Why is LinkedIn so miserable these days?

If you follow me on LinkedIn, you've probably seen me complain about that godforsaken website at least few times over the years. Mostly it's been about my frustrations with the algorithm and the useless features they ship (games??), instead of the things that would actually benefit users, like time stamps on posts, or any number of other features they could build or fix that would improve the user experience.

Occasionally they do right by users, but I've become mostly disappointed in this place where I've invested so much time and effort over the years. You would think I'd know better by now than to get irritated at the ways of product development in late-stage capitalism, driven by growth at all costs. I saw it firsthand working with such companies for a decade, where UX is almost always secondary to business goals. It took me a few years into my career to realize that I could do just about nothing to change this, and eventually I bailed.

Yet here I am writing this post, and why? Well, I like sharing my opinion, I enjoy writing and "thinking through writing", and I like talking about things that resonate with others. So no, I'm under no illusion that anyone at LinkedIn will ever see or care about this post or any of the others I've done. If anything, I write with the hope of helping people see things what they really are and validating their experiences.

Oh, and agitating workers so they band together and UNIONIZE.

We are linked in to LinkedIn

It used to be optional to be on LinkedIn, but for many people that is no longer the case. LinkedIn has grown in popularity with the digitization of communication, the online nature of job searches (remember circling newspaper ads?), and the proliferation of remote work. There is a lack of third places for professional-social interaction, more recently as a result of the collapse of in-person conferences and networking events due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Plus, two years of tech layoffs have gutted budgets for corporate sponsorships and worker training.

The unfortunate reality for many information workers in 2024 is that in a way, to some extent, most of us have to be on LinkedIn. I have a business to run and clients to get. We have jobs to get, jobs to hire for, networks to tap into, ProFeSsioNaL bRaNDs to build, and cOnTEnT tO cReATe!

And as someone who has been self-employed since 2018 and works alone from home, it's actually an important part of my social life.

I used to want to be on LinkedIn! 😥

If you asked me two years ago I would have said, with genuine excitement, that I love hanging out on LinkedIn, that it's great for meeting people, engaging in worthwhile conversations on important topics, learning and growing, staying up to date with industry happenings, and yes, finding coaching and consulting clients. These are words that came out of my actual mouth! To a large degree, this is still true, but LinkedIn has become a place that I want to more often avoid than seek out.

LinkedIn has been extremely beneficial for me, as I described in this 2022 post. I loved getting nerdy with my engagement metrics. Heck, I used to be a huge promoter. I even ran LinkedIn workshops for people who wanted to get more engaged with their professional communities. One of my post popular resources is this free list of 101 Content Prompts for Community Engagement. I believe(d) in the enormous opportunity of this place as a social and relational space, not just a transactional one.

Sometimes I still like it there, even with the pervasive cringeworthy posts from toxic thought leaders. I still get clients and meet cool people and learn things, and I enjoy the shit posts and snark and satire (heyyy Hang!). Each week, LinkedIn hosts 67 million job seekers, and there's no denying that it's a great place to find opportunities because most white collar jobs are posted there.

What LinkedIn has become

Nowadays the mood is a bummer, and the UX is still pretty barebones given the possibilities of what it could be (not to mention the basics it's still lacking... I will never get off of my time stamps soap box!).

Two culprits come to mind:

1. The crappy job market and captive audience of tech job seekers

2. The enshittification of LinkedIn and its shareholder-centric product development

The mass tech layoffs of 2022-2024 have resulted in an explosion of people looking for work in an awful market where there just aren't enough jobs in some fields like recruiting, product design, user research, and even engineering and game development (the latter of which are faring better).

As a result, LinkedIn has become a hellish waiting room giving off Beetlejuice vibes, where unfortunate souls are virtually required to spend inordinate amounts of time scavenging for jobs, filling out redundant applications, performing professionalism and feigning excitement in their posts, and bootlicking the companies that laid them off.

It's not just me, and it's not just you. SF Gate recently published an entire article about how laid off tech workers are sick to death of the cesspool that is LinkedIn.

All the while people are being fed the same old, tired ass, contradictory job search advice over and over, most of which comes from people who don't know what they're talking about, and some of which is misinformation that recruiters are constantly battling, like the myth that the ATS will eat your resume, or the so-called hidden job market. Even I don't have anything more to add and this is my line of work.

