12 ms·

The next professional network will not look like LinkedIn

186 points by ohjeez 7y ago

t34543 7y ago
LinkedIn started great but they shit the bed. The path they chose wasn’t aligned with users interests, it was to serve themselves. Fraudulent LinkedIn profiles are a big problem, too.
- everdev 7y ago
  Not to mention spam connection requests. I get a few of these each week: "I came across your profile and thought we might mutually benefit from connecting. I help business generate 1,000 high quality leads a month..."
  - servercobra 7y ago
    "Oh you work on Toptal? I have a business proposal for you. What if I use your profile and do all the work, and give you 30%!" I get a few of those a week.
tarr11 7y ago
It’s worth mentioning that this VC is an investor in Webflow, one of the companies mentioned that is “unbundling LinkedIn”.
- sequoia 7y ago
  Yeah that's not ethical as far as I know to not disclose one's financial connection to a company one is "reporting" about. For posterity can you link to her connection to webflow?
  - rauchp 7y ago
    Ironically enough, it's on her LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/briannekimmel https://www.linkedin.com/in/briannekimmel
  - npo9 7y ago
    It is unethical, but the entire article is designed to convince people LinkedIn is outdated. It’s written on a blog that has 0 other submissions to hacker news. It was obviously a fluff piece written by someone trying to disrupt professional networks. It doesn’t change the quality of her argument.
  - tarr11 7y ago
    I found it on her Twitter https://twitter.com/briannekimmel https://twitter.com/briannekimmel
- nmcfarl 7y ago
  Webflow seems to be a Wix competitor - and in spite of her mentioning it's "template showcase" in the article as example of some sort of next generation LinkedIn community replacement - it's really a place to buy templates - and I would bet that no one has ever "built an audience there" much less gotten a gig (that's not directly related to a template they sold (or gave away)).
Pxtl 7y ago
I'm always surprised that Facebook didn't pivot into that space and eat LinkedIn's lunch. The bar is really low. Facebook's main layout is already very professional-looking (except for the ads and games), and they market it for internal social networks. Bolting on resumes and job searching, letting users have a professional face to their page... wouldn't be a huge stretch.
- ghaff 7y ago
  One of the challenges with that is that, to the degree I "like" either Facebook or LinkedIn, I actually like the fact that one is mostly a personal social network and the other is pretty much just a Rolodex for professional contacts. I'm probably not alone in trying to keep the two spheres largely separate (though I don't on Twitter).
  - Pxtl 7y ago
    Well yes, they'd have to do the Google Plus Circles sort of thing where your different friends are placed into different groups, so you can keep your Professional and Personal facebook separate-but-linked. And yeah, Twitter is the water-cooler/street-corner, it conflates the professional and the personal in its culture.
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      And that's why Google+ ate FB'd and LinkedIn's lunch
      - skinkestek 7y ago
        No. The reason for that was that Google is Google and in Google the only thing that matters is launching new things[0] and keeping gmail/gsuite[1] and the ads[2] running. You might think I'm exaggerating, but frankly, even the search product has seen a massive decline since 2009. [0]: based on testimonials from googlers and xooglers here on HN. [1][2]: based on observations.
      - 7y ago
CriticalCathed 7y ago
I only used linked in as a resume i could refer people to and occasionally for networking with other professionals. what linkedin actually became is a way to get tons of unsolicited offers from headhunters and the resume component lost significant value because of that. I deleted my profile but there's no undoing it because of thoroughly it got crawled. I regret using it. whatever new system comes it better have stronger privacy controls and more free form resumes.
- dangus 7y ago
  LinkedIn has a huge control panel of privacy controls, along with controls to manage what you get notified on. There’s no way you can get “crawled” if your settings are correct.
- randomidiot666 7y ago
  Reactivate it and edit your profile to make it blank. You can delete your work history but still keep your contact list.
golergka 7y ago
So, StackOverflow and Github?
- GonzaloQuero 7y ago
  Not every professional is a developer
  - brujoand 7y ago
    Not every developer is a professional either. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to fragment this space.
dangus 7y ago
I don’t agree with this assessment at all. First, the analysis is woefully limited to specialized aspects pertaining to only the tech industry. A lot of the disruptive forces linked in the article are highly ill specific to very limited situations. Second, the analysis doesn’t explain why it’s bad that LinkedIn appeals to businesses and recruiters. Why is that a problem? It appeals so well to them that basically all companies are on LinkedIn in some way, and that means that young people coming into the marketplace will go there to find work. They don’t have to enjoy it or even log in that often to justify keeping an active account. Personally, I know at least a few people who do not have a Facebook account at all, but they do have a LinkedIn, because that’s where the jobs are. Finally, making the assumption that LinkedIn itself won’t change over time is completely shortsighted. It’s owned by one of the better managed companies out there (Microsoft) with tons of resources to make changes. Accusing LinkedIn of being a relic of the past is like accusing Azure DevOps of being exactly the same as the old TeamForge Services - a woefully outdated view that only someone with zero recent exposure would take. It doesn’t matter that the LinkedIn feed is a stupid waste of time, the jobs platform and InMail are the bread and butter of the platform and the reason why anyone’s there in the first place. And by the way, if you’re looking for a job, give the Premium free trial a chance. The extra pieces of data you get on each listing can be really useful (although potentially not $40 a month useful), and there isn’t really another job website that can give them to you.
