
The Absurdity of LinkedIn - darrennix
http://blog.42floors.com/absurdity-linkedin/
======
scrollaway
I can't believe people still use LinkedIn.

And when I say that, I am talking about the HN crowd. It's one thing to say "I
can't believe people use IE6", but this is _tech-savvy_ people using a joke of
a social media.

Guys, if you want to look professional, buy your own domain name. Something
professional, like yourname.me, or clever like "yourna.me". Build your own web
page with your own damn profile and don't leave control over a company on how
you look on the web. Be in control of the first point of entry to your
_identity_.

For god sake guys. LinkedIn has had so many security issues, so much scummy
behaviour regarding spam, user retention etc... yet you are still blessing
them with your presence. (Obviously this doesn't apply to those that don't)

PS: Use gandi.net as a registrar for your name. They offer a free ssl cert
along with the domain (and support almost every tld) for added "professional-
looking" value to your site. I am not affiliated with them, I just love Gandi.

Edit: I'm being called out for "living in my own bubble" it seems. Yet
LinkedIn is the very definition of a bubble. I used to have a LinkedIn profile
and from it all I got were the most awful recruiting experiences, and all of
them through cold calls. Your own site with CV + portfolio + Github + contact
details is a LOT better.

PS2: Downvote or not I don't care, but please reply if you disagree; I'd love
to disagree even harder!

Edit 2: I'm starting to think there is correlation between finding LinkedIn
useful and not having a Github profile. A lot of the points people are
bringing up here are solved in a very similar way by Github (which is in many
ways a social network). This does bring me back to my original point though,
why use LinkedIn when you can use a company that isn't scummy and actually
have your _real_ work experience on there and a link back to your personal
website with more portfolio etc?

~~~
seldo
As a hiring manager, I expect candidates to have a LinkedIn profile that is up
to date. A LinkedIn profile is a public copy of your resume; other people can
see it and flag if you make inaccurate claims. I can also see how you're
connected to me (it's a very rare web developer who isn't a few degrees away
from me, mostly because of my time at Yahoo) and use those people to work out
where you are in the industry, and get background information from them.
Public recommendations are good (the skills endorsements list much less so).

If you don't have a LinkedIn profile, I assume you're either very junior,
shady, or clueless, and none of those is good. [Edit: per comments below, you
might have some deep principled reason for not using social networks. In this
case my metric is wrong, but I'm okay with having a false negative once in a
while.]

Expecting everyone to have and maintain their own domain probably isn't
practical, but even for those that do, the discoverability of that domain is
low: I don't search google to find developers, I search LinkedIn. That's what
it's for, and it's really pretty good at it.

They do some really dumb UI stuff around privacy that is trivially worked
around using Incognito. I wish they didn't, but it's not dumb enough to make
me abandon the giant utility of the network as a whole.

[Update: I took this thread to Twitter and got a bunch of really cogent
arguments, including that LinkedIn enables harrassment/stalking of
marginalized groups. That's more than a few isolated people who don't like
social networks or object to the dark pattern UI, that's a systemic flaw. So
I'm going to change my hiring practices to take that into account. Thanks,
everybody!]

~~~
sergiosgc
I know I am not going to change your modus operandi, but I must publicly point
out that I fully, absolutely, disagree with how you execute your hiring. If
you were working for me, you'd soon be working for someone else.

Your approach is a minimal-effort Pareto principle based hiring. By eschewing
any and all candidate information sources other than the market leader
professional social network, you get access to a pool of 80% of the candidates
with minimal effort. For you, it's great. For your company, it's passable. For
the candidates, it's disgusting.

I know many professionals, top of their class, that do not maintain their
LinkedIn profile. Some don't even have one (usually out of principle). You
absentmindedly dismiss these 95th percentile professionals in the "junior,
shady or clueless" category. It reeks of profiling, smells like laziness and
must be called out as bad practice.

~~~
mason55
_> For you, it's great. For your company, it's passable. For the candidates,
it's disgusting._

Not the OP and playing a bit of devil's advocate but why do I care what's best
for candidates? If I'm able to hire the people I need then I don't really care
if there's a group of developers that I'll never find.

That's a choice you make when you take your principled stand.

