
Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn - rohmanhakim
https://www.pcmaffey.com/finally-i-closed-my-linkedin/
======
ThePhysicist
From a professional standpoint LinkedIn gave me a lot of value for free so I'm
mostly feeling positive about it, but I agree that like any social network it
has downsides and can lead to psychological stress.

Personally I live by the mantra that "scrolling is dangerous", i.e. I try to
never interact with social media or news platforms that incite me to scroll
down a feed of algorithmically curated news or updates, as I find this to be
the primary mechanism by which these platforms try to suck people into their
content machine (there are other mechanisms like notification spam). Most of
these systems seem to target dopamine-releasing pleasure mechanisms in the
brain, but some are built around darker psychosocial patterns (e.g. success
relative to others, the feeling of adequacy and social confirmation).

HN is like a diet to my brain in comparison as it just presents a single page
of news without inciting me to scroll to the next page and doesn't show any
notifications to me either. Please keep it that way!

~~~
42_
Now that I think about it, most of my complaints about LinkedIn is about the
"news feed". Its full of mostly useless content by wannabe thought leaders
drowning out a few posts which may have been insightful/relevant. Job search
and add/message connections are the only features I have found useful.

~~~
mancerayder
> wannabe thought leaders

A high percentage of which seem to be recruiters cutting and pasting words of
wisdom, inspirational quotes that dozens of people "Like."

I don't know how people can take this stuff seriously.

~~~
ssijak
Or people pasting gotcha dumb math “problems” where hundreds of people reply
the answer. I could never understand that.

~~~
the_af
"83% of people won't be able to solve this" (some basic puzzle follows).

~~~
Phrenzy
83%‽ That's almost half!

------
gregdoesit
It’s clear from the comments that many people have no positive experiences
with LinkedIn. For me, LinkedIn was the tool that not only helped me get into
better companies, but also introduced me to Hacker News.

I joined Skype/Microsoft, then Skyscanner, then Uber: all after a LinkedIn
recruiter reachout. They were opportunities I did not know or think about and
I would have never applied to any of them at the time. I was _very_ happy the
time working in investment banking, and had zero reason or motivation to
change this up. I needed that "nagging" from a recruiter to actually consider
what if I was building the next Xbox that millions of gamers will use on day
one, instead of a trading system that no more than a dozen of traders use.

In hindsight, all the positions were a step up in professionally, financially,
and from a personal growth point of view. I even learned about Hacker News
when I was working at Skype, from colleagues. If it wasn't for LinkedIn, I
might have permanently been stuck in investment banking and my career would
have turned out very differently.

~~~
spelunker
Twice LinkedIn connections have resulted in full time jobs for me. It's just
another outlet for passive job searching IMO, and I think it fills that
position better than Dice or Monster or any other resume site, so I'm content
with keeping a LinkedIn account.

I also check it maybe once every other week so it doesn't mostly doesn't have
an impact on my life really.

------
BrentOzar
If you ever want to become an independent consultant, LinkedIn has a value
that won't be immediately apparent to you.

While YOU might hate it, there are some business folks who search LinkedIn
first. They want to see consultants/contractors who've been used by other
people in their network, been recommended, etc. I know it sounds odd to us - I
would neeeever search LinkedIn first - but I've heard from prospects who have,
and they've contacted me on LinkedIn first.

It's never worked out for me though - the billable rates on those kinds of
gigs have been pretty low.

~~~
ageitgey
As a consultant, LinkedIn is also helpful if you are trying to turn a niche
consulting area into a resellable software product (the dream of every hourly
consultant). You can find and reach the end users of whatever weird niche you
want to sell into and have them try out a prototype, etc.

Most of the world's employees aren't software devs who get annoyed by regular
cold calls from recruiters. So often non-software people are happy to talk to
someone who speaks their language and values their advice. It can even lead to
new relationships and your initial product sales.

~~~
petercooper
_Most of the world 's employees aren't software devs who get annoyed by.._
(insert one of many things here)

This is a really important point. Time and time again I see lengthy
discussions on Hacker News around various topics (especially relating to
advertising and marketing) where the consensus isn't even vaguely a majority
viewpoint in the wider world, and it's useful to be able to focus on the big
picture.

------
ravenstine
I've never found a job through LinkedIn. I do like Easy Apply a lot, but it
never resulted in anything. Every job I've ever had was found either through
someone I know or by applying directly on a company website. I've had a few
interviews resulting from LinkedIn, but it's not like LinkedIn gave me much of
an advantage beyond Easy Apply. I didn't exactly get _more_ interviews. In
fact, I may have been getting fewer interviews on average, but it didn't seem
like it because it was easy enough to apply to a lot of companies.

In terms of the actual social network... people use that sh __? I 've had my
moments of Facebook addiction in the distant past, but there's nothing about
LinkedIn that makes me look forward to logging in. My feed is mostly composed
of inspirational quotes, people celebrating their anniversary at their current
job, corporate brown-nosing, articles on productivity, articles about people
quitting their job, etc. All generic, mostly low-effort junk. Let's not even
get started on the recruiter spam!

Unfortunately, it we will have to wait for a serious decline of LinkedIn
before a serious competitor can make headway.

~~~
MattGaiser
I mostly do Easy Apply as a market/sanity check every now and then.

I can do 10 applications in 10 seconds for various tiers of jobs and various
jobs in different locations and get an idea of what kind of interviews I can
get going forward.

But yeah, I don’t get more interviews. I just get to lazily spam.

~~~
boopk
Exactly. I'm in a completely different field than the demographic of HN users;
however, easy apply does give me the ability to apply to a bunch of random
positions at various tiers. Now I've never had an offer from LinkedIn and a
handful of interviews out of the 500+ applications but it does give me the the
ability to apply quickly. For cool companies I find that have jobs I am not
qualified for I just book mark them into my companies bookmark and
periodically check or reach out to a recruiter.

------
lordnacho
I find that a lot of serendipitous connections are made on LinkedIn. People
will see my profile and strike up a conversation. Seems to work OK for what it
is.

What it isn't great for is content. There's never anything remotely useful
there, the whole feed is a weird corporate version of the self help section in
a bookshop. A lot of stuff is written purely to get attention.

But I also don't see the tradeoff in as poor a light as say FB. What's so
personal about where you work? If people can see what I've done they can offer
relevant services, mainly they can try to recruit me.

~~~
outime
>A lot of stuff is written purely to get attention.

Doesn't this apply to any social network feed? Most of the time people (or
companies) just want your attention and LinkedIn is still a social network,
therefore it makes total sense.

~~~
kuu
Well, I would say HN seems interesting in most cases, not only some attention
grabbing platform. Don't you agree?

~~~
outime
I get what you mean but I didn't say that attention-grabbing platforms are
incompatible with (at least some) interesting content.

Also, HN doesn't have many dark patterns (or any?) and I'd not consider it a
typical social network like FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc but more like a forum.
But even if we consider this place a social network, comparing it to any of
the typical social networks is futile IMHO.

~~~
fakedang
The difference between HN and any other social platform can be summarized in
one word - dang.

------
Avalaxy
The author says it himself in the introductory paragraph:

> I never used LinkedIn... hadn't even updated my profile in the 9 months
> since I left my last software engineering job.

So you use LinkedIn only passively, never do anything on the platform and then
write a rant on how it provides you no value? Maybe actually _try_ to use the
strengths of LinkedIn before you dismiss it?

~~~
bulka
I think this is what author is saysing exactly. If you use it passively then
there is no value (add?) and then the question is why to have a profile at
all? Did not look like a rant to me.

~~~
Avalaxy
Then I don't really get what the news value of this post is. Pretty much
nothing that you don't actively use provides value. It comes across more as
"LinkedIn has no value" to me.

~~~
quijoteuniv
Maybe you can provide your experience on why linkedin is of value to you and
then there can be a discusion. I personally agree with the author and i am
happy to read on this. From the stand point of a company, if they were
actually paying attention to honest feedback they could learn a bunch.

~~~
Avalaxy
> Maybe you can provide your experience on why linkedin is of value to you and
> then there can be a discusion

Sure, let me think of a couple of reasons:

1) The network effect of the timeline is HUGE. If people share/like your post,
you can have a reach of ten of thousands of people. I scored new customers
this way.