- ghaff 7y ago
  I find LinkedIn reasonably useful as a professional Rolodex. I've never fleshed out a resume on it and I mostly just ignore emails that come through it. But, then, I haven't gotten a job other than directly through personal contacts in decades. ADDED: To your broader points, a resume (especially for experienced people) has long been one of those things that you need to have and that people may use to roughly gauge potential fit. But very few people are making decisions based on only a resume, especially for senior positions. And portfolios, in whatever form, have always tended to trump resumes in certain fields. (Which can admittedly be problematic in software because some have portfolios they can share and other, potentially equally skilled developers, do not.)
  - 7y ago
vsskanth 7y ago
I'm surprised why people here hate on LinkedIn so much. I'm able to find and contact professionals working on very niche fields (the ones with little online presence) and follow their latest work. This is access I've previously never had. I'm not a developer so I don't get a lot of recruiter spam, but the ones that do contact me usually have very relevant openings for my experience.
- arkitaip 7y ago
  It's the HN echo chamber at work that finds little value in social networks targeting non-devs. I don't use LinkedIn myself but know lots that do and most do find work and opportunities through it, otherwise they wouldn't bother using it.
- bluedino 7y ago
  It's just another outlet for spammers/recruiters. And the sharing of Facebook-style posts is annoying. Indeed and LinkedIn are basically the only job sites these days so you need an account to use it. I wish I could block certain employers or be able to tell LinkedIn to quit telling me about jobs from certain companies.
- allthecybers 7y ago
  In a decade plus of my career, four of my most significant jobs, including my current role have come from being sourced/recruited on LinkedIn. I hate being on any social networks, and I feel like LinkedIn has declined in quality over the years, but I stay with LinkedIn. The primary reason is that you never know when you are going to be thrust into the job market, and its the key place to find future opportunities, identify gatekeepers and leverage your professional rolodex when an opportunity to earn an income is on the line.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    > a decade plus of my career, four of my most significant jobs This is an extremely niche persona among professional careers, overrepresented on HN.
motohagiography 7y ago
As someone hacking on a linkedin alternative as a side project to solve my own talent search problems, she's captured a lot of the rationale. Amazing. It's not just linkedin, the whole concept of a resume was to facilitate an unskilled middle manager who could manage labor in a commoditized way. Today, hiring managers know what they want, and talent competes globally. Teenagers especially understand that the difference between them and their parents is they are entering into a global talent market with a steep distribution curve. Growing up with social media threw them into the world of elite competition that previously only ivy league students were exposed to (thanks, Zuck). Resumes can't capture the differentiation they need to compete and leverage their real skills. The infrastructure around resumes was all about legitimizing that broker role for recruiters and enabling generalist HR managers, where those roles could be replaced by tech tomorrow, (or like 3-4 weeks, suppose I should launch).
- dangus 7y ago
  If hiring managers know what they want, how do they find the person that has what they want? Would that be...a distilled list of relevant skills and experience? How is a resume (digital or paper) not that? What exactly is your proposed alternative? Also, you speak to global competition as if that’s a universal trait of most jobs. That doesn’t really line up to reality. Many or most jobs can’t be performed remotely, and many or most jobs located far away have local equivalents (i.e. it’s not worth moving hundreds of miles away to drive a bus or put up drywall).
  - motohagiography 7y ago
    The signalling piece is what's missing and what I think I've solved. My exact proposed alternative will just have to get launched and see if it flies. Global competition for most jobs is very much a reality. I live in a country that spans an entire continent, as do americans. Many people cross continents and borders to get construction and trade jobs, which include driving heavy vehicles and hanging drywall, and the solution covers them as well. Exciting times.
- downerending 7y ago
znpy 7y ago
I would pass, if possible. I like LinkedIn because it a very low bs social network, and I would really appreciate for it to stay that way.
- inetknght 7y ago
  It was a low-bs social network. Today it's used mostly for recruiter spam and a pseudo-free blog advertisements.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- seattle_spring 7y ago
  > very low bs social network Your LinkedIn feed must be completely different than mine, because the shit I see shared there by monetized narcissists ("influencers") is far worse than even my Facebook feed.
platz 7y ago
Suits make a corporate comeback! http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
ignoramous 7y ago
EightFold.ai [0] is the most uneasy LinkedIn replacement I've come across, by far. They seem to be utilising similar tricks of trade used in targeted advertising, except now the developers are the adverts themselves and the keywords are bought by the recruiters. The claimed AI based engine from the co-founders previously behind adtech at bloomreach and newsfeed at facebook make it all the more spooky. [0] https://eightfold.ai/technology/ https://eightfold.ai/technology/
redmattred 7y ago
https://helpful.io/ https://helpful.io/ is another interesting alternative where the focus is on asking for/receiving career help within small-medium sized groups
