This reads like it was written by a developer 'who doesn't get marketing'.
> Nothing you post there is going to change your career.
I can attribute millions of dollars in revenue to LinkedIn, as can a lot of my 'LinkedIn friends'
> Doing work that matters might.
This is a pre-requisite for winning on LinkedIn. The kind of content that performs best are strong opinions informed by actual expertise.
> Go for depth over frequency.
Unfortunately that's not the way marketing works. 95% of your audience is not 'in-market' and ready to buy when they see your content. Sometime over the next 3-5 years they may move into a buying lifecycle, and they are much more likely to trust you, and therefore buy from you, if they've seen your content 1,000x vs a couple of long reads.
> If writing online matters to you, you’re probably better off starting a blog and building things there.
Your long form, in-depth content lives on your blog, and your LinkedIn profile should act as a funnel, moving people from newsfeed --> your profile --> the most important piece of content you want them to read. From there, you can capture their email to touch them on another channel (inbox), push them to your YouTube / Twitter / community, etc.
With that said, while LinkedIn is responsible for a significant % of my total revenue, it's also responsible for a significant % of my anxiety. Building in public invites folks to publicly blast you if they don't agree with your ideas. 'Getting ratio'd' happens. LinkedIn eventually becomes a mentally exhausting slog. But as a career driven individual the upside has been very high and I think the trade off was worth it. I would do it again knowing everything I know now.
Shacklz · 39m ago
> if they've seen your content 1,000x vs a couple of long reads. [..] From there, you can capture their email to touch them on another channel (inbox), push them to your YouTube / Twitter / community, etc.
The endless game of catching people's attention. Focus on actual value creation? Nah, let's just mind-hack everyone into buying the product.
It works, it's obviously a game worth billions, but I find it deeply depressing.
inopinatus · 10m ago
It took a while for their sector to become a mainstream byword for snake oil, but when it did, the SEO touts switched to peddling "content marketing" services instead. Not surprising that the internet's most insipid forum remains their favourite target-rich environment.
nathanaldensr · 9m ago
It is depressing. There's nothing spiritual in it--nothing grander than just base greed and psychological manipulation.
makeitdouble · 11m ago
> This reads like it was written by a developer 'who doesn't get marketing'.
That's spot on.
And it will be a very common sentiment regarding marketing. Many devs don't like "bullshitting", it's the exact opposite of how we're supposed to do our job. And while it's understood marketing has a huge impact on sales, one can still take a healthy distance from it.
I think this post is about linkedin moving from a generic work focused SNS to a business/marketing eldorado, and how the author isn't happy about it.
We'd see probably see the same kind of rant if Salesforce pivoted to become a Github competitor.
oytis · 8m ago
> The kind of content that performs best are strong opinions informed by actual expertise.
I agree on the strong opinions, but not that a real expertise is a prerequisite. You probably need to have a bit of understanding of what you are writing ragebates about, but not necessarily be an expert - returning to the author's point about rewarding mediocrity
melvinroest · 24m ago
> This reads like it was written by a developer 'who doesn't get marketing'.
I'm a dev, and I'm interested in marketing.
I'm currently working as a data analyst in a marketing team (and a secret software engineer - don't tell the marketers, haha). While I do learn a thing or two, mostly by automating some of their things, I would like to know how to go from 0 to 100K users. I work for a corporate and I really notice that they do "corporate marketing". So it's much more about maintenance.
Would you know how to get started on learning that? It's hard to know what information is solid info versus what isn't.
saagarjha · 9m ago
> The kind of content that performs best are strong opinions informed by actual expertise.
…and here's what it taught me about B2B sales.
baq · 49m ago
Are you an employer or an employee?
zwnow · 49m ago
LinkedIn is basically a marketplace for boomers. Facebook but for jobs pretty much. Im sorry to hear u think this highly of it, as its just a gathering of pretentious people.
kkirsche · 43m ago
This has been my experience. Just a bunch of ego stroking
nathanaldensr · 8m ago
If you want to see how true this is, visit r/linkedinlunatics[1] on Reddit.
There are a lot of boomers out there though, and you won’t reach them on TikTok.
jibal · 36m ago
The boomers have retired.
