8 ms·

LinkedIn at least managed to retain its only useful function, a self-updating Rolodex. It would be nice to be able to disable the virtue signalling feed though

by dade_ 3y ago

LinkedIn at least managed to retain its only useful function, a self-updating Rolodex. It would be nice to be able to disable the virtue signalling feed though.

ljm 3y ago
The joy of LinkedIn is you don't need to spend your life scrolling through it. Go in, spend 5 seconds seeing what's new or if you have any non-spam messages, then close the tab. Ignore it for a week or two and repeat, no excessive engagement required.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Yeah I unironically really like LinkedIn. I use it to see who works at companies and who else people I know might know, and what all those people have been up to. This is all super useful information to me as I plan out what to work on and with whom. But the feed could just not be there and it would make no difference. Not sure what you'd put in that real estate on the home page instead though.
  - local_crmdgeon 3y ago
    I think LinkedIn doesn’t know either, so they just did … that
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      Absolutely. I imagine the product meeting being "What are we going to put on the homepage? It's would be weird for your home page to just be your own profile... I guess a feed? Those seem popular and take up plenty of space...".
  - culopatin 3y ago
    I must not know how to use it. My experience is an empty shell of people that only use it when they are looking for a job. The active ones post things that they think will make them look smart, cheap blog posts about “5 management tips”, “is your manager micromanaging you?”, “9 must have resume tools”, stuff like that. The people that I’m actually interested in have a profile, but never actually use it. Or already got a job and don’t need to open it often, if at all. The recruiters that reach out are always scammy or offer ridiculous things hoping that if I’m there, I’m desperate. 12/h do it all position, contract, for maybe 2 weeks, maybe 6 months, (doesn’t matter, I’m on the verge of homelessness anyway right?) for a “very important and growing company” that’s not even in the area I’m in. It always gives me that fake useless vibe. I don’t really know how to turn it into something I actually want to be part of.
    - intelVISA 3y ago
      Pretty much how LI works unfortunately. The people you'd hope were active are out there busy doing useful things not writing "5 lifehacks to do useful things".
      - sanderjd 3y ago
        > Pretty much how LI works fortunately. Fixed that for you! :) Seriously, discoverable linkable profiles with tracking of connections and links to businesses and schools is incredibly useful, and we're fortunate it exists.
    - nurbel 3y ago
      the trick is to not try to be a part of it, but only use it when looking for a job. Sometimes the recruiters leads are worth it to me, but this must be very variable between users depending on profile, location,…
      - culopatin 3y ago
        And do what in that scenario? Do you cold-chat (like cold call I guess) people?
        sanderjd 3y ago
        Yes. It's professional, not personal, it is in no way weird or creepy to just say "hey interesting background, any interest in getting coffee with me?" just like you would with a new colleague at work. But it's pretty much everyone you can meet that way, not just people at your own company.
        moneywoes 3y ago
        Have you come across a playbook for doing it the right way?
        3y ago
  - ljm 3y ago
    Aside from the occasional lunatic post the feed's been pretty decent for me. A lot of it can be noise but I think the fact that it's kind of basic and doesn't manipulate you into constant engagement is what makes it better - I see a lot of stuff that I might not have come across otherwise rather than being fed content the algorithm thinks I enjoy, and the stuff I post gets decent visibility. I suppose it's kind of old-skool in a way while also just being there to fill the space with... something. Meanwhile you couldn't pay me to sign up to FB, Twitter, Insta or TikTok. Overall though - LinkedIn definitely grows in value as your career moves from 'what you know' to 'who you know'.
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      Yeah I agree. I find the feed useless but harmless.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
    So do I. Besides the fact that I got my current position directly through LinkedIn (cold contact from a recruiter), I use it to learn about people I'm going to meet. I work with our Bizdev team a lot, discussing proposals for new business and it's great to be able to look up the management/development team of a company that we're going to have a meeting with to get a better picture of where they're coming from and what their company does. The objections in this thread strike me as typical developer negativity: it's not directly tech-related so it must be useless.
- b112 3y ago
  Ignore it for a week or two and repeat, no excessive engagement required Oh my god, don't say that out loud! That'll send them into a full redesign!
  - antonvs 3y ago
    That’s nothing, I generally ignore it for months at a time
- davidmurdoch 3y ago
  A week or two? More like a year or two.
- stcroixx 3y ago
  You log into LinkedIn every week or two to check messages there? I'd call that pretty solid engagement. If I were a product person there, I'd be happy to have a user like you. I log in every few years when I really have to for some reason and it's always a pain because I'm going to have to reset my password, figure out my login, blah, blech.
- Forgeties79 3y ago
  I log into it strictly to job search, and for that it has been fantastic. What I love is that I don’t need to engage with the site regularly in order to utilize it for that function. I’m on every year or two for a few weeks (minutes a day tops) to update resumes, clean up my “professional storefront” essentially, and do a few job searches - which then leads to me getting regular emails with job opportunities that match my parameters. And unlike other hiring sites, LinkedIn has actually produced results for me.
Garlef 3y ago
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/linkedin-feed-blocker/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/linkedin-feed...
ian0 3y ago
You can with a quick ublock filter. I find the following works a treat: www.linkedin.com###ember69 > div www.linkedin.com##.pb3.pt2.learning-top-courses www.linkedin.com##.clear-both.text-align-center.t-normal.t-12.global-footer-compact__content www.linkedin.com###ember131 > div www.linkedin.com###voyager-feed www.linkedin.com##.msg-overlay-bubble-header www.linkedin.com##.msg-overlay-list-bubble__content--scrollable.msg-overlay-list-bubble__content www.linkedin.com###msg-overlay www.linkedin.com###messaging-nav-item
