Why Did You Endorse Me?

I’m not a person that is lacking in self-confidence. I try to be honest with myself about what I do well and what I don’t. I’m pretty good at spending time with my kids. I’m not so good at taking out the trash. I don’t lack for confidence in my ability to both write code and manage teams of developers. That said:

I was pretty excited when LinkedIn rolled out its endorsement feature. Soliciting recommendations on LinkedIn always felt like begging for a date in high school. Erhm, not that I spent my evenings watching reruns of MASH with my parents, what with being the dude who programmed Blackjack games on his calculator during football games…

The endorsement feature went live and people started endorsing some of the skills I listed on my profile. It started with some of my old classmates from business school. I co-founded Goalee while getting an MBA and was known as the guy who made websites so these endorsements made some sense. I got a couple of endorsements from people in the industry that I’ve worked with and for whom I have respect, and that was gratifying. But then I started getting endorsements from people that I’ve never worked with and who have no technical background. I’m talking about the kind of people rocking IE 6 with three or four toolbars. And it’s one thing if those technophobes are previous clients that can vouch for the work you do, but it’s quite another when it’s an old family friend with whom you exchange Christmas cards.

I’ll be honest in saying that I don’t completely understand what LinkedIn’s end game is. It also appears that I’m not the only one who thinks this feature either is, or is becoming, worthless.