I see a lot of emphasis on being :linkedin: famous these days. While a lot of it is valuable content, I wonder what's the motivation behind it? What's in it for very senior engineers?
Having a giant megaphone always has value, and that's pretty much what building a known brand is. You might not have a use for it right now, but there's a lot of viable use-cases that could occur for you later on:
What's in it for very senior engineers?
As a fairly senior engineer who posts to LinkedIn way too much and is mentoring several other engineers on doing the same, here are some additional reasons:
If you're interested in building your presence on LinkedIn, I recommend joining my upcoming event: How I Get 500,000+ LinkedIn Post Views Per Week - By Alex Chiou
Take action to increase your luck surface area. One of the best ways to improve your odds of getting lucky is to become top-of-mind when it comes to a job, topic, or other domain.
Posting on LinkedIn consistently is one of the easiest ways for you to build that expertise.
For me, it led to valuable connections. Concretely, I was able to teach a LinkedIn Learning course back in 2021 due to the network I was able to create.
When people disagree with me, I learn from it.
I learn that I wasn't clear - and hopefully how to be clearer in future.
I learn how to better convince others when I am right.
And most of all I learn something useful when I'm wrong.
Alex hit on a lot of great points in his post. I'll add a few more from my POV.
If you're looking to advance your career: Treat your post history as your personal content library. It can be extremely powerful when job searching or making new connections. Relying purely on your LinkedIn profile and CV is difficult to properly showcase all your expertise. For example, you might only spend one line on a CV on an accomplishment, but the journey you took to attain that accomplishment is better expressed through a series of posts or newsletter articles.
If you're running a business (especially in career services): LinkedIn is one of the best ways to generate leads and nurture them over time. There are several mid to high 6-figure businesses where LinkedIn is their primary channel.
You don't really need to bother posting on linkedin unless there's clear value for your brand you're trying to build through social media. I personally post on linkedin every day trying to connect with Mr. Beast to only satirize how linkedin is mostly filled with low quality influencer content.