~~~
sergiosgc
It's not central to the argument, because the OP's position is obviously
suboptimal for the company. However, yours is an interesting view, and a point
in my argument that does require clarification.

Current good management practices envision managing as optimizing company
behavior for all company stakeholders. In past times, management optimized for
shareholder profit. Optimizing for shareholder profit alone has been
repeatedly proven not sustainable. It usually leads to very spectacular
failures, which themselves cause the public notion that _all_ management is
still shareholder-oriented. Not all companies are managed like this.
Successful ones manage their relationship with all stakeholders. It is in this
view that caring for candidates is important.

In this view, in order to maximize long term profit, you should aim to create
positive effects on every individual or organization that somehow interfaces
with your company. This is obviously theoretical, and impractical. Sometimes
it is just not possible, and anyhow you have to give higher importance to
central stakeholders (shareholders, customers, employees). However, when the
cost is not too high, you should strive for positive impacts.

In hiring, the cost of reviewing non-standard resumes is not relevant. The
cost of causing a bad impression on the random important candidate that you
decline, or the cost of missing an excellent hire, is relevant. The OP's
position is fundamentally wrong.

~~~
vonmoltke
Unfortunately, the OP's position is held, in varying forms, by many in this
industry. How many have said they won't hire someone without a Github profile?
Without Open Source contributions? Without a direct personal network
connection? If they spent too long at $BIG_STODGY_COMPANY? I have come to the
conclusion that most companies don't give a shit about candidates as long as
they are getting enough. Hell, even some companies that bitch and moan about
"talent shortages" seem to have their own Pareto principle bullshit getting in
their way.

~~~
jarrett
Well yes, all of those criteria are bad business, if taken as absolutes. They
can all be _factors,_ for sure. But as absolute requirements, they just weed
out good candidates.

> I have come to the conclusion that most companies don't give a shit about
> candidates as long as they are getting enough. Hell, even some companies
> that bitch and moan about "talent shortages" seem to have their own Pareto
> principle bullshit getting in their way.

It sounds like a lot of the companies you've encountered have embraced
irrational business practices. That can definitely happen. I'm not convinced
it's the norm, though. And I'm sure that it _shouldn 't_ be.

------
sridharvembu
LinkedIn seems to be changing, and I am not sure for the better.

Recently they stopped access to a whole bunch of CRM players to LinkedIn API.
Only Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics are allowed now.

[http://www.zdnet.com/linkedout-crm-companies-squawk-over-
lin...](http://www.zdnet.com/linkedout-crm-companies-squawk-over-linkedins-
api-policies-7000028762/)

(Disclosure: Zoho CRM was one of the affected products - we offered to pay for
their API access but no dice)

------
krelian
I'd rank LinkedIn number 2 after Godaddy in the list of Successful Shady
Companies (list ranked by shadiness BTW). Their entire business model revolves
around tricking the user into doing stuff that - if it was clearly explained -
they would never want to do.

~~~
matrix
Their shadiness is not limited to usability dark patterns; I am fairly sure
they're scraping people's contact lists from gmail and the like without
consent via impersonation (have gmail open in one tab, linkedin in
another...). Exactly how they're accomplishing that, I'd love to know --
Facebook is likely pulling the same trick.

~~~
mortenjorck
That's a pretty wild claim; what observations have led you to this conclusion?

~~~
philrapo
Hi have noticed this repeatedly as well. Under the "People you may know"
section, I see names of people with whom I've emailed only 1 time, often many
years ago. These are people with whom I have no relationship, and the only
record of them in my life is a gmail email. This leads me to believe that
LinkedIn is somehow accessing this data without my permission.

~~~
mortenjorck
Actually, that makes perfect sense, with no need for exotic cross-tab
scripting attacks.

