LinkedIn is one of the strangest social media Platforms in existence where else can you find
people bragging about working unpaid overtime and writing appreciation posts to the company
that just laid them off it's a really weird website but is it hurting her career [Music]
I learned the value of if it's good for the company and it's
values I learned while working at this 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 to me is like this weird Cesspool of corporate culture
that feels like corporate culture but from the perspective of its high school in 2006 when the
company was founded it was a strange concept but it has worked for LinkedIn which is now the ninth
largest social media platform in the world it had more monthly users than Twitter before both sites
were acquired Elon Musk and a team of investors purchased Twitter for 44 billion dollars in
October 2022 a record some for a social media company being taken private must controversial
purchase beat linkedin's record from 2016 when it was taken private by Microsoft for 26.2 billion
dollars musk is often criticized for overpaying for Twitter when LinkedIn is the comparison at
the time of acquisition LinkedIn had slightly more monthly users than Twitter but also had
it's something that the bluebird just couldn't match every time you log into LinkedIn you are
giving Microsoft something unmatched by every other social media Network in existence value
if you are using a service for free you are the product and Linkedin users are the most valuable
product of them all LinkedIn generated revenue of 13.8 billion dollars in 2022 which is two and
a half times higher than Twitter's highest year of Revenue ever we don't have public financials on it
now since it's a private company but most analysts expect that Twitter's revenue is down since musk's
acquisition 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 this comparison is not 100 fair either users who
log on to Reddit Pinterest YouTube or Facebook spend a lot more time on the platform on average
additionally a site like YouTube is much more expensive to operate than LinkedIn given the
inherent differences in the cost of Hosting HD videos and hosting content that is just text
and pictures LinkedIn is able to extract revenue from their users at the highest rate per hour in
the industry and when you are the product that value is coming from you LinkedIn achieves this
in four ways the first is by creating a digital Marketplace for people LinkedIn is the biggest job
search site in the world companies and recruiters can post job listings and boost their visibility
by paying LinkedIn directly when you apply for a job through Linkedin the employer gets your
skills experience education and employment history on display in a consistent format which is a big
advantage over normal job search sites like indeed this information should be on your resume but the
standardized way that LinkedIn presents it lets recruiters automate their candidate searches far
more easily a subscription to LinkedIn recruiter costs nine thousand dollars a year but it offers
hiring managers and third-party recruiters a range of tools to search for candidates
based on criteria reach out to them directly and advertise new roles it's a small price to pay for
most companies because what they get in return is a buffet of potential applicants for their jobs
when you ask for a raise and give your manager the ultimatum of quitting they weight up the
expense of giving you a raise with the expense of replacing you finding qualified candidates
used to be much harder than it is today but now if you quit they are just a few key words away
from finding a perfect replacement from the largest collection of career-focused people
in the world hiring managers would not pay nine thousand dollars a year for tools that didn't
provide a return on investment having the tools to reach out to potential applicants that aren't
even actively looking for a job has given hiring managers a lot of power over you and that's just
the first reason so it's time to learn how money Works to find out how LinkedIn has ruined your
career this week's lesson was sponsored by Aura not too long ago I was curious and did a simple
web search of my own name hoping to see what would pop up shockingly I found my personal details
scattered across tons of websites it hit me that this was due to so-called data brokers who were
selling my info to cold callers junk mailers and anyone else who would buy it that's just
not right but that's where Aura comes in it finds these data Brokers that are putting your info out
there and sends leave me alone messages for you and that's not all Aura does you've probably heard
it's good to have a bunch of strong passwords use a VPN have a solid antivirus system and to keep
all of these updated but let's be honest who's got time for all of that or is like a do-it-all tool
for staying safe online it provides you all of these and more and the best part you can get all
these features for your family at a low monthly price whether you need a password manager a way
to find your info on the dark web antivirus protection or a VPN or has got you covered
guard yourself from data Brokers and scammers and relax when you're surfing the web with aura go to
aura.com forward slash how many works and get two weeks free check out how many data Brokers have
been sharing your info and discover all that aura can do for you the second way LinkedIn
is ruining your career is by creating an imbalance of information between you and potential employers
LinkedIn is actually one of those things that's becoming more and more required more and more
requested on every single job application and that is a big problem and the main reason is
LinkedIn just makes it way too easy to give too much information about yourself a good LinkedIn
profile should have all of the information an employer would ever want to know about you but
company Pages don't have any of the information you really want to know about a potential employer
salary information is often not shared and job expectations are kept as vague as every other
site LinkedIn is giving companies the database of employee information for nothing in return there
are some careers that require a higher level of sacrifice than others and you should know that
before going into them if you want to work as a corporate lawyer or investment banker you need to
accept that you will need to put in Long weeks and have little personal time in the first few
years of your career the same sacrifices are made by doctors who suffer through years of medical
school and residency but in exchange they get a career path with a certainty of high compensation
it's not fair that you be expected to work like these people if you don't have the opportunity to
make the same money as them and that's the third way that LinkedIn is ruining your career which is
also one of the company's most lucrative revenue streams it forces self-comparison it's well known
that over consumption of social media is bad for your mental health because it forces you to
