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I don't really understand your comment. You seem to simultaneously acknowledge the problem and complain about someone else acknowledging and doing something abo

I don't really understand your comment. You seem to simultaneously acknowledge the problem and complain about someone else acknowledging and doing something about it. I have very little reason to doubt that you are a good recruiter. And I think it is very respectable of you to help out friends who are looking for work and for whom you can make useful connections. But how many of those friends did you meet through LinkedIn? How many of those inquiries are coming to you through LinkedIn? Could all of them not be made just as well (if not better) through personal email? The fact of the matter, which you readily admit, is that most recruiters on LinkedIn aren't very good. If 95% are "worthless annoyances" then why would any qualified person stick around on the platform hoping to meet the rare gem like you that might actually understand how to do the job properly?

potatolicious 14y ago
> "then why would any qualified person stick around on the platform hoping to meet the rare gem like you" Because there isn't really another good way to meet exclusively good recruiters. This might mean the market is ripe for disruption (i.e., a place where good engineers can meet good recruiters without all the noise). It's the same game as online dating. 99% of the people you will meet you will not have a relationship with, but lacking a better alternative you must wade through the 99% to get to the 1%. > "Could all of them not be made just as well (if not better) through personal email?" LinkedIn's value is not as a communications platform. Anyone can throw up a textbox and send someone the contents of said text field. LinkedIn is known for discoverability - and that remains an unsolved problem. Not every programmer has an up to date resume, on their website, and properly SEO'ed to boot. So the question is, without LinkedIn, how would a (good) recruiter even find your email address with which to contact you? There are alternate ways of discovery, but each one seems to leave a large group of qualified candidates on the floor. Not everyone is on StackOverflow, not everyone is on Github, etc.
- stanleydrew 14y ago
  "So the question is, without LinkedIn, how would a (good) recruiter even find your email address with which to contact you?" That's a great question. You should ask a good recruiter. Because there were surely recruiters, and good ones, plying their trade before LinkedIn. I'm willing to state, unequivocally, that if a recruiter's top talent discovery system is LinkedIn, that recruiter is not a good recruiter. My relatively uninformed opinion is that to be a good recruiter you have to forge relationships. And I'm pretty sure a lot of us would agree that LinkedIn is not a good platform for forming relationships.
ryguytilidie 14y ago
" I don't really understand your comment. You seem to simultaneously acknowledge the problem and complain about someone else acknowledging and doing something about it." There isn't much to understand really. While there are many bad recruiters you should just archive their email. There are some good ones. The more ways good ones have to contact you (though I would admit, contact through a community other than linkedin would generally be a signal of a "good one") the more ways you have to make a connection. With bad recruiters, simply archive their email, with good ones, just keep in touch. The implication that the OP is "doing something about it" by deleting their linkedin account and making blog post #428934892 where people complain about recruiters because of a bad experience is a bit ridiculous. What does that accomplish? I guess I just don't really see whining about a problem as doing something about it. Seems like the flavor of the week to talk about how recruiters suck because you had a bad experience with one and that one just wants to get a rep by pretending like they're so overwhelmed with headhunter emails they just can't handle it. As many have said, bad recruiter=hit archive. good recruiter=build a relationship with. That is a much better way to "do something about it" than writing another blog post about how bad recruiters are because you didn't like one...
- stanleydrew 14y ago
  "What does that accomplish?" Well, deleting the account sends a signal to LinkedIn, albeit tiny, that it isn't providing value to him. It also removes a (presumably) quality engineer from the pool of talent available to be found on LinkedIn. This eventually will force the good recruiters to look elsewhere for engineering talent. The blog post is an attempt to amplify those two signals. I agree that whining isn't helping much, if at all, when you think about it as whining. I'm mostly agreeing with the deletion of the account, not so much the blog post announcing it. If you are offended by the blog post, but can see the validity in actually removing yourself from a network that isn't providing much value, then we agree on everything.

potatolicious 14y ago

> "then why would any qualified person stick around on the platform hoping to meet the rare gem like you" Because there isn't really another good way to meet exclusively good recruiters. This might mean the market is ripe for disruption (i.e., a place where good engineers can meet good recruiters without all the noise). It's the same game as online dating. 99% of the people you will meet you will not have a relationship with, but lacking a better alternative you must wade through the 99% to get to the 1%. > "Could all of them not be made just as well (if not better) through personal email?" LinkedIn's value is not as a communications platform. Anyone can throw up a textbox and send someone the contents of said text field. LinkedIn is known for discoverability - and that remains an unsolved problem. Not every programmer has an up to date resume, on their website, and properly SEO'ed to boot. So the question is, without LinkedIn, how would a (good) recruiter even find your email address with which to contact you? There are alternate ways of discovery, but each one seems to leave a large group of qualified candidates on the floor. Not everyone is on StackOverflow, not everyone is on Github, etc.

stanleydrew 14y ago
"So the question is, without LinkedIn, how would a (good) recruiter even find your email address with which to contact you?" That's a great question. You should ask a good recruiter. Because there were surely recruiters, and good ones, plying their trade before LinkedIn. I'm willing to state, unequivocally, that if a recruiter's top talent discovery system is LinkedIn, that recruiter is not a good recruiter. My relatively uninformed opinion is that to be a good recruiter you have to forge relationships. And I'm pretty sure a lot of us would agree that LinkedIn is not a good platform for forming relationships.

ryguytilidie 14y ago

" I don't really understand your comment. You seem to simultaneously acknowledge the problem and complain about someone else acknowledging and doing something about it." There isn't much to understand really. While there are many bad recruiters you should just archive their email. There are some good ones. The more ways good ones have to contact you (though I would admit, contact through a community other than linkedin would generally be a signal of a "good one") the more ways you have to make a connection. With bad recruiters, simply archive their email, with good ones, just keep in touch. The implication that the OP is "doing something about it" by deleting their linkedin account and making blog post #428934892 where people complain about recruiters because of a bad experience is a bit ridiculous. What does that accomplish? I guess I just don't really see whining about a problem as doing something about it. Seems like the flavor of the week to talk about how recruiters suck because you had a bad experience with one and that one just wants to get a rep by pretending like they're so overwhelmed with headhunter emails they just can't handle it. As many have said, bad recruiter=hit archive. good recruiter=build a relationship with. That is a much better way to "do something about it" than writing another blog post about how bad recruiters are because you didn't like one...

stanleydrew 14y ago
"What does that accomplish?" Well, deleting the account sends a signal to LinkedIn, albeit tiny, that it isn't providing value to him. It also removes a (presumably) quality engineer from the pool of talent available to be found on LinkedIn. This eventually will force the good recruiters to look elsewhere for engineering talent. The blog post is an attempt to amplify those two signals. I agree that whining isn't helping much, if at all, when you think about it as whining. I'm mostly agreeing with the deletion of the account, not so much the blog post announcing it. If you are offended by the blog post, but can see the validity in actually removing yourself from a network that isn't providing much value, then we agree on everything.