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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

This is probably a good case to remind people: You ("engineers who want to network") are a small fraction of the LinkedIn userbase. You cannot begin to accurately grok how the vast majority of users use and feel about LinkedIn. Your opinions are valid (and I share them fully). But be careful not to assume that the way _you_ interact with LinkedIn is universally shared.

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Who are the predominant users of LinkedIn then? Marketing mostly, or is it recruiters? Startup founders? How do you measure "activity" in this scenario - is it public postings or are we including the private messages that people send about jobs?

I see a lot of useless posts end up on my feed - self congratulations and a lot of what equates to a press release for some product - but those have to target a user base of some kind that isn't there to just do that or it ends up being bots talking to bots (effectively), which is arguably bad for the company (e.g. bad for their valuation).

Seems like the largest userbase are mid-career white collar workers, even if they don't make up the majority (or even a plurality) of the public posts/interactions happening.

Similar to a gacha mobile game you need some minimum amount of userbase to create the environment where "whales" will be encouraged to engage with their money - in this case that's advertising revenue through sponsored posts and premium accounts.

Every college student in the world has a LinkedIn account, whether they want one or not. That's a gigantic userbase of engaged users.

That seems unlikely, given that any EU institution unnecessarily sharing personal details with LinkedIn would be breaking the law.

Users. Not necessarily engaged. Anecdotally, nobody I've ever known uses LinkedIn unless they're job-hunting.

Good points, but I would suggest that just because the swamp-dwellers like it that way, does not mean it isn't a swamp.

I very much minimize my time there, because it is the spammiest, clingiest "social" network I've tried. I abandoned Facebook too, but there is at least marginal usefulness on LI, so I log in periodically.

I'd say that those who engage most are either directly recruiting or marketing, or self-annointed "thought leaders". At least the recruiters are unashamed in their role there. I cringe most at the thought leader types who apply the term to themselves. Like "hacker" or "guru", the term should usually be given by other people.

Generally most people don't even get messaged at all on LinkedIn.

One CEO I know mentioned they only hire recruiters for engineers. Other slots are filled in other ways. Some are with job posts, others might be with referrals.

Another mentioned that engineers are like gold. A valuable commodity that's mineable via a process, enough of a commodity that everyone agrees on value.

Yes the language is intentionally constrained to “network with other engineers.”

Thanks, I guess, for suggesting I keep a perspective I already had in mind (as evidenced by the constrained choice of words).

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