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LinkedIn’s Alternate Universe

• emptyparadise 6y ago
  I fear people who enjoy using LinkedIn.
• neals 6y ago
  I treat everything on LinkedIn as a press release. Not just content from organizations, but especially that from individuals representing themselves or their (small) businesses. It's all just a dishonest representation of their 'best self'. The LinkedIn Crowd is just as bad as the Instagram influencer crowd and I hate what the internet is becoming.
  • josefresco 6y ago
    I'm more self-conscious about posting to LinkedIn than any other network. I know will cross post content from Twitter, but even that needs to be re-written to be more "professional". It's strange.
  • notahacker 6y ago
    > The LinkedIn Crowd is just as bad as the Instagram influencer crowd No, it's more fake and forced. I once sat through an hour meeting about "representing the company" better on LinkedIn which was triggered by a post by a sales guy which had been dutifully reshared by colleagues until a board member saw it and decided it was sexist. The post in question was one of those awful only-on-LinkedIn stories involving our hero, the sales guy, bumping into a distraught stranger recently laid off by the industry vertical he was selling into and comforting her with words of sage wisdom. It wasn't sexist per se, but it was pretty nauseating and probably bullshit. After this, I think my colleague responsible for drumming up social media engagement better understood why I was uninterested in helping the company hit performance metrics by posting on a biweekly basis with random people in my network @mentioned to beg for likes. Give me a feed full of poses in improbably expensive clothing in front of a Santorini sunset, 31st takes of overly technical "improvised" guitar solos and artfully posed kids any day.
    • gowld 6y ago
      Is this why men in business have learned to avoid talking to women in business? A man delivering a sales pitch to a man isn't offensive, but a man delivering a sales pitch to a woman is sexist. And then women notice that men avoid talking to them, frezing them out.
      • notahacker 6y ago
        I believe the assumption of sexism was based on the assumption the hysterical person requiring comfort from a kindly man didn't actually exist, but was inevitably cast as female. Personally I'm not particularly bothered by the gender of distressed people I might be able to calm down with a quiet word, but if I try to turn it into a teachable moment on LinkedIn then shoot me...
    • indymike 6y ago
      "No, it's more fake and forced." No more or no less than how most coworkers act at work.
      • bdefore 6y ago
        I don't think your statement holds ground. If your coworkers behave like conversations on Instagram or LinkedIn, I'd hope you'd get the gumption to find another workplace.
• josefresco 6y ago
  I enjoyed this article because I feel the same way about LinkedIn, and also really like the term "performative professionalism".
  • throwawaycuriou 6y ago
    The red stapler that won a bronze medal.
• jaaron 6y ago
  I don't like LinkedIn as a social network but as a hiring manager, there's nothing else close to it. Sometimes we wish there were, but it definitely fills a niche.
  • Etheryte 6y ago
    Out of curiosity, what niche does Linkedin fill for your day-to-day work? Personally I only have a profile so people can see I physically actually exist, outside of that I don't think I've ever used the site for anything.
    • UnpossibleJim 6y ago
      I thought LinkedIn was only for looking for jobs and getting business contacts, for business to business work. I see people posting personal "stories" and, to be honest, I'm a bit confused.
    • xyzelement 6y ago
      // Out of curiosity, what niche does Linkedin fill for your day-to-day work? Not the original poster but I'll take a stab: Someone says "I know a guy you may be interested for your team." Guess what the first thing I do is? I have a meeting with someone (internal or external) that I hadn't met yet. Guess what I look up before I meet them? Who do I know who works at Bank of America (or whatever.) Guess where I can find an answer in two seconds? If you life doesn't involve meeting/evaluating/finding people then I guess you don't need LI. But really - you can go through your whole work life and not be interested in the professional background of people you are meeting etc?
    • jaaron 6y ago
      I agree with everything in xyzelement's comment. As a hiring manager, it's only one source, but it's an important one. Examples of how I use it: - Posting job openings and company updates to my personal LinkedIn status. - Using the recruiting tools (these cost extra) to search for candidates with specific skills. - Looking through the staff of a specific company in search of potential candidates for a specific role. - For most candidates I'm only 2, sometimes 3, hops away on LinkedIn. I look to see who we know in common. - Sometimes it's the only resume-like document I have for a candidate, so I refer to it during an interview and I often share the candidate's LinkedIn profile with other interviewers when providing them context/background about the candidate - Less often, to directly message former coworkers if I don't have some other better way to reach them. - Also less often, there are some active LinkedIn interest groups, but in my experience, the quality of discussion isn't as good as other forums. I'm in LinkedIn almost every day, one way or another. So are most tech recruiters I work with. For anyone who is not actively part of the recruiting effort, I have no idea why you'd be on it that regularly. For what it's worth, we also use a lot of other recruiting tools, but I would say that it's odd to find an engineer who doesn't have a LinkedIn profile and I do recommend them for anyone who is actively job hunting (at least within tech). It's great for when you're on the market, passively or actively. An active GitHub account is also good, but it's not a place recruiters or hiring managers start their search. An active personal website is even more valuable than an active GitHub account, but also not likely the way a recruiter or hiring manager finds you. Oh, one other thought: for lots of startups and companies, applications aren't where we find all our best talent. That's not to say you shouldn't apply, it's just that the signal to noise ratio for applications is low. As a hiring manager, you can't just wait around for the best people apply for your team. You have to actively recruit. If you want to be recruited for those sort of jobs, LinkedIn is a pretty important way to show up on their radar.
• softwaredoug 6y ago
  I enjoy using LinkedIn Why? My timeline is exclusively about professional interests. Blog posts, interesting papers, etc. Sure there's marketing crap in there, but that's also nice as I get to see what my contacts are building / hustling. I find it inspiring. After all, most of them I know as actual people doing cool stuff. Meanwhile Twitter/Facebook are negativity cesspools, it's hard to spend much time there.
  • minsc__and__boo 6y ago
    That's because people's careers are tied to their Linkedin profiles, so naturally you're only going to get the most positive, shiny things being propped up on it. This feature also inhibits sharing though, which is why Linkedin has such an artificial feel about it.
  • totemandtoken 6y ago
    It would be kind of cool to see a more reddit-y or hackernews-y professional networking site. Like, I'm glad I have a professional connection to my friends who've went into healthcare, but honestly I have no intellectual curiosity about medicine and I ignore it if it comes on my feed. I'd rather see the stuff you're talking about - interesting papers, blog posts, etc - in a professional context with possibly the opportunity to network. The culture is somewhat here on hackernews, although more geared towards startups and computer science, but I'd like to see it available for other professional fields.
• Apocryphon 6y ago
  Interestingly Quora has also adopted the LinkedIn self-promoting hustling style crossed with positivity/profundity porn.
  • superbcarrot 6y ago
    > Quora One online cesspool at a time please.
    • Apocryphon 6y ago
      Certainly, I just think the two are in the same category, along with Medium, as opposed to the Facebook/Twitter or TikTok/Instagram/SnapChat categories. Different vibes and demographics.