2) I often post something about something I've done (new certification, new
project I launched, whatever). This almost always leads to replies from
connections from unexpected people in my network. The thing I posted might
have struck a chord with them, they may see ways for us to collaborate, it
might be a product that they need, they may have valuable feedback on it, etc.

3) I interacted with many people over the course of my career. I may have
forgotten about those people, but having them all together in an easily
searchable "address book" proves pretty valuable to me when I am looking for
people with a particular skillset.

4) In the past I did find jobs through linkedin. Either by applying to the job
posts or by simply asking around with recruiters.

5) I use LinkedIn a lot to find out who works where, what role they have and
who to address when I need something from another company.

There are also counter points to be made:

\- I have received a ridiculous amount of recruiter spam over the years.
Taking all skills I don't use anymore (like PHP) off of my LinkedIn has
certainly helped.

\- Advertising on LinkedIn is garbage. We were looking for Dutch speaking
candidates in Amsterdam. We got 0 Dutch applicants. All we got is 100+ Indian
coders who barely speak proper English.

~~~
quijoteuniv
Cool! Thanks for that. I am glad ln work for you and thanks for sharing. :)

------
take_a_breath
LinkedIn jumped the shark when they started heavily promoting their skill
endorsement section. I remember receiving a notification that my mom endorsed
my ability to perform discounted cash flow analysis. She didn’t know what a
discounted cash flow was, but endorsed me all the same.

This is the moment it became spam. I do still use it for job searches.

~~~
randycupertino
> my mom endorsed my ability to perform discounted cash flow analysis

I mean, that's really quite charming. She loves you!

The first time Linkedin jumped the shark for me when they suggested I add the
random dude I sold a couch too on craigslist to My Professional Network. I'd
used a throwaway email and only texted the dude 1x. I only randomly remembered
who he was after Linkedin suggested him to me because his first and last name
rhymed and when he picked up the couch I thought his name was kind of
interesting. It was so weird and sketched me out quite a bit as we were in
completely different industries and I had no idea how linkedin associated us.

The second time I decided I was over used linkedin was when I was a pitched a
data analysis of industry trends in biopharma by a company that scraped and
analyzed a bunch of my current and former coworkers linkedin profiles as well
as what conferences they had recently attended. It was so creepy and invasive
and accurate that I just decided I'd rather not supply my info to be a data
point in some hedge fund analyst's report.

I have a shell profile but don't update because I see no benefit and have
always gotten jobs without needing it.

~~~
kyuudou
>The first time Linkedin jumped the shark for me when they suggested I add the
random dude I sold a couch too on craigslist to My Professional Network. I'd
used a throwaway email and only texted the dude 1x. I only randomly remembered
who he was after Linkedin suggested him to me because his first and last name
rhymed and when he picked up the couch I thought his name was kind of
interesting. It was so weird and sketched me out quite a bit as we were in
completely different industries and I had no idea how linkedin associated us.

This is exactly what spooked me about use LinkedIn. That was many years ago,
too. The feeling of "how in the ffffuu did they know about that person" was
nauseating.

------
gerland
Most of my best jobs came from LI leads, so I don't really get the point. I
find LI to be a more open and just system than hiring a guy that knows a guy,
or forcing people into slavery in open source.

It's not the hiring that is broken, but the tech industry itself. There is
nothing that compares in how low a measurable value is priced in any other
domain. It seems that the less you can put a price on something, the more
people speculate that it is worth. There is probably some fancy economical law
to follow, idk.

~~~
achow
Hear! Hear!

I too don't get the animosity for LinkedIn. For me too all the career defining
moves happened because of LinkedIn.

Never ever going to close my account.

~~~
tcbasche
I guess YMMV though. I closed mine and it hasn't really affected anything.
Career has been able to move forward full steam without it.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
LinkedIn is fairly useless, but it’s a game I play. Some folks just expect me
to have a LI profile, so I keep it up, and treat it respectfully.

I do like to have a platform where I’m not constantly reading troll screeds
(but it’s starting to show cracks).

I mainly use it to reinforce my “personal brand,” and give people a place I
can send them to, where they can find out about me, in a format with which
they are comfortable.

I don’t treat it casually, as a lot of folks take it seriously, and treating
it badly is disrespectful (IMO).

> Hiring is broken

Yup. Not LI’s fault, though.

I won’t even begin to address that, but, as an older techie, with an enormous
portfolio and experience, and mediocre “schoolboy test” performance, I have
encountered this in spades.

------
arexxbifs
LinkedIn began as something that actually seemed useful, but it long since
turned into Facebook for middle management types for feeding their echo
chamber with self help stories and 10 Things All Successful People Do.

I have not come across a single serious recruiter there for years and I closed
my account 6 months ago or so. Perhaps it's still useful for freelancers.

~~~
scarface74
Three of the Big 5 tech companies (no Netflix doesn’t count) had internal
recruiters randomly reached out to me in the last three months while the local
job market has cratered. Without LinkedIn, I wouldn’t have even pursued the
(remote) job I am starting in July with $BigTech.

Even before that all of the _local_ external recruiters I’ve found have been
through LinkedIn.

~~~
arexxbifs
Glad to hear it can still be worthwhile!

------
actualwill
The feed is nothing but useless hustle porn. 99.99% of recruiter messages I
get are offering the same position I have now, but at a less mature company.
However I got my first software job using it (don’t have a degree), and found
my most recent job via the easy apply. LinkedIn has been a net positive for
me, and can safely be ignored for a long time while not hunting.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
The feed is akin to a perpetual conference hall. Maybe you'll bump into
someone who got a new job, but the majority of the time it's just people
trying to sell their new business or themselves as a "thought leader"

------
kerkeslager
I've never had a LinkedIn, but I regularly receive emails from recruiters that
start, "Hey, I found your profile on LinkedIn and...". These get a form
response from me which says basically, "No you didn't, and given the first
words you say to me are a lie, I have no interest in working with you. And if
you feel guilty enough about how you _actually_ got my email that you feel the
need to lie about it, maybe you should consider whether you want to be the
kind of person who gets people's emails via unethical means and then lies
about it."

Some of these recruiters apparently work for Amazon, which isn't unsurprising
given their track record on other ethical concerns.

~~~
laurentdc
Probably an automated tool. Sometimes I even get the "Hey _|REAL_NAME|_ ,"
ones..