misja111 3y ago
Every time I fall into the trap of scrolling through the LinkedIn news feed, I end up losing faith in humanity. What LinkedIn has decided that I want to see is a mix of conspiracy theories and narcistic self promotions; and under every post a chorus of congratulations and compliments.
- nicbou 3y ago
  Every time I log in, I unfollow everyone on my feed. LinkedIn is great if you don't follow anyone. I've done the same thing with other social media.
  - yodsanklai 3y ago
    On Twitter, I follow exactly one person. I don't even see all his comments on my feed. But I do see things like fights, light porn content (dicks, prostitutes), Musk trolling... And sometimes, I feel the urge to react to trolls or argue with people. Not a good social media in my opinion. I'm sure it could be vastly improved with a better feed algorithm, and better moderation.
    - nicbou 3y ago
      This is what got me to leave Facebook definitely. I could not follow the only family member I cared about. Facebook just wouldn't show me their posts. Twitter forced "recommended content" onto me recently. Now I just visit /notifications directly. I cut the feed out entirely.
- api 3y ago
  There’s conspiritainment on LinkedIn now? Holy hell. I haven’t logged into that clunker in a long time so I haven’t seen it. Our sales team is forced to use it. Poor souls.
  - misja111 3y ago
    Not only are there conspiracy theorists on the LinkedIn feed, also there is no censoring or warning like on FB. It's a conspiracy theorist's paradise ..
walthamstow 3y ago
Super easy to disable the feed, just unfollow all of your connections.
- FeistySkink 3y ago
  Is there a batch way to do that without triggering some safety check? I have several K of them.
  - walthamstow 3y ago
    Afraid not! The ublock origin method is probably your best bet.
ubermonkey 3y ago
"Virtue signalling?"
edw519 3y ago
LinkedIn's "only useful function" is insufficient to overcome its "deal killer": it's a farce. I have never met an I.T. manager whose LinkedIn profile was remotely close to reality. They all claim the same B.S. (detail oriented, results driven, digital transformation, blah blah blah blah blah blah), enabling them to get hired into roles that ruin the lives of programmers like me. Better they should just be honest and say, "Switch jobs every 3 years when they find out I'm a total poser but I promise to stay out of the programmers' way". I prefer to share my experience here: https://eddiots.com/1038 https://eddiots.com/1038 https://eddiots.com/28 https://eddiots.com/28 https://eddiots.com/1840 https://eddiots.com/1840 https://eddiots.com/983 https://eddiots.com/983
- ExtraRoulette 3y ago
  3 Days late but this is a funny comic! (I'm more WandaWant than say, alGorithm so some of the coding references go over my head but the jokes are funny all the same!)
  - edw519 3y ago
    Thank you, ExtraRoulette! Don't underestimate yourself. My version of wandaWant would never admit that anything went over her head. She'd just pretend that she knew what we were talking about. So you're way ahead already :-)
    - ExtraRoulette 3y ago
      Hah! I appreciate that. One question if that's okay. I notice a few comics refer to COVID though they seem to be dated pre-pandemic: https://eddiots.com/344 https://eddiots.com/344 I'm curious; how come?
      - edw519 3y ago
        Nice catch, ExtraRoulette! You're the first to notice. This project is new. My plan was to write a "comic generator", where I would just input parameters and it would generate the comics. It worked even better than I expected. In the last 6 months, it has generated 2700 comics from my inputs. Then I realized that if I launched 7/1/23, it would take 10 years just to post what I already had, even at one per day. So I just reset my start date from 1/1/23 to 1/1/14. I wanted to launch with a lot of content so people could explore. I also wanted the site to be evergreen which is why I try not to dig too deep into specific technologies. But COVID was obviously too big to ignore. I sorted my backlog a few weeks ago based on many factors, but I guess 344 slipped through the cracks. I think I'll leave it there to see if anyone else notices.
wesapien 3y ago
Install uBlock Origin and wipe those virtues away. Use the element zapper mode to temporarily remove things. Refresh and it'll be back. Use element picker to permanently hide parts of a website.
aidenn0 3y ago
I refuse to sign up for linked-in because I'm still salty about the years when 2/3 of my inbox was emails asking me to sign up.
- dade_ 3y ago
  Yes, I remember when LinkedIn was tricking people into spamming everyone in their contact list on their phone and using the information to suggest connections. A coworker was fooled and sent out invitations to everyone in his massive contact list. He was in sales for over 40 years and was mortified, then pissed off. I refuse to install the LinkedIn apps on my devices. Microsoft didn’t help matters when they integrated it into Outlook.
JohnFen 3y ago
I deleted my LinkedIn account years ago because it had no useful function for me. All it did was get me a constant stream of recruiter spam.
- yetanother12345 3y ago
  > I deleted my LinkedIn account... Genuinely curious: Can you delete now? How? Around 15-16 years ago I _tried_ doing the same and found out that deletion was _not_ possible. I had a personal profile as well as a company profile there. The company was a one-man startup that went down around 2007-9 sometime with the crisis. So it was closed. As there was no option to actually delete or remove profiles I had to resort to manually tracking every bit of content in groups/threads etc and editing each one-by-one to be blank. Also profile pages were blanked and company facts removed where possible. I even wrote a note on both profile pages that "I no longer use this site: this profile is no longer active". This work took days I recall. As many years have passed I do not recall if there was an option to hide the personal profile or not, but no such option existed for the company, and no delete option existed either way. Last time I logged in was around five-six years ago only to find out that my profiles were still there and my former company had now gained 100+ current and former employees from multiple countries! I had no way to inform anyone that these people were not really employees, as said company no longer existed. And, they never had been. I would still like to be able to permanently delete these profiles, but last time I checked it was still the digital equivalent of Hotel Califonia: "you can check out any time you want, but you can never leave"