    • rgoulter 6y ago
      I find Quora these days to be less self-congratulating than it was 5 years ago. That said, my main interaction with it is the digest emails. The recommendation algorithm is a bit wonky, and will recommend you many answers for any topic whose answer you merely glance at.
• ed312 6y ago
  I think we're almost at the point where the predictive text bots could all chat with each other in the LinkedIn echo chamber. I look forward to the day where I get a notification from "me" on LinkedIn saying we just had a great interview and start at the new company next Monday.
  • Kaze404 6y ago
    Someone needs to make a LinkedIn profile who's content is all GPT-2 generated from other posts and see how many job offers it gets.
    • hvocode 6y ago
      Well, a Sea Bream did pretty well. https://twitter.com/j4n0/status/1125380024733925377 https://twitter.com/j4n0/status/1125380024733925377
    • zimpenfish 6y ago
      I created a fake almost empty profile to test a previous job's profile scraping and it regularly gets more search hits than my real profile according to the emails.
  • rchaud 6y ago
    We are absolutely at that point. People are optimizing their content for the algorithm, and using keywords and hashtags so the machine recognizes patterns batter. Even on a mostly non-algorithmic feed like Reddit, the highest upvoted comments on popular subs always feature an extremely predictable response, like a dad joke, followed by similarly predictable sub-comments written solely to garner upvotes.
    • adamnew123456 6y ago
      > Even on a mostly non-algorithmic feed like Reddit, the highest upvoted comments on popular subs always feature an extremely predictable response, like a dad joke, followed by similarly predictable sub-comments written solely to garner upvotes. The subreddit simulator is a good proof of this, especially once it was rebased on top of GPT-2. Generally, the closer a subreddit is to the top of the list the more it's content will look like the output of the language model.
• glsdfgkjsklfj 6y ago
  "what happens when you have a literally captive audience and the company can do whatever they want in terms of data abuse and features" If you are employed, you cannot fathom how dependent on linkedin some people are. It is when you are most vulnerable that they get that $5 to see who viewed your profile (I didn't even know they had that feature until some out-of-work friends were talking about it)
  • lopis 6y ago
    I'm curious. How is that feature useful for an unemployed person? If someone visited your profile and didn't text you, they are not interested, right?
    • glsdfgkjsklfj 6y ago
      fear of missing out. it is not a feature, it is psychological abuse that generates revenue.
• he11ow 6y ago
  Unpopular take: whether your LinkedIn experience is good or bad is a pretty strong indicator of how much you "get" online networking. - If you see it as a place to mostly transact with recruiters, Yes, your feed is absolutely going to be crap. If you see it as a place to have conversations with your professional community, your feed is going to look like a constant streamed event with the best content. - If you see online networking as shouting-from-rooftops self promotion, of course you'll notice the worst of the worst shouters. If you realize anyone you'll ever need to engage with professionally is basically a click away, you start looking at what on these people's mind. You don't care about Mark Cuban or whatever, because it's a whole lot more interesting to hear your real target audience talk about their pain points. - "Performing professionalism" is the best. Of all the social networks, LinkedIn has the greatest built-in policing mechanism: its users' fear for their own reputation. Being an ass might end up costing real dollars, so maybe best avoided, the logic goes. You don't see trolling; you don't see fighting; no one will give you points for being shitty to others. There's a lot to like in that. Plus, LinkedIn is nerdy. Text posts actually perform better than links. Attention is fairly aligned with follower count. (I've collected data for a year, and some pretty clear trends emerge) So yeah, it's good that we have this variant of a social network, if anything I wish there were more like it.
  • Bakary 6y ago
    For me the experience is bad not because I don't understand how the platform works but because it represents some of the soullessness of modern culture and online media. Most of the content that it posted there, even by real people doing real things, often sounds like self-parody or a TEDx talk. The platform itself warps the way people relate to the world. The point you raised about reputation is a good one: it's not just reputation in itself but also a certain culture and way of thinking that is unofficially enforced. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the usefulness of it but I can feel something dying inside of me each time I use it as well. I cannot for the life of me relate to someone who enjoys LinkedIn for its own sake.
    • he11ow 6y ago
      What I meant by "understand how online networking works" is not that you - or anyone else - has struggled to grasp which button to click to connect with someone. Hundreds of millions of people use LinkedIn, and yet that's not quite the use case I'm talking about, so let me be clearer: Most of the value lies in the messaging. You connect with someone. You read their stuff, or they read yours. You strike a conversation. You continue that conversation here and there. You hop on a call to get to know each other a little more. You continue chatting here and there. It could be a week, it could be two months, but do you see how easily now you're not "a vendor" or "a jobseeker", but, YOU? So your CV doesn't need to compete with a gazillion other CVs, before people start asking you if this opportunity is of interest. And clients come to you because they trust you. That's the kind of networking I'm talking about. Yeah, I like it. It gets me business. I get to engage with really nice people in my industry, who self-select because they find the stuff I write interesting. It's not dependent on my physical location or whether I got entry into some event.
• nickdothutton 6y ago
  I use it to keep in some level of contact with a wide group of work contacts as they move around the industry. But it’s not an enjoyable experience. I wrote about how it could be improved in the hope someone would do it... so far still waiting. https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/ https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/
• edoreld 6y ago
  I exclusively use LinkedIn to find new jobs. I set it to "Open to Finding New Jobs", and then get 1 to 2 applications per week. I found my last two jobs by recruiters contacting me. It works great for that. I never had any use for all the social networking.
  • folkrav 6y ago
    Same. Last two jobs were through LinkedIn recruiters.
  • lopis 6y ago
    You're lucky. I got so many junk job offers over the years, mostly secretive "amazing opportunities" they would only talk about over the phone. I one (rare) time replied that I receive several such messages per week and that if recruiters want our attention, maybe they should reveal more about the offer (sometimes they reveal literally __nothing__, not the industry, not the tech stack, nothing). The recruiter got extremely offended and said I was rude and that I just missed out on a great opportunity. ... bye Felicia
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• offtop5 6y ago
  While I love linkedin, as it makes it very easy to apply to so many jobs, the photos seriously need to be removed. A person's physical attractiveness should play no role in hiring, many people who are disabled might not be able to take photogenic pics. Those people are heavily disadvantaged, any person of color is heavily disadvantaged, I really hate the idea of social media creeping into LinkedIn. For one it doesn't make a lot of sense for your political or social views to become a part of your employability. It's a resume not a statement on who you are. Then again I generally hate social media because it leads to the least informed shouting the loudest.
  • notahacker 6y ago
    LinkedIn used to constantly harass me with popups asking me why I hadn't uploaded a photo. Guess I'd have felt a lot worse if the answer was "because I'm insecure about my appearance" or "because experience tells me some people have issues with my ethnicity" or "because I did upload a photo once, and then realised that the people who looked at my profile also looked at other profiles of people in completely different roles who had similar facial features to me and found it really creepy" and not simply that I didn't want to.
