When LinkedIn Made Me Practice What I Was Preaching Against

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When LinkedIn Made Me Practice What I Was Preaching Against

I just wrote a post about the "Ambujam Effect"—how companies mimic each other's layoffs not out of necessity, but performance. How executives cut jobs to signal efficiency to Wall Street, even while posting record profits.

Then LinkedIn told me my post was 1,018 characters too long.

The First Round of Cuts

I had to decide: Which sentences were "essential"? Which examples could I afford to lose? Which explanatory phrases were just "nice to have"?

I made the cuts. Painful, but necessary to meet the platform's arbitrary limit.

The Second Round

Then LinkedIn came back: "Still 18 characters over the limit."

Eighteen characters. Not a paragraph. Not even a full sentence. Just... a bit more efficiency needed.

The Irony Wasn't Lost

Here I was, writing about how layoffs are often driven by arbitrary metrics rather than genuine need—and I was being forced to enact the exact same process on my own words.

What did I sacrifice in those cuts?

  • Supporting evidence that might have convinced skeptics
  • Nuance that acknowledged complexity
  • Transitions that made the argument flow better

Just like corporate layoffs, the "optimization" didn't make the message better. It just made it fit the constraint.

The Accidental Lesson

LinkedIn's character limit became the perfect meta-commentary on my own argument:

Arbitrary limits force cuts that serve systemic constraints, not quality outcomes.

Whether it's a 3,000-character limit or a quarterly earnings target, the pressure to "optimize" often means sacrificing substance for metrics.

The platform didn't just host my message about performative efficiency—it forced me to perform it.

P.S. - I didn't get to send a heartfelt memo to the deleted characters about "difficult decisions" and "positioning for future growth." But I'm sure they understood it was nothing personal. Just business.

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