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Comment by etangent | Hacker News Reader

> It prompts me every now and again to congratulate people on job anniversaries--maybe people do that but it's a weak play when a company reaches to those depths.

So what? Facebook prompts me to congratulate on people's birthdays, and Facebook is doing quite well.

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Apples and oranges. Also, this has been a common spectacle for me:

Click here to congratulate Jill for reaching her ninth anniversary at Yoyodyne!

"..But Jill left that company 5 years ago.."

Or better yet. Do you know Dave? Connect with Dave.

Dave died two years ago. Really don't want to contact his widow to make this stop.

ok, i get that it seems annoying, but why would it entail poor company performance?

I wondered for a long time about the anniversary thing, then actually went and did some analysis on it. Looking at the data, it shows that people mostly tend to do leave jobs on year boundaries so contacting and targeting people at that time of year when they are thinking about changing jobs makes a lot of sense. You can argue the morals of it of course! Here's my blog on it : https://medium.com/@mrmattwright/workforce-analytics-happy-a...

Is that something you do every year? Congratulate your friends on their job anniversaries?

Congrats on the 30 minute anniversary of writing this comment. Good luck in your future endeavors.

What I don't understand though is why people (specifically on this forum) seem to hate these prompts so much. Sure, they're annoying, but I've always ignored them, and they never bothered me. Do you people automatically do what the talking head on television tells you to? Of course not. So why so much vicious sarcasm directed towards LinkedIn?

> Facebook prompts me to congratulate on people's birthdays, and Facebook is doing quite well.

So What? :) Snapchat compels people to post videos of their cats and daily humdrum. And it also does quite well.

You seem to be proving my point.

Facebook contacts are my friends, at least for some value of "a friend". LinkedIn contacts are not.

How does that distinction matter? Wasn't it LinkedIn's goal from the very beginning to make one interact with people who are not one's friends? (Otherwise how does one expand one's network if one merely interacts with the people one knows well?)

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