Even if you don't agree with this guy, you have to admit his credentials are impressive!
this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
437 points (99.8% liked)
LinkedinLunatics
4427 readers
756 users here now
A place to post ridiculous posts from linkedIn.com
(Full transparency.. a mod for this sub happens to work there.. but that doesn't influence his moderation or laughter at a lot of posts.)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Things techbros imagine they've invented:
- Trains
- Friendship
- Fraud
Is anyone gonna tell him that they just check after messaging people ?
We don't check. I don't really care as long as they can do the job. But believing they have a degree is useful for telling clients who specifically sometimes ask about the degrees of the people they'll be working with.
We also don't DM people trying to recruit people tho.
I swear being on linked in is like a dating app.
If you're a male in IT, the recruiters that DM you are always hot but likely bots. When you interact with them, they always want to steer you toward jobs that have nothing to do with what you want.
They blue ball you until you get through the interview and then ghost you.
Dude in iT, never had that problem and even doubled my salary through linked in. Anytime I actually interact with a recruiter I lay down my bare minimums and won't even bother responding further/block if they can't hit that.
That said, LinkedIn is a shit hole not worth touching more than once every couple of years if you're not looking for a gig. I don't even really interact with people I actually know in there because the platform is terrible and 90% of public posts are from sociopaths who despise work life balance.
This could never go wrong
We had a university hire a professor here that taught for a few years before they figured out they lied about credentials - only because they had no idea what they were doing, so it's not an unreasonable strategy to throw as much shit against the wall as you can and see if any sticks.
I was a hiring manager in aerospace for decades. We for sure checked transcripts before a start date.
I also just don't get people who lie on their resumes. That would cause me so much anxiety. Even for things I have training or experience with, I always worry people are going to expect me to be more proficient than I am. I had I guy put that he was fluent in a computer language that I'm not sure he'd ever seen, so everyone was always frustrated with him and he eventually got laid off.
I think it's super dependent on the industry and you as a person.
I used to have a fake degree on my resume and I attribute a decent amount of my career success to that. But I am in IT where experience is a lot more important and there's a lot less risk than engineering haha.
But it was just some random bachelors degree from a community college in my home town. I would explain it away as "just some online BS program so I would have a degree on my resume" and that was really all the background checking anyone did. I'm also very charismatic, had a bunch of professional references, and a couple certs so that helps a ton
I don't have it on my resume anymore because I'm at a point in my career where it just frankly doesn't matter, but back when I was just a baby help desk tech it genuinely got me a couple incredible opportunities. I didn't feel bad because the hiring process is such nonsense and employers made candidates jump through so many hoops I just figured it was fair. They ~~lie~~ creatively explain benefits and pay, so we can ~~lie~~ creatively explain our history.
I'm pretty sure people lie on resumes because you're more likely to actually get a response that way, rather than using whatever credentials you actually have.
Well sure, of course. I'm more likely to hire a painter to paint my house if he says he's been in business 20 years, but I'm going to be pissed off it turns out in his first job and he's bad at it.
That's the whole thing about "fake it till you make it," though. You fake it to get your foot in the door, pray like a mother fucker you can actually do the job, and pray like a mother fucker you keep the job. I don't know how folks actually make it like that, but, hey... In the current dark times, gotta do what you gotta do.
Wouldn't be worth the anxiety for me.
On the other hand, I've long been a proponent of the above board fake it till you make it approach. There were many, many times in my career that my boss needed something done and I told him I could probably figure it out if he keeps his expectations low. Got to do a lot of interesting things that way and learned some really cool stuff.
And every promotion was like that. They knew all of my experience, but were putting me in a new position. Managing people for the first time is always a fake it till you make it situation.
He's talking about an MBA, not an actual degree.
This is the kind of out of the box thinking that the team needs right now. Unfortunately, you're fired.
Career pro-tip: Lie on your resume!
I’ll be honest that’s what I’ve done. But they weren’t lies of stuff I can’t do. More like “oh I made this small coding project”, “I’ve replaced phone screens before”, “I know how to debug code”
Yeah; those are reasonable. Not overly-checkable stuff like the school you went to and degree you obtained.
It's why I'm stuck in a factory. I just don't have it in me to bullshit/lie. I have a friend who worked his way into his career by saying whatever he needed to say and he makes 3x my salary.
I wish I had no morals or anxiety....
The way I see it is that they're looking to exploit me for as much as they can get, so I have no obligation to treat them with any more respect than that. I don't lie, but I have no problem taking a single instance where I worked next to a couple newbies for an hour and gave them pointers and turning it into "trained and oversaw new hires to ensure proper workflow protocol" on my resume.
