Ken Cheng doesn't believe in giving his employees raises to boost productivity. He has a simpler solution: Take away their desk chairs. Without the ability to sit, workers are more alert and inspired, he wrote on LinkedIn.
But that's because Cheng isn't really an executive. He's a 35-year-old comedian in London who has crafted a satirical CEO personality on the professional-networking platform: "I want to connect with you, emotionally :)," his LinkedIn tagline reads. He writes posts in what has become classic, and chaotic, LinkedIn style:
Open with a life or work conundrum (from providing difficult feedback to a direct report to confessing that you have difficulty urinating in public restrooms).
Space out each sentence or clause into its own paragraph.
To build suspense.
And wrap it all up with some unexpected lesson learned that has further propelled you to success.
Cheng's wisdom includes the realization that it's OK for men to cry if it's over the end of tax loopholes, that swapping raises for an air-hockey table is great for morale, and that there are ways to justify watching porn at work.
The absurdity resonates with workers scrolling their professional feeds, where his posts often blend in so seamlessly people can't tell whether they're satire. Cheng has gained thousands of followers in the past few months, and even about 7,000 in the past week as his posts have gone viral and been shared by others on Reddit and X. "Everyone has met a boss. Everyone has met a person who has hit the top end and they're just not very smart," Cheng told me of his craft. Collectively, we're watching as billionaire tech CEOs make outlandish style choices and challenge each other to cage matches. The comedy comes in part from "seeing these insanely rich people lose their minds," Cheng said. LinkedIn is one of the places we're all watching that happen in real time. But can a platform known for cringe humblebragging and manufactured corporate enthusiasm become actually funny?
Comedians like Cheng are posting on it as LinkedIn content has gotten far weirder. It's a place that lays bare, as my colleague Rob Price put it, how "no one really knows what it means to be 'professional' anymore." The screenshots of deranged posts that fill the subreddit r/LinkedInLunatics and the X account @BestofLinkedin capture the vibe shift of the once buttoned-up social network. There are bosses who applaud themselves as innovative leaders for instituting company policies like no raises. There are oversharers divulging too much about their personal lives on the platform, like divorces, exotic vacations, and, in at least one instance, five lessons on principles from when a startup worker's CEO slept with the employee's wife "in retaliation for my pushback on him at work." Last week, Ryan Salame, a former co-CEO of FTX, posted one of LinkedIn's typical new job updates, tongue in cheek: "I'm happy to share that I'm starting a new position as Inmate at FCI Cumberland!" (His profile is no longer available.) Salame is serving seven years in prison in Maryland for campaign-finance fraud.
Workplace humor is a well-trodden trope. "Office Space" remains a cult classic for its wry commentary on micromanaging bosses, long commutes, and the catharsis of exacting revenge on the printer for another paper jam. "The Office" was a take on corporate life with a buffoon as a boss — it was both cringe-inducing and redeeming. Maybe work can be a family, we're nearly convinced after many seasons of watching Michael Scott long for connection and the blossoming of workplace romances. Fittingly, "The Office" was the most streamed show of 2020. Locked down at home, America was nostalgic for a more winsome view of office life. Post-pandemic, workplace humor has taken a far more pointed turn.
Today, instead of poking fun at the mundanities of office life or a quirky boss, LinkedIn comedians such as Cheng take aim at their CEOs' egos and tone deafness. They question company loyalty, the grinding mindset, and other ideals that have long been the mark of a reliable worker — it's not just about having "a case of the Mondays."
Cheng says he has never worked a corporate job; he's always been a comedian and an online poker player. "I've always been against corporate structure," he said. "I've never respected people who have risen up in those structures." But since he started using LinkedIn for comedy, he sees a larger shift. The pandemic made more people think "nothing means anything," Cheng said. We're living in a world of anti-work culture fueled by post-peak-pandemic changes that had people reevaluating their priorities and relationship to work. Viral posts about bad bosses pushed an anti-work sentiment, previously a more niche idea, into the mainstream in 2021. In a 2023 Gallup survey, just one-third of US workers said they felt engaged in the workplace, compared to 40% in 2020. But in a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, just 11% of workers said they felt dissatisfied with their boss — while 26% said they felt dissatisfied with their pay. Books like "Work Won't Love You Back" and "The Good Enough Job," published in 2021 and 2023, respectively, have been popular. Workplace trends like the "Great Resignation" and "quiet quitting" showcase the refusal to work under exploitative conditions for unfair wages and a rejection of the power-hungry grind.
And corporate trolling's momentum is building. John Mulaney roasted Salesforce workers when hired to perform at the company's annual Dreamforce event in September. "Some of the vaguest language ever devised has been used here in the last three days," Mulaney said. "The fact that there are 45,000 'trailblazers' here couldn't devalue the title any more." It's a mindset that finds its way onto TikTok and Instagram's Reels, too: Comedians there make skits about their day jobs in front of computers. And the critiques increasingly take on topics about the larger value companies and work have in our lives.
This isn't 'Dilbert.' It's the chore of finding work in this economy and not really understanding what this economy even wants from you.
Jason Roeder
But this snark, typically found on X, has seeped into LinkedIn, a much rosier, earnest platform. "The environment is not at all built for it," Jason Roeder, a Los Angeles humor writer and former editor at The Onion, said of the marriage between comedy and LinkedIn. "People have just kind of imposed themselves on it."
He's one of those people. Roeder quit X and started writing joke posts on LinkedIn about a year ago, he said, after becoming "disillusioned" with what X has become. He sometimes gets replies from people trying to be helpful, not understanding that he's satirizing the platform and the employment climate itself. "I almost find it sweet when I post something nonsensical, when someone swoops in with some helpful advice and resources," Roeder said. That sort of earnestness is as much a part of LinkedIn as the inspirational bragging. LinkedIn posts can expose just as much about one person's struggle to find work as they can about another's boasted success. "This isn't 'Dilbert,'" Roeder added. "It's the chore of finding work in this economy and not really understanding what this economy even wants from you."
LinkedIn's own relationship to jokes is complicated. The platform is focused on promoting "knowledge" content, or posts that offer advice and insights. But as LinkedIn's editor in chief Daniel Roth has said, content creators have a balance to strike while showcasing productivity: Followers "also want to see your personality — that you can have fun while doing both. Work doesn't have to be homework.
Unhinged LinkedIn content must hit a sort of tipping point. It's unlikely that comedy can become a staple of the platform in the way that "shitposting" thrives on X and Reddit, or comedians in skits do on TikTok — LinkedIn lends itself to niche humor on office and remote-work culture. The occasional laugh to break up a feed of job seeking and brownnosing is refreshing, but being funny on LinkedIn ultimately still serves the platform's foundational purposes: self-promotion and networking. Cheng said the posts had helped him to get comedy gigs, but they've also unlocked new work on the platform itself: as a LinkedIn ghostwriter for executives. He's trying it out, writing in his catchy style but with the more subdued musings of a real CEO, he said. Maybe not everyone gets the joke. But some see the following he's built, and they're hungry for that same LinkedIn clout.
Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.