I'm convinced LinkedIn demotes anything that links off-platform

Interesting...why do you think that? I was on LI the other day and it struck me that probably half my feed was "look at this thing on this other site". Admittedly, the link was usually under the fold in the comments, which maybe is a cheat code to get around some real or perceived blockage? Not that any sort of user-hostile behavior from LI would surprise me, I just made a mental note of it at the time.

I got my current job (which I love and am being paid incredibly well for) by cold-firing a DM to someone at the company who I thought would be responsive who then put me down as a referral.

It's a whole song-and-dance, absolutely. The 'game' is to post enough (once/twice a week) with genuine, non-AI generated content to get your co-workers liking your posts and engaging. General, pro-social musings about layoffs, coworkers, job prospects, etc.

Recruiters started hitting me up fairly quickly after I started doing this even with my paltry engagement numbers (5k~ views per post) - half a dozen DMs a week for pretty decent roles in my city while I kept it up (and still a handful now after I stopped posting). And it also made my profile relatively 'attractive' for hiring managers, too, which is to say I didn't seem like a total sociopath with anger problems.

It helps that code-switching is pretty easy for me given my personal history so it doesn't feel like I'm somehow fundamentally betraying who I am by posting fluffy things on one social media platform. I imagine if you're more sensitive about your identity or how you engage socially, it can be very difficult to put any effort into your LI profile.

> Not that I think that this is LinkedIn's fault

It is, they’re darkpatternmaxxing.

There used to be a time sites got punished if they treated searchbots differently..

LinkedIn was more open earlier I think they closed down much more. It seems that Google didn’t delist the profile pages.

Linkedin, reddit, instagram, pinterest, x, bluesky, threads, facebook... they provide a better experience to web crawlers than logged-out humans.

If you like, you can block it from coming up with an extension: https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist

X is the same. "Check out what [politician/celeb] said on X!!" And it's the login page.

The answer is not to sign up to X, but to learn to suppress your FOMO. Chances are it was drivel anyway. Especially true for LinkedIn.

Back when expertsexchange was consistently in the top search results, google had instituted a rule that said that the page must show content without requiring being logged in otherwise the site would be deranked. Guess they quietly dropped that rule

Try Kagi. It's definitely worth it. And you can block sites in search very easily. None of the closed content farms show up in my search results.

I still remember the days when Google saw it as 'cloaking' when you showed different content to users and search engines. And to be honest, I'm annoyed they don't seem to do that anymore.

Like I get why they probably changed that. I suspect all the attacks from media outlets on Google for requiring their articles to be paywall free to rank in search likely had a big effect here.

But it should be simple. If you want to rank in Google, your pages should be visible to guests. If they're not, those pages don't rank at all.

I didn't expect there would be a Christmas party in hell.

Good on you for doing this and I hope you get promoted. But I can imagine a lot of people are like me and just don’t want to engage in office politics on or offline. Not that I don’t sometimes, but I’d much rather just work and be paid to do a job and live my life.

You do you. When I see someone posting on LinkedIn, my only thought is "Can I get away with unfollowing?"

I guess a few posts a year are ok if they don't sound angry or delusional. But zero is really best.

Is this for real? If so, that's a major institutional and managerial failing.

Everytime I see shit like this on LinkedIn, I assume it is rage bait. Hat tip to the GOAT of LinkedIn trolls: Lumko Solwandle.

I cannot find his original post, but here is cross post: https://www.reddit.com/r/me_irl/comments/ve8iyw/me_irl/

    > Nobody:
    > LinkedIn Influencers:
    > 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 went. Then the interviewer came in. He was the dog.

LinkedIn plot twist: the client IS the wife.

Your wife and kids are holding you back. Your clients are your family now.

Depends on your definition of more.

You can absolutely find non-performative posts on Instagram. There is value in a sincere post - ex. sharing pictures of your cat to your friends.

Whereas in LinkedIn no such value exists in my experience - I can't imagine myself posting there for any other reason than to be performative.

So in terms of % of posts being performative I don't think anything tops LinkedIn.

Tech Instagram is worse they just like looking at flashing colors on screen with no meaning. I once saw like this dude flexing about how complex his code is by showing like this obsidian ass diagram like dude what am I supposed to appreciate here? how coupled your code is?