    • Ekaros 6y ago
      Bit of the first box. A lot of not wanting to. My facebook photo is from over 15 years ago with sunglasses... And generally I have come to conclusion that I do not want my photo to be shared online. I'm just old fashioned that way.
      • notahacker 6y ago
        My Facebook photo is from when I signed up, at a time when I needed a university email address to do so, but I'm quite happy sticking other photos on there. As for LinkedIn, mostly I just don't care whether clients know what I look like, but I think the repeated surveys got some ruder answers!
  • superbcarrot 6y ago
• Igelau 6y ago
  LinkedIn weirds me out. It's like there's a machine somewhere churning out bubbly young blondes and they all wind up as recruiters on LinkedIn. There was even one that billed herself as part of a combination job-search and matchmaking service: get an interview and a date! It's not surprising that some guys are getting confused, because there are users who are intentionally recreating an "enterprise" version of the thirst/influence dynamic of other social networks.
  • Apocryphon 6y ago
    Baser dynamics are definitely not absent from LI. I've heard of salesmen creating catfishing accounts and boosting their response rates from executives. But that's also the seedy underbelly that's always existed in enterprise- tales of HR violations at trade shows and industry conferences abound. It's just more surreal or perhaps hypernormalized to see it in the clean, sterile, ostensibly professional world of a business social network.
  • ffhhj 6y ago
    That's disgusting. Where?
• mcenedella 6y ago
  The best way to get out of the LinkedIn treadmill is to take control of your own presentation. At Leet Resumes, we write engineering resumes for free (premium hosting services coming this fall): www.leetresumes.com Use us, or use someone else, or write your own resume and host it on your own personal site. It's better to own your own presentation on the web than rely on a distant, and perhaps not friendly, corporation.
  • site-packages1 6y ago
    I don't think I would use a service called "leetresumes" but having your own site is good advice as a place with high SEO value when people DDG your name. However, this doesn't replace LinkedIn, unfortunately. Also to echo someone else, hiring managers love LI for good reason, it's easy to source a bunch of candidates with potentially niche experience.
• forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Imagine you have a friend. A good friend. One day, when you're not paying attention, your friend says to you, in a tonguetwister, "ifyoudontmindmelookingthroughyouraddressbookandcallingeveryonesaywhat?" "What?" you reply. "Nothing.", says friend. Later that day, when you're not looking, your friend copies all the numbers out of your address book and starts calling everyone. If they pick up the phone, friend says: "Good afternoon, Friend's Name, Your Name said you'd be interested in my new social network, would you like to sign up?" If you found out that this had happened, would you still be friends with this person? Would you still talk to them? Would you still want to know what they have to say?
  • onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
    In fairness - a lot of social networks "growth hacked" with similarly seedy techniques, right?
    • bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      In fairness, I don't like any social network.
      • oblio 6y ago
        Yet you have 14k karma on what is practically a geek social network ;-)
        • bryanrasmussen 6y ago
          anecdote time: When I was working at Thomson Reuters marketing did some sort of outreach thing to the accountant community, and they had a bunch of accountants in to some sort of social gathering and the marketing person was up talking about how they were going to do social stuff for the accountants, etc. etc. And finally one accountant spoke up and asked (I paraphrase): You do realize we didn't become accountants because we like people? When I heard about it, it made me think, you know, programmers sure are a lot like accountants. Theory time: Perhaps my high karma is derived from all the other geeks realizing intrinsically I hate social networks as much as they do, so they upvote me in solidarity. Thank you for your time!
• JoeDaDude 6y ago
  LinkedIn has provided a treasure trove of comedy material. I especially enjoy Joshua Fluke's youtube channel [1] where he shows cringeworthy team building videos he culled from LinkedIn. [1]. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-91UA-Xy2Cvb98deRXuggA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-91UA-Xy2Cvb98deRXuggA
  • slow_donkey 6y ago
    Wish he didn't make fun of bad English from non-native speaking posts - of course they'll seem cringey to us. There's plenty of legitimate examples he could have used instead.
• gsmo 6y ago
  I've muted most people in my network. The amount of self and mutual-mas2batory posting is nauseating.
  • xtracto 6y ago
    If you think about it, it is very similar to Facebook, where the majority of things people post are how happy they are and how successful they are; or the odd ranter. However LinkedIn does not have ranters.
    • kazen44 6y ago
      which is weird when you think about it. Only showing succesfull and how happy you are is not a realistic view of life, and hiring candicates who are engaged in this behaviour should be a major red flag?
    • gsmo 6y ago
      Perhaps its just my network or industry, but I've considered creating a parody account just to mock the absurdity of what people post. Of course my parody account would have - a background photo of me on a stage with a headset and - a professionally polished profile photo with my arms crossed. smh
    • runawaybottle 6y ago
      The underbelly of LinkedIn is Blind. Of course, Blind has all the vanity but less masturbation because it’s anonymous. So you’ll get the ‘actually, ___ sucks’ posts versus the endless dick sucking and self dick sucking on LinkedIn. Grotesque really, but what are you gonna do. I’m at peak misanthropy today thinking about LinkedIn posts.
• Kim_Bruning 6y ago
  Originally I had linkedin in 2009 to keep track of my contacts (as that was what they were for at the time, afaicr). Unfortunately I can't easily export contacts anymore, so I'm kind of stuck. The number of dark patterns linkedin uses is ... rather large. And every few months I come back, it seems like there's some new option to share my Personal data. Defaulted to "on" of course. I keep meaning to hand-copy all the contact information I still need and delete my account, but it's a lot of work so I keep putting it off.
  • pge 6y ago
    Here’s how to get them out - https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/66844/exporting-connections-from-linkedin?lang=en https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/66844/exportin...
    • Kim_Bruning 6y ago
      Maybe you'll have more luck than I did? Originally you could get out phone numbers and e-mail addresses that way. The last 1 or 2 times I used it, I didn't actually get the contact info back out for most of my contacts.
• hankchinaski 6y ago
  i would also want to burn linkedin to the ground, but i found pretty much most of my jobs through it so not sure how i would do otherwise
• unstatusthequo 6y ago
  As a lawyer who depends on network building, especially a during no-contact world, LinkedIn is critical to me to stay up to speed, increase interaction with clients/colleagues, source new hires, etc.
• cryptica 6y ago
  I like LinkedIn. It's one of the few places on the internet which still has this 'wild west' vibe. I enjoy the random connection requests and scam attempts. It's the only social network which actually allows me to meet smart interesting people outside of my immediate network. Maybe LinkedIn doesn't work so well if you're a rich person, but as a regular person I really like it. I've established many successful personal and business connections through LinkedIn.
