A Day in the Life of Someone Who Just Wanted to Open LinkedIn in Peace

All I wanted was a referral. LinkedIn had other plans.

Every morning, I open LinkedIn with a very simple intention.

Find a recruiter.

Connect with someone working at a company I like.

Maybe send a cold DM.

Perhaps find a job opening that doesn't require 7 years of experience for an entry-level position.

Simple. Reasonable. Harmless.

And then LinkedIn loads.

"I'm thrilled to announce..."

Oh, we're doing this again.🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪

Someone has joined a company. Someone has completed an internship. Someone has received an offer. Someone has been selected for something. Someone has finally achieved something they've apparently been manifesting since the Jurassic period.

And everyone is thrilled.

Everyone.😑

I haven't even had my first sip of coffee, and I'm already congratulating people I've never met on achievements I discovered 0.4 seconds ago.

At this point, opening LinkedIn feels less like using a professional networking platform and more like accidentally walking into a never-ending award ceremony where I don't know anyone, but I'm expected to clap (Yes, an annoying relative's kid's wedding, idgaf, pardon my language, please).

The LinkedIn Morning Ritual

There's a very specific routine to this.

You open LinkedIn.

You scroll.

You see:

"I'm beyond excited to share..."
"After months of hard work, I finally..."
"Words cannot express how grateful I am..."
"This journey has been nothing short of incredible..."
"Humbled and honoured to announce..."

And somewhere between the third and fourth post, you start wondering whether you're actually on LinkedIn or attending a very large, very formal group therapy session where everyone is celebrating their career milestones.

Don't get me wrong. People should celebrate their achievements. Getting a job, landing an internship, receiving an offer, or finishing something you've worked hard for is genuinely worth celebrating.

But there's something fascinating about watching an entire platform develop a shared vocabulary for being excited.

It's almost ritualistic.

You don't simply get a job anymore. You announce that you've been blessed with an opportunity.

You don't join a company. You embark on an exciting new chapter.

You don't complete an internship. You express profound gratitude to everyone who made the journey possible, including the person who once replied to your email.

And you certainly don't just post an update.

You begin with "I am incredibly excited and humbled..."

The Professional Personality Cult

Here's the funny part.

LinkedIn was supposed to be a place where professionals connect, exchange ideas, find opportunities, and build networks.

Somewhere along the way, it also became a place where everyone is expected to look like they're having the most professionally fulfilling life imaginable.

And the really ironic thing?🫩

The more people do it, the more everyone else starts doing it.

One person writes a beautifully polished announcement. It gets engagement. Another person notices. Then another. Soon, the format becomes a template.

We collectively discover that the secret to professional visibility is apparently to sound like a press release written by someone who just discovered the word gratitude.

It's not even necessarily intentional. The platform rewards certain kinds of posts, people notice what works, and eventually everyone starts speaking the same language.

The result is a professional ecosystem where even a minor update can sound like the launch of a multinational corporation.

Congratulations, you've successfully completed your first week at work. We are delighted to announce your continued existence.

Meanwhile, I'm Just Trying to Get a Job

And then there's the other side of this little social experiment.

People like me.

The ones opening LinkedIn with a very specific agenda.

I'm not here to witness another cinematic career announcement. I'm here to find a recruiter who might actually respond to my message, and I'd get a human reply, not some billionaire trying to deliberately ghost me.🙄

I'm looking for engineering roles, checking company pages, sending connection requests, writing cold DMs, and trying to figure out whether a job posting is real or one of those listings that has been circulating since the invention of the internet.

But somehow, every scroll becomes a reminder that somebody, somewhere, is having an exceptionally productive professional life.

It's frustrating.

It's funny.

And occasionally, it's both at exactly the same time.

Because I can be genuinely happy for someone and still wonder why my own job search feels like a side quest with no visible progress bar.

Those two feelings can coexist. Shocking, I know.

The Algorithm Has a Sense of Humour

I also find it amusing that the platform seems to have developed its own little sense of irony.📉

You search for jobs, and it shows you people announcing jobs.

You look for referrals, and it shows you people thanking the person who referred them.

You try to connect with recruiters, and your feed introduces you to seventeen people who have just joined the company you were hoping to apply to.

It's almost personal.

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if LinkedIn started showing me a post saying:

"I am thrilled to announce that I have successfully opened LinkedIn today. A big thank you to my laptop, Wi-Fi connection, and everyone who believed in me."😒

And the comments would be full of:

"Congratulations! Well deserved."

"Many more milestones to come!"

"Keep shining!"

Maybe We All Need to Relax a Little

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with sharing professional achievements. In fact, I think people should.

But perhaps we've reached a point where the performance of having a successful career is becoming almost as important as actually building one.

Every achievement needs an announcement. Every announcement needs the right vocabulary. Every milestone needs a carefully constructed narrative.

And somewhere in all of this, the original purpose of simply connecting with other human beings gets a little lost.

I'd love to see more people talk about the awkward interviews, the applications that went nowhere, the projects that broke at 2 AM, the uncertainty, the failed attempts, and the ordinary days when absolutely nothing exciting happened.

Not because everything needs to be negative or brutally honest, but because professional life is not one continuous sequence of exciting new chapters.

Sometimes it's just you, a laptop, 46 open tabs, and a job application that asks you to manually enter the experience already mentioned in your résumé.

And that's a story too.

Anyway, tomorrow morning I'll probably open LinkedIn again.🙂

I'll search for recruiters. I'll send a few connection requests. I'll look for opportunities.

And, inevitably, I'll see:

"I'm thrilled to announce..."😑

I'll sigh.

I'll scroll.

I'll congratulate a stranger.

And I'll come back the next day.

Because apparently, this is our life now.