
How to beat LinkedIn: The Game - davydog187
https://theoutline.com/post/5495/how-to-beat-linked-in-the-game
======
laurex
> Shortly after I connected with an eagle-eyed Pulitzer Prize and Emmy
> nominated journalist/producer (who perhaps was initially fooled by my
> impressive credentials to accept my request), I received an angry message
> from him. “Don’t know who you are,” he wrote, “but neither school you list
> offers the majors or degrees you claim to have so I’m deleting you from my
> contacts."

Dying. Nice work.

~~~
orcdork
That part felt petty & mean spirited to me. If anything the person was playing
"the game" in the way it should be played, yet the author felt the urge to
unnecessary ridicule them (even anonymously so).

~~~
Rexxar
It's all other who are ridiculed imho. It was the only person who do a basic
check.

------
jdavis703
I don't understand why LinkedIn get's so much hate. I got my two last jobs
from recruiters reaching out to me on LinkedIn. My current job I got from an
ex-coworker at a place that I found because of LinkedIn. Like all markets,
LinkedIn is chaotic but you can get value out of it if you can avoid the bad
parts like spam.

~~~
Rjevski
The idea of LinkedIn is good, but the execution is absolutely awful. It
encourages spam and lies, has a shit app (on iOS) and the “social” aspect of
it is completely stupid and useless (they now even support videos - WTF?).

I’d pay good money for a “premium” alternative without the above issues.

~~~
lsc
Why would you want an iOS app for linkedin? Unless you are a recruiter it's
just not a daily use kind of thing.

I don't really understand why most people use apps for things that are
essentially websites that don't have unusual latency requirements. I mean,
sure, maps and some of the other daily use things, those extra microseconds
matter. I want to do more of it locally. But things like linkedin and
facebook? the ios browser works fine for that (well, I haven't figured out how
to make facebook messages work through the mobile website... but there's no
way I'm installing _that_ app)

~~~
siimtalvik
hold refresh button and click on "request desktop site".

then go to facebook.com/messages.

~~~
lsc
Thanks for the support. Your instructions work, and I can switch back to the
mobile site by closing the window and navigating back.

~~~
lsc
Note; as someone who has done a lot of tech support, I think it's important to
tell people "that worked" when they give you tech support and that support
leads to the problem being solved. Paid or not.

------
cm2012
I've connected to literally $200,000+ worth of client work through LinkedIn,
and the clients are very happy too, so I'm not on board with calling it
useless.

edit: And before I became a consultant, I got a life changing job offer from
someone who discovered me on LinkedIn.

------
adrian_mrd
Funny writeup - the recruiter and the Goldman/Quantcast callout was
particularly enjoyable :)

An alternate LinkedIn game that I've done many times with colleagues (and
which works better on the web/desktop UI) is:

* Ensure you have at least 50 connections

* Go to the 'My Network' then 'People You May Know'

* Scroll down and enjoy some of the ridiculous profile photos eg people at the horse races, photos with partners cropped out, weird off-camera poses, 1980s hair, etc

* Try not to laugh

Admittedly with the recent rise of 'personal brands', this game is more
difficult than it used to be - yet still juvenile!

Also, what the heck is a 'thought leader' anyway? Isn't it better to be an
'action leader', a decision-maker, a publisher of some description; someone
who does something or produces something meaningful?

Not all thoughts were created equal, of course, and there are not many
'thought leaders' on LinkedIn who were not self-appointed!

edit: fixed 2 spelling errors, formatting changes, added Quantcast reference
for clarity

~~~
TomMckenny
>what the heck is a 'thought leader' anyway?

As far as I can tell:

Someone who very successfully spreads ideas they only partially understand
with the inevitable oversimplification here and there.

~~~
noitsnot
Simon Sinek wins the gold medal for thought leader in my book.

~~~
adrian_mrd
Fair point, but at least he has published some works and spun a few TED talks.

