32
votes
The Filipino virtual assistants behind LinkedIn’s “thought leadership” content mill
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- Authors
- Michael Beltran, Indranil Ghosh, Daniella Fernández, Andrea Paola Hernández
- Published
- May 18 2026
- Word count
- 1282 words
Everything I ever read about Linkedin makes me question my sanity. What a vast monument to nothing at all.
Like most social media, it used to be genuinely useful. A digital business contact Roledex that automatically updates when people move jobs, get promoted, etc was a really useful thing. Then they built all the social media engagement nonsense into it, and it became a circlejerk of thought leaders and aspiring business consultants. The useful bits are still technically there, but now they're buried under a mountain of bullshit.
I feel like it's still required, however.
I've been out of the office world for about 8-years now and am finally ready to jump back in here now (terrible timing, I know), so I've been updating my Linked In, just so it looks relevant because I know people in the business world still value it for some reason.
Back when I deleted my account, my thinking was: Do I want to work for people who value this shit?
Honestly, at this point I just need a job and I want it to be a white collar job again. If I need to kiss a little ass so I can nab a paycheck and stop worrying about money, so be it, because it'll at least get my foot in the door again.
I understand. Best of luck!
The problem is that they all do now. And if you’re not participating you might as well not exist.
I don’t understand what people get out of LI, I see so many people posting on it but I wonder who reads if anyone.
And yet if you don’t have LI it’s a huge red flag to the machine/people doing the filtering when you apply.
I see this sentiment regularly regarding it and yet I have a very well paying white collar job having never had an account at all...
Seems more a self-fulfilling prophecy or perhaps something started by people invested in everyone having an account and people just pick it up and run with it.
Same with every other social site. I'm apparently supposed to have every twit-book-gram-tok-blue-deadelephant and yet I have none and have never had any and there's nothing missing in my life from not having them.
For link-y poo during job interviews (and every other social site in normal conversation) I've been asked what mine is and say I have none and never have. Occasionally I'm asked why and I respond with the honest question of what purpose does it serve and am never given an answer other than what amounts to "Because everyone has it."
I've had exactly one interview where they said the job requires it and I said "Then I suppose this interview is over."
Interesting. How do you find jobs to apply?
I have recruiters I've worked with in the past. If I'm looking to move jobs, I tell them so and what I want. They do their job. I treat them like a real estate agent. Many a recruiter is on linky-poo just searching away all day. These are shit recruiters. A good one has contacts, I use the latter.
If I'm just exploring moving to a new place or see what's around, I go to company's website that I think I'd like to check out and click on "Careers".
Just an anecdote - two last jobs (decent jobs) I found without LI account at all. Everybody's been telling me it's impossible, but turned out it's not.
Same here. I got my first full-time job (IT) in 2019 after graduating and have since switched twice. Still don’t have it.
Yeah, I'm just exploring all avenues at this point, since I've been out of the game for a long, long time.
I'm not even sure I want to go back to the field I was in or if I'll even be able to do the work, given its been so long.
So many job forms in tech have a mandatory field for LinkedIn profile these days even. Having been involved in interviewing, we never really looked at it because we got the actual CV which is what we looked at (I can't rule out HR looking at it in pre-screening though). I asked a friend that works at an ATS company why their product seems to require it and they said as far as they could tell it was because it let them populate avatars in the CV list to make their UI look better.
I've seen it be required when filling out the application form. I just put N/A like any other field that does not apply to me.
It can still be useful. The LinkedIn influencer slop not so much, but it can be useful to find out about job openings or as a point of contact for recruiters. My wife found her current position because someone in her network advertised the opening and it came up on her feed.
Absolutely. I got my current job because a casual friend posted about an opening in his department. Our initial conversation was in a LinkedIn DM, then a phone call.
I'm not an expert, but my family is from the Philippines. The economy there is still worse than the US, so the dollar goes a long way. I remember a couple decades ago, one of my cousins worked in the Philippines in a call center for ebay.
So it's not at all surprising to see that they contract work out there. Sounds like they're paying around local minimum wage.
I'm not an expert either, and my family too is from the Philippines (well, my parents are; I'm from the US), but my understanding is there's a burgeoning middle class, especially in places like Metro Manila, because of BPO companies and virtual assistants and the like. Young educated people can jobs at these places and they pay decently.
Having visited the Philippines a couple times, it is weird to pass by the BPO offices late at night, like midnight around Makati and Taugig. It's an office park; it should be dead that late at night. But no! Tons of people just hanging out outside the buildings on their breaks, smoking, chitchatting, whatever. But they're probably servicing American clients that are 12+hrs behind, where it's daytime.
Min wage is about $1.60 USD/hour or even less in provincia. Some Minute Burger employees are probably flipping burgers right now for about $3 per day in the Visayas... so there are definitely people earning less than minimum wage...
The Philippines is the largest call center ecosystem in the world with something like 1.5 million call center agents. $7/hour is easily 2-3x the median call center wage.
I think there's no contest that its cringe. The question I got for folks is, is it the platform's fault or is it people's fault? Which one takes the bigger pie?
It's the same feedback loop as any other platform.
Follow the engagement-centipede back to the root, and you'll find an open platform that originally was a product for the users. Once there were enough users, they became the product instead, and the feedback loop begins.
So, to answer your question: I blame the platform.
I don't disagree with any of what you said but one's entire professional ethics is on the line here. So basically following that conclusion we are at a place where many people with top tier jobs are open and happily farming engagement by sharing cringe. I'm still deciding which one to blame in majority but I think people should take some of the blame for sure.