by dade_ 3y ago

LinkedIn at least managed to retain its only useful function, a self-updating Rolodex. It would be nice to be able to disable the virtue signalling feed though.

ljm 3y ago

The joy of LinkedIn is you don't need to spend your life scrolling through it. Go in, spend 5 seconds seeing what's new or if you have any non-spam messages, then close the tab. Ignore it for a week or two and repeat, no excessive engagement required.

sanderjd 3y ago
Yeah I unironically really like LinkedIn. I use it to see who works at companies and who else people I know might know, and what all those people have been up to. This is all super useful information to me as I plan out what to work on and with whom. But the feed could just not be there and it would make no difference. Not sure what you'd put in that real estate on the home page instead though.
- local_crmdgeon 3y ago
  I think LinkedIn doesn’t know either, so they just did … that
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    Absolutely. I imagine the product meeting being "What are we going to put on the homepage? It's would be weird for your home page to just be your own profile... I guess a feed? Those seem popular and take up plenty of space...".
- culopatin 3y ago
  I must not know how to use it. My experience is an empty shell of people that only use it when they are looking for a job. The active ones post things that they think will make them look smart, cheap blog posts about “5 management tips”, “is your manager micromanaging you?”, “9 must have resume tools”, stuff like that. The people that I’m actually interested in have a profile, but never actually use it. Or already got a job and don’t need to open it often, if at all. The recruiters that reach out are always scammy or offer ridiculous things hoping that if I’m there, I’m desperate. 12/h do it all position, contract, for maybe 2 weeks, maybe 6 months, (doesn’t matter, I’m on the verge of homelessness anyway right?) for a “very important and growing company” that’s not even in the area I’m in. It always gives me that fake useless vibe. I don’t really know how to turn it into something I actually want to be part of.
  - intelVISA 3y ago
    Pretty much how LI works unfortunately. The people you'd hope were active are out there busy doing useful things not writing "5 lifehacks to do useful things".
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      > Pretty much how LI works fortunately. Fixed that for you! :) Seriously, discoverable linkable profiles with tracking of connections and links to businesses and schools is incredibly useful, and we're fortunate it exists.
  - nurbel 3y ago
    the trick is to not try to be a part of it, but only use it when looking for a job. Sometimes the recruiters leads are worth it to me, but this must be very variable between users depending on profile, location,…
    - culopatin 3y ago
      And do what in that scenario? Do you cold-chat (like cold call I guess) people?
      - sanderjd 3y ago
        Yes. It's professional, not personal, it is in no way weird or creepy to just say "hey interesting background, any interest in getting coffee with me?" just like you would with a new colleague at work. But it's pretty much everyone you can meet that way, not just people at your own company.
        moneywoes 3y ago
        Have you come across a playbook for doing it the right way?
        3y ago
- ljm 3y ago
  Aside from the occasional lunatic post the feed's been pretty decent for me. A lot of it can be noise but I think the fact that it's kind of basic and doesn't manipulate you into constant engagement is what makes it better - I see a lot of stuff that I might not have come across otherwise rather than being fed content the algorithm thinks I enjoy, and the stuff I post gets decent visibility. I suppose it's kind of old-skool in a way while also just being there to fill the space with... something. Meanwhile you couldn't pay me to sign up to FB, Twitter, Insta or TikTok. Overall though - LinkedIn definitely grows in value as your career moves from 'what you know' to 'who you know'.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    Yeah I agree. I find the feed useless but harmless.