That person may be in your address book, which you've never shared with
LinkedIn, but you are in _their address book_ , which they clearly have
shared.

~~~
wpietri
Plausible for some, not others. I've seen LinkedIn suggest I connect to
"people" that aren't people at all, but role addresses. E.g., reception@[my
oral surgeon]. Others are email addresses that are ancient, 15 years old at
least, or for domains that no longer exist.

No idea how they've gotten access to that, but I've never knowingly authorized
a connection to my address books.

~~~
matrix
This is the behavior I have observed too. There are addresses that could not
plausibly be gotten by any means other than unauthorized scraping of my mail
or contacts.

The only other mechanism I can think of is that maybe they're getting them via
Android or iPhone apps (not necessarily linkedin's app) with less-than-upfront
disclosure of what the app's doing. Either way, it's slimy behavior.

------
mjt0229
Linked in is a very strange world; maybe it's good for job seekers or
recruiters, but I find that the most frequent interactions I have there are
either recruiters contacting me for ridiculous jobs that I would never be
interested in (and sometimes am not qualified for). The second most frequent
type of interactions I have there are where people endorse me for various
skills.

Inevitably, I get endorsed by people who have no knowledge of said skills: I'm
not sure why a technology-phobic college admissions officer would endorse my
skills in distributed software engineering, and what would be the value of
such an endorsement?

~~~
artmageddon
> Inevitably, I get endorsed by people who have no knowledge of said skills:
> I'm not sure why a technology-phobic college admissions officer would
> endorse my skills in distributed software engineering, and what would be the
> value of such an endorsement?

I have to agree. I've gotten so many endorsements from non-software engineers
who I've never worked with for my apparent XML abilities. I literally don't
know what to think about that.

~~~
hnnewguy
> _I literally don 't know what to think about that._

The "endorsement" system is an utter joke. When it was implemented,
"endorsing" people consisted of clicking on any and every little oval that was
in front of the user. I bet _everyone_ here has been endorsed for _multiple_
things they are unassociated with.

The idea that someone thought that a real-life, personal "endorsement" could
be recreated by clicking a button that half the population won't read is
beyond me.

LinkedIn seems to be useful because it's hot (as in, everyone is there). But
outside of that original, clever idea (a professional social network) it
doesn't offer much outside of its network effect.

~~~
adrianhoward
It's why I made sure "coffee" made it into my top 10 endorsements. Shows how
seriously I take the the system ;-)

(BTW It's slipped to #9 now... if anybody wants to endorse me for coffee that
would be lovely ;-)

------
leorocky
This absurdity is found all over the internet and it's the result of Google's
crawling policy. You can do the same kind of thing with nytimes.com articles
and other websites that want their context indexed by Google but at the same
time restrict access to it. These absurdities are made and work because most
people do not understand how to use the software they have.

~~~
retube
I thought Google heavily penalised sites that made content available to the
Google bot but firewalled content for everybody else?

~~~
leorocky
I think there is a penalty for showing Googlebot something other than what
people can see, but these sites all use tricks to get around it by allowing
users to see the same thing as Googlebot in various circumstances. For example
Quora has the ?share=1 URL variable. The Wall Street Journal allows users to
read a limited number of articles for free if they clicked in from Google
(tracked via a cookie). The New York Times allows free reads from anywhere for
a limit, but also tracked via a cookie. LinkedIn blocks their registered
users, which is probably the worse system ever.

------
baddox
LinkedIn is probably my least favorite tech company. I have deleted my account
(or whatever is the closest thing they allow, it might be called something
like "unlink account") three times now over about two years. This was after
attempting to unsubscribe from all emails but continuing to receive them.

The first two times I deleted my account, my account magically resurrected
itself after I accidentally clicked a link to a LinkedIn page and my password
manager automatically logged me in. Apparently logging in resurrects deleted
accounts, no questions asked. After the second time, I wisened up and removed
all my LinkedIn cookies and disabled my password manager for the domain, then
deleted my account for the third time.

That had worked for a long time, until just a few days ago, when I received a
random LinkedIn newsletter out of the blue. This was disturbing. I clicked the
Unsubscribe link, which asked me to log in, but my login didn't work (which is
nice, because apparently my account is slightly more deleted now). So I
tweeted at LinkedIn, and they said they put my email address on their Do Not
Contact list.

Hopefully the reign of terror is over, but I somehow doubt it.

