
The next professional network will not look like LinkedIn - ohjeez
https://wfh.substack.com/p/why-the-next-professional-network
======
dangus
I don’t agree with this assessment at all.

First, the analysis is woefully limited to specialized aspects pertaining to
only the tech industry. A lot of the disruptive forces linked in the article
are highly ill specific to very limited situations.

Second, the analysis doesn’t explain _why_ it’s bad that LinkedIn appeals to
businesses and recruiters. Why is that a problem? It appeals so well to them
that basically _all_ companies are on LinkedIn in some way, and that means
that young people coming into the marketplace _will_ go there to find work.
They don’t have to enjoy it or even log in that often to justify keeping an
active account.

Personally, I know at least a few people who do not have a Facebook account at
all, but they do have a LinkedIn, _because that’s where the jobs are._

Finally, making the assumption that LinkedIn itself won’t change over time is
completely shortsighted. It’s owned by one of the better managed companies out
there (Microsoft) with tons of resources to make changes.

Accusing LinkedIn of being a relic of the past is like accusing Azure DevOps
of being exactly the same as the old TeamForge Services - a woefully outdated
view that only someone with zero recent exposure would take.

It doesn’t matter that the LinkedIn feed is a stupid waste of time, the jobs
platform and InMail are the bread and butter of the platform and the reason
why anyone’s there in the first place.

And by the way, if you’re looking for a job, give the Premium free trial a
chance. The extra pieces of data you get on each listing can be really useful
(although potentially not $40 a month useful), and there isn’t really another
job website that can give them to you.

~~~
steveklabnik
> Second, the analysis doesn’t explain why it’s bad that LinkedIn appeals to
> businesses and recruiters. Why is that a problem?

I will admit that I am probably an outlier here, but I deleted my LinkedIn
account years ago once I realized that the only thing I was getting out of it
was recruiter spam. No real upside, only downside.

~~~
dangus
It’s another anecdote - my current employer reached out to me on LinkedIn. Not
a commissioned third party recruiter, an internal recruiter.

Someone reaching out to you from a company is a huge leg up over applying
directly somewhere: you already know they’re interested.

I’m not sure how they would have found me otherwise. My personal website?
Through word of mouth and connections?

It’s only spam when you’re _not_ considering a job change.

------
tarr11
It’s worth mentioning that this VC is an investor in Webflow, one of the
companies mentioned that is “unbundling LinkedIn”.

~~~
sequoia
Yeah that's not ethical as far as I know to not disclose one's financial
connection to a company one is "reporting" about.

For posterity can you link to her connection to webflow?

~~~
npo9
It is unethical, but the entire article is designed to convince people
LinkedIn is outdated. It’s written on a blog that has 0 other submissions to
hacker news. It was obviously a fluff piece written by someone trying to
disrupt professional networks.

It doesn’t change the quality of her argument.

------
vsskanth
I'm surprised why people here hate on LinkedIn so much. I'm able to find and
contact professionals working on very niche fields (the ones with little
online presence) and follow their latest work. This is access I've previously
never had.

I'm not a developer so I don't get a lot of recruiter spam, but the ones that
do contact me usually have very relevant openings for my experience.

~~~
allthecybers
In a decade plus of my career, four of my most significant jobs, including my
current role have come from being sourced/recruited on LinkedIn.

I hate being on any social networks, and I feel like LinkedIn has declined in
quality over the years, but I stay with LinkedIn.

The primary reason is that you never know when you are going to be thrust into
the job market, and its the key place to find future opportunities, identify
gatekeepers and leverage your professional rolodex when an opportunity to earn
an income is on the line.

