MY PROBLEM WITH LINKEDIN

I’m very tired. I don’t mean physically, though admittedly, I am very tired. It’s all the rest of it: the constant overthinking, having to calculate what to say, what not to say, how to be, around people. Life’s like a relentless act sometimes where we’re all playing our part and trying not to get found out.

LinkedIn’s bad for this. Everyone there seems to absolutely love their job and their chosen career. Day in day out they’re posting away about great achievements, or new learning they’ve discovered, or thrilling adventures they’ve been on. I don’t believe all of them. I’ve listened to far too many real people in real jobs to fall for the flag-waving superciliousness.

But you’re not supposed to say that. You’re supposed to be professional, a thought leader, a subject matter expert, to get yourself noticed by recruiters.

Not everybody is safe to be real with either. I made that mistake at work the other day - I answered the question ‘how’s it all going’ to someone who wasn’t asking for a deeply honest response. His awkward silence to me being ‘real’ was a tough moment.

Has social media made us all a bit like that? Kind of isolated behind a shiny facade? The person shoving railway tickets under a glass panel is surely not having a fantastic day, or probably anything close to the life they dreamed of. Yet they’re sort of forced to pretend they always wanted that stuffy box and starched uniform - at least while they’re in it. That’s the job; pretence. It is, when you think about, ludicrous.

And who benefits? Not the beavering linkediners. They post things like ‘fantastic news’ and ‘wonderful stuff’ on each other’s posts whenever they make a huge sale or they hit a big milestone. But it’s the 1% who rake in the reward; the business owners and shareholders, and I have a growing suspicion, forged by nothing other than dreadful scepticism, that those exalted people have no need for, and wouldn’t be caught dead on, LinkedIn,

I’m tired of all that. I’m tired of pretending I’m alright when I’m not, and I’m tired of pretending I’m good at my job. My engineering colleagues have to correct my writing; my missing full stops and my spellings like ‘importan’ and ‘assymetric’ and ‘ocassion’… it’s embarrassing. I don’t know what TLS or KDF is, I can’t define a library from a stack and I’m still not sure what a compiler does, what HTTP actually is or why key exchange works the way it does. I’m really slow with all that stuff and if I have any skill at all it’s blagging my way through and yes, pretending, acting as though I do.

I’m very tired. If you ask me how I am and I say ‘fine’… do me a favour: ask me again. Say, “Matt how are you really?” Or ‘deeply’ or ‘on the inside’ or whatever. Because I’m probably not, and step one on getting back to being ‘fine’ for me is to start talking about it. Because relationship, friendship, connection - realness - is what all of this has only ever been about, and I would trade in all my skills for those moments that matter between friends and people who genuinely care about me. So ask me. And I’ll ask you back if you like.

Just maybe not on LinkedIn though, eh.