Maybe I should lie about being a sous chef so I can work at a Antarctica base as a chef…
I make higher than the median salary working at a factory. I left a job that required a college degree and professional licence that payed less than what I do now. Higher education requirements doesn't always mean higher pay. You might just need to find a unionized factory. The lowest wage at my workplace is $25/hr (CAD). Local minimum wage is $17.20/hr and median wage is $21.83/hr.
That's kinda the spot I'm at now, just no union. I'm "stuck" in that the wage isn't horrendous for my background, but the area I live in is so expensive that it kinda evens out. If I want any kind of savings I need to stay in this garage I rent.
I've wanted to make a move for the last 5 years, but COVID came along so i waited it out, then it was "omg recession is coming, recession is coming!" So I waited it out. Now we're "blessed" with the Mango Mussolini who is hell bent on destroying the economy so again I feel like the only smart thing to do is wait it out...
unionize and try to switch workplaces every year to a higher paying one.
If the education provider no longer exists can you just claim what ever you like?
Because genuinely the provider of the apprenticeship I have got busted for fraud and they collapsed incredibly quickly. Can I just make up the qualifications I got with them?
Please advise, my landlord won't accept LinkedIn DMs as rent payment.
fire him; hire a new landlord
What if I already have a master's but still can't find a job?
Just keep adding master's degrees until you get an offer, I guess.
overqualified
"Employers hate this one powerful trick!"
If you keep adding enough master degrees eventually the HR system of some company hiring you will overflow and you'll be CISO in no time.
Add a PhD
Tried that, doesn’t work
Try adding an MBA. Money people and managers seem to think that makes you one of them.
Have you considered a doctorate?
Do you think there's a correlation between those who process further up the academia tree; and those who enjoy masochism?
DMs from who, though? Recruiting agencies? Those aren't job offers, those are people who want to doctor your resume even further and some it at companies going they'll get paid for it
The DMs have been flowing in ... from scammers.
As someone that works in academia, you'd be surprised how many academics never get their qualifications sighted for employment at a university. I've heard a few stories of renowned individuals admitting to fake degrees before retirement, suddenly rendering their highly cited papers ignored after 20 years of publication.
I have an old friend who worked in advertising for decades in Montreal. I talked to him about career advice once and I remember him saying something like this.
He said he just jumped into a low entry level position as a young 20 year old in the 70s, worked like a dog in a bunch of positions and eventually became a high level manager. He had a small college degree and he said that in his first position, they were just looking for someone .. anyone .. and he got in. No one ever checked his background or education ... no one ever asked for documentation or anything. From that start, he just worked day in, day out and after about five years, he becomes a leading manager. After that point if anyone asked about his education, he pointed to his track record working for the company. 40 years later he retired with a wealthy pension.
That would be nice... If companies still promoted people beyond the levels of, "beginner peon" to "senior peon."
you have companies that actually hire people instead of commissioning them as freelancers?
load more comments
(1 replies)
Meanwhile today data brokers and background checks walk hand in hand with hiring screens at any established tech company. I still have to verify my degree when applying for new jobs even though I’ve been out of college for over a decade and even if I’m not, I know they are still checking with a data broker of some kind or another. I know this because I’ve also been a hiring manager and had the recruiter drop people off my roster when their silent background check fails. Candidates don’t even know they are being dropped or which data broker may or may not have incorrect information on their degree status
Counter-experience: I don't have a college degree, but I have ~25 years' experience in tech. I never submit anything in the "education" section of applications but typically haven't had a problem getting interviews - including with the big name co's. Admittedly, it's possible I'm getting dropped silently from some applications but the only people who actually ask about my education at this point are recruiters looking to populate their database fields.
The verification is the Harvard sweatshirt you wear to the interview.
Now I want to do a thing where during interviews I wear merch from a different university than the one on my CV, especially from locations it would be extremely improbable for me to go to university and during interviews aggressively hint I went to said university instead of the one I actually said I went to, without outright saying anything false.
Back when I was in college, the only time you’d wear your own school’s logo was when attending a sporting event. Otherwise, folks always wore some other school’s colors — I think the implication was that they had a significant other attending another university. An unspoken “Yea, I have a boy/girlfriend, but you’ve never met them; they go to a different school.”
load more comments
(1 replies)
I once had a coworker whose CV said she had a BSc from Oxford University.
Clearly neither she nor our hiring manager knew much about Oxford.
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›