Learning to Play the LinkedIn Game

To be completely transparent, I've had a LinkedIn account for a very long time. As a matter of fact, I can't even remember when I opened it, but I know it was before COVID. Some of you might logically imagine that I've actually done something with it. That I've networked, shared my skills, or documented my career for the world to see.

You would be precisely wrong.

It might be a form of self boycott. I've never been particularly fond of self promotion, and I fully admit that's a personality flaw of mine. It makes even less sense when I tell you I'm also a musician. You would imagine that promoting yourself comes with the territory, yet here we are.

At any rate, just a couple of days ago I actually started using LinkedIn.

Why? I hear you asking.

Am I about to become one of those accounts that posts about working from a hospital bed while explaining how chemotherapy inspired a revolutionary idea to maximize ROI?

Hopefully not.

But... there is a but.

I'm getting to a point in my life where I need to stop being quite so idealistic and start planting both feet firmly on the ground. Networking matters. I need to let go of the notion that I can ignore every established path, do everything differently, and somehow still expect to win in the end.

Sometimes there are tried and true ways of moving forward.

So I'm going to try one of them.

I've recently started working with a friend doing developer recruiting. Honestly, it's something I never imagined myself doing, but strangely enough, it doesn't feel foreign to me. It's an odd kind of comfort. Unexpected, but welcome.

That said, I don't only intend to help with recruiting, which is what I'm technically there to do. I also hope to lend a hand with some bigger ideas. The kind of ideas that make me smile. Ideas with ridiculous potential.

But back to LinkedIn.

There seems to be a game being played over there. I think I've identified the rules... I'm just not entirely sure how I'm supposed to participate.

Some people seem to post complete insanities dressed up as entrepreneurial wisdom. Entertaining? Absolutely. Productive? I'm not so convinced.

Most others seem to use it as a sort of professional Twitter, except every technical observation eventually has to become a business lesson.

A post about a new AI model that runs on a laptop somehow has to end with how it can reduce costs by 30 percent or increase productivity by 50 percent.

Numbers that I'm fairly certain are magical in nature.

(A little programming pun for those of us who write code.)

Will I become the next LinkedIn influencer?

I sincerely doubt it.

But maybe... if I work really hard...

Really, really hard...

I can figure out a way to post memes on LinkedIn...

...and still be taken seriously.

Now that is a mission I can get behind.

MenO