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Comment by columbo | Hacker News Reader

I quickly realized how little value the endorsement system in linkedin was when my uncle endorsed me for Groovy. In my mind I like to think he was picking it as a personality trait and not a skillset.

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In case you don't realize it, the reason your Uncle did that is because LinkedIn prompted him to, by fraudulently showing a message that looked like it was from you, asking for endorsement. He was probably no more comfortable endorsing you for that than you were in receiving it, and you are both losers from it (him for looking like he endorses anyone for anything, and you for looking unprofessional to your "real" network who actually know that you are not qualified in that skill but now see you "claiming" it on your profile). The only "winner" is LinkedIn, who get to sell more ads and referrals to their recruiters.

Yep. And the sad thing is, it's one of the less shady and fraudulent things that LinkedIn does on a regular basis.

if you look closely, it only says - "Does X KNOW ABOUT"

Yeah - I am not sure how people don't realize what is really going on here... Linkedin found a great way to entice user engagement - by asking pointed questions about people you know and may have insight on their skills.

I don't see anything "shady" about this as much as I do see it as a targeted use of their system, in a germane method.

If you are not keeping linkedin as a silo of professional, superficial, contact with the many many many people you will work with over your career - and you don't understand why things like endorsements both happen and are a part of the linkedin ecosystem, then you're not using linkedin correctly.

Firstly, you shoul unsub from all notifications from linkedin aside from who has viewed your profile.

Second, its not facebook, thank god. You're not there to impress people by the content you create. You're there to show that your influence in your field is a positive attractor via the quality of your network; if you have good people and companies recommending you - then you have more marketability for your CV...

The people posting to linkedin groups really frequently telling you what to follow and what valuable BS skill/fad thing thats new - they are typically marketing, sales, bizdev and unskilled folks... stay away from the idea that you're going to show the world how farking smart you are via a linkedin post.

Work hard - build a good network. Have strong ACTUAL skills. People who know you will hit "yes, they DO know this" when linkedin asks this...

> Work hard - build a good network. Have strong ACTUAL skills.

Yes. But linkedIn doesn't come in there at all.

>...build a good network...

Keeping track of that network is enabled via linkedin. You do NOT need to follow all the personal lives of people you work with. You should keep a pulse of where they move to and what position they hold over the years.

So if you leave a company and had a great rapport with your peer Z -- and they go on to startup X and become head of Y and you are looking to work in a department like Y with a person like Z... then this is a good thing.

So, yeah - i think Linkedin comes in.

Further, assuming you transition to consulting. Recruiters and the like will seek out people with skills on linkedin to fill positions they only know about. If you are strong, you are your own best/worst negotiator when it comes to getting these contracts.

>>Keeping track of that network is enabled via linkedin. You do NOT need to follow all the personal lives of people you work with. You should keep a pulse of where they move to and what position they hold over the years.

This is called "networking" and people have been doing it since long before LinkedIn. If you want to learn how, read Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty by Harvey Mackay.

> build a good network

Good or big? Commercial companies usually pick big, and history has proven that there is no way to achieve both big and good (MySpace and Facebook being the obvious candidates).

Even LinkedIn looses, as they do get more noise in their data, so that their intel about you, their matching will become worse, when a lot of people are endorsed for things they do not like to highlight, or are endorsed by family even if the skills are not that "good"...

So everyone looses, even recruiters, as they get more false positives when searching for skills.

It is a short business-win for LinkedIn, but a long term loss.

Why? LinkedIn might be using more sophisticated data internally to differentiate real from bogus endorsements than they show externally.

But how do they differentiate between the two. How do they know, that endorsement a is less worth, than say endorsement b?

And how to be sure about the differentiation?

Bit I have to say I'm biased: I really do not give much on these sites. I tried LinkedIn years ago, but nearly no one used it here in Germany. I used to use the local equivalent, but it really was a big waste of time, at least for me and all the people I know who used it.

Recruiter spam, self-exposers, and so on. Nothing ever came from it. Really nothing.

So these sites ultimately live of the dreams of people and of recruiters with the (imho) wrong incentives.

> But how do they differentiate between the two. How do they know, that endorsement a is less worth, than say endorsement b?

E.g. they know _when_ a user endorsed, and if they endorsed all four or individually. And they know more about the user--ie how often he endorses, and who he's connected to.

And, yes, I agree with your low opinion of linkedIn and co. (Even though a close friend of mine actually got a job with the MathWorks in Germany through linkedIn---she was cold-emailled by an internal MathWorks recruiter.)

"by fraudulently showing a message that looked like it was from you, asking for endorsement"

Citation needed.