  • mrweasel 6y ago
    It honestly got better after Microsoft bought them, it's less scammy. Sure they want you to pay for certain parts, but that's perfectly reasonable in my mind. You're right about the wild west vibe, people still seems try to navigate LinkedIn. It's like Facebook, but then again certain posts simply don't sit well with people on LinkedIn. Political debates are pretty much shot down instantly, even those from politicians. So try to promote their business, some want to get hired, and a ton of people are trying to hire. It's all a big mess with a corporate vibe but somehow targeted at the small /medium business segment. The thing about LinkedIn I find extremely amusing is "social media managers" and "online marketing experts" who are looking for work on LinkedIn and get nothing but silence, while technical people are booked for job interviews within hours if not minutes.
• rchaud 6y ago
  This could just be re-titled as "Sometimes people turn their brain off when interacting online". Is it shocking anymore that people openly say bigoted stuff "with their real name, alma mater and workplace all listed"? They do this on Facebook as well. > In this story, straight from the weird world of LinkedIn, people use Skype in 2020, hiring managers give unsolicited feedback on performance at the end of an interview, and contracts are flourished and signed immediately. This phrasing really left a sour taste. Perish forbid people use Skype for a job interview. What, they couldn't FaceTime? This man living in a one-room apartment with his family couldn't have the decency to have an iPhone or join the rest of the 21st century in installing Zoom?
  • baobabKoodaa 6y ago
    > people use Skype for a job interview The implication there is not that they use unfashionable communication methods, it's that the stories are fake reposts of fake stories that someone invented years ago, when using Skype was a regular thing.
• frereubu 6y ago
  Previous discussion from 2 months ago with 277 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25320536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25320536
• AzzieElbab 6y ago
  LinkedIn is for recruiters. It is networking is a myth
• FlownScepter 6y ago
  The description at the end about how it's basically a hostage situation but with the hostage takers trying to be fun is the most excellent metaphor for anything I've ever heard. It's so fucking accurate, and explains why the site's content trends towards a very corporate-friendly "safe quirky" that I personally find nauseating.
  • xtracto 6y ago
    >It's so fucking accurate, and explains why the site's content trends towards a very corporate-friendly "safe quirky" that I personally find nauseating. Haha, all LinkedIn posts do look like if Silicon Valley's Jared Dunn had written them.
• stewx 6y ago
  > The depravity of a platform where HR Managers are the rockstars speaks for itself.
• teekert 6y ago
  So often here on HN, things like: Object Orient Programming is absolute garbage! LinkedIn is the Devils social network! Python has all these WTFs, why aren't we killing it in favor of Julia? Here I am, I found my job through LinkedIn, applied to places where my classmates ended up. That was nice. And I use classes in Python when it suits me and I even build stuff that people appreciate (how!?). Oh yeah, I also enjoyed Atlas Shrugged, take my Karma!
  • jschwartzi 6y ago
    Okay.
• srswtf123 6y ago
  Here’s a fun thing that happened to me on LinkedIn: A few years back, I was job hunting, using LinkedIn at bit to find leads. During this ongoing process, my father, who’d been receiving chemotherapy treatments passed away. Being the “technical one” it fell to me to manage his various accounts. I logged into his gmail from the same browser I’d used LinkedIn, and started to contact people he knew but was out of touch with. The next day, I started receiving email, from my dead father, from LinkedIn. Claiming he’d just joined the service and wanted to connect to me. I still don’t have the words for this, years later. What exactly is wrong with these folks at LinkedIn? They seem like caricatures of actual humans to me now, and I no longer even bother to visit the site. If anything positive comes from cancel-culture, canceling LinkedIn would be my preference.
  • kube-system 6y ago
    They were hit with a class action lawsuit for that
    • MaanuAir 6y ago
      That probably explains why there is a process to declare someone has passed away. I used it in a similar circumstance, years ago.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    • throwaway2037 6y ago
      I was unaware! I found a couple of stories via Google: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-linkedin-lawsuit/linkedin-must-face-customer-lawsuit-over-email-addresses-idUSKBN0EO1N620140613 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-linkedin-lawsuit/linkedin... https://richardharrislaw.com/linkedin-pay-13-million-lawsuit-regarding-unwanted-emails/ https://richardharrislaw.com/linkedin-pay-13-million-lawsuit... Not a huge settlement, but setting precedent is important. :)
  • leephillips 6y ago
• vorhemus 6y ago
  I also have one: https://allagora.wordpress.com/2021/01/23/technology-makes-it-easier-for-conversations-to-lose-their-soul/ https://allagora.wordpress.com/2021/01/23/technology-makes-i... I still don't understand what the benefit of those standard text blocks is.
  • deleted 6y ago
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• deleted 6y ago
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• 333c 6y ago
  It doesn't seem like the guidelines or FAQs mention this (so maybe the rule changed), but shouldn't this have (2020) in the title?
• kirykl 6y ago
  I was turned down for a job I was fully qualified for due to not having enough contacts on linked in. The hiring manager said he wanted a candidate with greater linked presence. Actual scope of the job was fully orthogonal to linked in
  • xyzelement 6y ago
    Curious, what is "orthogonal?" If you are a manager, your lack of network will prevent you from recruiting well. If you're closer to sales and marketing, building a network and presence is like the same skill set as the job. If you're a baseline software developer, it's still kinda odd to not have a network. You haven't worked with anyone in the past that you want to maintain professional ties with over the long term, kinda a red flag. (You can argue there are other ways to do these things, sure - but all else equal I'd go for the candidate with a good LI and a good network - shows competence and desire to connect) So yea curious what work you think is totally orthogonal to LI?
    • executesorder66 6y ago
      I think there's a difference between not having a professional network at all, and not having one on linkedin. Who the fuck cares about linkedin enough to think it actually matters?
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • Jiejeing 6y ago
      Are there actual developers who care about LinkedIn presence out there? It makes sense to have an account there, to appease HR people, but are there technical people who make use of this to create real connections? Or even display existing ones? There is some kind of mechanical "add randomly suggested people from the company" phase when getting a new job, but apart from this I do not see the point. Desire to connect over LI is entirely artificial and does not represent anything meaningful (heck, I have my past bosses as connections, even though I wish to never see them ever again). Conflating number of linkedin contacts with some social skill seems vastly misguided at best.
• forrestbrazeal 6y ago
  A fairly unique and interesting feature of LinkedIn that I've noticed: posts seem to have a much longer tail than, say, Twitter or Facebook. If I share a text-based post with useful info, it's often still getting engagement 15 or even 30 days later. And because the median quality of LinkedIn posts is so bad, good, non self-aggrandizing posts really stand out. The algorithm is GREAT at elevating them. I guess what I'm saying is, posting on LinkedIn in good faith is the new attention economy market inefficiency.
