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It’s clear from the comments that many people have no positive experiences with LinkedIn. For me, LinkedIn was the tool that not only helped me get into better

It’s clear from the comments that many people have no positive experiences with LinkedIn. For me, LinkedIn was the tool that not only helped me get into better companies, but also introduced me to Hacker News. I joined Skype/Microsoft, then Skyscanner, then Uber: all after a LinkedIn recruiter reachout. They were opportunities I did not know or think about and I would have never applied to any of them at the time. I was very happy the time working in investment banking, and had zero reason or motivation to change this up. I needed that "nagging" from a recruiter to actually consider what if I was building the next Xbox that millions of gamers will use on day one, instead of a trading system that no more than a dozen of traders use. In hindsight, all the positions were a step up in professionally, financially, and from a personal growth point of view. I even learned about Hacker News when I was working at Skype, from colleagues. If it wasn't for LinkedIn, I might have permanently been stuck in investment banking and my career would have turned out very differently.

jillesvangurp 6y ago
Agreed. I don't engage with it a lot but it's useful for it's original purpose of keeping track of former colleagues as well as profiling yourself to potential employers/customers. The content is a bit of a influencer shit show these days. Too many bored executives trying to promote themselves. I mostly ignore that. Recruiter spam is another nuisance and as recruiters are paying customers, technically us normal users end up being the the product. IMHO linkedin/ms could do more to balance that relation. A minor nuisance but sometimes there's some valuable conversations that convert to me finding gigs. So, room for improvement there but for now it's not optional for me to maintain my linkedin profile.
spelunker 6y ago
Twice LinkedIn connections have resulted in full time jobs for me. It's just another outlet for passive job searching IMO, and I think it fills that position better than Dice or Monster or any other resume site, so I'm content with keeping a LinkedIn account. I also check it maybe once every other week so it doesn't mostly doesn't have an impact on my life really.
opportune 6y ago
Same for me. I got my current job because of a recruiter on LinkedIn (where my previous applications to the company got no follow up). They also make it easy for me to interview at hedge funds because they spam me a lot about that, which I don’t mind except for when they somehow call me. I don’t even particularly care if these are semi-automated because when I follow up it results in genuinely getting added to the interview pipeline It’s already delivered a lot of value to me. I know they use lots of creepy/dark patterns and there are a lot of things I don’t like, like the news feed or teasing features behind paywalls. But it’s still worth it IMO. I have got tens (maybe hundreds?) of thousands of dollars of value out of it without paying a cent, just filtering through some spam

jillesvangurp 6y ago

Agreed. I don't engage with it a lot but it's useful for it's original purpose of keeping track of former colleagues as well as profiling yourself to potential employers/customers. The content is a bit of a influencer shit show these days. Too many bored executives trying to promote themselves. I mostly ignore that. Recruiter spam is another nuisance and as recruiters are paying customers, technically us normal users end up being the the product. IMHO linkedin/ms could do more to balance that relation. A minor nuisance but sometimes there's some valuable conversations that convert to me finding gigs. So, room for improvement there but for now it's not optional for me to maintain my linkedin profile.

spelunker 6y ago

Twice LinkedIn connections have resulted in full time jobs for me. It's just another outlet for passive job searching IMO, and I think it fills that position better than Dice or Monster or any other resume site, so I'm content with keeping a LinkedIn account. I also check it maybe once every other week so it doesn't mostly doesn't have an impact on my life really.

opportune 6y ago

Same for me. I got my current job because of a recruiter on LinkedIn (where my previous applications to the company got no follow up). They also make it easy for me to interview at hedge funds because they spam me a lot about that, which I don’t mind except for when they somehow call me. I don’t even particularly care if these are semi-automated because when I follow up it results in genuinely getting added to the interview pipeline It’s already delivered a lot of value to me. I know they use lots of creepy/dark patterns and there are a lot of things I don’t like, like the news feed or teasing features behind paywalls. But it’s still worth it IMO. I have got tens (maybe hundreds?) of thousands of dollars of value out of it without paying a cent, just filtering through some spam