p1esk 7y ago
Bullshit. Linkedin today is more useful than ever. It’s a way to bypass hr filter - first you go there to find companies you want to work at, then you find someone who already works there. Contact them. Get hired. This is how I found my current job.
- jupiter90000 7y ago
  That's pretty cool that it worked. If some random person on LinkedIn was like "hello can I get a job with you" I'd probably block them, but you must have a better way of saying it than I can think of.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    I pretty much hate cold calls from people who want to have coffee or whatever. Even if they happen to be one of the 100,000 people who happened to go to the same school as I did or whatever. I won't say I'll never respond. Maybe if they want to chat about an article I wrote of whatever and ask me some questions about my work or what I know about some specific opening while they're at it. But, if I don't know them, that's pretty much where the conversation would end. I'm not going to give them a recommendation.
    - p1esk 7y ago
      I'm the opposite. I love helping out a fellow engineer, especially when that does not involve much effort on my part. If anyone reading this is ever in Santa Barbara, let me know if you want to grab a coffee or a beer! :)
  - p1esk 7y ago
    you must have a better way of saying it Exactly.
  - underpand 7y ago
    It works best on recruiters, people actively looking for job seekers.
asmyers1793 7y ago
https://bravado.co/ https://bravado.co/ Bravado is a professional network for sales professionals.
AlphaWeaver 7y ago
I've noticed that smaller, targeted communities are on the rise. This thread [0] recently caught my attention and introduced me to Mighty Networks [1] which is software to enable these smaller niche communities. This is what comes to mind when I think of the "next professional network", even if it isn't some large centralized product that "everyone is on." [0]: https://twitter.com/tylertringas/status/1202990875120459776 https://twitter.com/tylertringas/status/1202990875120459776 [1]: https://www.mightynetworks.com/ https://www.mightynetworks.com/
- paulgb 7y ago
  I've noticed this too. In a way it's sort of a resurgence from the 2000s when independently-run forums ruled the day, but there's a different flavor to it because they tend to grow more from word of mouth. Slack groups not being indexed in Google search is surely part of that. This is generally seen as a feature, though, not a bug.
1e10 7y ago
It is clear to me that most people commenting here don’t understand or use LinkedIn effectively. And the recruiter hate is also unjustified.
puranjay 7y ago
The problem with the examples the author shared is that they only work in professions where your work and skills are easily demonstrable, aka "portfolio jobs". How would you demonstrate a skilled manager's capabilities without a resume that shows rapid advancement and dealing with increasingly higher responsibilities?
auiya 7y ago
Right, and Second Life was supposed to be a social gathering place and not at all a place for penises of every type and description to be put on display. Attempting to predict how a social network will behave is utterly futile.
tyingq 7y ago
"[LinkedIn] fails to reflect true potential such as grit, ability to collaborate with others" I'm not personally pining for a website that makes arbitrary ratings for such things.
underpand 7y ago
This is not a genuine post. This is a thinly-veiled informercial. She is an angel investor and owns a fund that invests in the type of professional networks she is promoting. She is even an angel investor for a company that she directly promotes in the post (Webflow). LinkedIn is sufficient the way it currently is. 1. Connect and contact professional peers 2. Contact recruiters 3. Display bare minimum work experience and look up this information of peers 4. Link to specialized work and portfolio e.g. github That covers the majority of consumer use cases and anything more complicates the website.
- tachyonbeam 7y ago
  I completely agree that this person should have been more forthcoming about their own affiliation. I think there are definitely issues with LinkedIn though. What I don't like about LinkedIn is how scammy it feels. They've tried to get me to enter my e-mail password in the past so they could get all my contacts... No thanks. Then there's the issue of being contacted by recruiters all the time even though I have my profile set to not looking for a job. I also wish there was a way to also say "not willing to relocate" (is there?). Lastly, I think the website could be more streamlined/simplified and better looking. That pic she posted from the LinkedIn interface in 2003. I like it better than the way the website looks now. So simple and straightforward. IMO, LinkedIn is "ripe for disruption". It's coasting on the network effect. The network effect is a powerful thing, but it didn't stop MySpace from getting killed despite its 100 million users.
  - ses1984 7y ago
    >I also wish there was a way to also say "not willing to relocate" (is there?). Would that stop recruiters from asking?
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    Who doesn't want to relocate for that swanky 6 month contract job in Iowa at 25% of your current pay.
- ryanhuff 7y ago
  You missed as a sales lead channel. Most of the activity I see are from vendors trying to sell products and services.
rsweeney21 7y ago
When my last startup was struggling to hit our growth goals after closing our series A round, I started formulating a theory: You can build pretty much any business if you have a large following on social media. I started thinking about this when someone told me that Tesla has no marketing budget and relies completely on Twitter and PR form Elon Musk. So I decided to give it a try with my new startup. We setup ad campaigns to ensure we had a traditional marketing channel that we could scale and then I started posting on LinkedIn. The results have been mind blowing. In 7 months I went form 1,000 followers to over 30,000 followers[0]. I was just named #4 in LinkedIn's Top Voices for 2019 for Software Development. A single post that goes viral on LinkedIn can generate $500,000-$2M in new sales opportunities for us and it costs us nothing. By developing a social media presence, we've been able to grow our company to $2M in annualized revenue (we aren't SaaS, so it's not ARR) without any outside funding. And we are profitable. So yeah, I think LinkedIn is pretty great. [0] Me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsweeney21/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsweeney21/ Shameless plug for our new startup: https://www.facetdev.com/ https://www.facetdev.com/
