rant and building of the slop YOLO project to detect other slop YOLO projects
153 comments
I have connections, and friends occasionally like a comment when I share something. I'm convinced LinkedIn demotes anything that links off-platform, even in the comments. That makes it really hard to share a good blog post.
Honestly, I get more engagement on Facebook. My mom and in-person friends find what I do slightly interesting, at least when the algorithm decides to show it. Same story there, though. Links to a blog get buried compared to native content.
This has been proven, they absolutely penalize off site links. The workaround is to put it in the comments, which they do not demote (yet). But engagement still matters for appearing on feeds. If you're not saying something controversial, you probably won't get a lot of engagement.
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.
One thing that has always hurt me is I have never once in my career been on the traditional job market. I was self employed as a teenager and have always just kept growing and pivoting and growing. I have never sought or taken a job via the normal market. LinkedIn has always been a bit of a odd place for that mode of work.
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. If you've never had to put on a mask to fit in then the first wear can be very uncomfortable.
Yeah, in part my issue is recruiters are completely unaligned with my interests. Anytime I have ever replied that I am available for a corp-to-corp consulting contract the contact dies. They are only about placing people in full time employment, which has been an anathema to me because to do that I would have to turn my back on all my current clients and leave them high and dry. Growing the business has always been the better path for me.
Not that I think that this is LinkedIn's fault, but I assume Google's rationale is that "everybody has a LinkedIn account" so it's fine to include result pages that cannot be accessed without one.
It is, they’re darkpatternmaxxing.
There used to be a time sites got punished if they treated searchbots differently..
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.
The person who decides my promotions follows me on LinkedIn. I never really see her except at the Christmas party etc, so the only way to influence her directly is through getting in her feed. If she regularly sees how great I am, that establishes the thought in her mind, so when she is then asked to promote me by other people, she’ll think it’s a good idea.
I guess a few posts a year are ok if they don't sound angry or delusional. But zero is really best.
Nobody would accuse me of performative normality
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-houle-a18809320/
Students at my Uni are still LIONs and will mostly accept my follow requests but other people in my town don't, I am gradually building up my network.
LinkedIn wants to reconnect me to my old friends in the knowledge graph industry but I could care less.
Then when something pisses me off at work I'll dig through my "hey this is a brilliant idea, I gotta write it down" ADHD notes I have in apples notes thing. I'll give it to an AI who will rewrite it to a load of crap that sounds way too professional to be something I would write. It will give me a great structure for the sections I want to write out of my crazy mess of a note. So I'll re-write every paragraph using basically none of what the AI output aside from the skeleton. Then I'll post it right before all the middle managers and c-levels take the train home on fridays. This will get me in right when they are LARPing on their linkedin.
Sometimes I'll get a tens of thousands of views. I've even had likes from one of the equity fund managers that owns the company that owns the company I work for. Those times I'll get some comments from the big bosses at the coffee machine or during lunch.
Maybe it's silly, but it works. At some point you'll also get enough followers or recognition or whatever it is they meassure you on that you'll start getting job offers from "real" people. I've had managers contact me directly for positions they were looking to fill. It've never actually gotten a job through linkedin though, but then again, all the jobs I've gotten after my first one has been through my real world network some of which have grown out of linkedin relationships.
I do wish the corporate larping platform our society has decided to use was decentralised though.
That said, there's an insane amount of garbage self promotion on LinkedIn for individuals and companies which amount to your mom putting up your messy crayon drawing of you pet cat on the refrigerator as a kid. It's only impressive to you and your family, and it's not a remotely accurate picture of your cat.
On a sunday.
I didn't go to the hospital.
I had a client, and a project.
Ready to go.
On a sunday.
You don't give up when life challenges you, you move faster.
Keep building [ROCKET EMOJI]
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.Read the full thread on Hacker News →
Related stories
- What Makes Slop, Slop?ampblog.substack.comHacker News · 1 points · 7 days ago
- Hacker News · 73 points · 9 days ago
- Hacker News · 1 points · 11 days ago
- Hacker News · 2 points · 7 days ago
- Hacker News · 2 points · 4 days ago
- Hacker News · 1 points · 1 day ago