960 is 6% of the global LinkedIn workforce. I am baffled by how many people work for LinkedIn.
It has a lot of potential, but is completely ruined by the social media aspect and their attempt at making it yet another cesspool like Twitter or Instagram, all the way down to the algorithmic feed, likes and reactions.
They should step away from the nonsense and make the tool (because yes it should be seen as a tool and not a lifestyle) easier to use, not harder. Stop getting in my way trying to make me use the algorithmic feed (it forgets your choice after a few hours) or nagging me to add a profile picture (I've said no for 2 years, why are you still trying?) or certain profile details I might not want to share, or "following sources" (whatever that means, I guess it's about following bullshit hashtags so you can have even more crap in your feed). The UI is absolutely terrible and slow for no good reason and makes it painful to use.
The worst is that you might think "okay well the free version for the plebs is nasty because it tries to drum up engagement, but the premium version should be better, right?" WRONG! The premium version is just as bad but instead of wasting just your time it wastes your time and your money.
LinkedIn has managed to release a new app for basically every function while also bundling all that functionality into their primary app...
It’s truly a disaster over there...
Never have so many words been written that mean so little.
The problem of course is that the platform doesn't seem to understand that and desperately tries to encourage me to participate which seems pathetic at this point. They have 2 years worth of analytics that essentially show them a big middle finger, why keep trying?
This tool seems to function perfectly well as a rolodex and as a recruiter contact for you (its primary function for myself and most others) but somehow it's problematic for to have other functions for other users.
> The problem of course is that the platform doesn't seem to understand that and desperately tries to encourage me to participate which seems pathetic at this point. They have 2 years worth of analytics that essentially show them a big middle finger, why keep trying?
What a strange personification of a vast social network. Who is it that you think is up awake late at night, desperate and pathetic? What middle finger? Recruiters can reach you, LinkedIn got paid for that.
They have metrics for conversions when they push for engagement. It works well enough. Nobody's out there 'trying' expending extra energy to engage you specifically. It would take more work to exclude you.
Disclaimer: Former LinkedIn employee baffled at how personal you seem to think all this is.
Add to this that even basic OS functions on mobile devices are constantly trying to get you to subscribe to various services and I think it's reached a boiling point for a vocal segment of people who just want to be able to go about their UI in peace. Unfortunately some data analyst at every big company has decided it's ok to have a popup every time the user visits to remind them to engage, and sign them up for 25 different email lists they have to unsub from individually, and have notifications pop up on their phone for no reason other than to get them to open the app, just because it results in 2% more users signing up for some service and it hasn't yet cause the other 98% to rage quit.
Disclaimer: this kind of behavior has been driving me insane for several years but there's almost no mechanism to avoid these issues on the whole. Also this isn't targeted at you in particular but just to illustrate what I think is a growing resentment amongst a set of users.
But I do think the parent's personification of the platform misguided.
I think it's a fair question to raise when the other function seems out of place or almost inappropriate for what the tool is trying to achieve. I feel like a professional platform should be trying to maintain a higher standard instead of decaying into yet another Instagram-like cesspool.
> What middle finger?
The ~2 years of analytic data showing that I have zero interest in the "features" they're trying to force me to use despite hundreds of attempts? I also find it unlikely to believe that I am literally the only one in this situation, thus why I am raising the issue.
> Nobody's out there 'trying' expending extra energy to engage you specifically.
Not specifically, but surely the platform should be built in such a way to respect the user's decisions? The various nags can have a use to engage new users (that might indeed not be aware of some of the features), but after a certain point it seems counter-productive and annoying. Imagine if every SaaS tool out there would always give you the "new user" onboarding experience with help popups all over the place and call-outs for "new" features, would you enjoy it?
> Disclaimer: Former LinkedIn employee baffled at how personal you seem to think all this is.
I don't think it's personal because I very much doubt I am the only one annoyed by this. The platform has been designed with zero respect for their users and looks like it's intentionally trying to be as annoying as possible. Even Facebook is more subtle in their shenanigans.
Quora is just as much of a cesspool, except more frustrating because casual users are actually expecting to get something out of it, as opposed to people posting productivity listicles on LI.
The real problem is that for anyone with decent-sounding title, the amount of inbound spam is incredibly high. Endless outsourced development companies, recruiters, and random people wanting to connect for no discernible reason. Add to that a bunch of low-quality blogging, and I can't see how anyone can really enjoy spending time on the service.
I'm at the bottom of the pile in terms of job title, and I think my profile is open to everyone, so I struggle to understand why a wood worker from half way across the globe would like to connect with me.
And it's not like they even try to talk to you or anything, so it feels like I'm missing something.
That's because the "product" isn't the social network. The "product" is insight and access to much of the professional workforce. Sales and HR use it extensively.
The social network aspect is likely to keep people semi-engaged with the platform and voluntarily disclosing things that Sales and HR can use as signals.
Linkedin has a much bigger potential than that though, just the social aspect and networking impact could be pretty significant.
I wouldn't actually mind adding a picture now (I had a reason not to add one at the beginning, but this is no longer a problem) but at this point I will refrain from doing so out of principle to not show them an increase in their analytics data and encouraging their terrible practices.
I really don't find any value of LinkedIn on the employee side (for the 5 years I had a LinkedIn account, there's zero job I got through LinkedIn). I know some of my colleagues (engineering managers) use LinkedIn as a recruiting/sourcing tool, but if talents don't find value on it, it's value as a sourcing tool will decline quickly. There are already a lot of interesting new ideas/companies in the sourcing market to eat its cake.
My guess would be that it's still riding the inertial wind. After a few years, if they still can't figure something new out, it will fail badly.
16K people spanning the whole globe is not bad .
Whatsapp would have needed at least 200 salespeople uf they hadn't been bought by FB.
Usually with those type of comments someone replies explaining that we don't get it and that you MUST have 20000 people to support a website like LinkedIn
I spent years trying to untangle us from their managed services, but couldn't as they batched all discounts company wide. I've never worked anywhere where departments shared budgets (even in a 3 person startup, my marketing "budget" was kept separate to other elements, alas the CEO had other issues...), but they basically enforced us to.
That meant I had to pay for pretty much all the LinkedIn usage company wide out of my budget (to receive the discounts on different products as they only applied to one invoice - huge savings on purchasing separately from different budget lines, but still large sums of cash), but internal systems meant other departments couldn't contribute their share back to us.
And once you're in the door, you're then given about 3 different contacts (your sales contact, a follow up sales contact, and then some kind of "content success" person whose only job I could tell was sharing the occasional case study).
God I hate LinkedIn sales.
Less than a certain amount and you literally couldn't move it out of a department (spend it or lose it) - you could shift it inside the department easily enough, but we as marketing and them as HR couldn't do it.
> the kinda crystal ball required to make rigid dept budgets work year-round
Apart from some mild quarterly reforecasting, you mean you've never had the joy of trying to flight out an entire year's marketing spend at the start of the year before? And then have to justify every "variance" ;)