Worst thing, these recruiter emails rarely have an unsubscribe link or some
sort of opt-out. I don't have a LinkedIn but I once accidentally set my email
public on GitHub for a month or so, now every once in a while I get those kind
of emails. I'm sure it's been scraped and added to some database/spreadsheet
somewhere.

~~~
kerkeslager
True. I'm not sure whether that makes it worse or better.

------
gshulegaard
I am not sure how I feel about LinkedIn but I did want to expand on this:

> But one thing I am sure about: no one will notice.

LinkedIn remains one of the largest and best data sets for the recruiting
industry. I don't want to speak too broadly since my experience is limited to
my current employer and personal experience, but if you remove your LinkedIn
you will effectively be invisible to the recruiting agency I work at.

Many companies rely on outbound recruiting tactics since inbound is often too
noisy; not having a LinkedIn would dramatically reduce (if not eliminate) the
chance of a recruiter finding you without prior contact (referral,
application, former colleague, etc). And this is not just limited to
recruiters reaching out via LinkedIn. There are companies that scrape LinkedIn
and sell that data to recruiting agencies and VC's (and who knows who else).

As an anecdote, having recently complete a job search myself, I have to say
that traditional inbound applications (e.g. apply via company website without
any contacts) was shockingly ineffective. The difference in traction between
self applications using my professional network, job boards, or recruiting
markets (e.g. Triplebyte) was night and day.

Since the author seems privacy oriented, removing his LinkedIn is probably the
right thing to do, but I don't think it's accurate to imply that there is no
opportunity cost to doing so.

------
jll29
LinkedIn has its advantages and disadvantages. I would characterise it as a
net positive for me, but it depends who you are, how you use it and what for.

Why net positive? For my second start-up, I found our first customer through
LinkedIn. After lots of attempts to source a paying customer that led to no
conversions, one day a message arrived saying "You're the only ones in Europe
doing this. We want to work with you.". No networking, no clever lead
generation, just being there being found in a search did the job.

Never used it for jobs because I got these all conference networking and by
personal email exchances or being headhunted. It also gave me lots of speaking
engagements.

Recently, LinkedIn has had some issues with too much Facebook-like noise
(people posting non-professional content), so I think if there was a more
focused, mininmalist alternative, lots of people may switch. There is also the
question of potential conflict of interest: LI sells to HR/Hiring functions
and to people that already work for companies that use it for these functions.
So if I was you, I wouldn't apply via LI to any kind of job in case you'd like
to keep that fact from your current employer's HR.

------
Ecstatify
I hate LinkedIn, majority of the articles are rubbish most of the job offers
you get are not related to your skills but I still feel it's valuable to have
when I want to look for a new job or just to keep in contact with people I
have worked with in the past.

My inbox is full of boring templated messages

"Hi XXX, #I noticed you work as XXX @XXXand it is why I send invitation to
your LinkedIn. Looking forward to connect with you for open discussion about
logging, monitoring, troubleshooting and cloud SIEM. #stayletsconnect"

"Hello XXX, I am a Success Manager of XXXHiring Platform. I will be glad to
become a part of your professional connections and build collaboration with
you. best regards XXX"

I found an extension to unfollow all my connections so I have no reason to
stay on LinkedIn anymore than I need to.

------
lbutler
If you publish content for a professional niche, then LinkedIn may be your
best choice to reach your audience.

I'm a hydraulic modelling engineer, and people in my field don't hang out on
the internet together like software developers.

So when I write articles or develop some FOSS, I'll go to LinkedIn because I
can reach thousands of other engineers doing the same type of work.

I don't believe I could get the same reach or engagement on any other
platform.

------
ptmcc
LinkedIn has directly led to me getting two great jobs and accelerating my
career by leaps and bounds.

I don't read much/any of the news feed, and only occasionally check in on it
at all, but it's a fantastic passive job search platform.

The vast majority of recruiter contacts I get are not worth following up on,
but that rare message that just happens to be the right time/place is
invaluable.

------
jasonv
I deleted LinkedIn about 5 years ago when I went totally independent. I was
super happy not to have it. I recently re-created it because a consulting
engagement put me back in the center of "Are you on LinkedIn?" discussions.

I do look forward to closing my account again. There's a lot of "professional
posting" that goes on -- professional signaling, and uplifting daily posts.
Knowing the people who are posting these things, and how they go about their
daily work lives -- it's a lot like fitspo/fitfam posts on Instagram.

And companies I have some back office knowledge of are flat out lying about
their responses to the pandemic (No, you didn't respond to the pandemic by
laying off any FTEs; yes, you did lay-off all your contractors on day 3; and
actually, you did have a round of FTE layoffs subsequently but your posting
army got their "I'm so proud of my company and the fact that they didn't do
any FTE layoffs" posts out the day before the layoff round).

Glad some people get value out of it. Feels of our social times too much for
me.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
There's nothing forcing you to scroll the feed. I just uBlock the entire feed,
and use it as an online Rolodex. I've also built a fairly sizeable contact
book of headhunters, should I ever want to leave my current position.

~~~
jasonv
True. And worth considering.

But it's not like I'm challenged by a corner case of their product offer. It's
the whole creamy middle. I'm inclined to want out.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
It's not really a "product" for individuals looking for work. Just set and
forget, check for recruiter messages. I think that's the beauty of it, or how
I use it anyways.

------
hyko
The idea that you need LinkedIn to further your career is a myth straight out
of the LinkedIn marketing budget.

It was a weak signal that is now pure noise.

~~~
s1t5
There's a large number of people who find their jobs through LinkedIn. I
wouldn't call that noise even if some people can do without it.

------
karussell
Maybe a bit unrelated but who else has _always_ serious page rendering issues
when visiting LinkedIn? I do not visit it often but there are so many problems
lately that I doubt that I'm the only one, especially since all other sites
are fine. These problems appear when I open LinkedIn pages in a tab or for the
initial rending but also just when I click on new messages or 'Start'. Is it
because of Firefox and/or uBlock Origin?

~~~
DailyHN
It gets much worse when you start using the less popular features, like group
management.

Edit: it doesn't even work correctly using chrome without any ad blockers...

~~~
karussell
Haha, thanks for confirming. This is ridiculous for such a popular site. Maybe
it is since Microsoft took over ;)

~~~
DailyHN
I've been heavily active, too active, on the site for over eight years.

It was always lousy, but it's getting worse.

Lastly, I manage groups with hundreds of thousands of people, and I can't get
anyone on the phone for anything.

After the countless hours I've spent on LinkedIn, I'm now focussing my energy
on ultimately moving away from the platform.

It's so disappointing that I don't want even to log in to see the mess. No
joke, this week, my assistant told me "that thing that's been broken and
annoying for months was finally fixed." That thing was merely "approving"
content in the group moderation queue. Some posts simply wouldn't be
approved...

My strategy used to be "build a community using LinkedIn groups."

Now it's "do everything to capture the value I already created in the groups
by directing members off of LinkedIn."

It gets worse.

You can't trust their documentation. And I'm not talking about the API. Even
information in their help section is factually inaccurate. And it remains
published. When confronted, the issue will get escalated until someone comes
up with a roundabout excuse for why the published information is correct, but
not practically.

I knew better, but I still fell victim to the building on someone else
platform problem.

Never again.

------
m23khan
If you are Developer or even a DevOps or Data Engineer, LinkedIn is a very
handy tool in order to get connected with recruiters and also to apply for
jobs that are posted there.

Sure, there are other great online job boards and even physical job agencies
but I find (LinkedIn) by being marketed and promoted as a professional job
seeking / networking tool, even the type of conversations you have with your
contacts tend to be of a professional nature.

Yes, there are some fluff on LinkedIn especially when it comes to variety of
videos or feel-good or motivational messages being posted but I take them in
stride -- not everybody is same and if some people are social and have desire
to share their social feelings with others, then so be it.

~~~
fatnoah
>If you are Developer...

I think value of LinkedIn increases as you progress in your career and/or into
harder to fill roles. I've now passed the 20 YOE mark in my careers and have
moved into management, and it's at this point where I'm really starting to
find value from LinkedIn. Yes, there's tons of spam ("I've got a great entry-
level role for you!"), but I was able to use it very effectively in my last
job search. Of the 4 opportunities I pursued through the final interview/offer
stage, 2 were initiated by someone finding my profile on LinkedIn and 1 was a
process that got stuck that I was able to get unstuck by reaching out to a
connection at the company. The two "inbound" opportunities were both
Director/VP level roles at companies I was interested in working in.

------
myth2018
In my country, probably the most well-known IT-related jobs website
(www.apinfo.com) is something around 20 years old and uses basically the same
technologies and concepts that were mainstream at the time. Coldfusion, plain
HTML, ad spaces sold directly to advertisers.

No social networking. No fancy stuff (they don't even use icons, it's plain
text everywhere). Just a simple, straightforward website.

It's not perfect though. Doesn't perform that well and the searching
capabilities are poor even after some improvements they've attempted. But
during my whole career (17 years) I've gotten 100% of my jobs there, despite
having tried some other websites.

I wish that UX folks payed more attention to cases like that.

------
berkes
Interesting and it resonates with me.

Just today, I wrote an introduction on a "federated linkedin" that we've been
working on for the last few months:
[https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/early-feedback-and-
pre...](https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/early-feedback-and-presentation-
of-a-federated-professional-business-network/743)

Basically, aiming to set up a "rolodex on steroids" or a "place to manange
your business network" without all the privacy-issues, recruiterspam and
duplicated social-network-features.

We are in early phase, currently working through problem interviews and market
positioning.

------
nwsm
I've been on LinkedIn for a while, and I don't mind it for what it is. I have
not taken a job that started with LinkedIn, but it has given me leads,
multiple interviews, and an offer at one of the big tech companies. On most of
my job applications I've attached my LinkedIn, but I doubt it does anything as
all that info is on my resume.

Secondly I appreciate seeing my childhood, college, and ex-coworker friends'
careers progress. I like knowing where they're at and what they're working on,
and a LI update from someone I know has sparked lots of conversations.

As far as content, we all know it's worse than any other platform. I roll my
eyes at over half of the things on my feed. But sometimes I find good article
shares that aren't just marketing, and occasionally there's an actually
interesting post. However I think they do a good job of showing you your
connections' updates from a few weeks ago even, which is great for not
following your feed constantly like Twitter.

I agree it is not at all necessary for finding a job, and I don't use it as a
normal social media where I expect interesting content. So I definitely
understand anyone who decides not to use it. But I've found value in it
myself, and I certainly don't think it's doing me _harm_. The author never
explains what the "harm" is.

I think this sentence in the article sums it up:

"It doesn't really matter, but that's not a world I want to participate in."

OP wrote an article about deleting an app that no one thinks is essential.

------
Springtime
Just wanted to give a bit of praise for the blog post's illustration as a
rather delightful little example of how lightweight and smooth SVG animation
can be (and SMIL no less).

44KB for a scalable, looping blog graphic. Imagine if more of the web were
like this.