  • XargonEnder 6y ago
    Thanks for sharing this, I'm going to give it a try
• kodah 6y ago
  Social networks are just vacuums of interest and I think they'll continue on that trajectory until an inevitable societal disinterest in centralized information sharing platforms. The internet will never reflect reality. - If you walk around venting to everyone all the time, you will have no friends. - If you walk around virtue signaling and one-upping people all the time, you will have no friends. - If you walk around telling people all the prestigious companies and schools you've attended, you will have no friends. Except on the internet all of the above is totally acceptable and even encouraged. People love to share information about themselves, there's a psychological component to this. It feels good. - It feels good to let people know exactly how frustrated and slightly nihilistic with the world you are. - It feels good to unload on the political opposition and get likes and shares in return. - It feels good to have reductionist arguments that get cited on mainstream news. You can delve into plenty of reasons why people do this stuff. Personally, I don't think it matters and I say that as someone who detests social media so much that I stay off of it. People come to the internet for different reasons and those reasons find an intersection on social media. I love IRC primarily for this but also because it couples anonymity with the service. We get some abusers and manipulators but even the stalking and harassment attempts that people have tried on me are worth the stay. I can speak freely and relate to people in a way that would not be possible otherwise, and largely I thank the culture of Freenode and it's channels for that. Yet, Freenode is also a vacuum of interest, just one designed for nerds that communicate over ASCII anonymously. Join the network that's right for you, just like you would in real life.
• MikeDelta 6y ago
  I get so many invites of recruiters; not to offer me a job, but to sell me their data science services and products. And what about the 'your expertise is required' messages that turn out to be questionnaires. It's getting a bit like FB.
  • jlokier 6y ago
    > And what about the 'your expertise is required' messages that turn out to be questionnaires. Surprisingly, I was invited to a couple of surveys via LI (found because of my profile) that paid generously for my time answering, in real dollars. I was quite grateful at the time.
    • XargonEnder 6y ago
      Thank you for sharing your story, I never even considered that this was a possibility
• k__ 6y ago
  Got a bunch of jobs via LinkedIn. The recruiters only wasted my time, but I got a bunch of messages from CXOs and VPs that got me good gigs.
• prepend 6y ago
  LinkedIn taught me, back in 2005, to never link my address book to anything. This has been so helpful because any time an app wants to do anything with my address book, I assume that they will do the dumbest, most embarrassing thing possible. Also, I used to have the “I don’t care if people see what I do setting” turned on, because why not. Then LinkedIn started emailing people because I moused over their post and stuff. Some contact emailed me to ask what I needed from her and it was so weird. And the email it sent her was super incorrect and stupid and said something like “Prepend wants to get back in touch with you.”
  • l8rpeace 6y ago
    I could practically set my clock by this...when I would get an announcement email from someone asking me to join LinkedIn and connect with them, I would know they (1) just got a new phone and (2) fell for the grey pattern during sign up/new login to share all of their contacts.
    • Silhouette 6y ago
      This is one of the most compelling arguments against the laissez-faire attitude to sharing personal data that has permeated the tech industry as we've become an increasingly connected society. It's all very well saying the person who owns the device consented to RandomNotMalwareAtAllApp accessing their address book, or listening in on their mic, or accessing their camera or photos, but what about everyone else who is now being observed or data mined as a result of that action? Obviously there has to be some reasonable middle ground, because otherwise no-one can ever provide an online service that offers a genuinely useful facility, say hosting email, even if it's done in a way that is respectful of privacy. But hoovering up someone's entire address book or photo collection or whatever, and then dumping the details into some database of shadow profiles or using it for other purposes that affect the data subjects? At some point, I think you are clearly across the line of what should be considered acceptable behaviour.
      • cgriswald 6y ago
        What reasonable middle ground does there need to be? If I share my contact book with an app I want: 1. That data to go exactly nowhere. 2. The company to not profit from the data except by profiting off me directly using their service. 3. That company to not allow anyone else (including me!) to do shady things with that data. It’s not really complicated. It does make some business plans impossible, which causes some people to make absurd rationalizations.
• philihp 6y ago
  When it comes to what school you went to, you can tell LinkedIn whatever you want. Just make sure you silently set it back to something true once you get that job offer and look confused when your recruiter thinks you went to school in Boston.
  • XargonEnder 6y ago
    This sounds hilarious, any chance you've got a good story to share with us?
• UweSchmidt 6y ago
  The vast majority of people have no reason to "network" professionally. They have nothing to give and nothing to take.
• emrekzd 6y ago
  Perhaps the author is in an alternate universe. Unlike what the author thinks linkedin revenue isn't largely fueled by recruiter business. It is driven by where he thinks they are weak: linkedin marketing solutions, or in friendlier words "feed interactions". See the most recent microsoft earnings report: https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://c.s-microsoft.com/en-us/CMSFiles/PressReleaseFY21_Q1.docx?version=cdf5530f-8dd6-85aa-4e21-78ebf85c610b https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://c.... And unlike what the author thinks linkedin navigated the current climate around social networks pretty well. Not only they've succeeded in keeping the network out of the political environment, and showed strong growth in user base and engagement (see above report), they also ranked as the most trusted social network consistently according to Business Insider Digital Trust study: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-digital-trust-study-from-insider-intelligence-2020-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-digital-trust-study-from-... I'm not going to argue the author does not have valid points, but the main argument doesn't connect with actual results.
  • throwawaycuriou 6y ago
    Found the shill.
    • dang 6y ago
      This breaks the site guidelines and will get your account banned here. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting to HN? We'd appreciate it.
• KDJohnBrown 6y ago
  LinkedIn is a ghetto with no redeeming value. It has close to 0 value for job seekers. In the past year I’ve received 5 real contacts from hiring managers (sadly all of whom wanted SRE, not DevOps. I find sre dull and I would rather be on the dole than waste my life in performance analysis). I also received over 1,500 connection requests and 5,000 InMails from parasitic headhunters. None of those had jobs amenable to my location or skillset. 75% of them were from spam houses in India. The other 25% were from generally incompetent headhunting sweatshops in the usa. I don’t give a crap about inspirational stories frok the head of DailyMail (I Hired a FELON), or other social media garbage. I just wanted a job. I gave up on my search and deleted my linkedin protile for good this week. It was the most freeing feeling since deleting pagerduty and facebook. I worked for Reid Hoffman about 20 years ago. If I could get him on the phone I would ask him if he had any idea what a piece of trash linkedin has become.
  • wikibob 6y ago
    Could you elaborate on your understanding of the difference between SRE and DevOps?
    • KDJohnBrown 6y ago
      Not on a phone, too much typing for my fat fingers and my laptop dinally gave up the ghost i’m afraid.
• jlos 6y ago
  LinkedIn is like every large internet gathering (Reddit, Facebook, Youtube, etc): 80% is a sea of thoughtless garbage, 15% is trivial but entertaining, and the remaining 5% is genuinely useful information and functionality that didn't exist 15 years ago. The stuff the article points out--hilariously--is the equivalent of browsing r/politics (or r/wallstreetbets the past 2 weeks). For useful 5% LinkedIn my principles are: - I unfollow all companies and people so the newsfeed is totally empty. - I don't post, like, follow, or any other kind of interaction - I add everyone I meet professionally (school, work, networking, etc) immediately after meeting them. - I keep my profile updated with essentials only (pictures, work history, etc). This has some nice benefits that are hard to replicate: - In the event I need to reach out to that one person I used to work with, for whatever reason, I have a way to reach them without ever having to get personal contact info like an email address or phone number. - If I need to put a name to a face for someone in a professional network, I can do a glance through LinkedIn. I think everyone appreciates when someone takes the time to remember you, so this is really valuable. - The occasional "what is that one friend doing 5-10 years later". Just the other day I was browsing alumni from my school and saw a friend I haven't seen in about 10 years. Turns out, we both changed careers and went into software engineering!
