Rant: LinkedIn Notifications are broken

I don’t know if you have noticed but notifications on LinkedIn have been getting annoying. Very annoying. We use LinkedIn to market ourselves, connect with pros, and build our careers. Most of our lives revolve around LinkedIn, which isn’t healthy but that’s another story.

Now we just get SPAMMED with absolutely nonsensical updates from LinkedIn that don’t benefit me or my career, and I keep asking myself, who is this change for?

How are notifications supposed to work?

Here is how it is supposed to be when you post anywhere. Twitter does it exactly right:

• People like your post and comment on it. You get a notification
• They share your post and maybe say some nice words, and you get a notification.
• Impressions are sometimes nice, so after a day or two, you are told how your post did.

Here is how it is supposed to be when you interact with another person’s post on LinkedIn:

• You comment on their post, and you get a notification if someone likes or replies to your comment on that post.

How does LinkedIn do it?

It’s honestly a dumpster fire at this point. I get multiple notifications about my own post and how many impressions I have. Ya, I know it’s not a lot, and I don’t like it being rubbed in my face.

If I comment on someone else’s post, I get notifications when someone else comments on the post. Not under my comment but the original post! Oh and by someone else, they are not even my connections. Just random folks! What am I supposed to do with this knowledge being bestowed upon me?

If that’s not bad enough, I now get notifications if one of my connections like a random post. Once again, I ask: What am I supposed to do with this knowledge being bestowed upon me?

What’s the solution?

Oh this is where it gets really fun. If you mute the notifications related to impressions, for example, you will not get ANY NOTIFICATION if someone interacts with your post. If you are reading this and I have not responded to you… that is the reason (or I may have muted/unfollowed your account for… reasons)

Why is it like this?

Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe really large companies don’t have an accountability process? No one checks what is going into production or questions it. Is this the way to get people to check their LinkedIn more because I don’t see a lot of healthy logic behind such decisions.

I don’t get a lot of activity on my LinkedIn so every time I get a notification, I assume it is a recruiter or someone has interacted with one of my posts. LinkedIn needs to do better for its users. Or atleast try to make it a little bit less annoying for all of us.