I’m Increasingly Confused By The Point Of LinkedIn, And Their Rules

I think I’ve now been in LinkedIn Jail three separate times, although I’ve never been sure why.

I have never been the biggest fan of LinkedIn, honestly. My relationship with it started late — probably August 2012, honestly, which I think is eight years or so after the platform launched. I was in a dumb graduate school program in Minneapolis and needed it to start networking for jobs. I actually think they used to have a “Contacts Upload” feature, which they don’t really have anymore, and I uploaded about 5,800 people (I was 31, about to be 32 at the time, so I had some “contacts”). They instantly put me in jail for trying to add too many people. I should have known then that the relationship would be sour.

Around 2019–2020, I was “popular” on there, insofar as I had 5,000+ connections and thousands of followers and some of my posts would hit like 80,000 impressions. None of it did that much for my ability to earn income. So, that sucked and I also should have known the whole thing was pointless posturing.

Most of the posts that pop on there are one of two types:

1. “I used to eat rats on a street corner and now I am the top-performing sales guy at this SaaS company.”