~~~
ktf
I don't even have a LinkedIn account, I've _never_ had an account, and I still
receive their emails. It's mystifying...

------
josho
This is the tension that is LinkedIn.

While they were growing, they allowed great amount of sharing. Now it seems
they are transitioning from a growth based company to growing their revenue--
I've personally been finding more and more examples of this increased
friction.

So far that tension seems to still be 'ok', they still give away, for free,
most of the value is in their huge user database. Their monetization strategy
has been to tighten things up so it's still valuable for most people, with the
exception of sales and recruiters. If you are one of them, then to get the
value of the database you need to pay.

Given the network effects of their user database, I suspect over time what
they give away will be less and less and we'll see more examples of this.

------
yahelc
I noticed this the other day -- while logged in, LinkedIn insisted I must
upgrade to Premium in order to see the last name of the person whose profile I
was looking at (which of course, was publicly once I logged out).

~~~
hga
Might you find some value from the person, and LinkedIn, knowing _you_ looked
at that profile?

I can't offhand think of any, but that's one difference between these two use
cases.

~~~
lstamour
Except anonymous users get the benefit of being both anonymous and able to
view the profile. LinkedIn pushes users to either upgrade or sign out. Works
for me, I don't like signing in often either.

~~~
andypants
They only really push users to upgrade. They don't let you know that you can
view the full profile if you sign out. That's just an obscure (possibly
temporary) workaround.

------
habosa
LinkedIn really blew it. They were the one of the big social players
(Facebook, Twitter, G+, Foursquare, Tumblr, LinkedIn) that had people who were
happy to pay for premium features. Put another way, they were the only social
player with a non-ad revenue play. The problem was that the people paying were
recruiters, so they did a lot to make the recruiters happy. They forgot about
those who the recruiters were targeting, however, and now people like us send
LinkedIn straight to spam.

LinkedIn had a real opportunity to be the social network that added real
value, but now (as evidenced by the comments below) people see them as a
spammy, shady mess.

~~~
untog
"People" on HN see them as a spammy, shady mess. People I've talked to that
work in different industries are mystified that I don't use LinkedIn. They
love it.

~~~
habosa
True, some industries like it more than others. But given that tech is one of
the most heavily recruited industries right now you'd think that LinkedIn
would want to keep a good image around the HN crowd.

------
ChuckMcM
I've wondered about this too. They don't seem to have a coherent "value
capture" strategy. There is always tension between the 'let the customer see
the value' and 'give away the value' except they do seem to have it backwards.
As a non-logged in user you should not see profiles but as a logged in user
you should. That at least would keep some of the scraper bots away.

~~~
fredgrott
their value strategy is allow recruiters to find the linkedin profile via
google and than up sell the recruiter.

~~~
Nicholas_C
Absolutely. My coworkers and I all get cold calls and cold e-mails from
recruiters who find our names/occupations on LinkedIn. I'm assuming these
recruiters are using premium accounts and paying to send e-mails through
LinkedIn.

~~~
eli
For what it's worth, I get many more/worse emails and calls from people who
scraped my github profile.

~~~
vidarh
At least the people scraping my Github profile tends to have a slight idea
about what languages I tend to work with.

------
whiddershins
Not directly related: I have a linkedin account, and once, I logged in and it
recommended a connection which happened to be the guy who lives on my second
floor. This guy was the roommate of the person who rents the second floor, I
have never called, emailed, or texted this individual. He works in a
completely unrelated business to me and we have no linkedin connections in
common. No social media or any other sort of connections. I have no electronic
connections with the _other_ guy who lives in that apartment. I have a
different _mailing address_. The only thing we have in common is that he
sometimes hops on my wifi when his is on the fritz. LinkedIn insists they
don't use ip addresses for connections. OK. This is incredibly hard for me to
believe.

I feel they pump their numbers with questionable tactics and people mostly use
it because of fear. Fear that if they don't use it, their career will suffer.
Which plays on a general unease that you could one day end up living in a
ditch. So, imo, LinkedIn isn't absurd, it is sinister.

