Linkedin Recommendations Are Junk

At first, I liked LinkedIn because it provided some transparency into peoples' career trajectories. One could compare what one was doing at a certain age to well-known people and see if one was on a right track, or should be trading up jobs soon. It had value. There was data there. "Hey, at age X I should have title Y." Granted, it was focused around something that's total and utter bullshit (job titles and professional status) but it made it easier to decode the bullshit.

Now, though, everyone's polluting the channels with nonsense. Why would I care that Bob has 37 endorsements for "APIs"? That doesn't mean anything.

Besides, social proof is for malakas. If anyone turned me down because I didn't have enough endorsements on a website, I'd laugh that person off the fucking bricks.

Re: Linkedin Recommendations Are Junk

#8

Post by msoad » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 10:59 PM UTC

oh wrote: post #3

Even junkier: endorsements.

But it's good for trolling. Endorse your friends for ColdFusion, PASCAL and ... :D

Re: Linkedin Recommendations Are Junk

#9

Post by milesskorpen » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 11:00 PM UTC

Given that users can hide recommendations, I'd never expect to see a negative one.

Re: Linkedin Recommendations Are Junk

#10

Post by misterbwong » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 11:05 PM UTC

Stock recommendations are not really analogous to resume/linkedin recommendations. People expect stock analysts to provide unbiased, objective assessments of stocks. There is an expectation of positive bias when a person shows a recommendation on his/her linkedin profile.

There are two sources of "signal" in this case: The content of the recommendation as well as the very existence of a recommendation. Not recommending people only addresses the first.