I never saw a message like that

What I've seen is "Does Person knows about Technology/Skill" and then you can click to endorse that

Well, today I got one "fake" endorsement, not far from what I do, but not what I had added to my list of skills

The word "fraudulent" is excessive, but when a site asks me a very specific yes/no question like "Did Paul graduate from Stanford on June 6, 1999?," it feels like this is user-generated data rather than Linkedin-generated data.

I was joking with a friend and endorsed him for "Knife Skills" -- which is one of the presets you can choose.

(It's intended for chefs, not game developers.)

I've seen "Common sense" and similar jokes as endorsed skills

A friend/ex-colleague just added "General Awesomeness" as a skill :)

Drunken Carousing is another.

I endorsed an old project manager for "Music" because he was a terrible project manager, but a great musician. Though, it was more of a career recommendation than a joke

> my uncle endorsed me for Groovy (...) as a personality trait

I laughed harder than usual at that. I wonder what a "groovy" professional would be? :)

That is great. It shows you the value of the endorsement is really nil. Personally, I'm not as impressed with an endorsement unless it is from someone, who themselves is well respect, or holds a high position. The original concept was good, but it was a low lying fruit, perhaps it is time for some AI by Linked In to try and solve the problem.

"Hey erikj54, pg just endorsed you for "HN Commenting Skills" -- We'd like to ask you (5) questions regading HN commenting! in order to publish this endorsement to your profile:

1. Assuming you just created an account on HN and immediately see a comment you disagree with. Can you downvote this comment? [Y/N]

2. A YC Company just posted a job posting to HN, can you post why you are a perfect rock-ninja for the job as a comment? [Y/N]

3. Can a comment receive greater than -4 comment Karma? [Y/N]

4. Can you downvote a comment reply to your OP comment? [Y/N]

5. How important is being civil in HN threads [Very Important/Not Important]

---

This might work....

Perhaps an expert in Groove?

http://grv.microsoft.com/

When I read that I imagined LinkedIn is refering to the groovy programming language http://groovy.codehaus.org/

Of course... that doesn't make a lot of sense for a personality trait either... It makes as much sense as describing someone as C++. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here.

Groovy (or, less common, "Groovie" or "Groovey") is a slang colloquialism popular during the 1960s and 1970s. It is roughly synonymous with words such as "cool", "excellent", "fashionable", or "amazing", depending on context.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groovy

That this needs to be explained makes me feel old.

I suspect that it is a geographical-cultural thing, not an age-culture thing.

edit: for clarity

Old people have different cultures.

It's both.

Well, in my defense, I know what it means to be groovy and sorry if post made it seem otherwise. What I was misunderstanding was the fact that you can actually endorse personality traits on people since I have made a point of staying as far away from LinkedIn as possible. I thought that you were only able to endorse skills, and so when I saw they were endorsed for a personality trait I was a little confused and wondered if they meant that as a skill trait :)

I interpreted the OP as saying that the uncle endorsed "Groovy" as a skill (presumably the programming language), but probably thought it was a personality trait.

It's as if Dude from "The Big Lebowski" had LinkedIn endorsements:

[ Groovy ][ Chilled ][ Fights "The Man"]

Wikipedia is OK, but I don't think anything can explain Groovy as well as Simon & Garfunkel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvlW4bEjB5A

This might help - http://youtu.be/mWBvcJAXwu4 (Simon & Garfunkel)

Groovy is a programming language on the JVM http://groovy.codehaus.org/

Unfortunately, more attractive language to me, Groovy++ didn't get much traction.

Nowadays, Groovy seems to fading as well.

I'm starting out on Grails, do you suggest I shouldn't?

Our requirements are that whatever I choose must be Java-based, and have some nice framework.

Within those constraints, is there a good Grails replacement?

No, not at all. I meant in terms of hype and popularity. Otherwise, it seems quite solid to me, and they (Groovy and Grails) are in active development.

There is another interesting jvm language: http://gosu-lang.org/compare.html

Web framework for gosu: http://ronin-web.org/

But it is even less popular and I'm not sure if it even has an active community.

Gosu is the language developed by Guidewire, a major insurance software provider :) (I work in the insurance sector. I wish my company bought Guidewire).

But yeah, it's much smaller than Grails.

What is that with family members going on linkedIn? My aunt is a retired teacher and she went on linkedIn under a (religious) pseudonym and tried to connect to me. And I also got endorsed by a university professor who never taught me (but we knew each other a bit) about ruby on rail that was not yet created when I was a student. I'm about to call bullshit on professional social networks (yeah, because each country has it's favorite moreover, so I'm stuck with viadeo, linkedIn and Xing), I never got a job or recruited through that, and they are just annoying with alert e-mail.

A free pair of bell-bottom jeans with every website :-)

I'm endorsed for "Social Justice"

The end state here is clearly that everybody will be endorsed for everything.

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