compare your everyday self with carefully curated posts by friends and influencers at their very
best Instagram will make you self-conscious about not hitting the gym for three hours every day but
LinkedIn will make you self-conscious about your career career coaches recommend that you
make as many connections on LinkedIn as possible because it expands your network and makes your
profile more visible I personally have over 1 000 connections on LinkedIn from my time in Investment
Banking because in the last years of my career connecting on LinkedIn became more common than
handing over a business card my feed is now filled every day with thinly disguised brags about how
someone became the youngest partner ever at their Law Firm or someone else was thankful to have the
honor to coordinate the synergistic digitization Sprint for internal tools development enabling
their company to Pivot to fields of disruptive innovation while empowering the customer
experience according to the company's own data only one percent of monthly users post anything on
the site compared to around 20 of users who make at least one post a month on Facebook people don't
post their Bad Hair Days on Facebook and they won't post their career failures on LinkedIn which
can give you as an observer the impression that everybody is doing much better than you are and
who can blame them I mean everybody on LinkedIn is essentially a saint a according to them LinkedIn
and the marketing teams that leverage the platform know that this insecurity is one of the best ways
to sell products if you are feeling insecure about your career you are going to be more receptive to
add selling services like Career Development training leads generation or job recruitment
you are also going to be more willing to spend money on a product that could increase your career
earnings because it becomes easy to rationalize as an investment in yourself according to Insider
intelligence who runs an annual survey of 15 000 respondents LinkedIn ranks highly among social
media platforms that Americans trust most it was in the top spot for four years straight but just
got edged out by Pinterest the company's branding of being a professional place where professionals
discuss professional things helps this reputation even though it still takes advantage of the same
human emotions to sell advertising space as every other social media site that's not actually the
problem though as a YouTuber I am sympathetic to the fact that a company in the market for
attention needs to monetize that attention to run a sustainable business LinkedIn attracts a
niche valuable audience with high intent and they should charge what people are offering
to pay for Impressions LinkedIn vets advertisers more rigorously than other platforms like metis
ad manager or Google AdSense the problem that this actually creates for your career is that
it forces you to think that you need to add more achievements to your page in order to stand out
according to the market research database Grandview research the American personal
development Market is worth 12 billion dollars and expected to grow at a rate of 4.1 percent over the
next eight years people are spending more of their money and unpaid hours to collect certifications
like they are Pokemon gym badges recruiters and hiring managers love this trend because they are
paid to put people in roles and the performance of a new hire once they are in the job doesn't matter
to them convincing the manager that will actually be responsible for the new hire is much easier
when they have a long list of certifications to point out there is no evidence to suggest that
Career Development training has any correlation with job performance and on the contrary people
that seek out meaningless tokens to boost their employability are more likely to switch jobs
more often LinkedIn didn't create this problem but it did make it much worse and unfortunately
that's what you have to compete with now the one percent of people who actually post on LinkedIn
also set the standard for working on paid overtime putting a job first and blurring the lines between
professional and personal domains they do it to show off and increase their chances of getting
a job but since it's the only thing that gets displayed on the world's largest Professional
Network companies and managers start to think it's a normal expectation the fourth way that LinkedIn
is ruining your career is by creating a culture of corporate worship since posts on LinkedIn are
not Anonymous and people want to keep their jobs any post that mentions a company is going to be
overwhelmingly positive some companies strongly suggest that their staff have a strong presence on
LinkedIn because they know it can help their image as a desirable employer corporate worship is not
just weird it can hurt your career big companies make it very easy for people to believe that they
are doing something bigger than just exchanging their time and skills for money companies have
been doing this for a long time before LinkedIn Walmart employees have to recite their company
cheer every morning because it helps with staff retention but LinkedIn has enabled companies
to push this kind of cringe corporate worship into the mainstream the overwhelmingly positive
feedback that LinkedIn gives companies also makes them less likely to acknowledge areas
of weakness in their organization praise from identified members of a team is much easier
for managers to address than criticism from an anonymous Forum many don't stop to think that
they aren't going to get negative feedback from people who just want to advance their careers
and that's the worst part in most professional Industries not having a LinkedIn profile is seen
as strange and unprofessional for some companies it can immediately disqualify you as a candidate
recruitment agencies that specialize in Tech and finance have publicly said that people without a
LinkedIn account don't take their career seriously enough to be considered for jobs so even though
that everybody that uses the platform knows it's a giant corporate circle jerk they need to play
along to get the most out of their career one of the most alarming Trends to come from LinkedIn
recently followed the wave of tech layoffs where ex-employees wrote appreciation posts about the
companies that just fired them the employees didn't do it because they were grateful for
the skills and experience they gained from their time with the company they did it because it was
the most corporate friendly way to announce they were looking for a new job these posts benefited
the company more than the laid off employees but if it gave these employees even a slightly
better chance of finding a new job quickly many were willing to put their dignity aside and play
along which is something that they will probably be doing for the rest of their lives to find out
why go and watch my video on why most people alive today will work until they die if you want to get
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