Maybe we need a separate HN thread: who is the lamest ‘thought leader’ you’ve
come across recently? ;)

~~~
adrian_mrd
I couldn’t resist :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17585492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17585492)

------
dade_
It is great that LinkedIn just reports 500+ connections. It truly is an
unimpressive stat. It's been a valuable platform for me, so I keep it around.
The only things to remember: don't install the mobile app and get used to
ignoring requests from unfamiliar people and irrelevant recruiters. Never
connect it to Outlook or any other app.

~~~
AznHisoka
When i see someone with less than 500 connections I am more likely to interact
with them. Its a signal that they don’t blindly accept all connections.

~~~
kostarelo
Or a signal that they actually have many connections...

~~~
mmt
True, but there can still exist a presumption that a large proportion of those
connections aren't meaningful.

I have no qualms connecting with a vendor or recruiter I just worked with,
even if briefly on a single project, but after 6 years of no contact and 2-3
employers later, that connection isn't going to be useful for something like
an introduction, if we even remember each other.

See also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number)

------
paul7986
For those who find LinkedIn pointless are you making crazy bank already and
find no need to raise your salary by using recruiters who offer you better
jobs weekly on LInkedin? When they do it's time for you to say I make 100k
more then you really do and boom you raised your salary a ton.

I don't get the hate though and again those that hate it I guess don't need to
play the game? They already have maxed out their salary and or aren't in tech
to make as much money as possible?

Or maybe they are the programmers who hate facebook and social networks in
general; have no clue how to use Linkedin to their advantage?

~~~
AllegedAlec
> For those who find LinkedIn pointless are you making crazy bank already and
> find no need to raise your salary by using recruiters who offer you better
> jobs weekly on LInkedin?

LinkedIn is useless even for me, and I'm not making crazy bank yet. I have
given up on it completely. I just wanted to use it as a tool to keep in
contact with some old mates of mine. However, I keep getting spammed by
recruiters, despite me having explicitly stated I'm not currently looking for
another job.

Furthermore: when I'm going to go and look for a new job, I'll avoid all
recruiters like the plague. They're a bunch of parasites who'll be the first
to go down when the bubble bursts. I've worked with quite a few of them, and
nearly all of them were completely useless. Worse than useless, actually, with
all the lies they told both me and potential employers.

> Or maybe they are the programmers who hate facebook and social networks in
> general; have no clue how to use Linkedin to their advantage?

Jesus christ. If you start projecting anymore, you should point yourself at a
wall and start a Drive-In theatre.

~~~
paul7986
So it sounds you are not a job hopper and are happy working for a company for
many years. Cool and pardon for projecting/thinking that it should all about
trying to make the most money one can in their field. It's not always about
that especially if those you work with are great friends. Also and of course
there is a downside to job hopping especially if you didn't line up your next
job as I have been out of work for a few or more painful/concerning months.

~~~
AllegedAlec
> So it sounds you are not a job hopper and are happy working for a company
> for many years.

I tend work for a company until I can either learn no more there, the projects
become too tedious or I get the feeling the company no longer cares for me
properly. I feel I'm a bit too young and unexperienced (I was really lucky to
land programming gigs given that I'm a biologist by education) to really start
job hopping, given that you need to be fairly good at what you do in order to
pull that off in the long term.

> Cool and pardon for projecting/thinking that it should all about trying to
> make the most money one can in their field. It's not always about that
> especially if those you work with are great friends.

Fair enough. I can understand why you would do so. I reacted a bit too
aggressively, since I've too often seen good IT people being labelled clueless
geeks for not playing the economic game.

------
misterbowfinger
At a previous job, we got so annoyed with recruiters that we decided to create
a honeypot account - fake LinkedIn, fake Github, fake Twitter, everything. We
took the first picture off of Google for "bro" as the profile picture.

For his Github, we just forked popular projects like jQuery and then ctrl+f
replaced the name with his first name, like "bradQuery".

Surprisingly, we had many recruiters contact us about the popular "bradQuery"
library. And we uh, had to play the part of a douchey brogrammer. It's amazing
how far those conversations went.

It was really fun at the time, but also maybe a little mean to recruiters.
They do have a tough gig and they're usually under the gun. Ah well...

------
djhworld
Very amusing.

I'm almost tempted to delete my LinkedIn. I turned off all email notifications
months ago so largely forgot about it, but a friend of mine recently said he
saw my profile pop up in his feed about a work anniversary or some other
'engagement' thing they spam people with.

The photo on my profile is from 9 years ago, and my job title has since
changed, in fact most of it is probably out of date.

I suspect my inbox is full of recruiters shouting into the void.

