posts i.e man doesn't hold elevator for someone or steals a parking space from a person while going to an interview just to find out that it was the CEO. Once I started following them, my feed cleaned up immensely taking on a more technical bent.

Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#80

Post by Retric »

takkiinvincible wrote: post #49
throwaway894345 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can indeed curate, but I definitely get the vibe that cringe is the default mode on LinkedIn (which is still strictly better than Twitter’s default mode, toxicity).

What would a better social media platform look like in your opinion?

Hacker News.

But for simplicity, moderation and downvote buttons would do a world of good.

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