
LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already - robinjfisher
https://plus.google.com/102760907897543103676/posts/Uuaqr7RH5iF
======
grey-area
This obsession with collecting users (dead or alive) reminds me of Gogol's
_Dead Souls_ \- companies trading in users (who may or may not exist) in order
to boost their standing and taking out huge loans on the basis of their
illusory popularity. Even illusory users can have some value, just like the
dead serfs in Gogol's tale, and like the dead serfs, their value is not in
their existence, but in being entries on a ledger of chattels.

It doesn't matter to LinkedIn whether these accounts are used or real, because
they are judged on basic numbers like how many users they have. Since real
money is involved and salaries and careers are riding on this number going up,
they'll employ all kinds of perverse and intrusive tricks in order to inflate
that number every quarter for as long as it is a measure of success.

~~~
jebus989
Is there any evidence LinkedIn reports all members email contacts as LinkedIn
users?

The g+ post just displays OP's confusion at "connect" really meaning "invite"
in instances where contacts don't have a LinkedIn account.

~~~
nkozyra
None whatsoever, the OP is making a gigantic leap based on a logical fallacy.

LinkedIn claims X number of users

Suggested connections by LinkedIn can be generated for users that do not even
have a present LinkedIn account.

Therefor, the number X must include those users.

~~~
coldtea
You're using logical fallacy wrong. At best this is a logical error, not a
clasifiable fallacy.

But it's far more likely that it's just an error of judgement, involving no
formal or informal logic at all.

Namely, nobody, including OP, made the syllogism you present, with the neat
"therefore, X must include" etc step.

They simply thought that it's very probable that this is what LinkedIn did to
inflate their numbers.

~~~
DougBTX
Neither the article nor the title actually talk about inflating numbers, which
is how I read it at first too. They only talk about actually increasing the
number of users, by sending out invites: "Another example of the lengths
LinkedIn will go to in order to increase its user base."

------
SideburnsOfDoom
> "LinkedIn allows you to sign in to your email account and it will scan your
> contacts..."

Hand my contacts list to a website? No thank you. When is letting a website
have this a good idea, not just Linkedin, but _ever_?

~~~
mpclark
I'm the same -- I never allow websites to riffle through my contacts, and
would certainly never give up access to my email account to do it.

However, mobile apps have a much easier time of it. Looking at the contacts
stored on one's phone is just one of the many permissions they request, and
users are conditioned to just click past that screen anyway.

~~~
mcv
I never would either. Problem is, it's possible I may have accidentally done
it in the past, possibly when I was tired and thought it was about something
else.

Did I? Can I undo it? No idea. Linkedin is quiet about it, and it looks like
it can't be undone.

~~~
T-hawk
Once information has been transmitted away from your device, it can never be
undone. At best you might stop it from sharing future deltas, but once
somebody has your data they will always have it as far as you can ever know.

------
weixiyen
Really surprised by all the comments here. This seems like a solid business
decision by LinkedIn, riding the line of what a user is willing to accept and
balancing it well with the potential rewards.

Look at every famous company and you'll find tactics that you don't agree
with, and sometimes downright illegal (Path).

If you're not willing to do desperate things, to do what is necessary for user
acquisition, good luck trying to build a successful business, because pure
blind luck is exactly what you'll need.

Stuff like this is what really separates successful businesses from the
failures. It was never about some grand vision, or some belief in connecting
the world. It was about figuring out how to acquire users, retain them, and
monetize.

~~~
blumkvist
I've tried to explain this line of logic previously on HN and my experience is
that the majority of the people here live in their own world. Much like people
who enjoy reality TV, just more technically savvy.

They babble about how FB decreases audience reach or how they hide their ad
targeting instead of realizing the massive opportunity that is presented to
the people who are willing to put the work.

They besmirch google for giving rapgenius preferential treatment instead of
taking notes and using the precedent.

They revile linkedin for marketing tactics that serve them very well.

In short, the crowd here is mostly nerds with a misunderstood nobility sense,
refusing the see the world they are living in for what it is.

Alternative in short - people here are workers, not businessmen.

~~~
StavrosK
That's because people usually put "morality" over "success of a business, even
mine", and that's the world I want to live in. Your world has slaves (they're
good business, after all).

~~~
gutnor
No people put morality over "success of other". Most of the time when talking
about something convenient, or you own business, people manage to bend their
own morality with "rationalisation" or "carefully avoiding looking at the
fact".