  • poidos 6y ago
    This is really insightful, thanks for sharing this! I think I'm going to adopt this for myself.
  • Proven 6y ago
    I'd like to add a another useful habit: > - I add everyone I meet professionally (school, work, networking, etc) immediately after meeting them. Never accept invites from people like this guy. Add only people who contribute and interact. Ignore contact spammers.
  • mizzao 6y ago
    This is generally spot on. Also, in my last life I only used LinkedIn when I needed a new job, but as a startup founder it became far more useful. The #1 feature is "who do I know that can give me a warm intro to person X?" This requires, of course, keeping your LinkedIn network only full of people you actually know and not accepting all the random connections.
• diggernet 6y ago
  My recent "LinkedIn is annoying" story: I rarely ever log in to LinkedIn, but do have their app on my phone (which I also rarely use). And I always ignore whatever stupid notifications it triggers (it seems they are almost as needy as Facebook). About a month ago, this LinkedIn notification pops up on my phone: "Ding! You're distracted (again). Here are tips for staying focused." I'm not distracted. I'm using my phone. And interrupting what I'm doing to tell me I'm distracted is...impressively oblivious.
• mattkevan 6y ago
  At internet scale, Sturgeon’s Law is six-sigma. For LinkedIn, add a couple more nines.
• artur_makly 6y ago
  So if it's so bad...which we can all mostly agree on. Why hasn't a better solution taken hold of the market?
  • runawaybottle 6y ago
    Because there is a song and dance involved in maintaining a career. Who you know, how you look, how you talk, and if you’re lucky, how good you are at a job. Dance dance dance, congratulate others, share your new job, upkeep your references, dance to every song, and then show up to work and do the same dance there. You don’t actually believe you’re getting paid to just do your job right? Remember everyone, repeat after me, I am successful, I am successful, I am ... I am successful, therefore I am. Dance your ass off.
  • executesorder66 6y ago
    I mean there is stuff like https://stackoverflow.com/jobs https://stackoverflow.com/jobs and in South Africa we have offerzen.com which are not brilliant but they are much better than linkedin. So there are some for tech related jobs. Probably because they realized that tech people in general hate linkedin and don't really use it for getting jobs. So there was a market for a platform. Whereas for other people linkedin already fills that space (crappily) and most people tend to just put up with it. I'd assume anyone who wants to disrupt the online job finding market now has to compete with microsoft. So any innovative idea they have for their platform will quickly be implemented in linkedin before they get any sort of traction. So no one bothers, and linkedin stays crap.
• mr_o47 6y ago
  Here’s my take on linkedIn, 1) If you are looking for a job then it’s great to use linkedIn since a lot of companies put their listings on the platform and its also perfect to remain in touch with your old colleagues 2) If you are a passionate technologist/programmer who loves to discover new technologies ,software , tools or what’s happening in the industry then I must say linkedIn might not be a great place since its more like filled with people who are just posting content to gain likes or visibility just like every other social media. Using LinkedIn does become depressing when you start seeing posts from people saying “ohh they landed their dream jobs while you might be searching for jobs and then you start comparing yourself with other people on linkedIn. You become depressed. And that’s one of the reasons I stopped using LinkedIn its nothing but a place full of people who are chasing likes LinkedIn is great for marketing and looking for jobs but if you are technologist/programmer who wants to learn something new or expand their knowledge I would suggest using specific programming related subreddits or hackernews Honestly I have gained so much knowledge just by using these platforms and I’m really thankful to people who contribute to hackernews with amazing links
• strenholme 6y ago
  I have actually had good experiences with LinkedIn. I use it to keep in touch with co-workers and there’s more to it than recruiter-prospect communication: • Using LinkedIn to contact old co-workers when I need a reference. • An old boss of mine at one point needed someone for a contract he just got, with gave me the perfect short-term gig.
• patorjk 6y ago
  > The professional neg: Recruiters ask senior level employees if they’re interested in entry level roles or, better yet, internships. Wait, this is a thing? Knowing this makes me feel a lot better. This always leaves me scratching my head when it happens. Kind of messed up that they do this.
  • xyzelement 6y ago
    It's not a thing. Shitty low-effort recruiting is a thing. EG I have C++ on my resume from like 10+ years ago and I get invites for exciting senior developer opportunities that I am technically qualified for, but if you actually read my LI you'll see I've moved in a different direction. There's no "neging" though that's ridiculous. Like, you think a recruiter you've never seen before or since will intentionally spend their time sending you a role you'd never apply for?
  • XargonEnder 6y ago
    To be more accurate, it feels like negging. The truth is they're just copy pasting stuff and not paying attention to who they're messaging.
• paulie_a 6y ago
  The last couple of job searches I updated or recreated and this time around I again realized how pointless it is. It's a circle jerk for HR, is jampacked full of terrible recruiters, the job search is beyond worthless. I see absolutely no reason to have an account there ever again From my perspective it has been and is a ball of "who gives a shit"
• nemacol 6y ago
  I dropped my LinkedIn years ago because they either tricked me into connecting my email contacts or did it without my permission. Every time I logged in it would ask "Do you want to find new connections from your mail list?" Every. Time. One day it stopped asking. Week or so later I got a suggestion for random people I emailed once years earlier. Got curious and checked settings and saw it was connected to my email contacts. No idea how, maybe I accidently clicked it? Maybe they decided they knew better than I did. Whatever caused it I closed my account that day. Couple years later (I think?) MS purchased linkedin and I smiled to myself safe in the knowledge it was only a matter of time until MS ruined it and every abandoned the platform. I was mistaken on that one.
  • lopis 6y ago
    > No idea how, maybe I accidentally clicked it? Happened to me too. I definitely clicked "next" one too many times and one next became a "yes" or smth.
• RandallBrown 6y ago
  I've never signed up for a LinkedIn account. As far as I can tell it hasn't been a problem for me as I've been happily employed ever since I graduated from college. Am I missing anything?
  • xyzelement 6y ago
    >> Am I missing anything? Possibly. A few years ago, a company I never heard of (and would have thus never considered) reached out to me on LinkedIn. The recruiter wrote a thoughtful message connecting what they are looking for in the role to what he saw on my profile so I engaged with him. Several months later I was working at that company (both a huge pay increase and a very interesting experience.) This happened again a few months ago, minus the huge pay increase but still an interesting opportunity. If these two opportunities didn't come along - I am sure I'd be working somewhere else and be fine - but I am really glad I was able to connect with these. So again to answer your question >> Am I missing anything? How would you know what you're missing if you aren't receiving the opportunities? Maybe you can be working in a much more interesting place and making much more money instead of where you are - but if you don't let people tell you that you won't know.