~~~
lonelappde
> a _decade plus_ of my career, _four of_ my most significant jobs

This is an extremely niche persona among professional careers, overrepresented
on HN.

~~~
spullara
Pretty common in Silicon Valley imho. One of the reasons people live here is
that you can often change jobs without even considering moving.

------
underpand
This is not a genuine post. This is a thinly-veiled informercial.

She is an angel investor and owns a fund that invests in the type of
professional networks she is promoting. She is even an angel investor for a
company that she directly promotes in the post (Webflow).

LinkedIn is sufficient the way it currently is.

1\. Connect and contact professional peers

2\. Contact recruiters

3\. Display bare minimum work experience and look up this information of peers

4\. Link to specialized work and portfolio e.g. github

That covers the majority of consumer use cases and anything more complicates
the website.

~~~
tachyonbeam
I completely agree that this person should have been more forthcoming about
their own affiliation.

I think there are definitely issues with LinkedIn though. What I don't like
about LinkedIn is how scammy it feels. They've tried to get me to enter my
e-mail password in the past so they could get all my contacts... No thanks.
Then there's the issue of being contacted by recruiters all the time even
though I have my profile set to not looking for a job. I also wish there was a
way to also say "not willing to relocate" (is there?).

Lastly, I think the website could be more streamlined/simplified and better
looking. That pic she posted from the LinkedIn interface in 2003. I like it
better than the way the website looks now. So simple and straightforward.

IMO, LinkedIn is "ripe for disruption". It's coasting on the network effect.
The network effect is a powerful thing, but it didn't stop MySpace from
getting killed despite its 100 million users.

~~~
ses1984
>I also wish there was a way to also say "not willing to relocate" (is
there?).

Would that stop recruiters from asking?

------
motohagiography
As someone hacking on a linkedin alternative as a side project to solve my own
talent search problems, she's captured a lot of the rationale. Amazing.

It's not just linkedin, the whole concept of a resume was to facilitate an
unskilled middle manager who could manage labor in a commoditized way. Today,
hiring managers know what they want, and talent competes globally. Teenagers
especially understand that the difference between them and their parents is
they are entering into a global talent market with a steep distribution curve.
Growing up with social media threw them into the world of elite competition
that previously only ivy league students were exposed to (thanks, Zuck).
Resumes can't capture the differentiation they need to compete and leverage
their real skills.

The infrastructure around resumes was all about legitimizing that broker role
for recruiters and enabling generalist HR managers, where those roles could be
replaced by tech tomorrow, (or like 3-4 weeks, suppose I should launch).

~~~
dangus
If hiring managers know what they want, how do they find the person that has
what they want?

Would that be...a distilled list of relevant skills and experience? How is a
resume (digital or paper) not that? What exactly is your proposed alternative?

Also, you speak to global competition as if that’s a universal trait of most
jobs. That doesn’t really line up to reality. Many or most jobs can’t be
performed remotely, and many or most jobs located far away have local
equivalents (i.e. it’s not worth moving hundreds of miles away to drive a bus
or put up drywall).

~~~
motohagiography
The signalling piece is what's missing and what I think I've solved. My exact
proposed alternative will just have to get launched and see if it flies.

Global competition for most jobs is very much a reality. I live in a country
that spans an entire continent, as do americans. Many people cross continents
and borders to get construction and trade jobs, which include driving heavy
vehicles and hanging drywall, and the solution covers them as well. Exciting
times.

------
rsweeney21
When my last startup was struggling to hit our growth goals after closing our
series A round, I started formulating a theory: You can build pretty much any
business if you have a large following on social media. I started thinking
about this when someone told me that Tesla has no marketing budget and relies
completely on Twitter and PR form Elon Musk.

So I decided to give it a try with my new startup. We setup ad campaigns to
ensure we had a traditional marketing channel that we could scale and then I
started posting on LinkedIn. The results have been mind blowing. In 7 months I
went form 1,000 followers to over 30,000 followers[0]. I was just named #4 in
LinkedIn's Top Voices for 2019 for Software Development.

A single post that goes viral on LinkedIn can generate $500,000-$2M in new
sales opportunities for us and it costs us nothing. By developing a social
media presence, we've been able to grow our company to $2M in annualized
revenue (we aren't SaaS, so it's not ARR) without any outside funding. And we
are profitable.

So yeah, I think LinkedIn is pretty great.

[0] Me:
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsweeney21/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsweeney21/)

Shameless plug for our new startup:
[https://www.facetdev.com/](https://www.facetdev.com/)