~~~
djhworld
Update: temptation got the better of me and I closed my account.

~~~
dyarosla
Now if only deleting your account meant never getting any more emails from
them... I still get ‘so and so wants to connect’ after I deleted mine.

Anyone have any idea how to stop this? (Besides an email filter?) is this
practice even legal?

~~~
djhworld
They should have an unsubscribe link, if you live in the EU you should be able
to ask them to delete all your data under GDPR rules

~~~
antsar
Is there any EU law which prevents them from resuming the spam as soon as
another one of your acquaintances gives LinkedIn access to his/her contacts?
Because otherwise that's what's going to happen...

~~~
qznc
GDPR still applies. This is personal information about you, so you can make
them delete it. The fact that they got the information from someone else is
irrelevant.

(Imho. Not a lawyer.)

~~~
antsar
Sure, but deleting it doesn't do much good if they're going to get a new copy
of the same information from someone else a week later.

------
danirod
I changed my privacy settings set on LinkedIn so that no one could see my
connections after I started noticing that many recruiters sending invitations
were already connected to other people I know or have as a contact otherwise.
I strongly suspect some of these recruiters just want to add you for the sake
of having access to your contacts lists in order to have more people to
connect with.

I don't usually accept requests from recruiters, either. In fact I had this
for a while as my first sentence in my profile page and that didn't stop them
from sending requests. That signals me they don't bother checking your profile
first, either.

Apart of maintaining my vanity URL, I don't even know why do I still have a
LinkedIn account; I just don't find it very useful.

------
projectramo
I want to read the version of this where you win Githib

~~~
ikeboy
Just run a script to commit every day, or better yet backdate commits

~~~
qznc
In 2015 I "painted" my Github profile this way:
[https://github.com/qznc/rockstar/graphs/code-
frequency](https://github.com/qznc/rockstar/graphs/code-frequency)

It was just a one off script. The next step would have been to run it daily or
fill it with commits from the future.

I remember there was an HN article where someone made the Github contribution
diagram on the profile page into some picture.

------
ravenstine
I'd like a version of LinkedIn that uses computer vision to shadow ban anyone
who wears a suit and a shit-eating grin.

~~~
confounded
LinkedIn may not be the site for you

------
rdiddly
_I endorsed them for things like “alcoholism,” “horse care,” “blood,” and
“solid waste.”_

Can't stop laughing at this!

~~~
jpatokal
My favorite trio of endorsements is "flexibility", "lubrication" and
"potatoes".

~~~
owenversteeg
So are there any banned LinkedIn endorsements? I imagine it would still be
pretty doable to string together several normal endorsements to make something
hilarious.

------
davedx
Hi!

I’ve started a couple of lucrative contracts via LinkedIn and receive many
offers there.

I make lots of money because of LinkedIn.

Thanks for playing, sorry to hear you suck at the game. Maybe try some cheat
codes?

~~~
anothergoogler
Wait, you're proud of being recruited on LinkedIn?

~~~
Rjevski
Well, if you use it correctly LinkedIn isn’t too bad.

As a contractor who has to jump ship every 6 months or so, I find it quite
convenient to let the recruiters do the heavy lifting.

I literally have to do nothing - I just get offers in my inbox and just have
to say “interested” to secure an interview and usually get the gig the next
week.

Maybe past a certain level of experience you can easily secure gigs without
it, but I’ve never really been interested at “networking” and if I can let
LinkedIn do the job for me then all the better.

