
Dammit LinkedIn, I'm a college dropout (2009) - iamjeff
http://paulholmes.ca/2009/11/20/dammit-linkedin-im-a-college-dropout/
======
jelder
This rings true for me. I'm a high school dropout with a GED and a couple of
community college credits, but nevertheless found success in tech. I know a
lot of people my age took this unconventional path, but LinkedIn basically
tells us to fuck off.

~~~
jameskegel
Conversely I'm in the same boat, but I still can't find value in LinkedIn
because it feels so disingenuous, and not at all part of my peer hiring
circle. I suppose if I weren't already employed in a job that fulfills all of
my needs, I'd be more concerned, but LinkedIn has never been anything but a
curiosity for me. I'm sure others may find more value in it, but in responding
to your comment I guess I just felt the need to say you're not the only one
that took the same unconventional path.

~~~
ryanmarsh
Highschool dropout as well. I see LinkedIn as sort of the antithesis of
GitHub.

Whereas LinkedIn is sort of a social proof via credential, GitHub is social
proof via work product.

Plenty of people smarter than me have written about the diminishing value of
credentials and credentialism as social proof[0]. I believe that is partially
why LinkedIn is such a cess-pool/shit-show.

Maybe it's my bias from being a dropout that only my work product has ever
mattered. I believe there's room for a social network to replace LinkedIn with
a "GitHub for non-tech people". Perhaps this would have a mix of credentials
and a way to show ones work.

[0]: The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of
Human Experts Book by Daniel Susskind and Richard Susskind
[https://www.amazon.com/Future-Professions-Technology-
Transfo...](https://www.amazon.com/Future-Professions-Technology-Transform-
Experts/dp/0198713398)

~~~
sbarre
I agree with the first part about credentials, but I see a bit of danger in
how you view Github.

I _wish_ I had time to put more stuff in my Github account, but I don't.. All
the work I do is for clients, or for my employer, and I can't post or share
it.

Sometimes I can extract a small piece and share it, but otherwise, I can't. I
also don't have a ton of time in my life to code on personal projects anymore.

So while I consider myself an experienced and accomplished developer (been at
it for 20 years now), if Github is my "social proof via work product", then I
don't look like much..

I'm not saying this is your fault or that people will only ever look at
Github, but I hear this more and more ("show us your Github work") in the
context of hiring and evaluating developers, and I hope it doesn't become just
another thing that - following OP's point - people or systems hold against you
for not having.

~~~
watwut
Only few of my colleagues have active github or open source contributions.
They code enough in work basically. Some of them a lot actually. Oddly and I
think it is just random, those with active github are less productive/reliable
at work.

Then again, I never bothered to have linked in account. Nobody I know is using
it.

------
Asparagirl
LinkedIn also only wants to consider jobs in the modern sense, not the
traditional sense. So I decided to list myself as "Co-CEO of the Ganz Family"
with the description "Full-time stay-at-home mom. Job description includes
cleaning up other people's poop, so it actually isn't too different from
corporate life..."

EDIT: And if you think that this approach would cut down on the dumb recruiter
spam, you'd be sadly mistaken. :-/

~~~
user5994461
It might not stop the poor recruiters but it might stop the good ones who had
good leads.

Yes, there are some good recruiters even read profiles before they contact
people.

------
a3n
I have never paid attention to any of the "you aren't complete!" messages or
indicators. I don't care.

~~~
tedmiston
I ignored LinkedIn's "get complete!" messages for a long time. One night I sat
down with the curiosity of hitting 100% on LinkedIn. I now have an "all-star
profile", whatever that means, and in a top some percentage of profiles.

At the end of the day, it just means more people look at my profile.

It may be jumping to conclusions to say I get no value out of it — it's a
mixed bag. More contacts from people I know about legitimately good
opportunities, and them seeing my face pop up more on LinkedIn might play a
role in that. But it also means more contact from recruiters, and usually that
means spammy third party recruiters. I mostly just don't respond to them
anymore.

------
webmaven
I finally gave up complaining about this issue late last year, and filled in
the education section of my profile with the following:

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Master of Wizardry, Arithmancy, Passed all N.E.W.T.s with grades E and O

1985 – 1989

Activities and Societies: Ravenclaw House, Dumbledore's Army

Thesis: "Extending Turing's Phase Conjugate Grammars for Extra-dimensional
Summoning to Account for Quantum Many-Worlds Hypothesis using Dho-Nha Geometry
Curves".

------
nailer
Facebook did something similar and I entered 'Bovine University', which it
turns out has tens of thousands of students.

~~~
tyingq
The University of Northern New Jersey would be a fun choice. A fictional
school created by US Homeland Security for a sting operation.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Northern_New_J...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Northern_New_Jersey)

Edit: 72 Alumni and 2 employees on LinkedIn. Heh.
[https://www.linkedin.com/edu/university-of-northern-new-
jers...](https://www.linkedin.com/edu/university-of-northern-new-jersey-50010)

~~~
a3n
> The fake university was recognized by the State of New Jersey and was
> accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges
> (ACCSC).[3] The director of the ACCSC confirmed that it had accredited the
> "university" to cooperate with the federal investigation.[6]

Thus bringing into doubt any ACCSC accreditation. I pity the innocent student
who, at best, wasted time researching UNNJ, and possibly moved forward without
realizing where the trail was leading.

~~~
tyingq
They appear to give out accreditation to massage schools, schools of "hair
design", and so forth. I don't know that they reached a new low or anything.
Homeland Security didn't appear to arrest any students, just the brokers.
However, they did appear to let the students get screwed out of their time and
money, and then deport them.

------
microcolonel
I never went to high school, and this option doesn't really exist in many
sites and forms on the web. It is what it is.