• master_yoda_1 6y ago
  "He was the dog" story was best :)
• blondin 6y ago
  OMG! i just realized that microsoft owns two social networks: linkedin and github. never thought of it that way before. always thought they were left out of the social network game. interesting.
  • asdff 6y ago
    They had one of the original social networks with xbox live
• romanhn 6y ago
  I had an amazing (amazingly bad) recruiter experience recently. They managed to make three screw-ups in the very first two sentences: "We are looking for a talented Back End Engineer [1], and if you think you are ready, a Back End Engineering Team Lead [2]. Don’t worry that you don’t have healthcare experience, you get to learn that with us [3]." [1] I haven't done hands-on coding in 10 years, as my LinkedIn profile clearly shows. [2] I've been in management and senior management roles, perhaps I am ready for a team lead role indeed :) [3] I do actually have healthcare experience. We really need a tool that addresses copy-paste-driven recruiting.
• eternalban 6y ago
  We need a rethink of how we're monetizing our privacy. We're like chumps at the table. So, current state of affairs is we get bunch of free services, with IRL lockin effects, and place control of social norms in the hands of a handful of companies. In the aggregate, it's fair to value these free services at say $1000.00 a year, if you paid for it. Now, is our privacy really that cheap? Shouldn't LinkedIn-cum-Microsft being paying me to get an inside seat at my professional life? They pay me, and we exchange a strictly delimeted bits of information I am willing to part for payment. I bet, lol, that one would easily make far more than a grand a year from selling specific bits of one's personal and professional life to interested companies, maintain direct control of one's privacy regime, and likely end up enriched, rather than sucker punched as is the case today.
• xyzelement 6y ago
  This resonates so well because LinkedIn is great and terrible. To give it its due - both my current and previous role materialized because a determined internal recruiter did a thoughtful search and found me on LinkedIn. So: really important career development milestones happened for me because of LinkedIn. Say it more bluntly - I make more money and have a broader skillset/experience because of LinkedIn. From that point of view it's the most valuable website I've ever visited. On the flip side, the social elements of LinkedIn feel bolted on and are absolutely horrific. The classic turd of LI is the "influencer" who crafts a virtue-signaling (I hate that term but it applies here) post of which the linked article has plenty of examples. It tends to be admonishment to either be kind or bold. Either "A man came for an interview. I could tell he was exhausted and said he had kids at home. So I hired him even though he had none of he qualifications" or "Don't be your own detractor - even if you know you aren't remotely qualified for a job, apply." The key thing here is it's terrible advice. If anyone actually did this, they'd go out of business or be black-listed as a candidate. Nobody actually does this shit but it somehow resonates as "feel good" with enough people. All of this is magnified by the worst feature LI could possibly have: when someone likes something, all of their network sees it - same as if they actually posed content. I guarantee you, when someone out of he kindness of their heart clicks "like" on the "I hired the unqualified dad" post, they aren't intending to broadcast that post to their hundreds/thousands of contacts, but that's what happens. There's actually a non-trivial group of my contacts that I want to maintain contact with (key to industry, good friends from b-school) who are terribly guilty of this behavior and there's nothing you can do to protect your feed. It's actually gross. I don't understand LI's strategy at all. LI is immensely valuable because it has a real deep, proven knowledge of real professionals, who leverage LinkedIn to recruit and be recruited - which are immensely valuable (see my example.) Similarly, it's strategic to be up to date on where my former colleagues are ending up etc, so I'd be a regular LI user for those reasons. I'd even pay. This bolted on social stuff MIGHT look good on some engagement metric, but it's clearly such low trashy engagement that it detracts from the value of the business, and it's so apparent to me as an outsider that I can't understand what they are thinking.
  • gsmo 6y ago
    Timeless classics include: - "Proud of..." - "Let's take a moment to celebrate..." - "I believe <Insert "profound" thought or saying> - "Kudos/shout out to..." - "I'm excited to announce I..."
• zwass 6y ago
  I don't find much value in the LinkedIn timeline, for reasons well-described by this article. However, LinkedIn has been of tremendous value to me as a founder of an enterprise software company. I see two primary areas for value: 1) Sales - LinkedIn allows me to quickly understand who I'm dealing with. Size of company, positions, org chart, etc. This is important information to know when trying to move along the sales process. 2) Recruiting - LinkedIn profiles are essentially a public resume directory. When folks are recommended or referred, I can often get a good sense of their resume by checking LinkedIn. This saves time for everyone when the connection does not need to be made due to lack of fit.
  • throwawaycuriou 6y ago
    Whatever value you think you are finding on LinkedIn is negative value. Anyone of value is too busy producing value to give an eff caring about the epitome of a dead social network.
• jlokier 6y ago
  I find LI is providing me with a daily feed of good material mixed with the silly stuff, but it took a long time. Now I can't look at LinkedIn because there are too many good posts about technically interesting things, conferences I find interesting, general industry commentary, and announcements about scientific and technical developments that I find novel and glad to have discovered. I just don't have time to read them. LI definitely learns over time from interactions and connections, and it seems to have learned what I want to see to make it addictive. There's a lot of guff as well, the self-promoting and nonsense puff pieces. But it's easy to recognise and scroll past. I've found some good thoughtful writing that I enjoy too, and activist pieces by people obviously promoting their own business and themselves, yet doing something decent for others in the process. Especially a few recruiters: There's a few putting the time in to teaching people who are struggling at finding a job in a pandemic how to do it better, for example. And in open source hardware, I'm seeing a lot of activist-style writing at the moment. Mainly I wanted to say, for the HN audience, that there's a surprising amount of interesting scientific and technology announcements to be found, if LI learns what kind you're into and starts picking it out. I've also met a small number of really interesting people via LI, with whom I now talk off LI, and ended up with some great contracts and now my current job through it. All of these through people who approached me. I've never applied for anything via LinkedIn. And been to some great online conferences last year that I only discovered through people mentioning them on LI, leading to something of a minor career change (still in tech). For me I can't deny LI has been very helpful, though it took a while to get better. I still refrain from posting, though, and I'm also rather conscious that people can see what I "liked". So I'm a bit careful with those choices, while remaining genuine. I have been acutely aware of the "professional appearance" thing, not wanting to affecting job prospects by writing the wrong sorts of things, or even sensible things in the wrong sorts of drama zones. Perhaps that carefulness and drama-subject avoidance worked out to tune LI's feed towards better quality things for me to see.
• gnicholas 6y ago
  recent message: "we help founders focus on their work by offloading their repetitive tasks! Anything we can help you with?" reply: "Can you help me outsource the repetitive task of deleting spam linkedin requests?"