Granted, the platform itself is shit (and the iOS app is an absolute crime)
but the idea isn’t that bad.

~~~
scarface74
Between networking with former coworkers and networking with good local
recruiters, you get a better bang for your buck working with recruiters. They
know where the jobs are and they are incentivized to get you a job.

------
robin_reala
This is where the classic phrase “the only way to win is not to play” comes
in.

------
Egidius
I like LinkedIn because it gives me a sense of how the market is doing. As a
Dutch developer, I get messages just about every single weekday. Especially
last year it's been crazy: I've had 3 recruiters in 20 minutes. Unfortunately
employers are more willing to pay (multiple) recruiters than to just increase
salary to snatch developers from lower paying employers. The free market is
not working that well for us developers if we keep giving recruiters the
chance to act as intermediaries. Out of principle I only deal with employers
directly or in-house recruiters. I'm not saying they're all bad, but I've seen
a lot of them who approach Javascript devs for Java positions and visa
versa... they add no value in the next step of your career.

------
soared
Unrelated to the (enjoyable) article - How do you feel about the
advertisements on this site? More intrusive, less intrusive?

Edit - I ask because instead of the usual advertising model they have 12
partners a year that get custom ads, and there is no other advertising.

~~~
rapnie
They want me to place 89 cookies. No way to opt-out, only 'accept all'. Abort
:(

Edit: actually I did return to the article just now. Curiosity. No longer a
cookie alert, though I accepted nothing yet. Either silently placed or not
working properly.

------
mandeepj
Coolest read of the day. Never imagined Linkedin as a game :-)

------
dswalter
That went gloriously off the rails.

------
cyberferret
Enjoyed the article, but I often wonder about the metrics of ads that appear
mid stream on a satirical article such as this.

I noticed a few ads for Hewlett-Packard within the article, but the cartoon-y
graphics used and their placement within the article body just made me think
they were faux ads that fit the comedy nature of the article.

It was only when I scrolled through to another (serious) article and saw the
same ads that I realised they were _actual_ legitimate ads.

------
xab9
Linkedin is terrible (the ui, the bugs, the social crap, the missing
functions), but I'm okay with that. When I want to find another job I start
accepting the random recruiters and tell them to write me an email, otherwise
I avoid it like the plague.

I remember one recruiter who was really pissed off when I accepted her request
after half a year or so, but most of them couldn't care less. I usually
apologize first and then tell them politely how I'm "not good with linkedin".

Same for facebook. Unless I want to reach someone who prefers the platform
(fortunately only a handful of people for me), otherwise no login at all.
Unfollow everyone (no exceptions), like their pages if they send a like
request (and unfollow in the same second) and just get out.

The internet is like a bottle. You can put the cork back in and noone will
care. Of course this is a strategy that works for me, ymmv.

------
s3nnyy
Xing, the German Linkedin throttles you after you send ~50 invites to
strangers (first some have to be accepted before you can send more), Facebook
even stops you from sending friend-requests after you sent 20 invites or so.

Not sure why Linkedin allows people to send 3000 contact-requests without
throttling them. Any ideas?

~~~
notahacker
Growth hacking. Some of those users won't have active LinkedIn accounts, but
will (re)register on the basis that VP of Very Important Company must be
trying to get hold of them for a reason...

------
jccalhoun
I'm so glad I'm in a field (academia) that doesn't really use linkedin.

~~~
gammarator
Academia: The Game is even more ridiculous, though.

------
lionhearted
Ok this was riotously funny, but in defense of LinkedIn, it's a _great_ place
to hire and a great place to get a job if you take the time to write a
quality, genuine profile — which is certainly a rarity and makes good people
stand out.

I just ended a hiring campaign on LinkedIn. The stats were that it lasted 35
days, cost $704, our job ad was shown to 1001 people, and 233 applied through
the platform.

I didn't keep exact stats of qualified / non-qualified people, but there were
at least 5 people I thought were _wow_ good, and another dozen or two that I
wasn't sure immediately about but who were possibly really good. We hired two
people.