HSO · 31m ago
are retiring
lots of phenomena that get incessantly overtheorized and misattributed these days can be simply explained by this
mr_toad · 30m ago
Gen X usually gets lumped in with boomers because they’re basically invisible. But Gen X DGAF either way.
fnord77 · 45m ago
where are the non-boomers looking for jobs these days?
adidoit · 24s ago
1. Self-Aggrandizement-as-a-Service
2. Tied to corporate status games
3. Delivered as an algorithmic feed
I'm obviously being provocative but those are the dynamics
adidoit · 21m ago
Because LinkedIn makes your employment front and center it encourages status games .
The way to understand LinkedIn is no one is actually trying to engage in good faith. Everyone is seeking status points in a game they're playing. And that status depends on their endowment (people they know, institutions they are part of)
Status conferred from their boss, their peers, their underlings, people in similar roles - It's why LinkedIn feels like a lot of thought-leadering, because the only way to get status is to post something that gets likes within the status game you are playing
Forums like this one and even to some extent Twitter are more evolutionary in that you will likely see higher quality ideas get conferred status.
I use LinkedIn (getting traction for my product). I don't enjoy it but I do understand the game being played.
democracy · 39m ago
LinkedIn is a vanity fair, and I'm not sure why it even matters in 2025 — it's just a job board when you need it.
__loam · 29m ago
LinkedIn is a great place to talk to recruiters still. If you're not picky about where you work, you can find a job pretty fast by working with recruiters directly and skipping the cold apply.
tornikeo · 8m ago
Use the best tool for the job.
I look at LinkedIn as a purpose-built tool for marketing my brand (my dev experience). It works well. Just like any tool LinkedIn has some problems. But it is the best in that niche.
antihipocrat · 52m ago
There is no benefit to be gained from disagreement or debate. Any such discourse looks problematic to a potential employer.
RA_Fisher · 48m ago
True, aside from the exceptional employers that’ll actually provide a good career.
chiefalchemist · 42m ago
Agreed. The level of mediocrity and group-think on LI is freighting. It’s no wonder so many companies / brands struggle.
Daily I see an OP based on myth / incomplete ideas (read: ultimately the originator is sharing bad advice)and then 95% of the replies to that mindlessly agree. The flaws are often obvious, and no one notices.
TrackerFF · 47m ago
r/LinkedInLunatics for the best of hits.
merksittich · 8m ago
What annoys me the most in my LinkedIn feed is low-effort visual AI slop, in particular based on fads such as the bland 4o comic style with text bubbles.
As a "visual animal", I find it very hard to tune out this kind of noise. I consequently try to hide such content from my feed, but the LinkedIn algorithm will not budge.
Full of people sucking each other BS. And then recruiters unable to understand the most basics of a profile.
Nevertheless I update my own from time to time, it can still be useful if you navigate through the garbage. Also it helps me to cross-check a bit some people if they have a contact that you both know and you trust.
More than once I encountered people with 100% fake profile and fake work history. Maybe LinkedIn should only allow to add that you worked somewhere doing something with some kind of verification process.
lloydjones · 56m ago
Exactly — depth is the new authenticity . #Reflecting #ThoughtLeader
lloydjones · 55m ago
Damn — HN strips emojis, putting my pastiche in danger of looking sincere
bootsmann · 38m ago
I think the hashtags save you from looking pretentious
cheschire · 1h ago
I wish LinkedIn wasn’t seen as a valid background check tool.
Now that we have HR going whole hog on AI processing of job applications, up to and including the first round interview, can we please get rid of LinkedIn?
Instead, I would much rather see job applications come in three parts. A cover letter, a human resume overview page, and then the deeper multi page CV that is primarily for AI processing.
mr_toad · 18m ago
I don’t think anyone bothers to read cover letters anymore. Recruiters don’t even seem to read resumes very closely, judging by the number of times I’ve been asked questions that are literally in the first paragraph of my resume.
ChrisMarshallNY · 1h ago
That makes a lot of sense, but the inevitable result is an AI arms race, with AI tools for writing these, feeding AI tools for reading them.
I really feel as if I retired at the best time possible.
reactordev · 36m ago
This is precisely why I deleted my LinkedIn profile all together.
While it's nice to have a cover letter. I've never included one myself, just a beefier resume with a strong opening statement. I'll read a cover letter if you send one but to me it's not required. Just your resume and your person is all that I need. Anything more is just pandering to indecision and wasteful spend.
