LinkedIn probably has a net benefit for your career by keeping up to date and checking the messages once a week, but I cannot get over the awkwardness of seeing total BS stories and thousands of replies saying "YES! AMEN!".
"I was running late to an interview this morning but stopped to help a man who fell off of his bike and fixed it up for him. Afterwards I bought him a coffee and talked about life. He mentioned how he had to go to work but was touched by meeting me, he said we had a real connection. I go to the interview and guess what! The man was my interviewer! He immediately offered me a job at 1.5m a year plus bonuses and is fast tracking me to become a regional director. Remember to be a nice human #Hashtag #Human #WEAREPEOPLE #ConnectWithMe"
"I was rushing to an interview still drunk from the night before. I hit a cyclist, but just turned on my wipers and got there in time.
After waiting 30 mins they told me my interviewer had been involved in a tragic accident, but as I was here would I like their CEO job?"
#KeepClimbing #PressureWashYourFender
Humor and corporations do not much but I always refused to fake the "how interesting, let me add some crap to this bullshit and look as if believe it"
Initially I was the village idiot, and gradually become free to actually say what I want to say. Since it is not really PC it was meet with terrified smiles or dedain. But what was said was said.
I like this situation very much because I can relieve some of the stress and straight lies, without confrontation.
Every community slides into its own stereotype like becoming a caricature of itself, but it's not objectively a bad thing, just strange to outsiders while the regulars are just fine with HN as it is. Oops, I mean LinkedIn.
Sometimes I feel like the mods' aggressive enforcement of, what basically amounts to, respectability politics might be hurting HN. The other day someone posted a link to a blog post titled "put bluntly - the effects of sleep deprivation" and someone who had struggled with sleep problems and who, I presume, was sick and tired of hearing people explain this to them like the problem was a lack of awareness. They started their response with "To put it bluntly, fuck you" following by a detailed explanation of their struggle with sleep and all the things they've tried and how they still have to put up with people trying to explain this shit to them.
The mods took the comment down right away of course. But it made me think about how much the enforcement of rules like these might just be reinforcing the echo chamber. Sometimes you need to be yelled at to realize how out of line you are. There was another post where a woman shared her experiences with sexism and having to face death threats and being doxxed because some incels didn't like how she responded to a man hitting on her. Half the comments were questioning her or blaming her for "seeking it out" or whatever. It was really painful to watch others try to respond to comments like that and sound "respectable" and trying to engage with their talking points. It made me wonder about people who post those comments and can go on being engaged with and never actually told how much of a fuckface they're being
Now that I think about it, I kinda feel like this is a major problem with LinkedIn as well. I don't believe in bullying, but I think socialization can be an important tool sometimes
Shameless plug of my open source LinkedIn clone written in a custom Lisp dialect. it's free but we offer cost effective white glove support for businesses and cloud hosted solutions
Someone made a satirical front page of typical HN stories which is right along the lines of what you posted. It was really funny and still relevant even though a few years old now, I can't find it unfortunately
I think the combination of real identities and the fact that you expect past, current and future employers and colleagues to see you on LinkedIn means “positivity” and affirmation is essentially forced on you, lest you be seen as “negative” or not a “team player”.
No one will ever contradict anything on LinkedIn because of that, which is why it becomes such a circle jerk.
I commented on something on LinkedIn in 2013 and, while completely not relevant, out of context etc, I get it thrown at me by investors and partners to this day. It was a remark that was correct at the time for my situation; it doesn't apply anymore now, 8 years later, but seems that people are not very good with that. So yeah; be fake and positive only on LinkedIn if you care about that kind of crap.
It reminds of the time I was going to a job interview, saw a homeless dude and went for a coffee with him. Turns out he wasn’t homeless, he was just CTO of a funded startup. The same startup I was interviewing for. We rebuilt the whole app over coffee and they named the company after me.
(It’s not directly named after me, but the company name and my name have vowels and consonants.)
Remember to ask homeless people for their three favourite programming languages before you give them anything.
I really was once in a meeting where a homeless guy had his face against the window peering in from the outside. While we were discussing what, if anything to do about it, someone recognized the homeless guy as our corporate lawyer. In fact, he wasn't homeless at all, just disheveled. We went outside and brought him in as he was supposed to be attending this meeting.
There was a homeless guy peering in. As a group you noticed his attention to detail, a skill important to a good lawyer. You unanimously agreed to invite him in and offer him a job as a corporate lawyer. He's now the CEO. His name? Jeff Bezos.
The biggest advantage of someone with no experience is they don't know what's scary, stupid, or impossible. So they end up doing magic.
heh i went to a Salesforce thing many years ago not knowing what to expect. I showed up in jeans, tshirt, and my backpack with a kind of confused and lost demeanor (this was also my first time to San Fran). One of the hosts opened the door for me and was like "come in come in, here get yourself something to eat" and walked me over to the breakfast spread. I'm pretty certain he thought i was homeless. When I said i was here for the event he said kinda sharply "oh. go over there and get a badge." and walked away haha.
