Part 3 · Operate
The LinkedIn state machine
Request, acceptance, three touches, and the rule that stops all of it.
01What it is
Every LinkedIn conversation sits in a state with a due date. The machine advances on what the companion observes and stops permanently the moment somebody replies.
02Why it exists
The single most important rule is that somebody who answered never receives the next scheduled message. Everything else in this machine exists to make that safe.
Three touches is the end. A fourth unanswered message is not persistence, and the cadence is deliberately conservative: three messages in a week to somebody you have never spoken to is the behaviour that makes this category disliked.
03How to use it
- 01Send connection requests yourself. The companion records them.
- 02Work the queue on Today. It leads with what is closest to lost.
- 03Pause a thread when somebody is on holiday. Nothing moves a paused thread except lifting the pause.
- 04Let a thread end at three touches.
04What good looks like
- You give it
- A request accepted on day three, touch one on day four, a reply on day six.
- You get
- The sequence stops permanently. No further touch is ever queued.
- Why
- A reply is terminal from every state in the machine.
Derived from the rules in the code
05What weak looks like, and what it costs
- You give it
- A paused thread resumed after two weeks.
- You get
- Timing restarts from now rather than firing what was overdue.
- Why
- Lifting a pause re-times rather than catching up, because catching up would send three overdue touches at once.
Derived from the rules in the code