~~~
pcmaffey
Thanks! SMIL is so under-appreciated. I always look forward to doing these
animations.

------
olcor
Linkedin provides value to me in two ways:

\- My connections list would make a potential recruiter (and maybe even the
Linkedin Algorithm) be slightly more confident that I am who I say I am, i.e.
I did work at the companies and studied at the schools I listed) because there
would be people in that list who have shared that history with me. I make sure
these are the only people in my connections list, apart from a few recruiters
I wouldn't mind chatting with again.

\- I can be discoverable professionally/personally by a google search. I don't
have any other social media accounts.

I take some effort to maximize this value and minimize the other irritations
and distractions. Example: I unfollow everyone I connect, so my feed is mostly
empty. I don't connect with people I don't know or those who don't bother
interacting in any other way except just sending a request.

Some people could go a few steps further and use uBlock origin's element
picker to permanently block the UI elements constituting the feed and anything
else they don't want to see. This way all you get is maybe a few emails a
month maximum, and potentially good job opportunities. Everyone else just sees
a quasi-official page about my professional experience.

------
paysandu
LinkedIn had enormous value for me after I graduated from a PhD and was
desperately looking for a job in industry. I got the LinkedIn Premium, which
allowed me to message any people directly (without the need to be connected
first). My first attempts at cold approaching people were not successful, but
I slowly refined my communications and was able to get many replies.

I would search a company that was interesting and then message an employee
asking for questions about the company, if we had a good conversation, they
would hook me up with the recruiter. Sometimes I would directly contact a
startup founder with a pitch of how my expertise would be helpful to them (my
field is pretty niche, so there aren't any job titles for it). I got my
current job by directly approaching the recruiter responsible for the position
I wanted. It escalated pretty quickly from the first contact.

I didn't need to manufacture my profile in an artificial way. I just put
everything I did and know there. The platform gave me the visibility I didn't
have, as I come from a small university. The single ability to find who works
at a certain company, and how many insiders you already know has enormous
value.

------
headmelted
LinkedIn is a very strange place to me.

I’m there, but like the author I never really bother with it. Maybe every year
or two I’ll check it’s up-to-date with work history but that’s about it.

I get a lot of calls from recruiters. I can only assume they’re cold-calling a
list from linked in search results and I can’t think of a single incidence
where the call has lead to anything.

The bizarre part is that I know several people on LinkedIn and Facebook (to be
fair I haven’t signed in on Facebook either for about two years for lack of
interest - if I haven’t bothered to call you in the last three years then I
really don’t care what you’re eating for lunch these days).

On Facebook people post cat memes and talk about things they’re genuinely
interested in, like how Janet’s friend Steve caught coronavirus from a telecom
mast.

On LinkedIn the same people’s feeds are repost after repost of how they’re
living their most Agile Scrum Synergy-driven Goal-oriented life.

As best I can tell, it’s a website for sucking up to employers you might some
day have or hope to impress. Every post reads like the applicant side of a job
interview where no-one even asked a question. Maybe it’s just me, and I don’t
get it, but I just have better things to do with my time.

------
nonines
>> The corporate work culture survives on people's fears. If you don't play by
the rules of the people in power, how will you make money, how will you feed
your family, how will you contribute to society?

>> When people long for the days of the early web, the glorious idiosyncracies
of personal sites and forums, they are really longing for a time and a space
where people were free to communicate their own values. Now that space is
owned and rented to the highest bidder. A site like LinkedIn wraps you up into
a tiny, uniform package, sets you in an enormous data warehouse next to
millions of other tiny people just like you, and sells the lot of you.

A lot of what he says resonates really strongly. Fact of the matter though is
that we are locked in this state of affairs. Specially if you are in a not-
exactly-buzzing job market. I don't know if there is a will and a way to
revert ourselves back to something more than a commodity. And I don't see a
way to move forward to something beyond that.

------
swiley
I quit using LinkedIn after realizing that just viewing pages spams people you
know with emails... Talk about unprofessional.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
It was quite handy to stay in touch with people you worked with but eventually
it turned in another spammy cesspit just like every other form of social
media.

------
dijit
I have conflicting feelings about linkedin. It suffers greatly from all the
things that SV success's suffer from: feature bloat, the need to be all things
and above all; trying to steal and keep your attention.

If you kill off 90% of notifications, the inane "feed" and some of the
duplicitous behaviour in trying to pilfer your contacts list then you end up
with a solid platform for recruiters and professionals.

I have recommendations from people on my linkedin page that has much more
merit than if I included such a thing on my CV.

I have people who endorsed me for skills, which when presented well can mean
that people are vouching that I have at least some area of knowledge there.

This means that overall linkedin is a more standardised, searchable and
credible source for my working history than my CV is.

So I think that if you treat linkedin simply as a 'live CV' then it has a lot
of value, even if you do get some recruiter spam sometimes.

~~~
aabbcc1241
I agree, and you can just ignore the spam (or block them with browser
extension as others as mentioned)

------
bad_user
> " _unless your profile is exceptional for some reason, it probably does more
> harm than good_ "

Isn't this true of your resume as well? What makes LinkedIn any worse than a
public resume?

And if you don't have a good resume, that's totally fine, many companies will
still call you in for an interview, however the companies that have a long
queue of interviews, will use those resume for discriminating between
potential candidates and there's no way around that.

If your online profile isn't good, then improve your online profile. Work on
some public projects, write a blog, read some marketing books and apply that
knowledge.

And on LinkedIn ... actively ask your former colleagues to recommend you on
LinkedIn. People writing words about you is the best kind of endorsement you
can get. Don't be ashamed of asking for it.

~~~
viraptor
I'm not sure what the author means by this, but my view is that unless you're
good enough to get the recruitment people you'd like to see, you'll only get
low quality messages that waste your time.

~~~
bad_user
I have some experience on being recruited. Most of the messages you receive
are indeed junk.

But that's not the value of LinkedIn. The value is being connected and
receiving recommendations from your current or former colleagues. That's not
something you can easily maintain on your own.

And if you want to be recruited, then you have to actively improve your
profile and even to actively seek a job — this means maintaining relationships
with capable recruiters that can filter out the junk for you, or even
contacting the companies that you like directly. And in both cases having an
up to date online profile helps.

In other words a combination of outbound and inbound marketing. LinkedIn can
help with both, or it might not help, but passively receiving messages from
recruiters is not the provided value.

Due to the supply and demand curve, software developers have gotten lazy, but
marketing is a soft skill we should all learn.

------
code4tee
LinkedIn is mostly full of people trying to reach or impress other people who
are broadly not really using LinkedIn.

Most people have a profile but few people I know spend any time on the site
unless their activity fits the description above. Thus it’s never really clear
to me what the point of it all is.

------
dep_b
I have a LinkedIn account for quite a few years now after some initial
hesitation and the bad feeling never quite went away given the fact they still
scrape address books and other dark patterns.

I used to leave it on "not interested in new work" because I already got so
much spam, but then I flipped the switch in March because I temporarily lost
all of my customers at once due to Coronascare and I had to scramble for new
work.

Most leads that I get that I wouldn't get before are pretty high quality I
have to say. I do see that once a new job lands that matches my profile
multiple recruiters reach out on the same day for the same job and I see the
same opening repeated several times over.

I don't understand why the job market needs to be so opaque.

------
Nginx487
The title reminds me of a joke "I chased you to say I'm a vegan". Well, you
deleted your account, we are happy fir you. If you're a regular employee, your
benefits from LinkedIn could be limited to a job search. However, being an
independent consultant, author of your content, owner of a product, you should
care about building your community and increase your "influence" in this
community. I do not agree nothing much happen there, probably nothing that
could be interesting a big corporation employee. In terms of building business
connections that is the only available worldwide social network.

------
eeZah7Ux
Excellent points:

> Fear of scarcity. Not having a job when you need a job is a terrible
> feeling, I get it. It's why I joined LinkedIn in the first place.

> Fear of missing out. Maybe some magical opportunity might trickle down
> through your network of connections? The truth is, if you're relying on
> LinkedIn to manage your network, those relationships are thin as tinsel.

> The corporate work culture survives on people's fears. If you don't play by
> the rules of the people in power, how will you make money, how will you feed
> your family, how will you contribute to society?

...and social media played on similar fears around social life.