~~~
ctdonath
If you dig a little you can find several articles detailing LinkedIn's
odd/scary ability to connect people having no discernible connection but a
good reason to think there could/should be.

------
malandrew
I would love it if Matt Cutts and the rest of the Google search team decided
to seriously derank any resource that requires login to view. LinkedIn, Quora
and Experts Exchange are prime offenders here.

There is absolutely no reason for google to index any information that the
general public can't see without logging in.

~~~
untog
They do. LinkedIn allows you to view an anonymous version of the profile, so
it doesn't technically break the rules.

------
aendruk
I had success in asking LinkedIn to blacklist my email address [1].

My reasoning behind the decision was simply that I found their continual
attempts to socially manipulate me insulting, and that I'd prefer not to be
walked all over by any company, let alone one as trashy as LinkedIn.

[1]:
[https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/](https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/)

------
thatthatis
There are two things you can do with this information:

1) Balk at its seeming absurdity

2) Assume linkedin is a rational company and take the seeming absurdity as an
insight into how to convert free users into premium users.

It is shocking how little it takes to convince some people to pull out their
credit cards and sign up for an annual subscription.

~~~
Kequc
Number two has to assume Linkedin is not only a rational company but also a
competent one. I deleted my Linkedin account almost a decade ago and I still
get mail from them. When I try to unsubscribe from the spam they send me I am
dragged through the sign in procedure, for an account I do not have. When I
use the forgot password function to try and figure out what account they are
talking about and I enter all of my addresses one by one eventually finding
out I definitely do not have any account. I am by this time so frustrated that
I want to kick my computer down the stairs.

Every single step that has anything to do with not giving them money by the
way is met with Captcha. I've never filled out so many captchas as when I
tried to unsubscribe from Linkedin spam.

My only remaining option was to mark all email from them as spam. Stop using
Linkedin. I certainly won't think fondly of anyone who tries to add me there.
People just put my email address into a box and I get an email from Linkedin
on top of the spam the company still sends me.

~~~
nollidge
See this post elsewhere on the thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7674630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7674630)

------
baggachipz
Ah yes the tried-and-true "experts-exchange" model. How'd that work out for
them, anyway?

~~~
Netminder_EE
DISCLAIMER: I'm Experts Exchange's senior volunteer administrator. That means,
for the most part, that I've outlasted everyone else.

At the time EE imposed the cloaking / hard and fast paywall / masking /
whatever you call it, we told them it was a bad idea. We understand why they
did it -- it was to counteract the effects of a prior less-than-advisable
decision -- but that didn't make it a good idea.

Long term, obviously, it resulted in 1) major penalties from Google and 2) a
lot of competition EE didn't need to provoke.

New management has removed the paywall and redirects from external search
results and links about two months ago; we expect that it will still be a few
months longer before the penalties will be overcome.

------
DanielBMarkham
As I noted on Twitter recently, "LinkedIn, the place where you can get
endorsed for skills you don't have by people you've never met, reaches 300
million users."
[https://twitter.com/danielbmarkham/status/457298482978512896](https://twitter.com/danielbmarkham/status/457298482978512896)

What can you say? The thing is growing. People use it. It's definitely no
Facebook (e-gads, is that EVEN a compliment?) but they're a contender.

If I had to choose, I'd say I hate LinkedIn less than Facebook because at
least they haven't mastered social manipulation to the degree that Facebook
has. They're kind of rookie-league slimy. I guess that's something.

------
coherentpony
I don't have a LinkedIn account, and they still keep emailing me. Go away
LinkedIn, I do not want your spam.

------
GeneralMayhem
I hate LinkedIn. It's a terrible, cluttered mess of a website. It's shady as
all hell. Their mobile app is unusable.

And yet, just by having a profile that's even vaguely up to date, I get job
offers left and right. Most of them are complete crap, but I was also
contacted by a recruiter for one of the big four on there. I filter all the
email to a separate folder where it can rot eternally, and I page through the
messages on LinkedIn every few weeks to see if there's anything interesting.