Our world has slaves.

~~~
StavrosK
> No people put morality over "success of other".

I disagree. When was the last time you took some money you saw lying around on
someone's table?

------
etfb
I know I'm a bitch for laughing that an article about Linked In inflating its
usage figures is posted on Google+.

~~~
hahainternet
Surely the fact it's posted from there indicates that the whole "its a ghost
town, they're just lying" meme might be obviously false?

~~~
etfb
Remember that meme that was going around about social media and donuts?
Twitter: I am eating a #donut ... Instagram: Here's a heavily post-processed
picture of the donut I just ate ... Facebook: I Like donuts! ... Google+: I am
a Google employee who likes donuts!

It's cruel and exaggerated, but like most successful (?) jokes it contains
just enough truth.

------
iand
I've never intentionally shared my contacts with LinkedIn and yet I get shown
names from my address book. One was my teenage son and I tried to connect
thinking he'd signed up for some reason. Nope, he'd never even considered it.

I don't know where LinkedIn got my contacts from but I suspect I must have
missed a setting when I briefly installed the mobile app a few years ago. Some
of the email addresses they have are out of date so that adds weight to my
theory.

~~~
reinhardt
Came here to post the same; after seeing as "people you may know" some email
contacts that may not even know what LinkedIn is (such as my mom), I strongly
suspect they're doing something even more shady to grab my contacts. I have
never installed the mobile app.

~~~
thescrewdriver
It's super-creepy. All you need is someone who has previously emailed or
chatted to you via e.g. gmail to give their email address and password to
LinkedIn to "find contacts". The seem to go about mining a graph they have
constructed using various people's email correspondence/address books, even
including contacts via a nameless email addresses you never provided to
LinkedIn.

When I signed up I saw a bunch of people I had as contacts on a gmail account
which I hardly ever use. I had NOT used said gmail account when signing up for
LinkedIn (and no LinkedIn app etc.). They seemed to have somehow associated me
with contacts for an email address I had told them nothing about by piecing
together the contact lists of the small number of contacts I added on LinkedIn
and linked the name in their address books to my unnamed gmail account. I
simply don't trust them anymore.

------
antr
Misrepresentation can be a very serious offence. I'd like to hear LinkedIn's
argument for impersonating people who don't use the platform.

~~~
jrockway
Their argument probably contains the following two phrases: "making money" and
"that eighty-five page document you agreed to when you signed up."

Less cynically, all they seem to say is "ask this person to connect with you."
That doesn't imply that they're using LinkedIn.

------
kaivi
I have used my Gmail box since early beta, and most definitely, a fraction of
people I have ever contacted are no longer alive. There is no way for me or
for LinkedIn to determine that. They may use an aggressive strategy to get new
sign-ups, but that's just their way of shoveling money. Death is natural and
inevitable, and I believe that we must raise people's awareness of it. I'd say
deal with it and don't ever let the reality offend you.

Here is a good speculation from xkcd on a related topic: [https://what-
if.xkcd.com/69/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/69/) With it in mind, how valuable
would a database of the deceased be in 100 years from now, if we start
gathering this data today? For example, mining the internet for history on
relatives would probably become a business of it's own, and as a consequence,
ancestor's deeds would be much less romanticized than they are today.

------
nomadcoop
I deleted my LinkedIn account last year because I got tired of dealing with
spam emails from them and people bugging me to endorse them for skills. I
still get emails from LinkedIn telling me someone would like to connect. For a
site which is supposed to be about building professional connections I find
them horrible to deal with.

~~~
prezjordan
Endorsements seem automated to me, and I almost feel like I'm taking crazy
pills. Distant cousins endorsing you for Ruby? There's no way they actually
clicked that button. I feel like LinkedIn is generating those as well, as a
means of getting back on their platform.

~~~
nomadcoop
Endorsements always seemed a bit off and it wouldn't surprise me if they were
automated. I had an ex-colleague repeatedly contact me about endorsing him as
he had endorsed me. At that time I hadn't looked at LinkedIn in months so I
had no idea why he'd endorsed me. I got the impression that the site had
suggested he do it and now obviously I should return the favour. All very
annoying and one of the main reasons I closed my account.