~~~
kubanczyk
Yes, the last point hit especially hard when he continued about "outsourcing"
the choice of my values.

Quoting Vonnegut: "we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about
what we pretend to be."

------
geomark
Just to toss in my two cents, Linkedin has been of no use career-wise for me.
But it has helped me find some people in a niche whom I failed to find through
a lot of Googling and forum trolling. So a net positive for me.

------
SCdF
I've said it before, but if your CV is one of hundreds that are being reviewed
for a role and you don't have a linkedin, it basically means that everyone
else is more legitimate than you.

This sucks, I am aware. But since people send fake / bullshit / impossible to
verify CVs all the time, I'm not really sure what the alternative is.

So by all means delete your linkedin, but maybe instead consider just never
logging in until you need to update your job history, once every couple of
years. Or do delete it, but just be aware of the reality of how that may play
out.

------
082349872349872
I keep my LinkedIn mostly to be aware of how much they know about several
decades of my true social graph.

(cf Böll —he did work in statistics, so I think the irony is strong in this
one—
[https://www.tandfonline.com/na101/home/literatum/publisher/t...](https://www.tandfonline.com/na101/home/literatum/publisher/tandf/journals/content/ucha20/2002/ucha20.v015.i03/09332480.2002.10554810/production/09332480.2002.10554810.fp.png_v03)
)

------
mehdix
I was in doubt whether to delete my LinkedIn or give it a facelift. After
Corona hit, I did indeed improved my LinkedIn presence.

I have diabled all the distractions and focuse on the network though. I
realized there is value in keeping in touch with potential decision makers and
employers.

If you are an expat, live in a faraway place, lack community in your town,
etc, LinkedIn could be valuable for you. If you are in a tech-hub, have access
to lots of communities and potential employers, sure, LinkedIn looks useless
to you.

------
dlkf
I liked this essay. I don't agree with all of it. But it has a lot of
interesting musings, and it's written without the sort of hyperbole or bombast
that typically accompanies pieces about "why I'm not using x."

> I'd go so far as to say that unless your profile is exceptional for some
> reason, it probably does more harm than good.

This can't possibly be true. LinkedIn is the go-to sourcing tool for every HR
department in the world. Right now —even in the midst of a global recession
—thousands of recruiters are trawling LinkedIn to fill a role. If you don't
have a LinkedIn account, you are immediately disqualified from the pool.
Moreover, a lot of HR departments will simply expect a LinkedIn profile. They
like having a standard mode of comparison that's easily digestible.

> You and I are just another candidate in a tall stack

This is a false dichotomy. Having a LinkedIn profile isn't mutually exclusive
with a portfolio, blog, github, kaggle account, stackoverflow profile etc. And
if the recruiter is only going to look at your LinkedIn _anyway_ , then how is
your awesome blog going to help? I would go in an opposite direction, and
describe LinkedIn as a sort of Pascal's wager. At worst it's a net neutral; at
best you might get an interesting job offer.

> When people long for the days of the early web, the glorious idiosyncracies
> of personal sites and forums, they are really longing for a time and a space
> where people were free to communicate their own values. Now that space is
> owned and rented to the highest bidder. A site like LinkedIn wraps you up
> into a tiny, uniform package, sets you in an enormous data warehouse next to
> millions of other tiny people just like you, and sells the lot of you.

Well put. It's definitely kind of depressing. But at the same time, I feel
that it's possible that a centralized platform like LinkedIn can serve as an
equalizing force (depending on its search/discovery capabilities). I suspect
that a world where we are all using blogs and forums is much more siloed than
one with LinkedIn. Information asymmetry in job markets is bad for workers.
For all their faults, tools like LinkedIn and GlassDoor are (or at least could
be) a force that alleviates this. I don't really have a final word here, I can
see benefits to both worlds.

------
ajtjp
I've found LinkedIn to be great for two things - becoming aware of
companies/opportunities I wouldn't have heard of otherwise, and building
relationships with recruiters so that when I'm ready to move on from a job, I
already have ins at the companies they work with. So far, that has led to two
jobs, although not my current one. But it's absolutely been worth having a
profile.

I mostly use it as some other people have mentioned - having notifications for
messages, and ignoring the News Feed and most other features. Once a twice a
year, I update my resume, and update my LinkedIn as well, which is not much
extra work, but is essentially really low-cost marketing of my skills and
experience.

Of the messages I get, some aren't worth responding to - the "I have a job to
fill using Java, and you used Java once, you should apply" type - but some are
from recruiters who are willing to build a relationship and place you when the
time is right, even if that isn't right away. It's often worth taking a 30
minute phone call with them, or meeting up for coffee or lunch.

------
apple4ever
I never had a problem with LinkedIn. Sometimes I get recruiter emails, but
those are easy to deal with. I actually got my last job via LinkedIn, so it
has helped me get a job.

As a hiring manager, I immediately get red flags when someone doesn't have a
LinkedIn. Its easy to create and keep updated, so to me it seems like they are
hiding something. Not that its an instant deny, but it is a part of the
decision.

------
fabiomaia
I saw the same thing a while ago and deleted it. I got my first job in a
different country easily without LinkedIn. I see no value in LinkedIn for job
hunting, many of the ads are just links to different job boards or application
forms that I have to fill out or upload my CV to anyway.

Ironically I created a LinkedIn again after starting this job, I think mostly
to flex on my exciting new job and measuring myself against my peers from
college, while some small part of me also thought it could be important for
networking. If you really want to keep in touch with peers from college you
will find a better and much more genuine way of doing so. If you want to
network maybe it can be a useful tool but I'm not sure stroking each other's
ego is the best way to do that.

Once again I was coming to the conclusion that it's a useless and pointless
platform (like most social networks, but that's another topic). My feed right
now is nothing but cringe memes, humblebrags, and weird flexing. Thanks for
bringing this to my attention, I think I will delete it for real this time.

------
dreen
You might have closed the account, but good luck stopping them from emailing
you!

~~~
robin_reala
I never had a LinkedIn account but was getting email from them. Hitting the
unsubscribe button would stop it for a month but then restart again. After
about 6 months I sent them a mail threatening legal action if I ever received
a mail from them again, and since then it’s been blissfully quiet. They must
have an internal black-list for people that do that.

------
ementi
If I didn’t worry about money, I would certainly delete my LinkedIn. The
author’s opinion is that having a LinkedIn will hurt in getting a job. I was
thinking that it would help since a lot of companies ask for it.

For me, having a LinkedIn is certainly out of fear however I haven’t had many
benefits from it. I paid for premium for 2 months and didn’t get anything out
of it in terms of getting a job.

~~~
toyg
It's definitely a defensive posture - in my corner of the world, unless you're
a hotshot name, not having a LinkedIn profile at all will raise eyebrows when
jobhunting. So you must have a presence, even if fundamentally idle.

I agree that Premium is useless. If you start spamming people you'll just look
desperate. And I've not had a single job application go through with LI, I
think employers just use it as "the new Monster" (post because you must show
effort, then just ignore the thousands of CVs you get, as most real candidates
will come through recommendations anyway). It's only useful to be there in
case a recruiter calls with a good job (rare but it happens).