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  So do I. Besides the fact that I got my current position directly through LinkedIn (cold contact from a recruiter), I use it to learn about people I'm going to meet. I work with our Bizdev team a lot, discussing proposals for new business and it's great to be able to look up the management/development team of a company that we're going to have a meeting with to get a better picture of where they're coming from and what their company does. The objections in this thread strike me as typical developer negativity: it's not directly tech-related so it must be useless.
b112 3y ago
Ignore it for a week or two and repeat, no excessive engagement required Oh my god, don't say that out loud! That'll send them into a full redesign!
- antonvs 3y ago
  That’s nothing, I generally ignore it for months at a time
davidmurdoch 3y ago
A week or two? More like a year or two.
stcroixx 3y ago
You log into LinkedIn every week or two to check messages there? I'd call that pretty solid engagement. If I were a product person there, I'd be happy to have a user like you. I log in every few years when I really have to for some reason and it's always a pain because I'm going to have to reset my password, figure out my login, blah, blech.
Forgeties79 3y ago
I log into it strictly to job search, and for that it has been fantastic. What I love is that I don’t need to engage with the site regularly in order to utilize it for that function. I’m on every year or two for a few weeks (minutes a day tops) to update resumes, clean up my “professional storefront” essentially, and do a few job searches - which then leads to me getting regular emails with job opportunities that match my parameters. And unlike other hiring sites, LinkedIn has actually produced results for me.

Garlef 3y ago

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/linkedin-feed-blocker/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/linkedin-feed...

ian0 3y ago

You can with a quick ublock filter. I find the following works a treat: www.linkedin.com###ember69 > div www.linkedin.com##.pb3.pt2.learning-top-courses www.linkedin.com##.clear-both.text-align-center.t-normal.t-12.global-footer-compact__content www.linkedin.com###ember131 > div www.linkedin.com###voyager-feed www.linkedin.com##.msg-overlay-bubble-header www.linkedin.com##.msg-overlay-list-bubble__content--scrollable.msg-overlay-list-bubble__content www.linkedin.com###msg-overlay www.linkedin.com###messaging-nav-item

misja111 3y ago

Every time I fall into the trap of scrolling through the LinkedIn news feed, I end up losing faith in humanity. What LinkedIn has decided that I want to see is a mix of conspiracy theories and narcistic self promotions; and under every post a chorus of congratulations and compliments.

nicbou 3y ago
Every time I log in, I unfollow everyone on my feed. LinkedIn is great if you don't follow anyone. I've done the same thing with other social media.
- yodsanklai 3y ago
  On Twitter, I follow exactly one person. I don't even see all his comments on my feed. But I do see things like fights, light porn content (dicks, prostitutes), Musk trolling... And sometimes, I feel the urge to react to trolls or argue with people. Not a good social media in my opinion. I'm sure it could be vastly improved with a better feed algorithm, and better moderation.
  - nicbou 3y ago
    This is what got me to leave Facebook definitely. I could not follow the only family member I cared about. Facebook just wouldn't show me their posts. Twitter forced "recommended content" onto me recently. Now I just visit /notifications directly. I cut the feed out entirely.
api 3y ago
There’s conspiritainment on LinkedIn now? Holy hell. I haven’t logged into that clunker in a long time so I haven’t seen it. Our sales team is forced to use it. Poor souls.
- misja111 3y ago
  Not only are there conspiracy theorists on the LinkedIn feed, also there is no censoring or warning like on FB. It's a conspiracy theorist's paradise ..

walthamstow 3y ago

Super easy to disable the feed, just unfollow all of your connections.