- ryeguy_24 7y ago
  Enjoyed reading this. How much did you have to spend on your initial ad campaign (or was that solely through content creation)? On a quick test I found the CPC and CPM rates to be insanely high especially if you target highly paid people.
  - rsweeney21 7y ago
    We started testing paid ads on LinkedIn and Facebook. We spent about $500/month to test. Just to clarify, this was to find customers for our product/service, not to acquire followers. Growing social media followers was only through making posts on LinkedIn. I started by accepting every connection I received. In month 5 I switch the default "Connect" button in my profile to follow because I was at 20,000 connections. LinkedIn has a max of 30K connections.
rdiddly 7y ago
Sometimes when you're having a hard time getting through a piece of writing, it's because the writer is so masterful, each word so rich with meaning, each turn of phrase so unusual and yet so apt, that you have to acknowledge a shining genius far beyond your own. This is not one of those times.
paulie_a 7y ago
Professional networks are stupid. It's an HR circle jerk but everyone is expected to have a glowing profile just for "reasons". Shitty recruiters love it though. LinkedIn is terrible at trying to get your contact list and the fraudulently email you saying a contact wants to connect. It's a complete waste of time. My recommendation is to use when searching for a job then immediately wipe your account. Plus some bosses monitor it to see if you are looking. It's a lose lose for individuals.
oarabbus_ 7y ago
Taking a wild guess without clicking the link, but this site must be a LinkedIn competitor.
mpfundstein 7y ago
linkedIn is so terrible. The facebook timeline really killed it IMO. Its full of 'consultants' publishing their worthless brainfarts and some feel good messages about work. urks. i quit it a while ago and i am very happy with it. I honestly was reluctant at first because I run my own business and thought it might be necessary, but quitting it didn't impact my business at all...
ryeguy_24 7y ago
Pretty poor article. In general, I think the LinkedIn network is quite powerful and is not simply for recruiters. That being said, I do think there is a lot of untapped potential sitting on this proprietary graph network of professional connections. If they don't move on this, others will.
jameswatling 7y ago
Interesting to see that even one of the co-founders of Linkedin has had similar thoughts, and started another company trying to focus on using your network to produce value, rather than be focused on recruiters and enterprise $. You can see more here (random interesting video from the platform) https://joinhub.com/posts/2hZQ9FZp?rc=James-Watling-4505 https://joinhub.com/posts/2hZQ9FZp?rc=James-Watling-4505
haileris 7y ago
LinkedIn is just about the one and only thing I have "because everyone else has one"
charlesholbrow 7y ago
Several years ago I noticed that I spent a lot of time creating my linked in profile, and got absolutely nothing in return for it. After that I started asking people if they had EVER gotten a job on LinkedIn. One person said yes. Several people said the know one person who had gotten a job on LinkedIn. I have asked a lot of people. Based on this I seriously doubt it is a good use of time for most job seekers. At the end of the day, it's another social media site that gives you a little endorphin rush when someone "likes" your status — but its not much (if anything) more.
- tracker1 7y ago
  I think it will largely depend on your skillset, job role and where you are located. For me it's like a floodgate and my current and a couple of past job roles were from LinkedIn contacts only.
0xdeadb00f 7y ago
"What's broke?" Is said multiple times throughout this article. For those who don't know, "what's _broken_" is the grammatically correct way to say this. Yes, I'm being a grammar Nazi. And no, that's not a bad thing. We speak English, and while a lot of it's rules are archaic and silly, this instance is not one of those silly rules. It's basic English.
rchaud 7y ago
This piece was extremely tech-centric and completely ignores all other job sectors, which is strange because tech people are already attuned to thinking of LinkedIn as a plague upon society. Finance people aren't going to have a Github. Healthcare professionals have no idea what Dribbble is. Girlboss is a niche network and its job listings are a drop in the bucket compared to what LinkedIn has. > If the new American Dream is defined by “creative expression, online influence and extreme optionality” over linear moves up the corporate ladder, then LinkedIn is enough to make any Millennial or Gen Z jobseeker cringe. The author must live in a pretty sheltered world if she thinks millennials are cringing at LinkedIn as opposed to applying to a million job listings across all networks for the slim chance of even getting an interview. Young and inexperiencee jobseekers make up a good chunk of LinkedIn's audience. Not a single recruiter is reaching out to them. LinkedIn is valuable because it gives them one way of finding people at organizations who may be willing to chat with them and give them a plain English breakdown of the skills needed at those jobs. The HR-penned job descriptions are hilariously inaccurate in many jobs and can appear to be designed to actively discourage people from applying due to the absurd requirements they post.
siddharthbhatia 7y ago
This is very true. LinkedIn has just been trying to mint money from the very people who helped build the company!
lowdose 7y ago
But will be bought by Microsoft like Github.