------
atldev
Unrelated to this post, I was trying to downgrade my account from premium to
free today. It was surprisingly hard to find the path. I had to google it.
Btw, it's under "Privacy and Settings", not under "Account" where you'd
expect.

I have nothing against LinkedIn and find it helpful. It just struck me as
something that was discussed in a design meeting- "how can we make
cancellation hard to do?"

------
hahahafail
About time I got to this ...
[http://i.imgur.com/0oIx1uC.png](http://i.imgur.com/0oIx1uC.png)

------
datacog
The article isn't entirely accurate about viewing 3rd degree connections.
There are considerable number of profiles who have lot less information
publicly viewable (on public url), in those cases this wont work. Linkedin is
basically trying to achieve 2 things here: a) Show you what you can do using
premium b) Convert/onboard user If you have tried premium before, they will
highlight it when "you are viewing a 3rd degree profile".

There is a very very simple __HACK __for viewing full 3rd degree profiles
without being a subscriber. Here 's what you need to do:

\- When you arrive at a 3rd degree profile, copy the 'name' and 'company' (or
an other attribute) e.g. 'Chris Amazon manager'

\- Google search for 'Chris Amazon manager linkedin', you'll get the full name
of the person, but still would view a 3rd degree profile

\- Now copy the full name + 'attribute' and search in linkedin, voila... You
see the full profile.

------
jively
Fun fact - small recruitment agencies use this tactic to stalk candidates...
it's even got a name: x-ray searches

[https://www.linkedin.com/groups/How-Google-XRay-Search-
Linke...](https://www.linkedin.com/groups/How-Google-XRay-Search-
LinkedIn-114325.S.112175327)

(I realise the irony of posting a linkedin link)

------
wfn
So, has anyone been working (or pondering working) on alternatives?

Ideally (and perhaps naively), I can see a diaspora-like abstract semi-
decentralized / federated social network infrastructure which could then be
used to build all sorts of social networks (e.g. friends/diaspora-like "non-
evil version of facebook," "professional like-linkedin-but-not-evil network,"
what have you.) The kind of vibe that federated open source systems like
tent.io might have.

Of course it's all about network effects and "actually getting a critical mass
of people to use $thing," but _ideally_ , there should be a generic federated-
social-network-protocol which may support many clients / web portals, and many
particular social networks. "I've built a non-evil-linkedin-clone, join this
network by clicking one button."

~~~
Udo
I worked on a decentralized social network for a while, but eventually gave up
on it because it was impossible to get traction (especially since other open
source alternatives "exist").

~~~
wfn
Did you end up open sourcing the parts of the thing that you ended up
implementing/writing? Seems like a waste to just throw it into a trash bin.
(But of course there may be nuances / it may be hard to do that, etc.) Non-
working code on github and a blog post explaining what has been done is imho
>> nothing!

~~~
Udo
No, it was open source from the beginning - one of my hobby projects. I
believe open source is the only way something like this can work at all.

I had some early adopters who used the prototype, which motivated me
initially. As I spent some time developing the actual version, people drifted
away (mostly back to Facebook). In hindsight, I should not have thrown the
prototype away - big mistake.

When I tried to get other people interested the answer was basically either
"you'll pry Facebook out of my cold dead hands" or (sometimes literally) "why
are you wasting your time on this stupid shit when Diaspora exists?". At the
time Diaspora had just gotten funding and people were actually really hostile
or condescending towards the idea that someone was working on anything else.

After that I basically suspended my efforts. I might eventually get back to it
when/if fancy strikes.

------
uptown
The thing that gets me is their pricing. I pay about $40/month for my
cablemodem if you extract that cost away from the other parts of my internet
provider. LinkedIn costs minimally $30/month? I realize it's apples to
oranges, but it just seems like an absurdly expensive service unless you're
working as a hiring agent for a company. But based on the number of emails
LinkedIn sends trying to convince me to upgrade my account - I can only assume
they see their target customer as more than just the HR departments of the
world.

How could I possibly value what LinkedIn could provide at close to what I get
from internet access? It's not even close. I'd pay ___maybe_ __$3 /month to
access what LinkedIn is selling out of curiosity ... but even then, I don't
know that I'd keep the plan.

