08 May 2007, Posted by Matthew Reinbold in New Work Ways, Thought & Theory, 8 Comments

LinkedIn as Cult Builder

A cult, as defined by everyone’s favorite dubious source (Wikipedia), is

a cohesive group of people …devoted to beliefs or practices that the surrounding culture or society considers to be outside the mainstream. Its status may come about either due to its novel belief system, its idiosyncratic practices, its perceived harmful effects on members, or because it perceived opposition to the interests of the mainstream culture.

Growing up on the upper Great Plains meant that there weren’t a lot of highly technical people around. When my interest in computers first started manifesting itself (sometime around middle school, much like a mutant power) there weren’t a whole lot of local cultural touchstones to serve as guides. The career path laid out before me was one of best guesses based on what popular tech culture seeped to my middle of nowhere. It was always assumed that after graduating college I would go off to some place like an IBM, or Microsoft, or Intel – usually because my rural community vaguely understood those places did something with computers.

The problem with having an assumption stand in for a career blueprint is that it doesn’t map reality. I did an extended internship at IBM. I worked for a Microsoft branch. While I never was employed by Intel a good friend was. The firsthand stories of cubical drudgery and unmet personal fulfillment was not what the mainstream society had written about. There are certainly those that have and can flourish in those environments. However, as a college student, seeing someone emotionally break down after realizing their highest professional achievement would be middle management is quite profound.

As I briefly mentioned before I am extremely selective in who I connect to on LinkedIn. By doing so I am not limiting my networking opportunities. Instead, by selective filtering, I am re-enforcing a set of constraints that encourage individual empowerment. If you are simply a moth fluttering from one megacorp flame-out to another my network will be of no value to you. I am constraining my LinkedIn network to those who are not just professionally inclined, but ideologically as well. In my role as node I am attempting to facilitate those running contrary to ‘traditional’ software employment. In short, I’m building a cult (without any of that messy religious pretense, of course).

Will I ever have a large LinkedIn network this way? Of course not because, frankly, most people don’t think this way – and that’s perfectly fine. The value of my network lies not in numbers but the cohesion of those that are there. As for the ‘ perceived harmful effects on members’ that’s a post for another time.

Special thanks to the LinkedIntellegence Blog for the topic idea on top uses for LinkedIn.