I've not understood why people wanted it to be a social network. That aspect always seemed bizarre to me until it had been true for long enough to stopped being strange. But this doesn't make sense to me either.

I wouldn't load the site at work because I wouldn't want to signal to my employer that I was looking for another job. I very deliberately didn't accept invites from management at my last employer (small company, ~25 people) until I didn't work there anymore. I wouldn't want them to get a notification if I suddenly revised my profile because maybe I'm shopping around for a new job, for example.

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cjbgkagh 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Microsoft wanted it to be a social network because they couldn’t buy Facebook. They did buy Yammer though.

A lot of the bad policies were implemented when getting LinkedIn ready for sale to boost the short term gains and maximize the sale price, once sold it was hard to reverse the policies in order to maintain a healthy market long term. They do kinda have a mini-monopoly / cornered market so they were able to milk that for money.

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siva7 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yammer was probably one of the most bizarre m&a stories ever.

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Spooky23 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The same reason there’s probably some dude pitching adding AI to notepad. Fad and fashion.

In the last 20 years “peer to peer”, “Uber for X”, “gamification” and now of course “AI” were the must have tech memes. Back in the day O’Reilly had a conference dedicated to the revolution of… XML.

Social was just another one. Now, even the social companies are kinda moving past social. It’s more about hoarding attention. But when Microsoft was shoveling money at Gartner, we had guys coming in dropping books about how the social enterprise would revolutionize business.

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cyanydeez 9 hours ago | parent [-]

eh, that guy who pitched AI for Notepad was a product of M$lop push for AI everywhere. No one seriously though it needed AI, but if they're trolling for AI pitches, of course that's an easy target, it's already text based. GUI stuff is hard, but raw text?

	▲	Spooky23 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I actually didn’t know that was a thing. I was trying to cook up something quick and absurd. Truth is stranger than fiction!

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user_7832 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I wouldn't want them to get a notification if I suddenly revised my profile because maybe I'm shopping around for a new job, for example.

If I'm not mistaken, LinkedIn has options for all of this. You can edit your profile with or without a notification post. You can select "show open to being hired only to people outside your company".

Not that I have great (or any) love for the platform, but if I understood you right, these things aren't really issues.

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mancerayder 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is it terrible if your employer finds that you're looking for another job? If they like you, maybe they'll intervene to make your life better?

If they hate you, they're less likely to go through a termination process including severance.

I used to always worry about them finding out. Now, I'm having trouble not blurting it out from the rooftops.