YetAnotherNick · 18m ago
Ironically, this post and comments here feels like it could be on Linkedin. Catchy title with low effort content. Nowhere in the blog he answers this question and the comments here just go with the title and common hate against Linkedin and "owned by Microsoft" as author calls it.
WhereIsTheTruth · 49m ago
It reflects society, everything rewards mediocrity and deception
HPsquared · 54m ago
Mediocrity can be measured.
cranberryturkey · 2h ago
Is it me or is LinkedIn nothing but Indians now?
ycombinete · 54m ago
India probably represents the largest “homogenous” block of the English speaking world. I think the internet is coming to reflect that more and more as it develops and more of the population comes online.
Edit: apparently it’s 2nd in number of English speakers to the USA.
dep_b · 20m ago
A reflection of the global tech pool minus China. I think they also might work LinkedIn a bit more on LinkedIn because they’re not spontaneously bumping into useful people for their careers in SF coffee shops.
Disposal8433 · 33m ago
0 indians for me. I only see French people because I'm French. And I also see only my friends because I'm not in a following frenzy.
incone123 · 56m ago
Might be an effect of your location, field and 3rd order connections. Also India is a big place with a lot of people in or looking for white collar jobs. Granted so is China so I guess the difference is LinkedIn is not so popular in China.
dep_b · 18m ago
They shot it down a while ago, but it was always something separated from the main LinkedIn population I think.
varispeed · 26m ago
LinkedIn isn’t a professional network, it’s a slave auction with a newsfeed. Workers line up to show their teeth - “failure is just learning in disguise”, “kindness is leadership”, all that drivel - while hoping to be picked by a master who won’t beat them too hard.
The algorithm is the overseer. It doesn’t want insight, it wants compliance: claps, congratulations, and endless oatmeal platitudes that prove you’ll play the game. That’s why your feed is full of garbage. The mediocrity isn’t a flaw, it’s the commodity being traded.
Anyone looking for substance is in the wrong marketplace. LinkedIn is about teaching people how to smile wider while the chain gets tighter.
hubraumhugo · 37m ago
As a technical founder, I can't tell you how much I despise LinkedIn. My feed is mostly AI-generated slop, and ever since someone figured out selfies would boost reach/ranking, it’s just AI text paired with pictures of people. Ridiculous.
That said: we acquired our first customers through LinkedIn outreach and made successful hires through it. As much as I dislike it, I can’t ignore it. And if I compare it to the hassles of in-person networking, it's actually great.
nicksbg · 33m ago
The posts section always basically goes like: We did X but then what surprised us with X is something we did not see coming.
Disposal8433 · 34m ago
> My feed is mostly AI-generated slop
I see zero slop on my feed. Maybe because I only follow friends and former coworkers that I liked. How many people are you following?
tropicalfruit · 29m ago
linkedin is training data for tuning the corpo-speak, sycophancy and sociopathy tokens on microsofts AI models
> Nothing you post there is going to change your career.
I can attribute millions of dollars in revenue to LinkedIn, as can a lot of my 'LinkedIn friends'
> Doing work that matters might.
This is a pre-requisite for winning on LinkedIn. The kind of content that performs best are strong opinions informed by actual expertise.
> Go for depth over frequency.
Unfortunately that's not the way marketing works. 95% of your audience is not 'in-market' and ready to buy when they see your content. Sometime over the next 3-5 years they may move into a buying lifecycle, and they are much more likely to trust you, and therefore buy from you, if they've seen your content 1,000x vs a couple of long reads.
> If writing online matters to you, you’re probably better off starting a blog and building things there.
Your long form, in-depth content lives on your blog, and your LinkedIn profile should act as a funnel, moving people from newsfeed --> your profile --> the most important piece of content you want them to read. From there, you can capture their email to touch them on another channel (inbox), push them to your YouTube / Twitter / community, etc.
With that said, while LinkedIn is responsible for a significant % of my total revenue, it's also responsible for a significant % of my anxiety. Building in public invites folks to publicly blast you if they don't agree with your ideas. 'Getting ratio'd' happens. LinkedIn eventually becomes a mentally exhausting slog. But as a career driven individual the upside has been very high and I think the trade off was worth it. I would do it again knowing everything I know now.
