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Comment by fliellerjulian | Hacker News Reader

Totally understand where you're coming from — and it's a super fair concern.

We're not trying to turn hiring into a popularity contest or a casting call. The point of video or a photo isn’t to favor looks — it’s to give people a chance to show personality, communication skills, or walk through a project — especially in roles where that matters (e.g. PMs, founders, designers, etc.).

That said, both video and photo are optional. We’ve seen that for many candidates, especially those early in their careers or from non-traditional backgrounds, a short video can dramatically increase response rates — not because of appearance, but because it humanizes them and cuts through the noise of generic applications.

We’re 100% aligned that character and substance matter most — we just want to give people more ways to show that, not perform for it.

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Another potential big issue is the community itself. A huge reason why LinkedIn is so hated is the community that's on there, and how the various engineering/design choices made by LinkedIn over the years amplifies and encourages those behaviors. Things like humble bragging, writing styles, DMing patters, etc etc etc.

And I don't know if building another platform with a feed will solve that problem. Because the existence of a social feed itself might be the issue here. But then what do you have if you don't have a feed? Is that a "platform" anymore if all that's on there are peoples' resumes?

I feel that building the next LinkedIn is really building the next LinkedIn community. That can't necessarily be done through computer code. I mean, look at the kind of community building that it took to build out HN.

Things like humble bragging, writing styles, DMing patters, etc etc etc.

This exists because there is limited courage to call this out. There are not many polite ways to tell someone this, you would need people in their life to pull them aside and point it out. It's very similar to being the friend that pulls someone outside and explains they need to brush their teeth (someone has to do this, with love). Maybe more working professionals need to blog about this so the broader community can be educated on behavior when it comes to excess vanity and general manners.

For example, it's simply rude to broadcast your new job when some people are struggling with it (will they ever get one? will they get fired? are they good enough?). Just the very fact that there are "some" should be enough to kickstart one's manners, even if that "some" is not a lot of people.

It's simply rude to continuously market things (anything) when there are people literally ... stressing themselves over the pressure of competition. Again, as an example, a person constantly marketing their looks is putting stress and pressure on many others - this is a simple fact. The same goes for those with wealth and opportunity.

> For example, it's simply rude to broadcast your new job when some people are struggling with it (will they ever get one? will they get fired? are they good enough?). Just the very fact that there are "some" should be enough to kickstart one's manners, even if that "some" is not a lot of people.

To be fair, LinkedIn is nominally a professional networking site. Broadcasting your new job is absolutely in scope for that site.

It’s the “what the death of my dog taught me about viral content marketing” or “how my child losing her soccer game made me a better manager” posts that are out of control.

My personal favorites are people bragging about working during their wedding / funeral / vacation. “Joe is such a dedicated worker! Look he is taking time out from his bachelor party to deploy this database schema change!”

> For example, it's simply rude to broadcast your new job when some people are struggling with it

LinkedIn is a job site. It is completely appropriate to announce you got a job. I want to know that people in my network have a job whether I have one or not. It means that I can reach out to them and ask if the company is still hiring.

> For example, it's simply rude to broadcast your new job when some people are struggling with it

> It's simply rude to continuously market things (anything) when there are people literally ... stressing themselves over the pressure of competition

> a person constantly marketing their looks is putting stress and pressure on many others

The way you put it nothing should ever happen.

Everything has pros and cons. There's no perfect solution to make everyone happy.

For example if I vote for 1 party, the other party loses votes so puts stress and pressure on them i.e. I shouldn't vote? Then they both lose out.

Or we should have monopolies everywhere because introducing competition puts stress and pressure on the existing player?

If we were in a perfect world, I'd agree, but unfortunately that isn't the case. The cons here are far more prevalent than the pros, as photos and videos will lead to discrimination before the main part of what matters, the resumé, your experience and your actual knowledge, shines through.

There's a reason these things aren't standard in resumés (at least for jobs that don't have a focus on appearance).

> photos and videos will lead to discrimination

I feel like video will help mitigate this, as personalty and soft skills are communicated better that way. But if a company is going to discriminate based on a video, then they are going to discriminate when they interview you in person, no?

>photos and videos will lead to discrimination before the main part of what matters,

We're in such a connected age that anyone wanting to know your face can 99% of the time just google your name. That was an issue talked about even 20 years ago in my grade school days of Myspace.

Unless you legitmately have no photo of yourself on the internet (including LinkdIn), adding a photo here will not give or take much away from a malicious actor.

>There's a reason these things aren't standard in resumés

because companies are so scared of litigation that they won't even give feedback anymore. It's not a particularly good reason if we're being honest.

Do you have any guesses as to how much the photo/video on a resume site is used for legitimate purposes, vs. how much it's used/influencing in illegal, unfair, or inappropriate ways?

People don't check your intentions before they discriminate, they just do.

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