FeistySkink 3y ago
Is there a batch way to do that without triggering some safety check? I have several K of them.
- walthamstow 3y ago
  Afraid not! The ublock origin method is probably your best bet.

ubermonkey 3y ago

"Virtue signalling?"

edw519 3y ago

LinkedIn's "only useful function" is insufficient to overcome its "deal killer": it's a farce. I have never met an I.T. manager whose LinkedIn profile was remotely close to reality. They all claim the same B.S. (detail oriented, results driven, digital transformation, blah blah blah blah blah blah), enabling them to get hired into roles that ruin the lives of programmers like me. Better they should just be honest and say, "Switch jobs every 3 years when they find out I'm a total poser but I promise to stay out of the programmers' way". I prefer to share my experience here: https://eddiots.com/1038 https://eddiots.com/1038 https://eddiots.com/28 https://eddiots.com/28 https://eddiots.com/1840 https://eddiots.com/1840 https://eddiots.com/983 https://eddiots.com/983

ExtraRoulette 3y ago
3 Days late but this is a funny comic! (I'm more WandaWant than say, alGorithm so some of the coding references go over my head but the jokes are funny all the same!)
- edw519 3y ago
  Thank you, ExtraRoulette! Don't underestimate yourself. My version of wandaWant would never admit that anything went over her head. She'd just pretend that she knew what we were talking about. So you're way ahead already :-)
  - ExtraRoulette 3y ago
    Hah! I appreciate that. One question if that's okay. I notice a few comics refer to COVID though they seem to be dated pre-pandemic: https://eddiots.com/344 https://eddiots.com/344 I'm curious; how come?
    - edw519 3y ago
      Nice catch, ExtraRoulette! You're the first to notice. This project is new. My plan was to write a "comic generator", where I would just input parameters and it would generate the comics. It worked even better than I expected. In the last 6 months, it has generated 2700 comics from my inputs. Then I realized that if I launched 7/1/23, it would take 10 years just to post what I already had, even at one per day. So I just reset my start date from 1/1/23 to 1/1/14. I wanted to launch with a lot of content so people could explore. I also wanted the site to be evergreen which is why I try not to dig too deep into specific technologies. But COVID was obviously too big to ignore. I sorted my backlog a few weeks ago based on many factors, but I guess 344 slipped through the cracks. I think I'll leave it there to see if anyone else notices.

wesapien 3y ago

Install uBlock Origin and wipe those virtues away. Use the element zapper mode to temporarily remove things. Refresh and it'll be back. Use element picker to permanently hide parts of a website.

aidenn0 3y ago

I refuse to sign up for linked-in because I'm still salty about the years when 2/3 of my inbox was emails asking me to sign up.

dade_ 3y ago
Yes, I remember when LinkedIn was tricking people into spamming everyone in their contact list on their phone and using the information to suggest connections. A coworker was fooled and sent out invitations to everyone in his massive contact list. He was in sales for over 40 years and was mortified, then pissed off. I refuse to install the LinkedIn apps on my devices. Microsoft didn’t help matters when they integrated it into Outlook.

JohnFen 3y ago

I deleted my LinkedIn account years ago because it had no useful function for me. All it did was get me a constant stream of recruiter spam.

yetanother12345 3y ago
> I deleted my LinkedIn account... Genuinely curious: Can you delete now? How? Around 15-16 years ago I _tried_ doing the same and found out that deletion was _not_ possible. I had a personal profile as well as a company profile there. The company was a one-man startup that went down around 2007-9 sometime with the crisis. So it was closed. As there was no option to actually delete or remove profiles I had to resort to manually tracking every bit of content in groups/threads etc and editing each one-by-one to be blank. Also profile pages were blanked and company facts removed where possible. I even wrote a note on both profile pages that "I no longer use this site: this profile is no longer active". This work took days I recall. As many years have passed I do not recall if there was an option to hide the personal profile or not, but no such option existed for the company, and no delete option existed either way. Last time I logged in was around five-six years ago only to find out that my profiles were still there and my former company had now gained 100+ current and former employees from multiple countries! I had no way to inform anyone that these people were not really employees, as said company no longer existed. And, they never had been. I would still like to be able to permanently delete these profiles, but last time I checked it was still the digital equivalent of Hotel Califonia: "you can check out any time you want, but you can never leave"