~~~
jodrellblank
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7673915](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7673915)
This person claims to have got multiple contracts at >$1000/day from LinkedIn.

At that rate, if you used it to get one day of contracting, you would pay for
Linkedin for two and a half years, and it would be much more valuable to you
than a decade of tech-blogs.

~~~
uptown
Seems like a great use-case for that type of worker, and obviously well worth
the price. But I'd guess that the vast majority of job seekers are looking for
longer-term employment with a single employer. If their target audience
includes those types of users, it's difficult to see how it'd be worth the
membership price.

------
lukasm
Heh I do the same. I've been using porn mode so often that I remember shortcut
by heart (shit+cmd+N)

I really don't understand this strategy. Don't hold to "your" data so
aggressively, build a platform. I'd be happy to pay for premium API to
LinkedIn to build a custom CRM and other tools.

------
orky56
I've been doing this for awhile now. By going incognito, you not only get more
information on that person but also you don't let them know you have been
viewing them. It's pretty ridiculous that LinkedIn gives you more
disadvantages than advantages for being logged in.

------
Maskawanian
I deleted my profile once I started receiving spam from an address I had only
given to them.

------
cookiecaper
LinkedIn is a great analog for its target audience. Meaningless flattery is
the primary social currency, users are constantly harassed to engage in
pointless drivel that distracts from real productive work, exorbitant fees are
exchanged for products and services of dubious value, and everyone pretends to
be your friend while they secretly resent you. Sounds just like a corporate
job to me!

Seriously though, I don't know if you can grow a social network for
professionals without mimicking a lot of the bad things that are inherent in
the modern work place.

------
atto
Neat trick: when wanting to see the full profile, just search LinkedIn for
their name. If you come from search results, you can see the full profile (if
their privacy settings allow it, which most do).

------
jbb555
Linkedin seems to exist entirely so recruiters can spam people. I put up with
it for a long time but finally had enough and deleted my profile. Nothing of
value was lost and I get a lot less spam.

------
bowlofpetunias
This has been the case for quite a while. I've gotten used to using LinkedIn
in another browser where I'm not logged in.

It's pretty obvious that LinkedIn's strategy is completely dictated by sales
and marketing droids with zero respect for the user or the product.

Neither a strong product manager nor a responsible development team would ever
accept such an illogical anti-user feature just to scratch extra sales out of
existing users whilst at the same time maintaining their Google footprint.

------
enginerd
Linkedin has always baffled me with this stuff.

It's the guy at the party who's so nervous to over-control the social
situation, right down to the T in Gil's name.

------
joeframbach
Remember LinkedIn Intro? [http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/24/do-not-
want/](http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/24/do-not-want/)

I'm sure they have many spectacularly bad ideas lined up. Intro was just one
that leaked out. The absurdity in the OP blog is just one that was noticed.

This is not a one-time thing. This is their strategy. I can't believe people
still use LinkedIn.

------
err4nt
I found Hulu to be the same so I don't use my account anymore.

You have three options with Hulu: watch free anonymously, get a free account,
get a subscription on top of your free account.

Free users are given 7 days of trial, after which they show you all the
content you _could_ have, if you were asubscriber. Suddenly nothing you see
you can click on (until you either log out or subscribe). So I just use it
logged out.

------
arecurrence
You can pay to remove that restriction. You're almost guaranteed this was
shipped because it showed a stat sig improvement in revenue. While this may
seem absurd, most people are not savvy enough to realize there are simple
solutions to workaround this restriction and pay up.

You may counter this is so absurd that you wont use LinkedIn anymore. But is
that really true? I doubt it.

------
chrisbennet
For an employee, LinkedIn is a marketing tool. For all it's downsides, it
_does_ make it easier for companies to discover" you. _This_ is why people put
up with LinkedIn.

If your personal network is such that you don't want to be discovered by
