Just when you think the ecosystem couldn’t get more surreal — employers demanding focus inside a human terrarium — another species appears: the LinkedIn Guru.
If open offices drain your sanity, these people drain your will to live. They are everywhere: self-made thought leaders, mindset warriors, personal-brand evangelists, and people who post 14-line poems about resilience followed by 22 hashtags. At the center of the genre sits Brendan Dell. Dell is a real LinkedIn marketing guru — part copywriter, part self-mythologizer, part algorithm whisperer. One recent post began:
Years ago I was a copywriter making $75/hour… I felt stuck… I hated the treadmill…
So I climbed the value stack…
Messaging strategy…
$15K → $50K → $100K+…
Anyone can do this…
Change your story, change your price, change your life.”
Dell’s post, like much of his output, is a masterclass in the guru genre: a relatable origin story, an emotional hook, a vague method, miraculous numbers, and promise of universal transformation
It’s not mentorship. It’s not career strategy. It’s narrative arbitrage–rebranding old consulting tropes as revelation. And it exists for a simple reason: The worse the job market becomes, the more people look for salvation narratives. These influencers exist to fill a psychological void — the one created when work becomes precarious and identity becomes transactional.
By this point — after the layoffs, the ghosted interviews, the algorithmic purgatory, the open-office utopianism, and the influencer prophets promising transformation through “mindset” — the truth becomes painfully clear: The system is exhausted, and so are the people in it.
Every part of this ecosystem feels engineered to grind workers into submission, then scold them for being tired. Which is why I end this series the way every modern job seeker eventually ends their day: by closing the laptop, staring out the window, and surrendering to the absurdity of the moment.
Bless every single one of you. We’re all in this circus together.
Finally, this is the job news I wish I could announce:
🎉 Life Update! 🎉
After months of soul-searching, networking, rejection, re-networking, and Googling “how to fake confidence in Zoom interviews,” I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve accepted a new role as Senior Vice President of Quantum Reinvention and Existential Mild Panic at a company that may or may not exist yet.
This journey has been anything but easy. There were days I doubted myself. There were nights I refreshed LinkedIn until the algorithm begged me to go outside. But I kept going. Not because I’m brave. But because my dog Willow refused to give up on me. She sat beside me through every failed application, every awkward coffee chat, and every moment I considered becoming a full-time kombucha influencer.
And to my wife Jane—thank you for your unwavering love, your support, and your daily reminders that if I didn’t find a job soon, I’d be living in the Airstream with Willow and a stack of rejection emails. Truly inspirational.
To everyone who believed in me: I see you. To everyone who didn’t: I also see you. And I know where you live.
I post this not to brag, but to revel in my crushing victory. And to those of you who also applied for this job, all I can say is: Losers!
This new chapter is about growth, grit, and pretending I know what “synergize cross-functional deliverables” means.
And remember: Whether you think you can or think you can’t… there’s a 50/50 chance you’re right. Or wrong. Or somewhere in the middle. Life’s weird.
As Céline Dion once said: “Love can touch us one time… and last for a lifetime… and never let go till we’re gone.” Which is exactly how I feel about my LinkedIn Premium subscription.
-end-
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