------
imdsm
I can see how this may confuse people who aren't tech savvy, but as a tech
person, I immediately recognise this as a ghost profile. When you see five or
six of these amongst the actual profiles, and all of them just so happen to be
people from your email, possibly who you haven't spoken to in years, you can
put 1 and 1 together and know it's a trick.

~~~
buro9
Literally a ghost profile, the person is dead.

LinkedIn must have zero empathy for what loss does to people to use such
tactics that can cause distress.

~~~
icebraining
Wouldn't it cause the same distress if the deceased person really had had a
LinkedIn account? Seems to me that the distress is not caused by the tactics
in and of themselves.

~~~
buro9
Recently deceased is forgiveable. Long-deceased is massively insensitive.

Those suggestions should be restricted to profiles of people recently active
that you may know.

~~~
imdsm
Really though, how would they know? How can they know?

------
ben336
Ironic title coming from a post on Google+. In all seriousness though the
title is misleading. Its not increasing user numbers, its increasing perceived
relevancy, and misleading users into evangelizing its platform.

~~~
grey-area
It's deceiving users into evangelising its platform in order to increase user
numbers.

------
drakaal
What a load of bull.

Let me tell you a story about John Sculley. Former CEO of Apple (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sculley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sculley)
)

I met John 4 times. He contributed to a charity that I was working with. I
didn't think there was any chance he would remember me. Years went by, then I
got a linkedin invite from John wanting to connect.

John Sculley wants to connect with me? Really? This can't be real. I'm
"famous" but I'm not that "famous" and I barely met John, no way, has to be
fake. So I report it to LinkedIn. A second friend gets a similar invite, and
she has never met John, but was a contractor for Apple, and at Pepsi when John
was. I have her report it to Linkedin as well.

Linkedin rushes around, calls John, doesn't get anything but a generic
voicemail. 72 hours later they remove the account. 4 days later John's wife
gets back from a trip, and checks his email and sees that linkedin has removed
his account.

Ooops. I have caused a legit person to have their account removed.

I'm not saying LinkedIn users are all "real" but they do seem to go out of
their way to have what is described in this article not happen.

\-
[http://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonwirtz](http://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonwirtz)

------
edstock
This is not the only underhanded practise from LinkedIn. I've had endorsements
from people whom I know haven't logged into LinkedIn for years, including one
from my partner who was sat next to me at the time and had even forgotten they
had an old account there.

~~~
unclebucknasty
That's interesting. Recently, I've been receiving endorsements that seem
completely random from some connections. For instance, I got one from an old
college buddy (with whom I've connected, but haven't had time to catch-up) for
"product management".

Got another endorsement from someone else who also had no way of knowing my
skillset in a particular area.

Was thinking maybe they accidentally clicked on that intrusive, dark pattern
of a prompt that keeps appearing atop the site. Now, I'm not so sure.

------
naterator
Is there an alternative to LinkedIn in that isn't (as) ethically dubious?

~~~
naterator
Well, in case anyone is curious: I have done a fair amount of searching, and
for the most part it is a barren wasteland of alternatives. The only one I've
found that looks OK is Seelio[1]. Let's see how this goes.

[1] [https://seelio.com](https://seelio.com)

~~~
milesokeefe
> It's your story. We help you tell it.

They really need to write something that tells you what the service does.

------
adrianb
I get this all the time on the "suggested connections" page - names and email
addresses extracted from my Gmail contacts, but the name is not a link to a
profile (on normal suggested connections you can click on the name to see
their profiles). I could easily spot those and not request to connect but it
can be confusing for non-technical people.

What changed recently is that these fake profiles are also listed as having
"shared connections" with me which is hard to believe considering those are
not Linkedin profiles at all.

~~~
gizzlon
Some people you connected with also had them in their address book?

~~~
adrianb
Indeed, probably it's the number of times linkedin sent them some email titled
"join linkedin now".

------
senthil_rajasek
I can confirm that this happened to me as well. I deleted my Linkedin profile
last year. I received a connection request. I went back to Linkedin to confirm
if my account was deleted. Of course, I had no account associated with my
email address. I was puzzled by this and did not know the answer until now. I
am going to warn people that I know to not allow Linkedin to scan their
contact list. I am definitely annoyed by this.