~~~
marak830
Side note: how did you not go to high school and end up in tech(assuming
here), just curious, you don't have to answer of course :-)

~~~
MichaelGG
I did the same thing; never finished Grade 10. Had been playing with coding
since I was 5 [1]. Always knew one day I'd "do something with computers". My
dad wrote one of the first books on the Internet in '92 so I got some good
exposure somewhat early. Moved to a third world country at 15 cause they
didn't card for booze. Ended up with some web site contracts, and kept diving
deeper until I was a "real" programmer (not just web/CRUD stuff - but high
perf, high-scale, life-critical, reversing, etc.).

It was only hard for the first little bit. No one takes a 17-yr-old seriously.
But I had a 24-yr-old business partner and that helped. I managed to get a
speaking slot at a 300+ person business conference and picked up some solid
clients that built portfolio. Plus it was 2000, so a whiz-kid-Internet-thing
had some sort of cachet perhaps.

I already had a real career and some recognition by the time I would have
graduated, so, eh, it worked out and was fun. Though I do regret not knowing
maths and not having taken really solid algorithms classes (OTOH, no guarantee
I'd have gone to a real school - might have gotten fake CS classes like so
many end up with). And I wonder what kind of connections I might have made if
I had stayed with it, especially staying in the US.

1: Most elaborate thing was designing a fake grade tracking program (demo) to
convince other kids I had hacked the school's systems (hint: they used paper)
and could change their grades.

~~~
niceperson
which book?

~~~
MichaelGG
"Fundamentals of Database Systems". Hashing schemes and so on. I thought I had
come up with some neat stuff, it seemed to work real fast, showed my diagrams
to a friend and he showed me identical ones from his classes.

Edit: Sorry I had made an edit and was referring to another book. The book my
dad wrote was called NetPower. Was a collection of links, gopher servers, etc.

~~~
praneshp
Is it the one by Navathe and Elmasri or a different one?

~~~
MichaelGG
Yep that one.

Edit sorry. I thought the question was talking about an edit I made before
where I mentioned another book.

~~~
praneshp
No worries. I took a look at your github, etc and you didn't look like either
Navathe or Elmasri's kid :) Congrats on setting an example for others!

------
zitterbewegung
Dammnit Linkedin, all you do is let recruiters spam me.

~~~
blowski
They do a lot more than that - e.g. they scan all your contacts so they can
spam them as well.

~~~
tedmiston
Only if you grant them access. It's not required to use LinkedIn.

~~~
throwaway1182
Erm, nope. Unfortunately, I downloaded the iOS app before Apple finally
stopped their annoying "growth hack" by introducing a permission for accessing
the contact list.

To this day, I still have ex-girlfriends, one-time ridesharing buddies and
even some fictuous people "waiting to connect with me" on LinkedIn.

~~~
tedmiston
Not sure when you downloaded it but the contacts permission was added under
iOS 6 in 2012.

[http://www.imore.com/how-restrict-apps-access-your-
contacts-...](http://www.imore.com/how-restrict-apps-access-your-contacts-
iphone-and-ipad-under-ios-6)

------
hughperkins
Is a 100% filled in linked in profile something to strive for? It seems like
the poster has chosen an arbitrary goal, then seeks to manipulate the goal so
he can finish it. Why not just choose a different goal?

~~~
tyingq
He was complaining about the LinkedIn UI, and probably things like email, that
would constantly complain about it being unfinished.

They've moved away from percentages, but it still nags you:
[http://imgur.com/a/vVOdv](http://imgur.com/a/vVOdv)

Note there's a "NOT NOW" button, but no "NOT EVER" button.

------
phkahler
If liked-in does not make your "percent complete" available to others then who
cares? If it does, that could be bad because people will think "this guy
didn't bother..."

So what is the answer to this?

~~~
andai
Add a custom stylesheet that removes the warning? ;)

------
ultim8k
It's not about LinkedIn. Apparently companies today don't care about your work
or skills. All they want is a dog that is trained to obey. School education is
part of that. Questions like "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" are a
sign towards that direction.

------
nickcano
Holy shit, posted in 2009 and still no change. I see this every time I'm on
LinkedIn--I hate it. Still nowhere for me to add my book (sure, publications,
but it will drown under more recent talks and papers), but it can harass me
about my non-existent schooling.

What would be the harm in making the widgets modular and more customizable?
I'm not asking for CSS, but let me completely remove sections that don't
apply, and add new generic ones as I see fit.

------
stoic
I just put "School of Hard Knocks" on my LinkedIn and leave it at that. If
that's unacceptable to a prospective employer, I've successfully weeded out a
bad fit.

So far it hasn't been.

------
musesum
For eduction I put down "Various" \- that seemed to work.

------
trevyn
I put down the school that I attended, but no mention of a degree. Do they
still let you do that?

~~~
sulam
They let you, but then nag at you to fill in more details. It doesn't get you
to 100%.

------
5706906c06c
Meh. I don't need LinkedIn to judge or validate my life achievements.

------
draw_down
I recommmend avoiding it entirely. That has worked well for me so far.

~~~
andai
How do you deal with the email invites? I'm thinking of making a filter to
auto-delete them.

~~~
tedmiston
Settings > Communications > Emails in the iOS app

You can turn them all off.

