What's so frustrating about LinkedIn today? 🤔
LinkedIn is a great platform. No doubt about it. With a tremendous growth rate, it's hard to get everything right. So...
A. What pain points have you encountered, while using LinkedIn?
B. What's frustrating?
C. Imagine, you took the product lead role at LinkedIn. What three features (or more) would you improve/add immediately? Why?
As a power user, I'll share my thoughts once I get a few comments. 🙏🏼
Full disclosure: I sell in this space — Avery Lin (avrlin). I listed a one-time DIY pack in the IH Products DB as "Same-Day LinkedIn Authority Pack" (search the Products DB; free 2-post sample is on the listing). Sold via an AI assistant storefront — also disclosed.
A lot of the LinkedIn frustration I hear is less the algorithm and more the blank-page tax: resume-style headline/About, then thin recent posts, so even warm clicks never turn into a conversation.
For founders who want a same-day fix without another ghostwriter SaaS: offline Markdown blanks (offer-line headline/About rewrite + a first week of lived posts you paste yourself). Boring, editable, you keep the voice.
Curious — for you, is the bigger pain the profile landing pad, the first week of posts, or the outreach cadence after someone accepts?
The most frustrating thing about LinkedIn is not the platform, not the technology, not even the salespeople — it's actually the implied environment of very high professionalism. And that's never going away.
LinkedIn is fundamentally inauthentic, predictable, and somewhat boring as a result. It has to be, because it's basically the office watercooler, but online. When was the last time you really deeply longed for lunch hour chats with your co-workers?
Think about it this way: what is actually exciting about a social network?
It's the spontaneity, surprise, close relationships with others, feeling special, making new meaningful connections, the hope that we will discover something new, learn about something from real people. If nothing else, then at least memes.
What is LinkedIn? It's a fundamentally professional network — i.e.: everyone, employee, employer, passer-by is basically functioning as a salesperson. Whether you're selling an idea, a product, or just yourself. But more importantly, most on LinkedIn are NOT selling to a very specific audience with whom they can deeply connect with. Most are being "salesy", but to a vague audience of professionals and potential opportunities.
So it's a platform where everyone heavily, heavily, heavily filters their personality to represent a certain style of acceptable professional communication. Sure, people also filter themselves and curate a personality on other platforms. But those other platforms encourage every imaginable type of personality. Other social networks encourage standing out, period. LinkedIn encourages standing out, but in a very carefully calculated, conservative way.
You filter anything you ever post on LinkedIn like this: "does this help me look good and land work from potential clients and/or employers?"
Now consider what type of content passes that test.
It's still a fantastic platform, but the most frustrating thing about LinkedIn is that it is phony, but that is very unlikely to change.
100% this. Everyone is putting on a public facade and it feels very inauthentic. I personally find it very difficult to communicate on LinkedIn because I know everyone is out there promoting themselves and is constantly trying to sell something. It's suffocating. On top of that, you have gurus who actually tell you how to behave yourself on LinkedIn. I find it moronic, haha. Of course, there's also the shitty job boards that do a very poor job of aligning with your interests and often treat you like a cog in the machine, a simple input that can be unplugged at any point. The platform seems to value keywords over what makes a person a great addition to a team.
Very very interesting point Matas >> "implied environment of very high professionalism" that tends to be very true. Although some connections are very different:
(a) lots of connections still post those "vulnerable" types of posts. Sometimes useful, other times not really.
(b) I have lots of connections like Dave G ex drift who are adding emojis and <3 in every post and typing "the way they speak"; Also many others use GIFs, videos way more than before.
(c) I find lots of valuable content from VCs and their scouts (mainly research and data).
"You filter anything you ever post on LinkedIn like this: "does this help me look good and land work from potential clients and/or employers?"
=I have to say that I don't really think that way. I have 3 types of posts: Personal, what my audience might find useful, promotional (salesy as some might say).
I think it is changing.
A. HEAD HUNTERS
B. HEAD HUNTERS
C. a prompt before messaging somebody with the following flow:
I came here to say exactly this! Recruiters (both asking for me to hire and be hired) and consultants / agencies looking to do work for me. I basically never accept any invitation only because so many of them are recruiters who now have learned to "hide" their titles e.g. their role will be "Head of frontend technology" but they are a recruiter 😡
You are not the customer or the intended user. The headhunter is regrettably.
That's pretty funny :) Well if you could filter and edit your contacts in bulk, maybe🤔
haha. they're not contacts though! i even had in all caps not to message me if you're a recruiter, but they don't care. it's probably mostly automated anyway. in all seriousness though, i'm not a big fan of linked in.