These numbers outperformed their algorithm — they estimated that we'd get
40-60 applications for $600 across 30 days, and we got considerably more. I
think our ad was pretty good and unusual, it was a condensed version of our
team hiring page —

[http://ultraworking.com/work](http://ultraworking.com/work)

As for whether "fake social networker" cred helps... I don't think so. I make
a quick checklist of things I'd skim rapidly for when looking at profiles to
do first pass analysis. Basically, I'd look for any sense of ownership,
service, or self-direction.

Things like genuine volunteer activities, excellent academics, leadership
roles in student clubs are all obvious examples.

But actually, there were a bunch of things that are doable for everyone that I
looked for, and which surprisingly few people do.

For instance, the vast majority of candidates wrote their profile in first
person tense. "I'm a skilled marketer with X years of..." or "I'm looking for
a job doing..."

Very few people wrote in any second person tense at all. EG: "If you're
looking to hire a marketer and you have a great company, I'd love to help you
develop your..."

I also saw only 2-3 profiles out of 300 that mentioned being happy, smiling,
or service oriented. One guy didn't have any fancy brand name education or
work experience, but he wrote something like, "I did this job with a smile
every day and looked to make everyone I worked with happy." Okay cool, yes,
I'd be delighted to talk to you.

Your culture will vary of course, but I was also impressed with people that
had a mix of any kind of art/aesthetics alongside any
math/engineering/analytical pursuits, and noted anyone who mentioned a
disciplined history of sports, martial arts, or athletics.

What didn't factor much at all for me were the self-descriptions of jobs (I
skimmed briefly to make sure they weren't a total non-fit, but otherwise don't
really trust it) and in the Hiring Portal, you can't even see how many
connections someone has easily. Or maybe you can, but I must have just parsed
over it if so — I didn't notice it once.

I was skeptical of Linkedin for a long time. The "LinkedIn: The Game" thing.
But it's a legitimately great way to put good opportunities in front of people
looking for a new job, and a good way to seek companies doing what you're
interested in if you're jobseeking. I'm legitimately very impressed with
Linkedin excited to work with the two people that joined the team. In my book,
a _very_ good use of $700 and 15 hours.

~~~
thermodynthrway
I would rather work with a bunch of people that were similary grounded/jaded
about work, but whatever floats your boat.

My team is a pile of nice people with no illusion of only showing up on Monday
for the money. The work environment is great because we treat the whole game
as a bad joke. Corporate makes some nonsensical decision? Let's all play
along, might as well make the game fun.

I like coding but there's countless other things I would work on besides
boring CRUD apps if I wasn't getting paid. I don't understand the people that
insist you should like work. My opinion, these people should get out more
because if work is fun then you probably haven't done much else

------
armini
We found the best way to beat LinkedIn was to create a better version of it
[https://peertal.com/#/profile/9](https://peertal.com/#/profile/9)

We've developed an algorithm for ranking users similar to how Google ranks
pages. This does away with spam & depends on reciprocal endorsements rather
than friend requests.

~~~
lloydde
This is at least as great satire! Google rank not having spam — good one! My
favorite though is your one two punch:

> Why is the company setup in the USA?

[https://peertal.com/#/faq](https://peertal.com/#/faq)

And

> Peertal is developed by a global team...
> [https://peertal.com/#/about](https://peertal.com/#/about)

So good! I won’t spoil it for others. They’ll have to visit the sight for the
full experience. I’m a beleiver!

~~~
armini
Thanks lloydde You raise some valid points that I'm sure we can overcome. By
no means are we pretending that our platform is perfect but as we get user
feedback we will improve these points.

1- I will personally update site FAQs & about section shortly. I wrote those
points when we first launched the app back in 2015 but we're now up to version
47 of the app & a lot has changed.

2- The app is developed by Global team, we all work remotely from Australia,
New Zealand, Vietnam & Canada. You can find us all on the map view
[https://peertal.com/#/map-view](https://peertal.com/#/map-view)

3- As for your point about our code being vulnerable to spam, you might find
it more entertaining to read our business principles that we're working on
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jPV7sXWfMRle03U0E6RPdCDY...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jPV7sXWfMRle03U0E6RPdCDYiDlSBifRvazQp_aF6ws/edit?usp=sharing)

If you haven't read this book already I suggest you read it
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13530973-antifragile](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13530973-antifragile)

Feedback & criticism will only make us better & I can only thank you for that
:)