• gnicholas 6y ago
  My main issue with LinkedIn's timeline is there is no way to only see content actually posted by your contacts. I don't care if someone I met at an industry conference liked something posted by someone I've never met. And 99% of the time, I don't even care if they commented (especially if it's a pre-written congratulatory 'comment' that LinkedIn suggested to them). Annoyingly, the only way to 'improve' my timeline is to add more people/companies to follow. That's pretty much the exact opposite of what I want to do.
  • XargonEnder 6y ago
    The main reason I'm browsing this thread is because I want someone to tell me how to fix this problem
    • gnicholas 6y ago
      I am thinking of writing an extension for the new Insight browser to make this happen. Can't be that hard!
• whoisjuan 6y ago
  This article makes it to the top of Hacker News every 2-3 weeks since it was published. It’s so weird.
• throwawaysea 6y ago
  LinkedIn is useful to network with recruiters and have yourself be 'available' in the job market - basically a phone directory for resumes. But I definitely do not care for its news feed or other social features, which are simply either marketing/advertising posts or political posts these days. It has become especially bad with the overt injection of progressive politics into many companies' practices in this last year, particularly their outward-facing public relations, all of which is leaking into LinkedIn and turning it into Facebook or Twitter.
• wruza 6y ago
  All the good points that social networks have, as noted in this thread, forums also have. You get to know people, you recognize them even if never seen in person, you may hire or be hired from there and you may discuss interesting or hot topic without being a pretender. I’ve seen it many times on local tech forums. These have less reach, but more meaning. ‘Social network’ thing that puts a profile first and topics second is what brings this madness: self-presentation, fake friends/connections, viral idiocy, etc. We as a species are not ready to go full-public and stay ourselves. I think that the reason is in our deep history, when a leader or a current speaker that climbs up a rock has to behave and speak differently (publicly) than when we hunt or fight together. When everyone climbs their own rock, a tribe becomes a silly circus.
• coliveira 6y ago
  I have a linkedin account, but I only login when I'm thinking about getting a new job. I find the whole thing disturbing and annoying.
• AlexDanger 6y ago
  My experience with LinkedIn is remarkably positive. I am contacted a few times a month for professional opportunities and two of my most recent jobs started from recruiters contacting me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a chance to put forward your best self to the professional world. It is a serious force multiplier - do the work once to make your profile really shine and reap continual benefits. Knowing who is looking at your profile (and hence who might be interviewing you for a new job) is incredibly useful information. Does this person have a technical or a business background? Do we know the same people from previous jobs? Do we have similar interests or did we go to the same school? All of that information is very powerful when meeting someone for the first time and can give you that 5%-10% edge during an interview. It's the kind of information that allows you to make a great first impression. I am not affiliated with LinkedIn but would recommend it to anyone struggling to find the right opportunity in the technology world.
• sub7 6y ago
  LinkedIn is where my totally unethical former employer offers me "consulting opportunities" at $500/hr every 6 months to keep tabs on whether I still keep their shady shit confidential.
  • XargonEnder 6y ago
    Tell us more!
• boredatworkme 6y ago
  I've heard LinkedIn is very helpful when you're looking to switch jobs, but unfortunately this has not been my experience. I noticed that everyone on LinkedIn projected themselves as an "expert" on something and in their own way wanted you to believe (marketed themselves) as someone who could solve every problem they'd encounter. This left a particularly bad taste for me, so I didn't seek out to network way too much on LinkedIn. People I know have 500+ connections on there, while I have about a few dozen. Perhaps this is the reason for my unsuccessful attempts at landing an interview from recruiters lurking on LinkedIn.
• nunorbatista 6y ago
  For some time I thought I was the only one with issues on LinkedIn. I'm happy to see I was wrong. My fundamental issue with it is that I believe it takes more from the society than what it gives back, it's extractive. On a world where inequality is rising and unemployment is hitting records on multiple countries, LinkedIn keeps its approach of having to pay $29 to see more things and get advantages. If you're based in countries where $29 is too much, too bad for you. Its purpose is to make money with my job search, not with the fact that I found a job.
• Daho0n 6y ago
  LinkedIn is malware. Any proper secured network that care about its users block it.
• dimman 6y ago
  I guess most of these are consequences of trying to solve problems that doesn’t really exist.
• mjgs 6y ago
  Given how central LinkedIn is to many people’s professional careers, I find it shocking that their support department is not contactable via email. Do they even have a support department? Everything is fine until you have an issue. If your issue isn’t answered by one of their pre-written articles, then there isn’t much you can do about it. There are a surprising number of “big” tech companies that do the same. - Reddit support for example, I only ever get automated responses. They just got a $6 billion valuation, yet they have no support email. - Substack doesn’t list its support email on their website, I only found their support email by searching Twitter, found a random tweet that mentioned it, and amazingly it was the right address.
  • lopis 6y ago
    Receiving a multi-billion valuation means you don't need support - the users and the money just comes to you regardless.
    • mjgs 6y ago
      I wish there was a website that lists which big tech companies have support departments that are known to exist AND are contactable via email. You might even be able to offer a service that notifies people when a support department disappears. Such a site could help avoid a lot of heart ache. Finding out that a site you rely on has had its support department gutted, right when you really need a support department, is the worste.
• one2three4 6y ago
  This -verbatim- in my email yesterday: >> Hi, First Name, I tried to reach out to you with a Linkedin Connection, but I had no luck, So I’m trying InMail! ... << Yup. Linkedin. And there's still a part of me that believes I'm gonna get my next job from there.
• jacquesm 6y ago
  All this and more is why I never signed up for LinkedIn, I think they're a bunch of scammers and a very nice collection of dark patterns and there is no way I'm going to support a company like that with either my content or my presence.
• HenryBemis 6y ago
  I have not logged on to LinkedIn for years. And when I do, it is only for its search engine for work. 75% of the ads forward you to the company's website where I actually apply. When I get my next piece of work, I add LinkedIn back to the AdBlock/PrivacyBadger and leave it out the door. That "platform.linkedin.com" (and the share button) tends to pop up in other corners of the internet.
• dbuder 6y ago
  The most awful thing about LinkedIn is that for most people you HAVE to use it, if you apply for a job and you don't have a LinkedIn account or it isn't up to date the vast majority of HR departments will ignore your application completely. Yes I hold both lazy HR people and LinkedIn for this. I've had women look me up on linkedin and refuse a date because of it too. Truly dystopian.
• kazinator 6y ago
  > Many of us have profiles but don’t log in for months at a time. Not those "us" who write articles like this, though. Those actual "us" who actually don't log in for months at a time don't know anything about any of this stuff.
• lmilcin 6y ago
  I don't care if people on LinkedIn want to marinade in their own sauce. I believe most people keep their accounts for the same reason as me, which is to maintain network of people you worked with, contacts to recruiters, to get leads to potential job opportunities and to find people to recruit. It is nice to know when your colleague changed job or is looking for new one. Other than those I completely ignore all other content. I believe people who post those messages are either pressed to get some publicity or/and misunderstand what LinkedIn is for.
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