I just got a response to on Twitter from @grayj_ , saying "Making a KPI go up will often get you a bonus or a promotion; advocating good UX won't."
However sad, I suspect this is the reality of LinkedIn being a large and slow corporation. Unfortunately :(
As much as it might seem corporate propaganda, LinkedIn really emphasizes a "members first" attitude in engineering. Engineers frequently get commended for decreasing spam, improving UX, and securing member data.
I guarantee this post will be reviewed tomorrow, and we'll discuss how to improve the flow for connecting with new LinkedIn members from the "People You May Know" feature.
Please keep the feedback coming. :)
And even logging in after clicking "Unsubscribe" doesn't unsubscribe you: you then have to go to options and find whatever caused the email yourself.
For a company that puts members first, that seems very member unfriendly. But it does mean more emails to users, which no doubt increases some metrics.
LinkedIn is pretty bad on this. Just when you think youve opted out of every mailing list, its seems like they invent or create some new 'feature' which opts you in. Again.
Somewhat related - I remember reading that when Facebook engineer decided to add a message feature to a friend request, Zuck got really pissed at him. I suspect that's because "# of connections" is a really hot metric, and it grows exponentially for people who blankly accept every request.
Thus, from LIN point of view, it makes sense to sacrifice UX for some people to get a sure growth for everyone else.
Now, if that "growth" is just a vanity metric, now that's a whole other story.