~~~
probably_wrong
Since you mention feedback:

1\. You should take a look at your typos.

2\. Collecting data like that about users without their consent and claiming
that you can only "suggest" its deletion is going to get you in trouble once
your project gets traction. Be prepared.

------
gandutraveler
It's amazing how majority of HN community hates products/companies that real
market users actually find useful and are successful.

------
morenoh149
"Once your profile is in decent shape, you can start connecting with
strangers. Unfortunately, LinkedIn limits users to only 30,000 connections,
and 3,000 connection requests, so use some discretion." l o l

Is it weird I was thinking of making a mastering linkedIn course yesterday? I
think people would be interested.

------
vfulco2
While I appreciate the creativity involved, my colleagues in the soft skills
world and I running a professional services firm in Shanghai, generate some
terrific leads and partnership connections through the service. The article
was good for a laugh.

------
adrianhel
Regarding the first quote:
[https://mobile.twitter.com/themlotsdad/status/99822758680631...](https://mobile.twitter.com/themlotsdad/status/998227586806317057)

------
mifreewil
This was great. If you enjoyed this, you should also watch this short parody
of LinkedIn from SuperNews: [https://youtu.be/_7DiOm-
edMs](https://youtu.be/_7DiOm-edMs)

------
NiceGuy_Ty
Not ready to outright delete Linkedin, but it was the noisiest mobile app on
my phone. Luckily the mobile site works decently, so it has been assigned to a
firefox tab for the foreseeable future.

------
winningcontinue
ROFL that reply to the recruiter. 'You know what they say: In business, you're
either the earthquake or the losers falling into the cracks and landing in the
hot magma'

~~~
thermodynthrway
> "Greebo" was banned the next day. I consider this my greatest failure, learn
> from my mistake.

LOL

------
leszekm
I’m looking for a professional agency that could create my LinkedIn profile.
Has anyone know one?

~~~
vfulco2
Please reach out through my email. I do them multiple times a week along with
English resumes and interview coaching in the Shanghai based professional
services firm I own and run. I am fully booked until August 1st however. TIA!

------
paulie_a
The best way to beat LinkedIn is to delete your account. LinkedIn is
pointless.

------
diminish
Page down and down arrow keys don't work. Is this a new UX normal?

------
hguhghuff
LinkedIn is like one giant business motivational poster.

------
emilfihlman
I loved this!

------
anothergoogler
You'll want to disable JS on this site, or else you'll get shot to another
article when you reach the end, replacing the linked article in your history
(lord knows who thought _that_ was a good idea).

~~~
jstandard
Techcrunch does this too. It's to encourage binge reading. The news equivalent
of Youtube autoplay next video.

The metrics likely suggest it's good for the site, but I'm also not a fan.
It's very confusing for the reader.

~~~
johnnydoe9
At least Outline doesn't have comments, a lot of sites have comments at the
bottom of the article at the click of the button which you can't hit at times
because it eagerly kicks you into another article.

------
sonnyblarney
"Strange game. The only way to win is not to play."

\- WOPR/Joshua

------
ivanjaros
I am a skilled sr sw dev, I have 600-700 connection on linkedin and I know 4
people, have been there for years and never got a job out of it. The idea of
linkedin is great but in practice it is absolutely pointless website.

------
coin
What an obnoxious layout, especially on mobile

~~~
whymauri
What makes it obnoxious? I kinda liked it on desktop (the website with the
news article).

------
auslander
Cyberpunk at its best. high5.