------
redelbee
Anyone else notice significantly more notification spam from LinkedIn lately?
It seems like I’m guaranteed to get a badge notification daily now compared to
once a week or so in the past.

LinkedIn is one of the few apps I still allow notifications from. In
retrospect I probably turned them on in fear of missing an opportunity when
looking for a job. I can confidently say I haven’t missed out on any
opportunity and the content notifications are mostly terrible. It’s so bad I’m
considering following the author’s lead and getting off the platform
altogether.

What does the future look like? I can only assume someone at LinkedIn is
looking at daily active users and trying to juice that number with app
notification spam. In theory LinkedIn is perfect: keeps business and personal
separate, a dedicated platform for work-related everything after the Microsoft
acquisition. In practice it’s awful. Is there any future where a social media
company like LinkedIn could coalesce around something useful instead of
chasing metrics (DAUs, etc)?

------
ThomPete
Linkedin works for me not the other way around. Its a giant rolodex, stays
mostly out of the way and make it easy for me to investigate various things
like who knows a person or what does company x do I even pay for the premium
account and have for years. Its not useful for everyone and definitely not all
the ti e but when its is, its all the money worth.

------
inglor
I don't understand why as a developer I'd want to use LinkedIn. I have
StackOverflow and GitHub which a lot of relevant leads come from.

When I buy a used car - I don't publish a "I'm looking for a used car" post
and wait for car salespeople to approach me. I go and charactarize what I'm
looking for and then go car-shopping.

When I look for a job - I don't publish a "I'm looking for a job". Talking to
the recruiters (HR people) is very boring and often counterproductive.

Contributing to open source and meeting and talking to engineers and building
things is a lot more fun and rewarding.

That's why I don't have a linkedin (well, only an account for the API). It
always seemed like "opting in to a lot of spam" without getting any value as a
developer. I don't even think I'm particularly good - but great developers
probably have this x100.

Of course if I was not a developer but a sales person my situation would be
completely different.

~~~
scarface74
_Contributing to open source and meeting and talking to engineers and building
things is a lot more fun and rewarding._

I personally get no enjoyment out of development besides it being a way to
support my addiction to food and shelter. I don’t dislike development, but it
is just a job.

When I am actively looking, it’s so much easier to send messages to _local_
recruiters with my resume and wait for them to call me (pre-Covid they always
did).

~~~
inglor
Maybe a dumb question - but what are you passionate about? What do you find
fun and rewarding?

I genuinely enjoy building software. For the first ~10 years as a software
developer I was genuinely surprised I was getting paid.

~~~
scarface74
By the time I got my first real job as a developer in the mid 90s, I had
already spent a decade doing hobby projects in assembly on 8 bit computers and
later C on Macs. It had really just become a method to enjoy the big city life
in my 20s to mid 30s (including a brief bad marriage).

During that time I dabbled in real estate, was a part time fitness instructor
and personal trainer.

In my 40s, I enjoy just working out (home gym), traveling (pre-Covid), hanging
out with my wife and friends (again pre-Covid). I have spent a lot of time
over the past four years working my butt off at work and after work learning
and gaining experience to prepare for (relatively) high paying consulting
roles.

Now that is done and I landed a job at $major_cloud_provider, until Covid dies
down, I have no idea what life looks like for us on the other side.

~~~
inglor
Thanks for taking the time to respond.

The transition I've seen people who enjoy traveling and hanging out with
friends a lot is to developer advocate roles where they travel a lot to
conferences.

I actually did that quite a bit last year (14 conferences which is hardly a
lot but then again I'm not a devrel). Now I'm stuck with the boring parts
(making the talks) and none of the interesting ones (traveling, meeting people
and tech).

If you spent a decade doing hobby projects - what happened that made that
"just a job"?

~~~
scarface74
That decade was from the time I was 12 until I was 22. I was a short fat kid
with a computer - what else was I going to do? By the time I got to college, I
started having a social life.

I got into exercise and fitness after college and my circle started consisting
of non-geek professionals who were active. That became my hobby.

Once I had to look at a computer all day, I wanted to do _anything_ else
besides looking at a computer after work. You can’t imagine how much fun it
was to transform from “computer geek” during the day to “outgoing drill
sergeant fitness instructor” in the evening.

I have turned down two or three decent paying ($120/hr+) side contracting
opportunities because I would rather just spend time doing anything else when
I get off of work.

As far as travel, post-Covid, my job will require extensive travel. I should
be able to get frequent flier miles for my personal use.

------
runawaybottle
I’m noticing a lot of pretentious at best, contrived at worst, mythology posts
on LinkedIn. Everyone’s career is being transformed through the narrative
machine, and it appears a lot of people suddenly persevered ‘against all
odds’.

Every super hero needs an origin story. Social media encourages exhibitionism,
and gone are the days of quiet accomplishment.

~~~
higeorge13
Best comment on this thread. Thank you for perfectly expressing my own
feelings as well.

------
AlexandrB
LinkedIn was and is mega-creepy. They still prompt me to "discover my network"
by giving them my Gmail username and password. Based on the comments here, it
seems that everyone has at this point accepted LinkedIn's creepy business
practices and now we're just arguing about its relative utility. Great.

~~~
jlokier
I don't think everyone has accepted to the point of giving LI their email
password. I certainly haven't. Personally I think LinkedIn has some utility
for me that I haven't found elsewhere yet. I was very skeptical when I joined
it, and didn't really update or use it for at least 10 years. But more
recently I've realised it fills a useful niche that is not well provided for
by other services to my knowledge.

------
pulkitsh1234
Off topic: I find that LinkedIn is bloated with features (most of the "social"
aspects of it seem to be just ripped off of FB), which often facilitate spam
(Look at my new certificates, Sharing of TikTok videos, Motivational quotes)
and just a weird way to share information ("Link in the first comment"). I
believe LinkedIn thinks they are improving customer "retention" and all other
metrics might be ringing hard, but it suffers from massive feature bloat.

The only reason I am on LinkedIn is just that every other person is on it.

And from [0] shared on HN yesterday, it will not work if just a couple of
people move to a new platform, they need to move AND share that fact as loudly
as possible.

[0]: [https://fs.blog/2020/06/coordination-
problems/](https://fs.blog/2020/06/coordination-problems/)

~~~
rakkhi
It is like management that expect to see what Gartner or Forrester said even
though it is just who did the biggest sponsorship

------
mud_dauber
80% of my LinkedIn feed feels like absolute dreck. "Humbled to announce..",
"We had a great time at..", or "Announcing availability of.." .. you know it
when you see it.

And I completely get the sentiment that much of the rest is just somebody
amplifying an opinion for likes, clicks or connections. But consider this
alternative scenario.

If you're dissatisfied with your professional lot in life, LinkedIn is a way
to vent. LinkedIn posts don't have to be of the 'please consider hiring me'
variety - they may be somebody who doesn't have another outlet for their
creativity or feelings on how a topic is being handled by the world at large.

I'm in this category. I use Li to show that I'm out here, alive, and have some
value. I strenuously try to avoid the whole "thought leader" vibe.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

------
JoeMayoBot
As an independent consultant, Linked-In has worked well for me. I've been
contacted there for more opportunities that I can count - real customers. I
have very few recruiter contacts and weed them from my list every once in a
while. In fact, I received a referral a couple weeks ago that's a paying
customer today.

One of the things I do that I don't see much is to reach out and stay in
contact with people occasionally. Sometimes I'll make a referral too.
Networking works many ways and you have to give to get. (#givefirst) Sometimes
just replying to the anniversary, new job, or giving a technology kudo means
something to some people (maybe more so in a pandemic world).

I also like the points that a few other folks made that customers almost
always look at the Linked-In profile.

------
Plutonsvea
I've always used a mantra of "You can't win the game without playing it". A
large majority of recruiters and job searchers in the world use LinkedIn. If
you're not willing to throw yourself out there in the LinkedIn world, I think
you'll find you're not opening yourself to enough opportunities for your
career growth. This is strictly from a growth perspective though.

I got my current job and wake up incredibly happy every day, and this
opportunity only came because I glossed-up my linked-in profile and a few
recruiters expressed interest.