186 points by ohjeez 7y ago

LinkedIn started great but they shit the bed. The path they chose wasn’t aligned with users interests, it was to serve themselves. Fraudulent LinkedIn profiles are a big problem, too.

everdev 7y ago
Not to mention spam connection requests. I get a few of these each week: "I came across your profile and thought we might mutually benefit from connecting. I help business generate 1,000 high quality leads a month..."
- servercobra 7y ago
  "Oh you work on Toptal? I have a business proposal for you. What if I use your profile and do all the work, and give you 30%!" I get a few of those a week.

tarr11 7y ago

It’s worth mentioning that this VC is an investor in Webflow, one of the companies mentioned that is “unbundling LinkedIn”.

sequoia 7y ago
Yeah that's not ethical as far as I know to not disclose one's financial connection to a company one is "reporting" about. For posterity can you link to her connection to webflow?
- rauchp 7y ago
  Ironically enough, it's on her LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/briannekimmel https://www.linkedin.com/in/briannekimmel
- npo9 7y ago
  It is unethical, but the entire article is designed to convince people LinkedIn is outdated. It’s written on a blog that has 0 other submissions to hacker news. It was obviously a fluff piece written by someone trying to disrupt professional networks. It doesn’t change the quality of her argument.
- tarr11 7y ago
  I found it on her Twitter https://twitter.com/briannekimmel https://twitter.com/briannekimmel
nmcfarl 7y ago
Webflow seems to be a Wix competitor - and in spite of her mentioning it's "template showcase" in the article as example of some sort of next generation LinkedIn community replacement - it's really a place to buy templates - and I would bet that no one has ever "built an audience there" much less gotten a gig (that's not directly related to a template they sold (or gave away)).

Pxtl 7y ago

I'm always surprised that Facebook didn't pivot into that space and eat LinkedIn's lunch. The bar is really low. Facebook's main layout is already very professional-looking (except for the ads and games), and they market it for internal social networks. Bolting on resumes and job searching, letting users have a professional face to their page... wouldn't be a huge stretch.

ghaff 7y ago
One of the challenges with that is that, to the degree I "like" either Facebook or LinkedIn, I actually like the fact that one is mostly a personal social network and the other is pretty much just a Rolodex for professional contacts. I'm probably not alone in trying to keep the two spheres largely separate (though I don't on Twitter).
- Pxtl 7y ago
  Well yes, they'd have to do the Google Plus Circles sort of thing where your different friends are placed into different groups, so you can keep your Professional and Personal facebook separate-but-linked. And yeah, Twitter is the water-cooler/street-corner, it conflates the professional and the personal in its culture.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    And that's why Google+ ate FB'd and LinkedIn's lunch
    - skinkestek 7y ago
      No. The reason for that was that Google is Google and in Google the only thing that matters is launching new things[0] and keeping gmail/gsuite[1] and the ads[2] running. You might think I'm exaggerating, but frankly, even the search product has seen a massive decline since 2009. [0]: based on testimonials from googlers and xooglers here on HN. [1][2]: based on observations.
    - 7y ago

CriticalCathed 7y ago

I only used linked in as a resume i could refer people to and occasionally for networking with other professionals. what linkedin actually became is a way to get tons of unsolicited offers from headhunters and the resume component lost significant value because of that. I deleted my profile but there's no undoing it because of thoroughly it got crawled. I regret using it. whatever new system comes it better have stronger privacy controls and more free form resumes.

dangus 7y ago
LinkedIn has a huge control panel of privacy controls, along with controls to manage what you get notified on. There’s no way you can get “crawled” if your settings are correct.
randomidiot666 7y ago
Reactivate it and edit your profile to make it blank. You can delete your work history but still keep your contact list.

golergka 7y ago

So, StackOverflow and Github?

GonzaloQuero 7y ago
Not every professional is a developer
- brujoand 7y ago
  Not every developer is a professional either. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to fragment this space.

dangus 7y ago

I don’t agree with this assessment at all. First, the analysis is woefully limited to specialized aspects pertaining to only the tech industry. A lot of the disruptive forces linked in the article are highly ill specific to very limited situations. Second, the analysis doesn’t explain why it’s bad that LinkedIn appeals to businesses and recruiters. Why is that a problem? It appeals so well to them that basically all companies are on LinkedIn in some way, and that means that young people coming into the marketplace will go there to find work. They don’t have to enjoy it or even log in that often to justify keeping an active account. Personally, I know at least a few people who do not have a Facebook account at all, but they do have a LinkedIn, because that’s where the jobs are. Finally, making the assumption that LinkedIn itself won’t change over time is completely shortsighted. It’s owned by one of the better managed companies out there (Microsoft) with tons of resources to make changes. Accusing LinkedIn of being a relic of the past is like accusing Azure DevOps of being exactly the same as the old TeamForge Services - a woefully outdated view that only someone with zero recent exposure would take. It doesn’t matter that the LinkedIn feed is a stupid waste of time, the jobs platform and InMail are the bread and butter of the platform and the reason why anyone’s there in the first place. And by the way, if you’re looking for a job, give the Premium free trial a chance. The extra pieces of data you get on each listing can be really useful (although potentially not $40 a month useful), and there isn’t really another job website that can give them to you.

