Welcome To LinkedIn. Sorry.

Dear 20% of people at Wieden + Kennedy hashtag#portland. And to the unspecified numbers of absurdly talented people from Ogilvy, VML, Huge, R/GA, Grey, Havas North America, Anomaly, Mother, Google, Paramount, VICE Media

Welcome to LinkedIn
I know, I know...
It’s not the party you wanted to go to.
This wasn't the welcome you ever wanted.
Or the one you deserve.
Being here isn’t what you’ve earned.
It's not some just desserts.
Or an industry-wide pronouncement of your value.
But there is a stupid idea, created by the insecure and propagated by the narcissistic, that people who are underemployed somehow “Deserve it.”
That they (and now you) do not possess the talent, dedication, or savvy to avoid sucking it with all the other feckless flops, fizzles, and washouts.

And that idea is the very first thing not to accept.
And it’s super hard not to.

Welcome.

Here are some things that you never wanted to know about being here.

Applying through a job board is the equivalent of playing the lottery. Whether you get an interview has more to do with formatting and keywords than how brilliant you are.

Don’t compare your life to the glory posts of others.
There’s a huge amount of well-deserved showboating here.
Everyone is justifiably proud of being on an awards show jury.
Everyone joyously shows off the great new things they made.
Everyone high-fives about winning.
Which is great.
Except it's not you.
And Jimmy cracked corn.
Try to remember that no one's life is as splendid as everyone else's press releases.

Being here means that you’re part of something.
It's not just a shitbox of self-promotion and desperation.
It's your shitbox of whatever you want and need it to be.
If you make an effort to make it better. It will be better to you.

Be honest.
Too few people embrace how much it can suck to be here.
Everyone here is heartbroken.
Or had their hearts broken.
And despite all that, the lot of us are hugely unreliable pessimists.
We all want to be dispirited cynics, but we can't.
We dream too fucking hard.

And lastly,
you’re in good company.
The best company.

Welcome.