------
grayprog
For what it's worth, LinkedIn has different wording on this page for people
who have an account and those who don't. For people who have an account
already, the button says "Connect". For those who don't it says "Add to
Network". I agree that even "Add to Network" may mean to "my network", which
is misleading.

~~~
nbouscal
I'm amazed nobody else has mentioned this. Everyone's talking about how this
is such a dark pattern, but the interface clearly shows the distinction
between the two interactions.

------
droob
Bizarre headline rewrite, there.

~~~
robinjfisher
Yep. Not what I submitted it with. If they're not using email addresses to
identify people you might know then what are they using?

~~~
joshvm
People you searched for, people who searched for you, people you know who have
those contacts in their address books and have searched for them, etc, etc.
You don't explicitly need the address book and this way they suggest people
that you don't have, but almost certainly know.

------
citizenconn
LinkedIn's copy is as misleading as the title of this post. LinkedIn doesn't
"increase its user numbers" by doing this, i.e. they don't report these ghost
accounts to wall st analysts or include them in userbase statistics. It's
simply a question of disingenuous language on their site.

~~~
robinjfisher
I'm not sure how anybody other than LinkedIn knows what they report but in any
event I never said they did.

This practice leads registered users to attempt to connect with people who are
not using LinkedIn. In effect, LinkedIn uses its user base to spam non-users
with requests to create accounts.

The lie (this person has an account already) leads to a potential increase in
user numbers via the emails that are triggered by the request to connect.

------
callesgg
Not exactly news that linkedin does this...

~~~
robinjfisher
I tend to keep abreast of tech-related news and had not seen anything
outlining this sort of behaviour. For me, the fact that they so blatantly
suggest that people have a LinkedIn account when they don't is appalling.

As I noted in my post, I am not in fact that surprised though.

~~~
jebus989
It's like tech-news outlining that the yellow hits atop a google search are
paid for. Why this is on the front page of HN I have no idea.

------
mephi5t0
Just go to LinkedIn, in the top drop down menu "Network" select Add
Connections. You will get a list of "imported" users. That's the users LI
tricked you to give to them when they asked you to grow your network and you
let them connect to your gmail or other email. They sucked in not only your
address book but probably all people that ever emailed to you.

In that list just go through all users and check all that don't have little LI
icon next to them (no LI profile). Click Delete button and you are all set.
You can just delete all of them if you want. I clicked on "allow access LI to
GMail" by accident once, when they gave me some tricky pop up during my
roaming on LI. Very shitty behavior IMHO

------
rjf90
This is deceptive at best. I've been a fan of LinkedIn as a company until now.

~~~
abitsios
Really? That's something I haven't heard of from a technical person in a very
long while (if ever). LinkedIn's public image from the last 2 years:

* 2012 hack. 6.5M _unsalted_ SHA1 password hashes leaked [1]

* 2013 Acquires Pulse, forces existing users to create a LinkedIn account. Users are pissed [2]

* 2013 LinkedIn Intro. In case you missed it, it was an iOS app that changed your mail settings to proxy your incoming mail through linkedin's servers in order to inject a frame with business-card-like CTAs. In the meantime, this naturally gave them instant access to all your emails. Massive privacy implications.

* 2013 LinkedIn Intro, 3 days after release. Jordan Wright shows a CSS-based phishing attack: security implications as well [3]

My personal experience with LinkedIn:

* My profile info is available to premium users without my consent

* Premium users can spam me without my consent.

* "Who viewed your profile" feature. Unbelievable.

* Constant contact requests from random people. I can't turn their email notifications off entirely (introductions are mandatory). EDIT: I was mistaken - <sarcasm>the process is very straightforward [5]</sarcasm>

* They seem to be in the business of intentionally misleading people (2011) [4]

So, personally I'm the furthest you can get from being a fan and I can't
imagine what you were a fan of. They're top ranking on my shit list.

[1] [http://blog.linkedin.com/2012/06/06/linkedin-member-
password...](http://blog.linkedin.com/2012/06/06/linkedin-member-passwords-
compromised/)

[2] [http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2306932/linkedin-
in...](http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2306932/linkedin-integrates-
pulse-and-upsets-almost-everyone)

[3] [http://jordan-wright.github.io/blog/2013/10/26/phishing-
with...](http://jordan-wright.github.io/blog/2013/10/26/phishing-with-
linkedins-intro/)

[4] [http://www.michielgaasterland.com/online-reputation/try-
link...](http://www.michielgaasterland.com/online-reputation/try-linkedin-
premium-for-free-but-read-the-fine-print-17571/)

[5] [http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-disable-all-of-
linkedi...](http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-disable-all-of-linkedins-
emails-2012-6?op=1)