ghaff 7y ago
I find LinkedIn reasonably useful as a professional Rolodex. I've never fleshed out a resume on it and I mostly just ignore emails that come through it. But, then, I haven't gotten a job other than directly through personal contacts in decades. ADDED: To your broader points, a resume (especially for experienced people) has long been one of those things that you need to have and that people may use to roughly gauge potential fit. But very few people are making decisions based on only a resume, especially for senior positions. And portfolios, in whatever form, have always tended to trump resumes in certain fields. (Which can admittedly be problematic in software because some have portfolios they can share and other, potentially equally skilled developers, do not.)
- 7y ago

vsskanth 7y ago

I'm surprised why people here hate on LinkedIn so much. I'm able to find and contact professionals working on very niche fields (the ones with little online presence) and follow their latest work. This is access I've previously never had. I'm not a developer so I don't get a lot of recruiter spam, but the ones that do contact me usually have very relevant openings for my experience.

arkitaip 7y ago
It's the HN echo chamber at work that finds little value in social networks targeting non-devs. I don't use LinkedIn myself but know lots that do and most do find work and opportunities through it, otherwise they wouldn't bother using it.
bluedino 7y ago
It's just another outlet for spammers/recruiters. And the sharing of Facebook-style posts is annoying. Indeed and LinkedIn are basically the only job sites these days so you need an account to use it. I wish I could block certain employers or be able to tell LinkedIn to quit telling me about jobs from certain companies.
allthecybers 7y ago
In a decade plus of my career, four of my most significant jobs, including my current role have come from being sourced/recruited on LinkedIn. I hate being on any social networks, and I feel like LinkedIn has declined in quality over the years, but I stay with LinkedIn. The primary reason is that you never know when you are going to be thrust into the job market, and its the key place to find future opportunities, identify gatekeepers and leverage your professional rolodex when an opportunity to earn an income is on the line.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  > a decade plus of my career, four of my most significant jobs This is an extremely niche persona among professional careers, overrepresented on HN.

motohagiography 7y ago

As someone hacking on a linkedin alternative as a side project to solve my own talent search problems, she's captured a lot of the rationale. Amazing. It's not just linkedin, the whole concept of a resume was to facilitate an unskilled middle manager who could manage labor in a commoditized way. Today, hiring managers know what they want, and talent competes globally. Teenagers especially understand that the difference between them and their parents is they are entering into a global talent market with a steep distribution curve. Growing up with social media threw them into the world of elite competition that previously only ivy league students were exposed to (thanks, Zuck). Resumes can't capture the differentiation they need to compete and leverage their real skills. The infrastructure around resumes was all about legitimizing that broker role for recruiters and enabling generalist HR managers, where those roles could be replaced by tech tomorrow, (or like 3-4 weeks, suppose I should launch).

dangus 7y ago
If hiring managers know what they want, how do they find the person that has what they want? Would that be...a distilled list of relevant skills and experience? How is a resume (digital or paper) not that? What exactly is your proposed alternative? Also, you speak to global competition as if that’s a universal trait of most jobs. That doesn’t really line up to reality. Many or most jobs can’t be performed remotely, and many or most jobs located far away have local equivalents (i.e. it’s not worth moving hundreds of miles away to drive a bus or put up drywall).
- motohagiography 7y ago
  The signalling piece is what's missing and what I think I've solved. My exact proposed alternative will just have to get launched and see if it flies. Global competition for most jobs is very much a reality. I live in a country that spans an entire continent, as do americans. Many people cross continents and borders to get construction and trade jobs, which include driving heavy vehicles and hanging drywall, and the solution covers them as well. Exciting times.
downerending 7y ago

znpy 7y ago

I would pass, if possible. I like LinkedIn because it a very low bs social network, and I would really appreciate for it to stay that way.

inetknght 7y ago
It was a low-bs social network. Today it's used mostly for recruiter spam and a pseudo-free blog advertisements.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
seattle_spring 7y ago
> very low bs social network Your LinkedIn feed must be completely different than mine, because the shit I see shared there by monetized narcissists ("influencers") is far worse than even my Facebook feed.

platz 7y ago

Suits make a corporate comeback! http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

ignoramous 7y ago

EightFold.ai [0] is the most uneasy LinkedIn replacement I've come across, by far. They seem to be utilising similar tricks of trade used in targeted advertising, except now the developers are the adverts themselves and the keywords are bought by the recruiters. The claimed AI based engine from the co-founders previously behind adtech at bloomreach and newsfeed at facebook make it all the more spooky. [0] https://eightfold.ai/technology/ https://eightfold.ai/technology/

redmattred 7y ago

https://helpful.io/ https://helpful.io/ is another interesting alternative where the focus is on asking for/receiving career help within small-medium sized groups

p1esk 7y ago

Bullshit. Linkedin today is more useful than ever. It’s a way to bypass hr filter - first you go there to find companies you want to work at, then you find someone who already works there. Contact them. Get hired. This is how I found my current job.

