This is a disclaimer: If you feel hurt or exposed, that is your problem. Just kidding! Obviously, I am trying to make fun of myself, too. So please, don't take it too seriously.
Intro: What do I mean?
To be honest: I am rarely on LinkedIn. The reason is: I don't really gain anything from it. I just get onto the platform and it takes 2-3 min until I am annoyed as fuck.
I have like 40 notifications about things I absolutely don't care about like "Person X has a new job; congratulate him/her". No, thanks. I haven't talked to that idiot in years. I did not want to know and I don't care.
Next, I take a look at the newsfeed and I see generic, random posts about shit nobody should even acknowledge like the posts below, which were clearly copy/pasted from the letter to his employees by Tobias Lütke, CEO of Shopify.
This makes me angry at people spending time on reading and engaging with this superficial stuff. It is a perfect example of professional, intelligent knowledge workers (formerly known as whitecollars) rewarding non-sense without any "skin in the game", as Nassim Taleb would say, while Tobias Lütke brought it up courageously in a time of political divide in his company and within a very thoughtful essay.
I mean, even looking at this dudes profile makes my blood boil:
I will come back to this kind of profile in the last part.
Before getting off the platform with a bad feeling, I might see something that is just genuine, authentic and interesting. Examples are:
- Informing about work-related news: "I have started a new challenge/project/job and I am excited for it. If somebody has advice, please get in touch."
- Showing off by mentioning what you accomplished and what your stake/contribution looked like: "I am proud of xyz. It was hard but I/we did it."
- Giving honest opinions on ideas, philosophies & change like: "I read xyz is the solution to all of management's problems but I see things differently. Here is why"
But in the end, I get drawn back into the slump of humble bragging, fake inspiration with no context, hustle porn without knowing what work really means, buzzword dropping, senseless sharing, urgh.
Why do I find it so appalling?
Well, really simple: You are being fake, even lying, and trying to disguise your intentions. You are trying to tell me that you invented, created, believe in or actually do something which you don't, just for the purpose to impress others.
Guys, I am not saying that you cannot have a different facet on LinkedIn than at work; it is completely ok and normal to show different facets in different contexts. Most people are different personalities at work vs. home vs. happy hour. People wear these different "masks" - as Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman mentioned in his book "The Presentation of Self in Every Day Life" to impress or avoid embarrassment with different audiences which is also something I wrote in my article about why being cynical seems so smart (instead of being an optimist).
But don't post your opinion on management philosophies when your own employees don't even like you.
Don't post about how other people gave you positive feedback about your personality or things you did without context.
And don't copy things other people brought up in a complex context with a lot of courage and sell it as inspiration!
Just be genuine when bragging, be honest when reflecting and share (negative) emotions. And not because I want it or it might work better. But because what everyone of us does counts in changing the social media that we consume. So, it is just the right thing.
But why is it working especially on LinkedIn though?
Well, the first reason is that this is how they make money. That was an obvious one.
Let's see how LinkedIn makes its $ 10B+ revenue (compared to ~ $5B Twitter and ~$2-3B Pinterest). Remark: The numbers are from LinkedIn's last public filing before the acquisition by Microsoft in 2016 (they don't share segment revenue anymore):
- Talent Solutions (65% of sales): Recruiters and employers pay for tools to attract, recruit and hire people.
- Premium Subscriptions (17%): Users pay to unlock (unnecessary) features like better search, messaging, connecting outside of your network, and seeing who creeped your profile.
- Marketing Solutions (18%): Display ads and sponsored posts in the newsfeed.
According to Fadeke Adegbuyi in her article "LinkedIn's Alternate Universe" which I found when searching for like-minded people:
"Every platform has its royalty. On Instagram it's influencers, foodies, and photographers. Twitter belongs to the founders, journalists, celebrities, and comedians. On LinkedIn, it’s hiring managers, recruiters, and business owners who hold power on the platform and have the ear of the people. The depravity of a platform where HR Managers are the rockstars speaks for itself."
My dear sweet baby Jesus. I had to laugh because finally I found somebody sharing my very negative perspective on administrative functions like HR. But that is for another time.