~~~
ryeguy_24
Enjoyed reading this. How much did you have to spend on your initial ad
campaign (or was that solely through content creation)? On a quick test I
found the CPC and CPM rates to be insanely high especially if you target
highly paid people.

~~~
rsweeney21
We started testing paid ads on LinkedIn and Facebook. We spent about
$500/month to test. Just to clarify, this was to find customers for our
product/service, not to acquire followers. Growing social media followers was
only through making posts on LinkedIn.

I started by accepting every connection I received. In month 5 I switch the
default "Connect" button in my profile to follow because I was at 20,000
connections. LinkedIn has a max of 30K connections.

------
t34543
LinkedIn started great but they shit the bed. The path they chose wasn’t
aligned with users interests, it was to serve themselves.

Fraudulent LinkedIn profiles are a big problem, too.

~~~
everdev
Not to mention spam connection requests.

I get a few of these each week:

"I came across your profile and thought we might mutually benefit from
connecting. I help business generate 1,000 high quality leads a month..."

~~~
servercobra
"Oh you work on Toptal? I have a business proposal for you. What if I use your
profile and do all the work, and give you 30%!" I get a few of those a week.

------
AlphaWeaver
I've noticed that smaller, targeted communities are on the rise. This thread
[0] recently caught my attention and introduced me to Mighty Networks [1]
which is software to enable these smaller niche communities. This is what
comes to mind when I think of the "next professional network", even if it
isn't some large centralized product that "everyone is on."

[0]:
[https://twitter.com/tylertringas/status/1202990875120459776](https://twitter.com/tylertringas/status/1202990875120459776)
[1]: [https://www.mightynetworks.com/](https://www.mightynetworks.com/)

~~~
paulgb
I've noticed this too. In a way it's sort of a resurgence from the 2000s when
independently-run forums ruled the day, but there's a different flavor to it
because they tend to grow more from word of mouth. Slack groups not being
indexed in Google search is surely part of that. This is generally seen as a
feature, though, not a bug.

------
p1esk
Bullshit. Linkedin today is more useful than ever. It’s a way to bypass hr
filter - first you go there to find companies you want to work at, then you
find someone who already works there. Contact them. Get hired. This is how I
found my current job.

~~~
jupiter90000
That's pretty cool that it worked. If some random person on LinkedIn was like
"hello can I get a job with you" I'd probably block them, but you must have a
better way of saying it than I can think of.

~~~
ghaff
I pretty much hate cold calls from people who want to have coffee or whatever.
Even if they happen to be one of the 100,000 people who happened to go to the
same school as I did or whatever. I won't say I'll never respond. Maybe if
they want to chat about an article I wrote of whatever and ask me some
questions about my work or what I know about some specific opening while
they're at it. But, if I don't know them, that's pretty much where the
conversation would end. I'm not going to give them a recommendation.

~~~
p1esk
I'm the opposite. I love helping out a fellow engineer, especially when that
does not involve much effort on my part.

If anyone reading this is ever in Santa Barbara, let me know if you want to
grab a coffee or a beer! :)

------
Pxtl
I'm always surprised that Facebook didn't pivot into that space and eat
LinkedIn's lunch. The bar is _really_ low.

Facebook's main layout is already very professional-looking (except for the
ads and games), and they market it for internal social networks.

Bolting on resumes and job searching, letting users have a professional face
to their page... wouldn't be a huge stretch.