Linked-In networking might be a terrible and sometimes cringe-y game to play,
but trust me, you'll be glad you expended the few braincells it took to fake
it when employers and recruiters start knocking.

------
aroberge
I did the same and the amount of spam emails (trying to sell me services or
products related to my job) dropped down by at least 80%. If I were at the
beginning of my career, I imagine that the network effect might compensate for
the annoyance, but that is not the case for me.

------
Pedrit0
I can underestand the author's point of view about the uniformizing atmosphere
on Linkedin, but I could not quit. I am IT system architect in Paris. It means
linkedin is my magic tool to get tons of job opportunities without even
searching. Closing my account would be a meaningless and self-harming move...
But by the way I use it only as smart and dynamic resumé / job offer board and
never use it as a social network. And I never read at personal publications as
they are mainly about corporate spirit BS clichés and pathetic personal
development advice. And I personnaly think that people who spend much time
commenting on Linkedin often offer a bad image of themselves : they should
work more and self-promote less.

------
asplake
I totally get that it’s not for everyone. For me though, way more traction
there than in (say) Twitter or Facebook. But for me it is not “glorified
resume site” (to quote the article) but a place actively to connect with
people. You get out of it what you put in I guess.

------
codingdave
I've gotten multiple jobs from LinkedIn. I've caught up with old friends after
not having talked for years, because I saw a job update from them, and it was
a good reminder to get back in touch. I've reached out to people local to me,
and to people from my college who I never knew, but I now see work in my
field, in my area, and gotten to know more people. I've seen well-written
articles, and found new people and blogs to follow who talk about the non-
technical side of this industry - management, product ownership, leadership,
and other such things.

Clearly, LinkedIn does have its share of warts. And if isn't for you, there is
nothing wrong with not participating. But you get out of it what you put into
it.

------
mcv
I'm no fan of LinkedIn. It's a mess of dark patterns, and I think that shortly
after I joined, they tried to con me into giving them my Gmail password. They
certainly offer me a lot of contacts who I do know, but they have no business
knowing that I know them. There's certainly fishy stuff going on.

At the same time, though, recruiters find me there. Despite my CV being years
out of date, and me ignoring LinkedIn most of the time, recruiters keep
finding me there and offering me interesting freelance positions.

A co-worker who is also a freelancer uses LinkedIn more actively, and uses it
to connect to hiring managers of companies he might want to work for. That way
he finds work without middlemen.

------
raverbashing
> but I'd go so far as to say that unless your profile is exceptional for some
> reason, it probably does more harm than good.

> You and I are just another candidate in a tall stack—ie. our profiles are
> more useless information they can use to cross our name off.

That seems a very naive interpretation. Or maybe my profile is truly
exceptional (who knows)

I've came across several potential good job opportunities in LinkedIn, and of
course, while you won't jump hoops too frequently and most of them might be
not great opportunities, I can totally see the value.

And those are not only through direct recruiter contacts, but also through
friends sharing job posts (or candidates).

(Yes, recruiters still ask for CVs sometimes _sigh_ )

------
benbristow
I found my last 2 jobs through LinkedIn. One through direct application
through LinkedIn (the Easy-Apply feature) and then once through a recruiter's
message.

I couldn't imagine not having LinkedIn nowadays, it's invaluable.

------
makison
Created Linkedin account while I had a job, kept it passive for a while - 6
months. Became active when I quit, recruiters started contacting me. Got a new
job, during covid and only because of Linkedin, in 2-3 months.

------
Beldin
I use linkedin for having a reasonable reliable connection to people from the
past. I.e., primary school friends, high school friends, colleagues, etc.

I've never used it for job hunting, but for the feeling that i might be able
to get back in touch with someone i was close with at one point in my life.
Basically, i just want Facebook without the feed. Linkedin admirably fits that
niche.

Admittedly, I hardly use it - but it's the ultimate fallback for when all
other options run out.

Apparently people post things there. But i don't think anyone holds it against
you if you do not interact.

------
paul7986
Ive found just about all my software/UX Design gigs on Linkedin via
recruiters.

Also, it's been a way to get my next best deal via job hopping and starting
conversations with recruiters telling them how much Im making (which is really
how much i want for my next job). Either the conversation continues or I went
to high and it doesnt. Now out of 100 times doing this I've landed 5 to 10
jobs over many years. A lot of the times I'm not looking, but interested in
what the market will bear for my experience.

Personally, couldn't imagine deleting Linkedin.

------
bsd44
Am I the only one not seeing the argument in the blog post? All I read was
"LinkedIn is bad and being on it does more harm than good" without anything to
support the premise.

I've been on LinkedIn for years and it did nothing but good for me. I found
nothing but quality jobs on it, I stopped visiting job websites as a result,
I'm getting approached by companies as a result instead of me applying. I
don't understand what the author was doing to find LinkedIn "bad" and "more
harm than good". I think this is nonsense.

------
jcun4128
It works great for me with regard to job hunting get pinged almost everyday by
recruiters... my connections mostly are recruiters other than people I
know/work with. Other than that I don't participate in social stuff as it has
my name on it.

Granted I have some social accounts(reddit) that are doxxable but mostly
they're not... I don't attack people I'm just weird/can't really be me with my
name. YouTube is almost borderline but thankfully as of yet I'm not aware of
an easy/public way to scan YouTube comments.

------
AlchemistCamp
I also closed my account recently because they wouldn't let me update my
profile without providing a location.

I've been a nomad most of the last 5 years and everything I do professionally
is over the internet.

~~~
majewsky
> they wouldn't let me update my profile without providing a location

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Island)

~~~
aungmyohtet
you suggested to provide Null Island as one's location?

~~~
majewsky
yes

------
gwbas1c
I used to get a lot of recruiter spam so I locked down my profile.

I opened it up a bit because I'm looking for a job. It's still spammy, but the
pandemic has really slowed things down.

IMO: LinkedIn is bad at managing spam.

------
raydev
I see a lot of complaints here about the News Feed, which I agree with, but I
spend approximately zero minutes looking at it.

All I have to do on LinkedIn is exist and it's led to some useful job
connections and a few offers (which I ended up not taking).

Honestly, the tone in the post tells me this person is at a point in their
career where they feel confident they can walk in anywhere and get a job. I
don't know if I'll ever feel that way and I like recruiters reaching out to
me.

Just don't read the News Feed, and LinkedIn is good.

------
lma21
I've had many positive experiences because of LinkedIn, whether noticing new
interesting people or companies. Though most importantly, I got connected to
good companies through LinkedIn and went through their recruitment process. I
don't think that would have been possible without it, unless I was actively
applying and searching for a job myself. It's not a bad thing to thrown with
some new opportunity without being the one actively applying.

What would be the downside of keeping a LinkedIn profile?

------
Rafuino
I don't think there's much value if you're a SW developer. You have many ways
to show off your work, but if you're not in that field, hiring is much more
based on word of mouth, credentials (ugh), or self-promotion.

I'm not a huge fan of LinkedIn, but the most it helps me is with understanding
the background of someone I'm about to meet (even if internally since I'm at a
huge company at the moment), or at least see what kinds of jobs are out there
when I'm casually looking.

------
hnaccount02
Just adding my $0.02. I was pretty neutral about LinkedIn for a long time. I
just made one because a couple friends recommended it, but it was neither bad
nor good for me. Later in my career, I actually had recruiters reaching out to
me and I had old colleagues that I wanted to hear from/reach. For my last job
hunt, I was actually able to find an opportunity to nearly double my salary
and shorten my commute. The feed is pretty meh, but I still think it's useful
having a footprint. YMMV

------
otar
I can freely attribute my previous and current job, as well as my current
partnership (emerged from the current job) to LinkedIn. I've been reached out
by recruiters both times and apparently it did work out.

From another POV I understand the criticism, it's been a while I haven't
visited LinkedIn, nor have I updated the profile, and it's mostly caused by
the "noise" I feel on social networks. But, it still can be beneficial for
some professionals at a certain phase of their career.

------
cryptozeus
Completely biased article.

“As everyone knows, LinkedIn is a glorified resume site. Nothing actually
happens there (unless you are a recruiter or in enterprise sales?).”

This means op could not get any benefit out of an online tool, this does not
mean nothing happens there. LinkedIn has been tremendously helpful to find my
last 2 jobs. You have to know how to use it, specially the premium account.
The market research aspect of it is amazing. I do not enjoy the social media
aspect and the timeline approach. Stay away from that.

------
davidcollantes
Never liked it. The first time I open a LinkedIn account, a long time ago,
most of my connections were people I didn't know. It seems--like with any
other social media--people likes to see big numbers, and I connected with
people I had no relation simply because I accepted their request.

The second time? [https://collantes.us/2019/07/29/closing-
linkedin/](https://collantes.us/2019/07/29/closing-linkedin/)

------
bengale
LinkedIn could really do with a way to segment recruiters. I don't know how
that would work but I tend not to go on there an interact as most of my feed
is recruiters either listing jobs I don't care about or talking about the
recruitment industry which I also don't care about.

However, I still want to be connected to them, its useful for them to be able
to reach out to me if they have something that aligns with my skillset, I just
don't need them in my feed I guess.