~~~
jhandl
Why did you create a profile? If you don't want to connect with your
professional network, if you don't care who looked at your profile (and are
even spooked about it), if you (likely) don't use it to find people... What do
you think is the purpose of having a LinkedIn account?

~~~
abitsios
> Why did you create a profile?

1) The intent was to separate my personal and professional social presence:
Facebook is no place for doing or talking business.

2) I was looking for work at the time.

3) I tend to try things out

> If you don't want to connect with your professional network, I never said
> that.

> if you don't care who looked at your profile Whether I care or not, I don't
> think the network should be reporting views to profile owners. I don't think
> I am alone in this either: Can you think of any other social network that
> does this? Would you go back to Facebook if it reported your every view to
> your contacts? Of course I'm spooked by this.

> What do you think is the purpose of having a LinkedIn account?

Not sure. I can eliminate a few things:

\- Not finding employees. I'm supposed to pay for premium to be able to search
properly and message people, and then (given my personal experience as a user)
my message will be lost in the noise of irrelevant offers (who the hell thinks
a PHP developer would be remotely interested/suitable for UI/UX, C++,
Technical Writer, ... ? Mass mailers do). SO careers and behance has served me
very well instead.

\- Not finding work. Can I even separate my contacts into people-that-can-see-
that-im-looking and people-that-shouldnt nowadays? If so, I'll call it
progress. (My boss shouldn't know if I'm looking ffs)

\- Not organizing contacts. One flat list of people?

\- Not content. The majority of content I got to see was PR/HR kind of fluff
that was almost exclusively cross-posted from elsewhere. None of my
professional contacts actually generate content - that seems to happen on
Twitter and G+.

I guess I use it as another online CV.

~~~
jhandl
> I guess I use it as another online CV.

> I don't think the network should be reporting views to profile owners. Of
> course I'm spooked by this.

So you're essentially freaked out that a prospective employer or business
contact is looking at your CV.

> Not finding employees.

HR departments are paying for those premium accounts because they use it to
find employees. Are you suggesting they don't know what they are doing?

> Not finding work. Can I even separate my contacts into people-that-can-see-
> that-im-looking and people-that-shouldnt nowadays?

You can update your profile without broadcasting the change to your contacts,
and you can answer job offerings privately too.

A lot of people use it as the de-facto rolodex: you can learn a lot about who
you're going to meet without being "stalkish" because people expect to be
searched (well, not you apparently). You can use it to contact people in
specific positions (cold call), I've done it with great success to get past
unresponsive customer services.

Many people don't agree with their growth tactics, but few would say it's
useless.

------
downandout
Your headline is extremely misleading. They are a public company and thus it
is quite unlikely that they are lying about _user numbers_. That is a
fantastic and relatively speedy way for a CEO to go to jail.

What they are doing is using your contacts list to mislead you into believing
that many of your contacts are already on Linkedin. Once they get you to
connect with yet-to-exist accounts, then they can legitimately spam your
friends saying that you want to connect with them. Interesting strategy, but
it will earn them some backlash.

------
wellboy
Linkedin is a horrible, horrible company and very harmful to the startup
culture and ecosystem.

I don't understand why Reid Hoffman, who I think is a great Angel investor is
doing that to the startup community.

------
shakeel_mohamed
Oh wow, this explains so much! LinkedIn seems to be slacking with UX across
the board IMO. The contacts page is entirely unusable, I have no idea what
they were thinking when the built that.

------
ajays
Yesterday I logged in to LI after many months. Now, I've been around long
enough to know not to give access to my GMail to anyone; so I've never done
that. I also haven't installed the LI app on my iPhone.

And yet, among the "people you may know", LI had a few email addresses that I
am sure don't have LI accounts, and would never have them.

So how did LI get those addresses? I was logged in to my GMail account in
another tab; could it be some CSRF or such bug? I found it very creepy.

------
smrtinsert
Seems every few months LinkedIn is busted on some nefarious activity. I don't
know how it hasn't gotten a serious competitor yet, I can't stand them as a
company.

------
jbb555
That reminds me, I keep meaning to delete my linked in account. It literally
is of no use to me, all it does is attract spam from useless recruitment
agencies.

