a linkedin post i don’t agree with

As I crawl my way back to my desk following break, I have slowly been easing myself into tasks and in a social media catch up, came across a post that seemed to go viral in some PhD and academic circles before the holidays around networking.

Tips were given on how to network on LinkedIn, stressing how before attempting to make connections on the site, the author suggests you should consider how you “will enrich and propel my own career” and “always think about your ‘value add’ when sending connection requests”. For me, hard stop.

Capitalism and white supremacy steeped the post that literally encourages people to consider themselves as an item on the market through the eyes of someone’s else’s perception of their value. Where is the humanity?

I can appreciate LinkedIn as a career building platform and therefore it may not be the grounds for belonging as one might find on platforms like Instagram maybe. And still, where is the community? People are people with stories to tell, with support to bring, with love to share. Advising folks to evaluate accepting a request by the metrics of individualistic value to oneself for the gain of fame and success metrics for capitalism is wild to me. There’s such little space for whimsical collaboration there. Or forget whimsical, this leaves out collaboration with young people or folks at the beginning of their time in their field who may not have even begun to think about themselves in these terms of value add.

It’s times like these where I realize how firmly I am planted in a gentle academia. And I don’t mean that as an aesthetic term, but in a collaboration over competition way, in a out-of-office on holidays kind of way, in a respect for the many knowledge systems that exist way, in a I will listen to you and make space for your questions kind of way, in a support the young people behind you generously kind of way. In a I won’t forget your humanity or mine kind of way.