Has LinkedIn Ruined Your Career?
Understanding LinkedIn
In this video, the speaker talks about LinkedIn and its impact on careers. The speaker discusses how LinkedIn is different from other social media platforms and how it has become a valuable tool for companies to find potential employees.
What is LinkedIn?
- LinkedIn is a social media platform that allows people to connect with others in their industry.
- It was founded in 2006 and has become the ninth largest social media platform in the world.
- LinkedIn is a digital marketplace for people, especially job seekers, where they can showcase their skills, experience, education, and employment history.
How does LinkedIn generate revenue?
- LinkedIn generates revenue by creating a digital marketplace for people. It charges companies to post job listings and boost their visibility.
- The average LinkedIn user is worth 76 times more than the average Reddit user, 35 times more than the average Pinterest user, four times as much as the average YouTube viewer, and three times as much as the average Facebook user.
- LinkedIn achieves this by extracting revenue from its users at the highest rate per hour in the industry.
How does LinkedIn help companies find potential employees?
- Companies can use LinkedIn to search for candidates based on criteria such as skills or experience.
- A subscription to LinkedIn Recruiter costs $9,000 a year but offers hiring managers and third-party recruiters tools to search for candidates based on criteria reach out to them directly and advertise new roles.
- Having these tools gives hiring managers power over potential applicants who aren't even actively looking for a job.
Why should you care about your online privacy?
- Data brokers sell personal information to cold callers, junk mailers, and anyone else who would buy it.
- Aura is a tool that finds data brokers that are putting your info out there and sends "leave me alone" messages for you. It also provides password management, dark web monitoring, antivirus protection, and VPN services.
Overall, LinkedIn is a valuable tool for job seekers and companies looking to find potential employees. However, users should be aware of the platform's revenue model and how their personal information is being used.
LinkedIn: The Strangest Social Media Platform
In this section, the speaker talks about LinkedIn and its unique features.
LinkedIn's Unusual Features
- LinkedIn is a strange social media platform where people brag about working unpaid overtime and write appreciation posts to the company that just laid them off.
- LinkedIn is like a weird cesspool of corporate culture that feels like corporate culture but from the perspective of high school in 2006.
- LinkedIn is the ninth largest social media platform in the world with more monthly users than Twitter before both sites were acquired.
- The average LinkedIn user is worth 76 times more than the average Reddit user, 35 times more than the average Pinterest user, four times as much as the average YouTube viewer, and three times as much as the average Facebook user.
How LinkedIn Generates Revenue
- If you are using a service for free, you are the product. LinkedIn users are the most valuable product of them all.
- LinkedIn extracts revenue from their users at the highest rate per hour in the industry by creating a digital marketplace for people.
- Companies and recruiters can post job listings and boost their visibility by paying LinkedIn directly.
- A subscription to LinkedIn Recruiter costs $9,000 a year but offers hiring managers and third-party recruiters tools to search for candidates based on criteria, reach out to them directly, and advertise new roles.
The Power Dynamic on LinkedIn
- Having tools to reach out to potential applicants who aren't even actively looking for a job has given hiring managers a lot of power over employees.
- Data brokers sell personal information to cold callers, junk mailers, and anyone else who would buy it. Aura is a service that finds these data brokers and sends "leave me alone" messages for you.
The Value of Company Values
In this section, the speaker talks about the importance of company values.
The Importance of Company Values
- The speaker learned the value of if it's good for the company and its values while working at a company.
- Hashtag proud to be unemployed: LinkedIn is a strange place where people talk at length about how great they are at their job to look enticing to potential future employers.
- LinkedIn was founded in 2006 and was a strange concept but has worked for LinkedIn which is now the ninth largest social media platform in the world.
- Elon Musk and a team of investors purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, beating LinkedIn's record from 2016 when it was taken private by Microsoft for $26.2 billion dollars.
How Company Values Affect Employees
- The values learned while working at a company can affect an employee even after leaving that company.
- Musk is often criticized for overpaying for Twitter when compared to LinkedIn. At the time of acquisition, LinkedIn had slightly more monthly users than Twitter but also had something that Twitter couldn't match.
- When you ask for a raise and give your manager the ultimatum of quitting, they weigh up the expense of giving you a raise with the expense of replacing you.
Protecting Yourself on LinkedIn
The video discusses how LinkedIn can negatively impact your career by creating a culture of corporate worship, encouraging meaningless tokens to boost employability, and making it difficult to get negative feedback.
Problems with LinkedIn
- Seeking meaningless tokens to boost employability leads to job hopping.
- Corporate worship is encouraged since posts are not anonymous and people want to keep their jobs.
- Companies push cringe-worthy corporate worship into the mainstream.
- Not having a LinkedIn profile is seen as unprofessional in most professional industries.
Negative Impact on Career
- Recruitment agencies specializing in tech and finance disqualify candidates without a LinkedIn account.
- Ex-employees write appreciation posts about companies that just fired them, benefiting the company more than the laid-off employees.
Why Most People Will Work Until They Die
The video explains why most people will work until they die due to factors such as low wages, lack of retirement savings, and increasing life expectancy.
Factors Contributing to Working Until Death
- Low wages make it difficult for people to save for retirement.
- Lack of retirement savings means people have no choice but to continue working.
- Increasing life expectancy means people need more money for retirement.
- Automation and outsourcing lead to fewer job opportunities.
Solutions
- Increase minimum wage so that workers can save for retirement.
- Implement universal basic income to provide a safety net for those who cannot work.
- Encourage companies to invest in their employees' retirement savings.
- Increase taxes on the wealthy to fund social security and other retirement programs.