Trung Phan summarized the consequences of Fadeke's observation perfectly. I quote:
- Incentivizes humble bragging: Users (especially job-seekers) broadcast all their wins — no matter how small — to catch the eye of a prospective employer. The wins are usually wrapped in some fake humility or BS lesson or hero’s journey (“I failed first, but then…”) so as to not come off as a complete egomaniac.
- Rise of faux gurus: AKA LinkedIn Influencers, because employers need to keep their workers motivated… and nothing motivates quite like a well-placed LinkedIn post with some famous quote taken completely out of context.
- Cringe-proof: Remember, ads only make up 20-30% of LinkedIn’s business. Even if the newsfeed were to become unusable because of a biblical flood of “I’m humbled to announce…” posts, the Talent Solutions gravy train will keep chugging along.
The second reason is obviously the algorithm feeding this kind of behavior.
The funniest method on how to exploit an algorithm is the phenomena called "Broetry", created by Josh Fechter, who, by the way, has been banned by LinkedIn for the creation of the following: Fechter figured a hack based on how LinkedIn posts appear in the feed: a body of text shows the first sentence with a “read more” hyperlink. Using clicky first sentences (aka “like-bait”), Fechter made users click his broems by using the first lines as a setup. You may find an example below:
And that is where the name "broetry" comes from: "bro" + "poetry", which is the endgame of saying stupid shit that does not mean anything but gets recognition because people stopped filtering due to the indefinite flow of information.
Since then, the algorithm has been updated so don't try this at home. And it is going to be optimized again soon regarding the following behaviors:
- Re-weighting the value of a like or share when the person is actually within your network instead of a random person (even if it is somebody with a big network)
- Time spent on consuming a post will weigh stronger than only liking it and
- Engaging with a post via comment or replies (again weighing more on your network)
Last but not least: How do the expectations of others play in?
I have several thoughts on that. Of course, I have. Otherwise, I would not write about it.
The first one is very personal because - I guess - I see work a bit different than others. I am at work, almost the same guy as in my private life. I call bullshit when I see it, I am very critical of myself (but also others), I make bad jokes, I curse a lot although I shouldn't, I might ask dumb questions sometimes. To summarize: a lot of stuff that other people might call "unprofessional".
Well, I don't give a damn anymore. In the past, I thought I needed to uphold a distant, careful composure, but today, I came to the realization, people care at work about the same things as in their private lives: honesty, sincerity, connection, humor and results. And if we have some fun along the way, complaining, talking shit (sometimes about others), it is normal human behavior. It is just important to keep those things in boundaries & context while getting serious if required. By the way: That was genuine bragging. No humbleness intended.
That is clearly not most people. Most employees, consultants & other service providers still try to impress their clients, keep clean images, acting as if they would know by using buzzwords or generic terms (operations, use case, business, proof of concept, entry into service, SLA, architecture, interfaces, process, RACI, owner, agile, etc.). I don't understand why.
As a consequence, people also try to keep their CV and external image as clean as possible. I would love to share some of my network's LinkedIn CVs where they try to show off competencies which they - honestly speaking - don't have! But I don't want to get into trouble, so here is a beautiful example via @StateofLinkedIn (also related to the guy I mentioned in the beginning):
Let's all be honest: That is the least liked version of ourselves that we expose, right? The CV? Absolutely nobody likes to write it up and show, respectively send it to anybody. Not even my mum.
If I look at my CV, I am like: Dude, just shut up. That is not you. You have no idea about cyber security, network architectures and IT in general. You are just good at talking, listening, structuring and talking again. But hey, it works because these seem to be valuable traits. Ok, that was kind of a humble brag.
The examples below play with self-mockery which I appreciate a lot (which I am doing, too within this post). I believe, that I will change my profile accordingly within the next day.
To stay on the funny way of things, I would like to share my favorite shitpost (left one):
And to finalize, a wise quite by the philosopher J. Cole:
"If I smoke a rapper, it's gon' be legit
It won't be for clout, it won't be for fame
It won't be 'cause my shit ain't sellin' the same
It won't be to sell you my latest lil' sneakers"