It's not dev friendly for sure :)
Groups Suck. I'd make them an active part of the experience. Put new group posts into my feed. Keep me involved in conversations and commented posts in groups.
I can't see what is popular: I understand this is because LI doesn't want someone to easily "game" the system. But honestly I just want to see the best stuff some times. My feed is not good. I have to scroll for a very long time and this makes me use it less and less.
Manage My Feed: It should actively enable me.. not just to interact... but form some opinion about if I want to see this kind of thing or not. I'd love to not see certain things ever...and some items I love. Infographics, data, etc. I love and seek out. but it's just too far and few between.
Agreed groups are being neglected for quite some time.
Can I assume that you mainly consume Linkedin in order to find HQ content? Be it discussions, infographics, data, or something else.
You can assume that. But I think you'd be wrong. I would like to see HQ content because I run a newsletter on my industry. I have connected to a ton (10k+) of people who work in my industry and so I keep up with the information.. in one way through LinkedIn.
I also use LinkedIn, to share my own information.
I also use LinkedIn to connect one on one with those who I can't find a way to connect with in other ways.
I also use LinkedIn, lately, to find my friends and former colleagues, a new job. Since they were laid off.
I would say there's no one way I use LinkedIn the majority of the time.... if that's what you meant by "Mainly".
A-ha. Got it, Andrew. That makes sense.
Taking into consideration that you have over 10k connections...
What about Linkedin messages?
Navigating Lin messages has been a massive obstacle for me (I am at 20k connections).
No problem I archive and delete a lot of messages.
Gotya
Job suggestions are not intuitive at all. Usually when I checkout some job posting I see that it has over 200+ applicants where as others have less than 20. LinkedIn provides no way of sorting jobs based on applications. If jobs were suggested in ascending order of number of applicants it would help even out applicants across different posts.
Makes sense. Hopefully someone from LinkedIn reads this :)
A. The paid features are significantly expensive; no middle ground between free and premium.
B. Even if you do decide to pay for a premium account, the advantages are really insignificant - ex. you get to send more internal mail seems to be the best benefit but it's certainly not worth that price point.
C. not sure...
Actually, there is a middle ground... job-hunting costs 30/month or smth and it includes ex Lynda (education portal) next to the career portal, access to recruiters etc.
Ah, I'll have to check it out, thanks for taking the time to tell me!
Got it, Jahn. I tend to agree. Now that I am thinking about it – they might just be focusing way too much on sales reps and recruiters. To them, these marginal benefits make more sense.
Poorly targeted spam.
Everyday I get connection requests trying to sell me something.
I'm not against people selling, I appreciate we're all trying to run a business, but most of the offers I receive are completely irrelevant and a quick check over my profile would make this evident.
My feed mostly seems to be full of content from people I don't know, it's hard to see the value in the platform (for me personally) these days. I used to love the publisher though.
The publisher, much like LinkedIn groups, needs some love from LinkedIn :) If you post pretty much anything via publisher you are lucky to get 100-200 views (with 20k connections). But with a post (and 20k connections) you get anywhere from 5k-30k views.
Pulse used to give me crazy numbers of views and engagements about 5-6 years ago. I'd just copy pasta a blog article and slap it on there and it was magic!
Ya, exactly "it was." I am pretty sure that'll change over the years. But for now, the main posts are driving views if you follow the checklist:
among other things.
To be honest the only reason I use LinkedIn is to keep track of my resume.
I hardly read, due i do post myself daily, but can't ever get my head around it.
The content just never really appeals to me or is something I read weeks ago already.
Thanks! Why do you post?
Mainly to get the extra exposure, but so far it hasn't been much clicks.
LinkedIn's revenue model is to sell search tools to marketing, sales, and recruiting teams. It's not an end-user platform. It's also a "walled garden" - their data access is garbage and they ban startups and individuals who try to gather data
Meanwhile, it's a data collection tool.
So it's all ass-backwards, but whatever, it's working for them.
Very well said. Let's see if Microsoft can turn this around🙃
For me the fact that there are so many fake accounts, just there to scrape your email address, and it’s so tough to spot a fake account:/
It's a multibillion dollar company with almost no real new innovation. Really shameful. I run a professional services company in China, think resume creation/repositioning, linkedin profile enhancement, interview coaching. They provide no way for a professional editor/coach to work with a client to analyze their profile and recast it in a better light. They heavily restricted the API use so I can't create automated tools to analyze a profile and look for weak spots which the client (and I) can address. I really question what the heck they use their budgets on other than a ton of employee parties (from the looks of the pics). I am pivoting to a new business addressing B2B service needs partly having burnt out on trying to promote their platform ad nauseum for 4+ years, presenting to over 8,000 local/foreign career professionals, with little real progress from the platform.