The endless game of catching people's attention. Focus on actual value creation? Nah, let's just mind-hack everyone into buying the product.
It works, it's obviously a game worth billions, but I find it deeply depressing.
That's spot on.
And it will be a very common sentiment regarding marketing. Many devs don't like "bullshitting", it's the exact opposite of how we're supposed to do our job. And while it's understood marketing has a huge impact on sales, one can still take a healthy distance from it.
I think this post is about linkedin moving from a generic work focused SNS to a business/marketing eldorado, and how the author isn't happy about it.
We'd see probably see the same kind of rant if Salesforce pivoted to become a Github competitor.
I agree on the strong opinions, but not that a real expertise is a prerequisite. You probably need to have a bit of understanding of what you are writing ragebates about, but not necessarily be an expert - returning to the author's point about rewarding mediocrity
I'm a dev, and I'm interested in marketing.
I'm currently working as a data analyst in a marketing team (and a secret software engineer - don't tell the marketers, haha). While I do learn a thing or two, mostly by automating some of their things, I would like to know how to go from 0 to 100K users. I work for a corporate and I really notice that they do "corporate marketing". So it's much more about maintenance.
Would you know how to get started on learning that? It's hard to know what information is solid info versus what isn't.
…and here's what it taught me about B2B sales.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics/
lots of phenomena that get incessantly overtheorized and misattributed these days can be simply explained by this
I'm obviously being provocative but those are the dynamics
The way to understand LinkedIn is no one is actually trying to engage in good faith. Everyone is seeking status points in a game they're playing. And that status depends on their endowment (people they know, institutions they are part of)
Status conferred from their boss, their peers, their underlings, people in similar roles - It's why LinkedIn feels like a lot of thought-leadering, because the only way to get status is to post something that gets likes within the status game you are playing
Forums like this one and even to some extent Twitter are more evolutionary in that you will likely see higher quality ideas get conferred status.
I use LinkedIn (getting traction for my product). I don't enjoy it but I do understand the game being played.
I look at LinkedIn as a purpose-built tool for marketing my brand (my dev experience). It works well. Just like any tool LinkedIn has some problems. But it is the best in that niche.
Daily I see an OP based on myth / incomplete ideas (read: ultimately the originator is sharing bad advice)and then 95% of the replies to that mindlessly agree. The flaws are often obvious, and no one notices.
As a "visual animal", I find it very hard to tune out this kind of noise. I consequently try to hide such content from my feed, but the LinkedIn algorithm will not budge.
I did an Ask HN a while ago trying to find browser add-ons which will hide (or blur) such images (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43833961), which turned out fruitless.
Nevertheless I update my own from time to time, it can still be useful if you navigate through the garbage. Also it helps me to cross-check a bit some people if they have a contact that you both know and you trust.
More than once I encountered people with 100% fake profile and fake work history. Maybe LinkedIn should only allow to add that you worked somewhere doing something with some kind of verification process.
Now that we have HR going whole hog on AI processing of job applications, up to and including the first round interview, can we please get rid of LinkedIn?
Instead, I would much rather see job applications come in three parts. A cover letter, a human resume overview page, and then the deeper multi page CV that is primarily for AI processing.
I really feel as if I retired at the best time possible.
While it's nice to have a cover letter. I've never included one myself, just a beefier resume with a strong opening statement. I'll read a cover letter if you send one but to me it's not required. Just your resume and your person is all that I need. Anything more is just pandering to indecision and wasteful spend.
Edit: apparently it’s 2nd in number of English speakers to the USA.
The algorithm is the overseer. It doesn’t want insight, it wants compliance: claps, congratulations, and endless oatmeal platitudes that prove you’ll play the game. That’s why your feed is full of garbage. The mediocrity isn’t a flaw, it’s the commodity being traded.
Anyone looking for substance is in the wrong marketplace. LinkedIn is about teaching people how to smile wider while the chain gets tighter.
That said: we acquired our first customers through LinkedIn outreach and made successful hires through it. As much as I dislike it, I can’t ignore it. And if I compare it to the hassles of in-person networking, it's actually great.
I see zero slop on my feed. Maybe because I only follow friends and former coworkers that I liked. How many people are you following?