We labor and post and connect and cross our fingers in desperation, getting sucked into the noise, customizing our feeds (this makes me imagine cows at a trough), scrolling and searching and DMing, trying to beat the algorithm (just post a selfie!) or do something to stand out, all with the hopes of obtaining a prized golden ticket to participate in capitalism for a damn paycheck. We feel bad about ourselves and want to give up when someone else somehow gets a job. We may joke about our own demise. We share that we are about to become homeless or that we're skipping meals. We express our anger at the system, and we're more aware than ever before of other people's suffering at the hands of this system.

People do not want to be on LinkedIn! And that includes me. 😩

As the saying goes, looking for a job is a full time job, and LinkedIn can make it even more of a time suck. There are better ways we could be living our lives. People want to work, make money, have fun, go outside, be with their families, and be off the computer. Or at least be able to go be on the Good Screen and not the Bad Screen.

LinkedIn, like so many other companies, doesn't prioritize the user experience

Which brings me to the second reason why LinkedIn sucks so much these days, which has to do with the fundamental nature of the website itself, how it is designed, and who it's really designed for (spoiler: not users).

I've been on LinkedIn since 2011. Starting in 2022, I became increasingly frustrated by changes to the algorithm, which became fickle and unpredictable, leaving users unsure of how to adapt.

Too many times since then I have worked hard on a post that I know people would want to read (because I know my audience well), yet somehow it doesn't get the engagement I thought it would. Predictably, I would go through the motions again and again before accepting defeat and taking my own advice which is that in order to win LinkedIn, you need to not care about winning LinkedIn. I've come to accept this and adjust over time, making sure my expectations are set appropriately, but it still gets under my skin sometimes.

The way I experience the algorithm is that it seems to randomly decide whether or not my posts are worth showing other people, or at least it feels that way because I don't understand how it works. Linkedin definitely isn't forthright about it. In its current form, the algorithm can be prohibitive for getting my ideas out there, having conversations, sharing my podcast episodes and blog posts, getting people to attend my events, and doing any of the stuff I used to enjoy about this place.

These are also the things that make my business run, and LinkedIn no longer sets me up for success. People used to call me the Queen of LinkedIn because they saw my posts everywhere, and that's because I was good at it. Generally I still am, but it's far more frustrating and I spend too much life force feeling disappointed and trying too much. Now I feel more like a dowager queen or one of Henry the VIII's wives who he tossed aside in divorce because he was a piece of shit. Maybe this metaphor isn't quite apt but I've been listening to a lot of English history podcasts lately, so whatever.

This is also why I'm going to be focusing more on connecting directly with my community through my newsletter, which you can sign up for here.

Where else can we go?

It's not cynical to say that most companies are driven by the desire for "infinite" growth and profit, no matter the social, environmental, or psychological cost. It's just the plain old truth of late stage capitalism, and more people are learning this because it's pretty much out in the open and they can see past the corporate propaganda of improving the world through our products and services.

This is the enshittification of tech, a concept popularized by Cory Doctorow that means less of a focus on the user experience and the utmost prioritization of shareholder primacy, doing anything and everything to meet quarterly goals and boost that juicty stock price. These are some of the same reasons why you, dear reader, may not currently have a job even though your last employer is rich af, and why you may be begrudgingly spending so much time on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn would not exist without its users, and neither would any other product or service. But that point becomes moot when you don't really have a choice, like when your livelihood is at stake and need to be where the jobs and connections are. This is what tech monopolies do—i.e., Meta, Twitter (I refuse to call it X), etc.—when they appropriate and privatize the democratic town square of the old Internet.

This is how it goes: first, they offer a product that is generally beneficial, attracting a huge user base which gets some value from it. They sell some ads and subscriptions, and make it into a multi-sided marketplace (for LinkedIn that would be workers, job seekers, recruiters, hiring managers, small businesses, salespeople, corporations, service providers, content creators, etc.).

Then they do two more things - they make it hard to leave because there isn't something else out there quite like it, and they extract and exploit every possible resource they can (financial and otherwise). Sometimes something new comes along to disrupt that ownership, but eventually it either gets acquired or joins the ranks of its competitors. But there isn't anything else like LinkedIn right now. It's hard to create new things when just a few companies control the entire internet and also most of the capital.

The execs and shareholders of LinkedIn (acquired by Microsoft in 2016) are the primary beneficiaries in all of this, and they will do anything to keep their monopolistic grip on our time, our lives, and our data (we are the product, too). This is all on purpose. LinkedIn continues to win big from the explosion in user activity, ad revenue, subscriptions, job posting fees, unpaid AI training via "Top Voice" user content, and the gobs of our data we gift them, in exchange for the displeasure of being linked in until hopefully something else comes around.

Originally published on LinkedIn on 8/6/24