Yesterday I was walking to an interview. There was a starving dog on the road. I stopped to feed him & missed the interview. The next day I got a call asking to come in to do the interview. I was surprised, but I went. Then the interviewer came in. He was the dog.
Hey Newsbinator - I'm here live, I'm not a dog. On a side note to this thread, I saw your company MVP For SaaS and it's very much aligned with what I've wanted to do for a long time. How have you found client acquisition? I really like your idea of targeting marketing and design companies - that's super smart. Overall, excellent looking site :)
Both the comments on this thread would fit well on https://www.shlinkedin.com/, if you haven't seen it, it is basically the sarcastic version of linkedin that you all live in.
Personally, Linkedin has been incredible for staying in touch with a large range of business contacts over the last 10+ years. It's provided me far more value than any other social network -- but the feed is mostly a joke :).
Second that. I only add people I actually do know IRL and most of whom I have met. The feed is something I avoid although I do post occasionally with stuff I find interesting. Only look really at the posts of a very few other people I know. Is also a useful place to keep a record of learning and achievements.
I look at it about once every 2 weeks. That is more than enough. More often is torture.
This is true whenever your real identity is at stake tho? Almost everyone sanitizes their views in the public so much so there's no opinion in there anymore.
There's sanitizing, and then there's writing a parody of your life that's borderline low fantasy. If the joke is that everyone involved knows it's creative fiction, and I'm just the odd one out, then so be it. But if people reading those posts think it's anything more, I'm.... worried about people.
> LinkedIn probably has a net benefit for your career by keeping up to date and checking the messages once a week, but I cannot get over the awkwardness of seeing total BS stories and thousands of replies saying "YES! AMEN!".
There are two ways of looking at linkedin:
* a) linkedin, the job listing service used by headhunters to fill positions,
* b) linkedin, the makeshift pseudo-facebook/myspace/instagram alternative used and abused by career-oriented attention-seekers.
This blog post focuses exclusively on b) while completely ignoring a).
I know people who landed jobs in FANGs just because they kept their linkedin profile up-to-date, even though they didn't even posted a single message and barely had any "like"-type interaction with any type of content. Personally, I've landed my past two or three tech jobs through linkedin, and I barely use it.
I also tried other like-minded services like Glassdoor or stackoverflow jobs, but at least to me those are a dumpster fire when compared with linkedin. Specially Glassdoor.
You get cringe content if you're using it to produce and consume cringe content. Others like me are quite happy with the benefit we take from it.
> LinkedIn probably has a net benefit for your career by keeping up to date and checking the messages once a week
Yes. Ignore the whole post feed, there's no point to that.
But other than that LinkedIn is very valuable, keep your connections, see who knows who, hire people, get hired. It's the only social media (maybe should be called professional media) that I see any value in.
Author: In a position of power
Poor Schmuck: Desperate for a job so that they can keep their apt, eat food
Author: Takes pity on the poor schmuck
Poor Schmuck: Works like a slave to have basic necessities
Author: Gloats about how they unearthed a gem
Author: Lesson from this incident
LinkedIn is my guess, the social media platform with the most reshares and least amount of new content. Everything I see is just a reshare of the same CEO message, or "hustle life" post. I would expect to find posts about career questions and what's a solution to my business issue but it's really just a rebadged Facebook.
I have to have a LinkedIn profile but I try to keep my profile very close to my reality, which means I look like an underachiever compared to my connections.
What makes nonsense like this work is that there really is a percentage of people who actually completely buy into the nonsense and find it all very "inspiring".
To be fair -- any religion could be described the same way, even by religious people (describing a different religion than the "correct" one, of course).
You know the funniest thing about the story above is that after you remove the sarcasm it is plausible... just not in the countries where everything is a car ride away and 1.5m of a local currency is a lot of money.
Yeah the changes over the last few years make it seem like facebook. hopefully the powers that be will notice and come up with some plan to limit such silly interactions on what should be a professional platform. I reported some overtly political posts on there more than once and nothing ever came of it.
"I was running late to an interview this morning but stopped to help a man who fell off of his bike and fixed it up for him. Afterwards I bought him a coffee and talked about life. He mentioned how he had to go to work but was touched by meeting me, he said we had a real connection. I go to the interview and guess what! The man was my interviewer! He immediately offered me a job at 1.5m a year plus bonuses and is fast tracking me to become a regional director. Remember to be a nice human #Hashtag #Human #WEAREPEOPLE #ConnectWithMe"
It's just a giant circle jerk.