
Ask HN: Why is LinkedIn's website so slow? - gnicholas
Since LinkedIn launched its new website, it has become unbearably slow — especially in Firefox, but also in Chrome. Even simple things, like clicking on the notification icon (which lights up for the dumbest things) takes many seconds to load a new page. Of course, checking notifications should probably be a dropdown instead of taking me to a separate page. But regardless, a new page load should never take this long.<p>How is it that such a well-known tech company can have such a slow website for its main product?
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daliwali
My theory is that they have little incentive to improve performance. All of
your professional network is there, and it's not like there's another website
with nearly as many people on it for that purpose. So you will use it no
matter how crappy the performance may be, because that won't negatively affect
their revenue nearly as much as an e-commerce website.

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davelnewton
FWIW, doessn't take that long for me by a long shot; sub-1sec page loads
across the site.

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gnicholas
I figured this had to be the case for some folks, otherwise it would have been
fixed long ago. I'd be curious to know what your setup is. I'm running Mac OS
Sierra on a 2013 MBA, connected via Comcast in the heart of Silicon Valley. My
computer isn't a speed demon, but it's also not a slug. LinkedIn is by far the
slowest website I visit with any regularity, and I have tried script blockers
and such to no avail.

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technion
From here in Australia, on an i7 with 16Gb RAM, using the gigabit link in my
office, I see multiple second loading screens with the circular "loading"
animation in both Chrome and Edge. It's by far the slowest site I've looked at
on a regular basis.

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gnicholas
You see a circular loading animation? For me, it's a horizontal bar with a
blue bit that dances left-to-right.

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wattson12
I see the horizontal loading, and it is also very slow (30 seconds + in some
cases)

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webninja
Because Microsoft owns it now.

All jokes aside, the important parts of the linkedin pages load in under 2
seconds for me. I'm using chrome without any extensions.

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WhiteSource1
What are you using to test it and examine all the different scripts that they
are loading?

