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Comment by kevincrane | Hacker News Reader

The thing I hate most about LinkedIn right now (apart from spamming me) is their new system of friends endorsing your skills. I just got an email this morning saying a friend endorsed my skills in Python. This guy played water polo with me in college, why would he be in any position to endorse my programming skills, and why was he asked to endorse me?

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Endorsements have lost all meaning whatsoever. 3 people have endorsed me for OS X for some reason even though I don't have it listed in my skills. I've never owned an Apple product in my life except for an iPhone so my skills with OS X are average at best.

My boyfriend's dad, who is not technical whatsoever, endorsed me for git. I'm pretty sure he just saw the word git and thought, "Hehe, she's a git!"

I think the problem too is that LinkedIn offers people the path of least resistance to endorse people. Occasionally I'll see a message at the top of my profile saying, "Endorse X for Y & Z" and a button to approve it. I'm sure more times than not, people just approve endorsements without giving it a second thought.

Why are you a professional connection with your boyfriend's dad?

Because LinkedIn is a social network just as much as a professional.

Then you're using it wrong. Your connections on LinkedIn should only be colleagues, former colleagues, or people who can potentially advance your career. If her boyfriend's dad was Charles Bronson, that would be a meaningful connection.

I'm not using it wrong, but it seems that everyone else is, and LinkedIn's more than happy to encourage that usage in the interest of a larger, more interact-y userbase.

Are you telling me that you only get "meaningful" add requests? My friends don't often bother (the feeling is mutual), but the more desperate acquaintances seem to seek me out nonstop.

No, I don't only get meaningful requests. From a ratio perspective, I probably get 1 meaningful request for every 10 non-meaningful requests.

I'm probably in the minority when it comes to how I use the network, but I've also found that I get a lot less noise from it than most people. I can't say if these two factors are correlated at all, but it stands to reason that they would be.

The point of Linkedin is leveraging extended networks. It isn't a collection pen for people you think you can use at some point in the future. The dad likely has professionals in his network who have professionals in their network who have ... and so on, all of whom you can connect with through the dad. It would be really dumb to _not_ take advantage of that.

Good luck explaining to the boyfriend's dad why you rejected his invitation to connect on LinkedIn.

Endorsements should use a web-of-trust.

Some people (undefined process) are given an endorsed skill (eg. Python). They can now endorse anyone in their network for python. But they cannot endorse anyone who claims a skill in 'goat herding'.

Now they have meaning as you can only endorse someone for a skill you have also been endorsed for.

My former boss had added 'Oracle' as a skill. I didn't know until LinkedIn asked me to endorse it. He's not even a technical guy, so I've no idea why he had added it but he's actually been endorsed for it by other business owners.

I believe LinkedIn automatically define these skills by crawling for keywords in your profile. I've never added a skills section yet every now and then I get emails stating I've been endorsed for a specific skill.

I believe users can also suggest them? I've got a couple on my LinkedIn profile that I didn't add, and weren't there earlier but I got a notification I was endorsed for that skill anyway.

It's really bizarre, I have skills I've been endorsed for for jobs where I didn't use those skills around the endorsers!

I've had former colleagues offended that I did not endorse them for skills (that I had not witnessed them using, though I knew they used them at that company.)

Was just inspired to add goat herding as a skill. Please endorse me for it: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=22023530&trk=tab...

I'm swimming in endorsements from people who aren't qualified to do so. I've told this story on here before, but my co-worker was endorsed by one of our colleagues for something he never set as a skill to begin with; it was just some random acronym she thought "sounded technical!"

They really need to figure that business out. Even a simple, "How do you know this person?" would suffice, allowing people to determine the weight of that endorsement on the relationship we have.

Couldnt agree more, this is the current biggest pain of linkedin...

...or perhaps the recruiters sending email such as "I see you have worked with purely with linux and mysql, how about you applying for this 100% microsoft-stack company as a sharepoint/exchange professional." That might not be linkedins fault the recruiters seems stupid, but it should be in linkedins interest to not annoy me with such crap.

I got so sick of meaningless skill endorsements that I decided to delete all the skills from my profile. I posted an update that I did this, and one of my former coworkers replied, "Now I want to endorse you for honesty."

And yet I am still getting empty endorsements.

I couldn't agree more, which is why I simply don't show them on my profile anymore.

Hiding endorsements is straightforward: http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/34994

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