people who don't already know you, or you want to handle/control all your own
marketing, that's fine.

------
FromStoneage
Old news, it has been like this for some times

------
themoonbus
You think using LinkedIn is bad, try developing for it. The developer
community is left to fend for itself – the API randomly changes, questions go
unanswered, bug fixes are promised and then never delivered.

See:
[http://fucknolinkedindev.tumblr.com/](http://fucknolinkedindev.tumblr.com/)

------
geekfactor
Along the same lines, but worse... If you're signed up for the emails they
send out about top news in your network or news mentions of people in your
network, and you click through the links in the email, they make you log in.
From your phone. To read a news article. Drives me insane.

------
sergiotapia
Meh, I treat LinkedIn as a glorified variable dump. Just dump client names,
stack and value added to the company when I work on a project. I don't really
know anyone who 'networks' within it. I don't see myself chatting with people
on there.

------
lispylol
You know what really pisses me off? When any change to your profile gets
broadcasted to your entire network. This needs to be off by default. My "feed"
is inundated with updates with updates about people tweaking their title or
personal information.

------
Major_Grooves
That's funny, I was tweeting my annoyance about this very subject this
morning:
[https://twitter.com/Major_Grooves/status/461456872017784832](https://twitter.com/Major_Grooves/status/461456872017784832)

------
mark_l_watson
I also have considered cancelling my account. The amount of SPAM, even setting
every profile option to 'no email' is absurd sometimes.

That said, I had lost track of an old friend and he just pinged me to join his
network. So, at least for now, there is some value.

------
pt3530
A few of my friends have taken advantage of this to create a search engine
that allows you to look up anyone on LinkedIn without having to pay LinkedIn.

Try [http://www.recruitem.net](http://www.recruitem.net) in incognito mode.

------
boomlinde
"The" absurdity as if this is the single thing that is absurd about LinkedIn.

------
kwaimind
LinkedIn is getting a bit silly with some of their ideas. Just like the
recommendation/endorsements thing, absolutely useless. I have people endorsing
mw who I have never met or spoken to about my job!

------
brotoss
I also use this method for looking at people's profiles without pinging them
for a "Viewed by", which makes it so I can still see who is looking at mine.

------
650REDHAIR
If you search full first + last name on linkedin you can usually view the full
profile without going into incognito.

------
Thiz
LNKD may well be the most overvalued stock in the whole world.

20B market cap for what?

It's the only top-ten social tech stocks I never use.

------
jorkro
This looks like a bug. I can see the guy's profile just fine as a registered
LinkedIn user.

------
badusername
LinkedIn pursues a bullshit strategy. Instead of adding value and figuring out
how to monetize it, they want to hide whatever value they brought to the
table, and charge $39.95 for what is essentially a resume hosting service and
a broken email system. I discovered long ago that browsing LinkedIn while
logged out gives me a better experience.

------
mbesto
It's even worse on mobile. Search for Gil Travish on the app. Full profile
available.

------
amorphid
LinkedIn has locked down their system so much, when someone asks me to send
the URL to my LinkedIn profile, often they can't see it without a premium
account. Even with a premium account. I have to download my profile as a PDF,
and send that. Lame!

------
Hovertruck
I only ever view LinkedIn profiles in an incognito window. I don't want to
appear in the "These people viewed your profile" emails that they send out.

------
bthomas
Is there a good alternative to Rapportive?

------
jacquesm
Linkedin will stay as long as there is nothing better. They're very much ripe
for disruption, but breaking the network effects is going to be hard.

------
slmnm
c xxzzzzxzzzzzx xxxxzxxx x xx cçcccccccccxx x xxxxxxxxxcxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxz

------
serverascode
I just setup a linked in account recently. Felt like I didn't have much
choice.

------
frade33
spoiler: never use linkedin when logged in.

------
slmnm
c xxzzzzxzzzzzx xxxx

------
company
Also the mobile app sucks.

------
ramonex
I have just closed my account that I had there for years.

------
grimmdude
Seems to be an oversight on LinkedIn's part.

~~~
rch
No, I'm pretty sure it's a purposeful strategy to acquire paying users.