jupiter90000 7y ago
That's pretty cool that it worked. If some random person on LinkedIn was like "hello can I get a job with you" I'd probably block them, but you must have a better way of saying it than I can think of.
- ghaff 7y ago
  I pretty much hate cold calls from people who want to have coffee or whatever. Even if they happen to be one of the 100,000 people who happened to go to the same school as I did or whatever. I won't say I'll never respond. Maybe if they want to chat about an article I wrote of whatever and ask me some questions about my work or what I know about some specific opening while they're at it. But, if I don't know them, that's pretty much where the conversation would end. I'm not going to give them a recommendation.
  - p1esk 7y ago
    I'm the opposite. I love helping out a fellow engineer, especially when that does not involve much effort on my part. If anyone reading this is ever in Santa Barbara, let me know if you want to grab a coffee or a beer! :)
- p1esk 7y ago
  you must have a better way of saying it Exactly.
- underpand 7y ago
  It works best on recruiters, people actively looking for job seekers.

asmyers1793 7y ago

https://bravado.co/ https://bravado.co/ Bravado is a professional network for sales professionals.

AlphaWeaver 7y ago

I've noticed that smaller, targeted communities are on the rise. This thread [0] recently caught my attention and introduced me to Mighty Networks [1] which is software to enable these smaller niche communities. This is what comes to mind when I think of the "next professional network", even if it isn't some large centralized product that "everyone is on." [0]: https://twitter.com/tylertringas/status/1202990875120459776 https://twitter.com/tylertringas/status/1202990875120459776 [1]: https://www.mightynetworks.com/ https://www.mightynetworks.com/

paulgb 7y ago
I've noticed this too. In a way it's sort of a resurgence from the 2000s when independently-run forums ruled the day, but there's a different flavor to it because they tend to grow more from word of mouth. Slack groups not being indexed in Google search is surely part of that. This is generally seen as a feature, though, not a bug.

1e10 7y ago

It is clear to me that most people commenting here don’t understand or use LinkedIn effectively. And the recruiter hate is also unjustified.

puranjay 7y ago

The problem with the examples the author shared is that they only work in professions where your work and skills are easily demonstrable, aka "portfolio jobs". How would you demonstrate a skilled manager's capabilities without a resume that shows rapid advancement and dealing with increasingly higher responsibilities?

auiya 7y ago

Right, and Second Life was supposed to be a social gathering place and not at all a place for penises of every type and description to be put on display. Attempting to predict how a social network will behave is utterly futile.

tyingq 7y ago

"[LinkedIn] fails to reflect true potential such as grit, ability to collaborate with others" I'm not personally pining for a website that makes arbitrary ratings for such things.

underpand 7y ago

This is not a genuine post. This is a thinly-veiled informercial. She is an angel investor and owns a fund that invests in the type of professional networks she is promoting. She is even an angel investor for a company that she directly promotes in the post (Webflow). LinkedIn is sufficient the way it currently is. 1. Connect and contact professional peers 2. Contact recruiters 3. Display bare minimum work experience and look up this information of peers 4. Link to specialized work and portfolio e.g. github That covers the majority of consumer use cases and anything more complicates the website.

tachyonbeam 7y ago
I completely agree that this person should have been more forthcoming about their own affiliation. I think there are definitely issues with LinkedIn though. What I don't like about LinkedIn is how scammy it feels. They've tried to get me to enter my e-mail password in the past so they could get all my contacts... No thanks. Then there's the issue of being contacted by recruiters all the time even though I have my profile set to not looking for a job. I also wish there was a way to also say "not willing to relocate" (is there?). Lastly, I think the website could be more streamlined/simplified and better looking. That pic she posted from the LinkedIn interface in 2003. I like it better than the way the website looks now. So simple and straightforward. IMO, LinkedIn is "ripe for disruption". It's coasting on the network effect. The network effect is a powerful thing, but it didn't stop MySpace from getting killed despite its 100 million users.
- ses1984 7y ago
  >I also wish there was a way to also say "not willing to relocate" (is there?). Would that stop recruiters from asking?
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  Who doesn't want to relocate for that swanky 6 month contract job in Iowa at 25% of your current pay.
ryanhuff 7y ago
You missed as a sales lead channel. Most of the activity I see are from vendors trying to sell products and services.

