I’ve worked in this industry since 2007.
That’s nearly twenty years. I’ve seen dot-com aftermaths, cloud migrations, mobile revolutions, container adoption, the rise and (blessedly) fall of crypto bro culture, and now I sit deep in the bowels of Generative AI. It’s what I work on every day.
I’ve always believed the best way to do anything is to approach it with genuine curiosity. Learn from other people. Take something apart (physical or virtual, it doesn’t matter). Share what you’ve figured out. Let others teach you. Get smarter. Do all of that because you want to solve interesting problems and be paid for it.
That’s still what I want. I think that’s what most engineers want. I hope it is.
What Professional Social Media Was Supposed to Be
Let’s talk about LinkedIn. I’ll use it as the example because it’s the biggest professional platform, but honestly this applies to all of professional social media.
When I look at LinkedIn, I expect people to show off. At least a little. Not in a toxic way. In the way that reputation-building is supposed to work. Show what you know. Show how good you are at your job. Show the problems you’ve solved. Put a little sizzle on top. Preen a pose a bit.
I get that. I participate in it. I want to be known as someone who does good work. Someone with good ideas. Someone worth working with.
That’s reputation. That’s professional identity. That’s the game. I personally have chosen a muppet version of myself as an avatar. I think there’s something deeper there. But that’s another day.
What I See Now
What I see when I look at LinkedIn isn’t reputation-building. It’s raw attention-seeking.
I used to think it was me. Maybe I didn’t understand the motion. Maybe the nuance of self-marketing had passed me by while everyone else figured it out.
I don’t think that’s the case anymore. At least not entirely.
I think people are conflating showing off with earning respect. They’re not the same thing. Showing off is loud. It demands attention. It performs expertise rather than demonstrating it. There are celebrities that are are famous for being famous. Like the Kardashians, but with more databases.
Earning respect isn’t loud in the same way. It comes from consistent good work. Real insights. Things worth reading then mentioning to your peers.
Everywhere I look, I see clickbait culture. The same structures. The same hooks. The same performative takes dressed up as professional insight. This particular rant was triggered by some guy who decided to give himself 3 gold medals in a chatgpt-made image for passing a few exams. Sir, calm down.
And generative AI gives them a topic that sounds smart while actually being completely hollow. I’ve written about the gap between AI hype and reality before. This feels different though. This isn’t about hype in the industry. This is about hype as a social currency.
It’s not Just Slang I don’t Understand
Here’s what’s strange. I’ve talked for years about craft over hype. About focusing on the work that matters. About cutting through marketing noise.
The people doing that? They’re not the ones getting attention.
The people getting attention are the ones writing the loudest takes. The ones optimizing for engagement over insight. The ones who understand the mechanics of virality better than they understand the topics they’re writing about.
This isn’t a new observation. People have been writing about clickbait since the internet figured out advertising revenue. But something feels different now.
Maybe it’s the volume. Maybe it’s the algorithmic amplification. Maybe it’s the fact that generative AI makes it easier than ever to produce content that sounds intelligent without actually saying anything. (full disclosure - this started as an AI draft)
I don’t know. I’ve been in this long enough that “I don’t recognize what’s happening” feels like a legitimate observation rather than an old guy yelling at clouds.
No Solution
I don’t have a solution for this. I don’t think one exists within the current incentive structures of professional social media.
The platforms reward attention. Attention rewards loudness. Loudness rewards performance over substance. The cycle repeats. Someone wrote about this audience shift in AI content last year. The mechanics are the same across every topic now.
Maybe the answer is just curating better. Following the people who actually know things. Engaging with the content that’s worth engaging with. Ignoring the rest. But isn’t that why we created social algorithms?
But even that feels like rearranging deck chairs when the whole ship is optimized for noise.
I’m just going to keep writing here. On this blog. Where I control the incentives. Where the only metric that matters is whether someone actually found the thing worth reading.
The rest of it? Get off my lawn.