>> Joe Duffy says "I’ve been granted 45 patents, with another 33 pending"
>> Bragging about patents doesn't exactly make me like the guy.
Genuinely asking, do you see putting information on patents as bragging or more generally as a negative? I have also been putting the same on my profile, so would like to understand your viewpoint better to see if I should remove it.
My side of the story:
I have nearly always worked for big technology companies and for various reasons they are always very protective of their IP. This means that an employee can barely talk about his/her projects at the company without making the description too generic. People are barely allowed to publish papers on their work, make contributions to open-source (unless with consent of the employer, which is rare), and cannot have side projects [1].
Such generic descriptions of the projects and a mere mention of the skills do not leave many options for employees to demonstrate their expertise. Recommendations is one way (and I correspondingly have plenty of stellar ones on my LinkedIn profile), but is also gamed a lot: I know several cases where non-deserving people also have great recommendations.
Then comes the patent filings. I have been known as a well-respected and "a prolific inventor" in my last employment, the "most original thinker" at college, etc. Yet, it is hard to reflect this on the profile or CV since these terms by themselves are also often overused.
[1] While it may be a common practice to have side projects, the employment agreements most big technology companies have, that most people sign without even reading, place a lot of restrictions on the side projects. These issues have been discussed on HN several times before. In fact, since most employees do not even read these agreements, talk about negotiating on them, the equilibrium position for these agreements is heavily biased in the favor of employers than of employees.