Michael Jackson on LinkedIn: #culture #work #jobs #employment #benefits #law #lawyer #lawfirms… | 98 comments

If the new American Dream is defined by “creative expression, online influence and extreme optionality” over linear moves up the corporate ladder, then LinkedIn is enough to make any Millennial or Gen Z jobseeker cringe.

People used to call LinkedIn “work Facebook”, by which I think they meant it's a mindless website where people gab about their work lives. But LinkedIn isn’t really about work in any meaningful sense. Of course, people talk about working on LinkedIn. Oh, how they love to talk about working! No matter the shitty job, no matter the grueling hours, ev... See more

Here is something I strongly believe: These are the kinds of people that are not only going to thrive on unconventional paths but in the broader working ecosystem. The world of work is increasingly being driven by creativity, art, and storytelling.

First, LinkedIn does not cover every job category sufficiently. For example, blue collar workers have never been able to use LinkedIn to showcase their work history and to find new opportunities. Second, many job opportunities are in the form of gigs, or shifts, which are very different from the full time employment opportunities found on LinkedIn.

The platform might be less alternate universe and more down to earth if the truth was acknowledged: performative professionalism, job hunting, and networking are extensions of work not play.

We previously espoused the need to transition from traditional job platforms like Indeed and LinkedIn to “vertical” job platforms that address the specific need of a particular industry or candidate.

To paraphrase Marx, we might hunt for jobs on LinkedIn in the morning, fish for compliments on Instagram in the afternoon, criticize each other on Twitter after dinner, and be as lascivious as we like on Tinder in the late evening, without letting any of these identities define us...  Nevertheless, something is lost in this fractionalization o... See more