rsweeney21 7y ago

When my last startup was struggling to hit our growth goals after closing our series A round, I started formulating a theory: You can build pretty much any business if you have a large following on social media. I started thinking about this when someone told me that Tesla has no marketing budget and relies completely on Twitter and PR form Elon Musk. So I decided to give it a try with my new startup. We setup ad campaigns to ensure we had a traditional marketing channel that we could scale and then I started posting on LinkedIn. The results have been mind blowing. In 7 months I went form 1,000 followers to over 30,000 followers[0]. I was just named #4 in LinkedIn's Top Voices for 2019 for Software Development. A single post that goes viral on LinkedIn can generate $500,000-$2M in new sales opportunities for us and it costs us nothing. By developing a social media presence, we've been able to grow our company to $2M in annualized revenue (we aren't SaaS, so it's not ARR) without any outside funding. And we are profitable. So yeah, I think LinkedIn is pretty great. [0] Me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsweeney21/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsweeney21/ Shameless plug for our new startup: https://www.facetdev.com/ https://www.facetdev.com/

ryeguy_24 7y ago
Enjoyed reading this. How much did you have to spend on your initial ad campaign (or was that solely through content creation)? On a quick test I found the CPC and CPM rates to be insanely high especially if you target highly paid people.
- rsweeney21 7y ago
  We started testing paid ads on LinkedIn and Facebook. We spent about $500/month to test. Just to clarify, this was to find customers for our product/service, not to acquire followers. Growing social media followers was only through making posts on LinkedIn. I started by accepting every connection I received. In month 5 I switch the default "Connect" button in my profile to follow because I was at 20,000 connections. LinkedIn has a max of 30K connections.

rdiddly 7y ago

Sometimes when you're having a hard time getting through a piece of writing, it's because the writer is so masterful, each word so rich with meaning, each turn of phrase so unusual and yet so apt, that you have to acknowledge a shining genius far beyond your own. This is not one of those times.

paulie_a 7y ago

Professional networks are stupid. It's an HR circle jerk but everyone is expected to have a glowing profile just for "reasons". Shitty recruiters love it though. LinkedIn is terrible at trying to get your contact list and the fraudulently email you saying a contact wants to connect. It's a complete waste of time. My recommendation is to use when searching for a job then immediately wipe your account. Plus some bosses monitor it to see if you are looking. It's a lose lose for individuals.

oarabbus_ 7y ago

Taking a wild guess without clicking the link, but this site must be a LinkedIn competitor.

mpfundstein 7y ago

linkedIn is so terrible. The facebook timeline really killed it IMO. Its full of 'consultants' publishing their worthless brainfarts and some feel good messages about work. urks. i quit it a while ago and i am very happy with it. I honestly was reluctant at first because I run my own business and thought it might be necessary, but quitting it didn't impact my business at all...

ryeguy_24 7y ago

Pretty poor article. In general, I think the LinkedIn network is quite powerful and is not simply for recruiters. That being said, I do think there is a lot of untapped potential sitting on this proprietary graph network of professional connections. If they don't move on this, others will.

jameswatling 7y ago

Interesting to see that even one of the co-founders of Linkedin has had similar thoughts, and started another company trying to focus on using your network to produce value, rather than be focused on recruiters and enterprise $. You can see more here (random interesting video from the platform) https://joinhub.com/posts/2hZQ9FZp?rc=James-Watling-4505 https://joinhub.com/posts/2hZQ9FZp?rc=James-Watling-4505

haileris 7y ago

LinkedIn is just about the one and only thing I have "because everyone else has one"

charlesholbrow 7y ago

Several years ago I noticed that I spent a lot of time creating my linked in profile, and got absolutely nothing in return for it. After that I started asking people if they had EVER gotten a job on LinkedIn. One person said yes. Several people said the know one person who had gotten a job on LinkedIn. I have asked a lot of people. Based on this I seriously doubt it is a good use of time for most job seekers. At the end of the day, it's another social media site that gives you a little endorphin rush when someone "likes" your status — but its not much (if anything) more.

tracker1 7y ago
I think it will largely depend on your skillset, job role and where you are located. For me it's like a floodgate and my current and a couple of past job roles were from LinkedIn contacts only.

0xdeadb00f 7y ago

"What's broke?" Is said multiple times throughout this article. For those who don't know, "what's _broken_" is the grammatically correct way to say this. Yes, I'm being a grammar Nazi. And no, that's not a bad thing. We speak English, and while a lot of it's rules are archaic and silly, this instance is not one of those silly rules. It's basic English.

rchaud 7y ago

This piece was extremely tech-centric and completely ignores all other job sectors, which is strange because tech people are already attuned to thinking of LinkedIn as a plague upon society. Finance people aren't going to have a Github. Healthcare professionals have no idea what Dribbble is. Girlboss is a niche network and its job listings are a drop in the bucket compared to what LinkedIn has. > If the new American Dream is defined by “creative expression, online influence and extreme optionality” over linear moves up the corporate ladder, then LinkedIn is enough to make any Millennial or Gen Z jobseeker cringe. The author must live in a pretty sheltered world if she thinks millennials are cringing at LinkedIn as opposed to applying to a million job listings across all networks for the slim chance of even getting an interview. Young and inexperiencee jobseekers make up a good chunk of LinkedIn's audience. Not a single recruiter is reaching out to them. LinkedIn is valuable because it gives them one way of finding people at organizations who may be willing to chat with them and give them a plain English breakdown of the skills needed at those jobs. The HR-penned job descriptions are hilariously inaccurate in many jobs and can appear to be designed to actively discourage people from applying due to the absurd requirements they post.

siddharthbhatia 7y ago

This is very true. LinkedIn has just been trying to mint money from the very people who helped build the company!

lowdose 7y ago

But will be bought by Microsoft like Github.