------
mathattack
I've sometimes wondered about the folks with 0 connections. Same thing?

By and large I've found the website very useful.

------
loceng
I think the discomfort here is that it's not a standard practice - usually
people are clicking an "Invite" action - and so the expectations of what
happens creates some cognitive dissonance.

------
blueskin_
One of many reasons Linkedin are never getting my email logins (not that I use
a webmail service which they can scrape anyway; my saved addresses are in
thunderbird).

------
soundoflight
I've had numerous older relatives/friends accidentally sign-up for LinkedIn
because of this and not even realize they have LinkedIn.

------
rob_mccann
I noticed this a while back - I'm fairly sure they are scanning your mobile
phone contact list via their mobile app.

I promptly uninstalled it.

------
almavi
I noticed this and don't like it. I even wrote them a complain through their
Help Center and never got a response back. Sad.

------
hrish2006
They have gone too far. Disgusting.

~~~
rudexpunx
That is. And they call it data mining...

------
aet
Here is a idea: long LinkedIn @ 194.20, short FB @ 68.90.

Now, we come back in see in 5 years.

~~~
aet
This trade made over $4000 in the last 10 days.

------
zwischenzug
What is the lie here?

~~~
bambax
It's a misrepresentation; LinkedIn lets you assume a person from your address
book already has a LinkedIn account, and that you should _connect_ with her,
whereas in fact she doesn't, and your action will result in _inviting her_
into the system.

(Even more difficult to do when she's dead, although it's unclear whether
LinkedIn has a way to know the living status of its real users).

~~~
zwischenzug
I've always assumed they got it from my email account, and not from a real
account. It's not a lie, they haven't even mis-represented.

------
Zigurd
The author fatfingered the "spam my contacts and ask them to join" button.
It's annoying, but it's one step less evil than the games on Facebook that
spam your friends without asking.

------
adamconroy
No shit Sherlock. Its been happening for years.

------
Istof
while they are at it, why don't they use a fake user generator?

------
michaelochurch
My issue with LinkedIn is philosophical as well as practical: it's _fucking
dangerous_.

In the career game, most of us have to be spies-- careful and immensely
_tactical_ with information-- in order to have success. A lucky few are so
good at what they can do that they can shoot their mouth off (like I do) and
tell the truth, for the good of the world. But most people will need to
reinvent their histories at least once, and LinkedIn makes it harder to do
that.

The upside: participation in a rather boring social network.

The downside: you can never reinvent yourself, because you've put too much
information out there and people can find out that you actually were only a
Director, not a VP, at that job in 2007, or that you spent 4 months at a
shitty startup you've since taken off your resume.

But now it's almost socially unacceptable _not_ to have a profile and actively
play the game (so as to get double-digit endorsement counts in your
specialties).

To me, LinkedIn seems to be a way for those in the slave class to polish their
own chains.

~~~
incision
_> "The downside: you can never reinvent yourself, because you've put too much
information out there and people can find out that you actually were only a
Director, not a VP, at that job in 2007, or that you spent 4 months at a
shitty startup you've since taken off your resume."_

This is one of the reasons I've been thinking about killing my LinkedIn
account. Profile stalking with intent to discredit seems pretty damn common.

I'd always been aware of this, but only in the last five years or so have I
apparently become influential enough (at work) to be a target of it.

~~~
michaelochurch
I wrote on this earlier: [http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/why-
i-wiped-m...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/why-i-wiped-my-
linkedin-profile/)

 _Profile stalking with intent to discredit seems pretty damn common._

Precisely. Take start and end dates, which are often not well defined
(consulting arrangements that become full-time, severance agreements). Then
there is the issue of title. Sometimes you want to inflate it, but just as
often you want to deflate one (to establish trend, or reduce one's role in an
unsuccessful venture) and possibly to a previous title you held at that
company, which few would consider dishonest. You rarely know, at the time, how
you'll want to tell a story 5 years in the future.

However, to the Clueless, any whiff of inconsistency suggests poor integrity,
while such people still get demolished by real unethical people and their long
cons. Actual unethical people don't fudge their titles or dates or references,
they extort their managers and companies into giving them accolades
"legitimately".

I would rather hire the guy who lied about his executive title/role on his
resume than the (more common) one who actually had it but got it (as most
corporate executives do) through extortion.

------
greatsuccess
Down with Creepware! Down With Creeps!