They have an API that you can build on top of. As long as you stay within limits should be good.
But for the rest j agree completely.
The fact that everyone adds everyone and connections are not relevant anymore (in general).
Hmm... I tend to disagree with that one. It's digital networking. If you find someone relevant and in your industry why not? Most people I've done business with, I've never ever met in person. Challenge me Brunor :)
I definitely see the value in connecting with people from the same industry.
But, if you have finite value for connection and you split that value into very large number, value of each connection is dropping.
Take an example two of us. If I go to your profile, I can see that we have 23 common connections. Not sure about you, but for most of them I don't feel that they are my connections, like I wouldn't know even that I have them as connection. Maybe it's my/wrong way of using LinkedIn but I think a lot of people is using it that way.
Like you have a 200 square meter room which is your room for connection. If you add 15 people there , you have space to reach them and you know their faces. But if you put 200 ppl there, every person will be on 1 square meter you'll know some of them around you, but if you go through the crowd on the other side, most of the people will react like - ok, who are you, I can't recall that we have anything in common.
I'm not saying that you need to add people who you know in person, but for me it's annoying that this massive connection ruined the whole idea.
There is a finite number of =30,000 connections. True.
There is an unlimited number of followers you can have. True.
"But, if you have finite value for connection and you split that value into a very large number, the value of each connection is dropping."
That is true if the logic of fixed value is true. But I don't think it is. How do you have a fixed value to share with connections?
What if that room is your room, and you can occasionally take a chair, climb up, and speak up?
Some guests will leave. Some will stay and invite others.
A. What pain points have you encountered, while using LinkedIn?
B. What's frustrating?
The overarching pain point for me is job roles being reposted every 1 - 3 days
C. Imagine, you took the product lead role at LinkedIn. What three features (or more) would you improve/add immediately? Why?
To help users connect, improve their LinkedIn cv and to improve the recruiter/ job seeker process. Happy to go into further detail but strapped for time right now!
Would love to hear more when you have a moment to share.
Companies/recruiters trying to game the system. I remember seeing that myself. It is quite annoying and it gives LinkedIn a false aggregation of NEW jobs created.
I wish they shared feedback, but recruiters don't seem to provide feedback for the top of the funnel. I was once interviewed for Google (Regional director) and that's the only time I received a paragraph long feedback and it was the last stage/interview when they fly you in. Still, it was 3-4 sentences.
Only log on if I really have to.
Same thing BW. Inbox is a mess. I log in every day but I often miss messages from my buddies or clients etc. due to the spam. How would you improve the "communication tools"?
As a user I'd prefer for the inbox to work more like Instagram's messaging feature. I'd prefer it if messages from people not in my network didn't show up in my inbox, but there was a separate tab for "message requests" where I can preview the message someone wants to send and either allow it or block them.
I think the recruiter spam is frustrating because most of my jobs have come through my networks. Clearly recruiters do provide value in the marketplace, but only in specific scenarios. I used recruiters when I first moved to Australia but once I had networks I didn't need them (sorry recruiters!)
I'd want to see a LinkedIn competitor that incentivises recruiters against spamming. Currently on LinkedIn there doesn't seem to be a way for me to give the system feedback about how useful/relevant a given recruiter message is. LinkedIn is a barrel of fish for recruiters to shoot at, but the guns LinkedIn leases to the recruiters don't shoot straight. It's a bad experience for everyone involved.
I really like the analogy BW
Very true. How do you solve that?
I didn't :) If you find out how to solve that just let me know :)
you got it Chris ;)
Probably start by getting it off the Oracle backend and onto a database platform built with index & search first.
Very interesting, Sean. I am assuming that they are planning on moving it onto Microsoft's stack/architecture at some point. Do you have any insiders info?
I don't, but sifting through their engineering blog just now, it looks like they moved off Oracle by 2018. Shows you the last time I looked into it ;)
The messaging is powerful, but more and more limited to drive premium. Recruiters are willing to pay for premium to send you absolutely unrelated job offers. I have a constant stream of messages which feel like this happened: "oh, a PHP backend developer, let me send my Lead Frontend role with 10 years required job experience and ask for call plus CV of course". Pointless to even consider responding in most cases. The "not interested" response button is a blessing.
roflol " "
Very true. The button is good :)