~~~
ghaff
One of the challenges with that is that, to the degree I "like" either
Facebook or LinkedIn, I actually like the fact that one is mostly a _personal_
social network and the other is pretty much just a Rolodex for professional
contacts. I'm probably not alone in trying to keep the two spheres largely
separate (though I don't on Twitter).

~~~
Pxtl
Well yes, they'd have to do the Google Plus Circles sort of thing where your
different friends are placed into different groups, so you can keep your
Professional and Personal facebook separate-but-linked.

And yeah, Twitter is the water-cooler/street-corner, it conflates the
professional and the personal in its culture.

~~~
lonelappde
And that's why Google+ ate FB'd and LinkedIn's lunch

~~~
ghaff
In all fairness, Google+ failed for a lot of reasons--starting with the
"Google" part. But Circles was actually a pretty nice concept that I wish
Facebook had to separate my friend friends from people who are more like
professional acquaintances.

~~~
singron
Facebook quickly copied the feature. You can put friends in groups and then
limit your various activities to those groups.

~~~
acheron
Facebook had it before Google+ existed. They just make it difficult to find in
the UI.

~~~
ghaff
I had no idea. Admittedly, I don't use Facebook much.

------
puranjay
The problem with the examples the author shared is that they only work in
professions where your work and skills are easily demonstrable, aka "portfolio
jobs".

How would you demonstrate a skilled manager's capabilities without a resume
that shows rapid advancement and dealing with increasingly higher
responsibilities?

------
rchaud
This piece was extremely tech-centric and completely ignores all other job
sectors, which is strange because tech people are already attuned to thinking
of LinkedIn as a plague upon society.

Finance people aren't going to have a Github. Healthcare professionals have no
idea what Dribbble is. Girlboss is a niche network and its job listings are a
drop in the bucket compared to what LinkedIn has.

> If the new American Dream is defined by “creative expression, online
> influence and extreme optionality” over linear moves up the corporate
> ladder, then LinkedIn is enough to make any Millennial or Gen Z jobseeker
> cringe.

The author must live in a pretty sheltered world if she thinks millennials are
cringing at LinkedIn as opposed to applying to a million job listings across
all networks for the slim chance of even getting an interview.

Young and inexperiencee jobseekers make up a good chunk of LinkedIn's
audience. Not a single recruiter is reaching out to them. LinkedIn is valuable
because it gives them one way of finding people at organizations who may be
willing to chat with them and give them a plain English breakdown of the
skills needed at those jobs. The HR-penned job descriptions are hilariously
inaccurate in many jobs and can appear to be designed to actively discourage
people from applying due to the absurd requirements they post.

------
tyingq
_" [LinkedIn] fails to reflect true potential such as grit, ability to
collaborate with others"_

I'm not personally pining for a website that makes arbitrary ratings for such
things.

------
jameswatling
Interesting to see that even one of the co-founders of Linkedin has had
similar thoughts, and started another company trying to focus on using your
network to produce value, rather than be focused on recruiters and enterprise
$.

You can see more here (random interesting video from the platform)
[https://joinhub.com/posts/2hZQ9FZp?rc=James-
Watling-4505](https://joinhub.com/posts/2hZQ9FZp?rc=James-Watling-4505)

------
znpy
I would pass, if possible.

I like LinkedIn because it a very low bs social network, and I would really
appreciate for it to stay that way.

~~~
inetknght
It was a low-bs social network. Today it's used mostly for recruiter spam and
a pseudo-free blog advertisements.

------
charlesholbrow
Several years ago I noticed that I spent a lot of time creating my linked in
profile, and got absolutely nothing in return for it.

After that I started asking people if they had EVER gotten a job on LinkedIn.
One person said yes. Several people said the know one person who had gotten a
job on LinkedIn. I have asked a lot of people.

Based on this I seriously doubt it is a good use of time for most job seekers.
At the end of the day, it's another social media site that gives you a little
endorphin rush when someone "likes" your status — but its not much (if
anything) more.

~~~
tracker1
I think it will largely depend on your skillset, job role and where you are
located.

