The translator that everyone is talking about was created by the search engine Kagi. LinkedIn Speak isn't the only language that the tool is capable of translating. It works just like Google Translate or any other kind of translating software: you input text in one language and get a translation in another. It supports 284 languages, and LinkedIn Speak happens to be one of them.
Kagi was founded in 2018 by Vladimir Prelovac in Palo Alto, California. The search engine launched in 2022, but the LinkedIn language translator has been available only for a few days as of March 20th. Kagi seems to be trying to rival Google to become the number one search engine. Perhaps this little fun feature is the key?
Kagi also has other quirky languages in its generator. Some include Reddit Speak, Klingon, and other English dialects like Middle English and Scottish Gaelic. For those who are familiar with Kagi, this LinkedIn translator seems like a clever joke.
"Is this an early April Fool's joke by Kagi?" one netizen asked. "Transforming text between different languages and styles is the thing LLMs are exceptionally good at, so I don't think it's interesting on a technical level," they observed.
Nevertheless, it's good promotion for the brand. Perhaps creating such a generator is not so hard, but the joke of it all might just be worth it. And the translator works both ways, so the next time you need help understanding what your HR department is throwing at you with their cryptically worded messages, try out Kagi!
It's now an open secret that LinkedIn's culture has become quite weird. As Coco Khan of The Guardian put it, it's "Stepford Wives, employment edition." If you were to look on Reddit, they're referring to LinkedIn users as "NPCs" and their behavior as "cultish." Even other LinkedIn users have written about LinkedIn folks acting weird and cringey.
If you're ever on LinkedIn, you'll notice that CEOs, managers, and hiring professionals are the top posters. Regular users either use it as a platform for their CVs or to check what that one classmate is doing now with their career 15 years later.
Fadeke Adegbuyi hits the nail on the head in her essay "LinkedIn's Alternate Universe": everything on the platform seems performative. Although that's true for all social media platforms in some capacity, professionalism, job hunting, and networking are what we need to do, not something we do for fun.
So, the people who post NPC-like essays and messages on LinkedIn are seen as incredibly cringy and off-putting. No normal person wants to hustle more than absolutely necessary, and this constant romanticization of "optimization" and "maximum impact" gets tiring really fast.
Every platform has its royalty," Adebuyi writes. "On Instagram, it's influencers, foodies, and photographers. Twitter belongs to the founders, journalists, celebrities, and comedians. On LinkedIn, it’s hiring managers, recruiters, and business owners who hold power on the platform and have the ear of the people. The depravity of a platform where HR Managers are the rockstars speaks for itself."