The only reason I have LinkedIn is because I think I'm supposed to.

It talks to that vain and insecure feeling that many of us have deep down.

Interestingly, unlike instagram the LinkedIn business model has nothing to do with it. It’s built around b2b sales and professional recruitment.

I feel that LinkedIn has a lot of similarities with late stage Quora. Though linkedin has handled the its descent into Instagramization a lot better than Quora did.

LinkedIn used to be a half-decent social network. There weren't too many updates, some were grift of course, but you'd also see former colleagues doing interesting things like startups or academic papers.

Then ChatGPT happened and dear lord did LinkedIn ever fall off a cliff. So, so many low-effort, zero-value updates. Far worse than any other social network I use.

God i hope this is satire

And yet... the author just posted the same sloppy content here too! Nowhere is immune :)

open, scroll to bottom, scroll back up, read everything without waiting for it to load. easy-peasy

I'd like to think that the slop-alert button is for their own internal measurements and figuring out much of their userbase is just fake

4chan is where people go to show who they truly are.

It's pure Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory[0] in action.

[0] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...

Apropos, some of the most wholesome community spirit I've seen in recent years has been amongst the degenerate gamblers of wallstreetbets.

Trolls posting absolute garbage /b/ are at least trying to evoke some feeling in you. Hard to say the same from the ‘I had dinner with my wife on a yacht. Here’s what it taught me about Series A VC relationships’ posting full of Claudisms and emojis.

Who’s the target audience for that?

Weirdly I’ve never seen Jim Simons or any Jane Street employees doing this. I wonder why?

What sucks abut these types of people and the latest get rich quick scheme of the day is that they are generally rewarded mightily by society and investment. Part of it is greater fool theory playing out lucratively, part of it is also these crypto bros or ai bros or what-have-you bros finding themselves with an ear to actual government power directly shaping the trajectory of nation states into their favor.

I remind you of the better version ShlinkedIN! Unfortunately it seems to be dead these days.

When searching for a job, it almost feels irresponsible not to use the site, but boy is it one poor execution. Why are jobs like the fourth tab? Why is there a feed populated entirely by people I don’t know and have never connected with in any way? Are people really just sitting there hiring strangers based off of cool comments? I literally hate like 10,000 things about this site. I rank it similarly to Discord in terms of quality:popularity ratio.

Years ago I worked with people who does "remarketing", tracking, online ads and sales funnels. Some of them ended up as LinkedIn connection. Their understanding of the internet, IT and the world in general is something to behold. They post the weirdest shit and would have zero moral issues jamming a radioactive AI tracking chip up your butt if it increased "conversion" by 0.5%.

Select your connections carefully.

Working games mine is all layoff posts recently

Just scrolled now and saw like 5

I never play then because I have better things to do with my time. Like closing the LinkedIn tab.

That's the reason I use LinkedIn, and I have zero complaints about it in that form. Tho for me is more about keeping the connection rather than see what they work on.

OTOH I do see the performative posting "I bumped my pinky toe on the cupboard and here's what it taught me about leading teams" and I genuinely don't understand who they're writing for. Isn't it obviously bullshit for everyone? Who cares about that?

Stalking ex-colleagues hasn't even been an essential part of what I would describe as a normie job.

I wouldn't mind LinkedIn at all if I could turn off the feed.

I wish there was an alternative but at least there's not much right wing propaganda and it does just work.

Go on corposlop site centered around betraying your humanity by method acting as lobotomized drone slaves of global transnational capitalism. I lie and sign myself to lies! At least no "right wing propaganda" though.

I second that other comment - this is still above average in terms of LinkedIn content.

My edification is complete and through a process of thought leadership osmosis I have now ascended to B2B sales enlightenment

Ironically I think these are insightful. If you want to produce true slop, you need to dumb down your topic selection, or have Claude pick the topics. The stuff about the incompatible goals of "data strategy" I think is genuinely useful perspective, for example.

It used to be the case that if you wanted a new job, you could strategically update your profile and over the next several days you would get bombarded by recruiter messages, some of which would actually be high-quality leads.

No one actually wants to go there, but they post the damn jobs there, so what can you do?

It’s part of the Microsoft network of properties that make everything harder to get up in the morning.