For me it's like a floodgate and my current and a couple of past job roles
were from LinkedIn contacts only.

------
ignoramous
EightFold.ai [0] is the most uneasy LinkedIn replacement I've come across, by
far. They seem to be utilising similar tricks of trade used in targeted
advertising, except now the developers are the adverts themselves and the
keywords are bought by the recruiters.

The claimed AI based engine from the co-founders previously behind adtech at
bloomreach and newsfeed at facebook make it all the more spooky.

[0] [https://eightfold.ai/technology/](https://eightfold.ai/technology/)

------
CriticalCathed
I only used linked in as a resume i could refer people to and occasionally for
networking with other professionals. what linkedin actually became is a way to
get tons of unsolicited offers from headhunters and the resume component lost
significant value because of that. I deleted my profile but there's no undoing
it because of thoroughly it got crawled. I regret using it.

whatever new system comes it better have stronger privacy controls and more
free form resumes.

~~~
dangus
LinkedIn has a huge control panel of privacy controls, along with controls to
manage what you get notified on.

There’s no way you can get “crawled” if your settings are correct.

------
asmyers1793
[https://bravado.co/](https://bravado.co/)

Bravado is a professional network for sales professionals.

------
1e10
It is clear to me that most people commenting here don’t understand or use
LinkedIn effectively.

And the recruiter hate is also unjustified.

------
ryeguy_24
Pretty poor article. In general, I think the LinkedIn network is quite
powerful and is not simply for recruiters. That being said, I do think there
is a lot of untapped potential sitting on this proprietary graph network of
professional connections. If they don't move on this, others will.

------
auiya
Right, and Second Life was supposed to be a social gathering place and not at
all a place for penises of every type and description to be put on display.
Attempting to predict how a social network will behave is utterly futile.

------
redmattred
[https://helpful.io/](https://helpful.io/) is another interesting alternative
where the focus is on asking for/receiving career help within small-medium
sized groups

------
mpfundstein
linkedIn is so terrible. The facebook timeline really killed it IMO. Its full
of 'consultants' publishing their worthless brainfarts and some feel good
messages about work.

urks. i quit it a while ago and i am very happy with it. I honestly was
reluctant at first because I run my own business and thought it might be
necessary, but quitting it didn't impact my business at all...

------
paulie_a
Professional networks are stupid. It's an HR circle jerk but everyone is
expected to have a glowing profile just for "reasons". Shitty recruiters love
it though. LinkedIn is terrible at trying to get your contact list and the
fraudulently email you saying a contact wants to connect. It's a complete
waste of time. My recommendation is to use when searching for a job then
immediately wipe your account. Plus some bosses monitor it to see if you are
looking. It's a lose lose for individuals.

------
siddharthbhatia
This is very true. LinkedIn has just been trying to mint money from the very
people who helped build the company!

------
haileris
LinkedIn is just about the one and only thing I have "because everyone else
has one"

------
oarabbus_
Taking a wild guess without clicking the link, but this site must be a
LinkedIn competitor.

------
golergka
So, StackOverflow and Github?

~~~
GonzaloQuero
Not every professional is a developer

~~~
brujoand
Not every developer is a professional either. I don’t think it’s unreasonable
to fragment this space.

------
lowdose
But will be bought by Microsoft like Github.

------
platz
Suits make a corporate comeback!

[http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

------
0xdeadb00f
"What's broke?" Is said multiple times throughout this article. For those who
don't know, "what's _broken_" is the grammatically correct way to say this.

Yes, I'm being a grammar Nazi. And no, that's not a bad thing. We speak
English, and while a lot of it's rules are archaic and silly, this instance is
not one of those silly rules. It's basic English.

------
rdiddly
Sometimes when you're having a hard time getting through a piece of writing,
it's because the writer is so masterful, each word so rich with meaning, each
turn of phrase so unusual and yet so apt, that you have to acknowledge a
shining genius far beyond your own. This is not one of those times.