~~~
jlokier
I think you can unfollow the recruiters whose output you don't care about, but
remain connected to them.

------
cybert00th
LinkedIn got me the job I'm currently in at this here publishing saltmine back
in 2013, so I'm a little ambivalent about it - but only a little.

Let's put it this way, in the beginning LinkedIn was useful - very useful, but
as many commenters are noting here, it's now become something wholly different
from what it started out as.

I deleted my account a good few years ago now and I don't regret it. And I
doubt now that I would ever go back - even if I needed to find another job.

------
morberg
I use LinkedIn as a Rolodex where the contact info is kept up to date by the
people in it. Professional contacts only, and only people I’ve worked with or
met through work.

------
joyj2nd
Relevant and formerly on HN:

[https://theoutline.com/post/5495/how-to-beat-linked-in-
the-g...](https://theoutline.com/post/5495/how-to-beat-linked-in-the-game)

I closed my account over 8 years ago. Sometimes a business partner of mine is
bitching that I don't have a profile but that's about it. I am not very
successful but the successful people I know (speak XX-XXX MM USD) don't have a
profile there.

------
brendancahill
I really enjoyed your article. LinkedIn seems to not know what it would like
to be. Its initial model was good - bring resumes into the 21st century. But,
in an era when one's Twitter account or personal blog is considered "the new
resume" what is LinkedIn's value proposition anymore? Personally, I do like
the platform, but I have found its users much less likely to respond/interact
with content or DMs than Twitter. Thanks!

------
saos
Fair enough.

Linkedin has helped me find and secure new roles. I do agree that its becoming
that sort of FOMO experience when I think about. In fact thats why I deleted
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram many years ago, which has positively helped
me. But, I do feel like its turning into that Facebook experience. I do often
reject those random Linkedin connection requests from time to time. Other than
that I just play along with it. Use it when I need to use.

------
ayhoung
I got my job at AWS from LinkedIn.

------
627467
I share a lot of the commenters opinions: most of the toxicity (and intrusion)
of social networks are due to... THE FEED. and they only affect us because we
keep checking on them. Yes, they are engineered to "make" us go back over and
over again to check for "news", but if we are aware of that, there are
(arguably convoluted) ways to minimize that effect. The following is my
experience on how I dealt with facebook, but I have since applied to linkedin
and others.

Years ago I started "leaving" facebook by just: not visiting it. I didn't
delete my account, I didn't explicitly posted anything announcing what I was
going to do. I just stopped visiting it.

Now, it wasn't a trivial as that, because facebook will notify you, will email
you, will send you messages reminding of everything I was missing out. So,
along with the decision of "leaving" facebook I had to manually go and disable
every way facebook could reach my attention. It took a while but it wasn't
hard: I disabled email alerts (or just filtered them straight to trash)
whenever I received one. For years I didn't have fb or messenger apps on my
phone, or I would just disable them if I couldn't remove them. Now, with more
granular control over notification I may install them but disable
notifications _entirely_. In fact, I take a similar approach to email. While I
do receive visual notifications of email, I don't get sound of vibration. In
fact, my phone is in silent mode practically all day (I do have some rules
that allow certain calls to breakthrough)

To me, gaining back control was about removing the ability of apps (and
people) to digitally reach me whenever they felt like. And this is the core of
my attitude with "leaving" social networks: it's about controlling when I want
to actively use them (as little as needed). So, deleting account feels (to me)
as I gave up having control (and extracting the little benefit of a network).

Also, it's not just about control how apps reach us.

It's also about establishing the social boundaries with friends, family and
acquaintances: socials networks are NOT how you can get my attention. you may
get my attention, but don't count on it. if you really need to find me you
probably know how.

I still extract value from facebook/ig/linkedin on my own terms. But those
companies probably get much less value out of me given their business models.
I feel it's alright. In fact, I feel (maliciously?) better in this approach.

I still get linkedin job offers, and I do respond to them, probably after a
few days when I feel like checking.

------
keeganpoppen
did this ~7 years ago; haven't regretted it once. _have_ been met with
bemusement on many occasions when people ask for my linkedin, which amuses me.
it's always struck me as the most flagrant "give my personal data to someone
else to profit on for virtually no reason" of all of the social networks. at
least on Facebook i can talk to my friends...

------
robomartin
One of the most perplexing things on LinkedIn is the terrible response rate to
messages. No, I don’t mean spamming your connections. That’s not what I’m
talking about.

In my experience, if you send a connection request to someone, they accept and
you message them, you might receive a response in 5% of engagements.

My best guess is that people are accepting connections as a pavlovian
response.

------
sarah180
I wouldn't drop it altogether, but getting dozens of connection invites daily
from people I've never met is very obnoxious. Even somebody from LinkedIn
bizdev spammed me after I asked them to stop; I had to block them…. I've since
adopted a "have we directly interacted or had a known introduction?" policy
and refuse any other connections.

------
chaostheory
What led me to killing my LinkedIn account back then was the near constant
email notification spamming of nothing. It just kept asking me whether I
worked with some stranger over and over again. Notifications of no importance
and no relevance to me is the same reason why I stopped using Facebook. Same
company, but Instagram was way better for that reason alone.

~~~
darkwizard42
You killed your LinkedIn account over the inability to silence email
notifications? Its like a 4-click experience to turn them off so that seems a
little bit of an overreaction no?

------
rapnie
I hope someone picks up a project similar to CloutStream [0] meant to be the
LinkedIn for the fediverse (but now dead).

[0] [https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-
fo...](https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-for-
activitypub-apps#its-dead-jim)

------
archon810
I find LinkedIn immensely useful for finding out who works in certain roles at
certain companies, then reaching out to them directly, say on Twitter, to
report a bug in their software.

It's been a proven strategy that works time and time again compared to the
void that eats up bugs reported to large companies (if you can even figure out
how to report one).

------
acd
I think we are past peak social network. At the plateau of productivity
whatever that means for social networks.

I think it’s healthy to question what value if any the network provides. Plus
what kind of personal info you give away about yourself. Social network news
feeds are designed like slot machines with random awards, so that you login
and check it every now and then.

------
jeff_vader
I sort of liked LinkedIn until they (like Facebook, twitter and others) made
"liking" or commenting equivalent to sharing. There's no distinction nowadays.
And, as a result, my feed is now mostly recruiter memes. I also stopped
reacting to any posts in any way since I don't want all of my connections to
see everything I do.

~~~
jlokier
I think the most important thing to understand about LinkedIn as an individual
is that you are publishing what you put out there. It's not a private space
and it's not meant to be (except for the messaging).

They do provide tools, at least, so you can see what other people see.

If you think of it as a professional and self-presentation network _which
other people understand it to be as well_ , then it's fair game to play that
to your advantage. Signal what you want to signal.

I only "like" things that I actually like, but each time I'm conscious that
it's a signal others may browse later, so I'm also careful to only "like"
things that overlap with my professional side enough that I'm happy for people
to see.

So for example I'll happily "like" things in (e.g.) open source hardware or
cool tech that I think adds to a better world. Including stuff that may not be
commercial. After all I want to work more in those fields, and I also want
certain things to be seen by others for non-selfish reasons (e.g. better
prosthetic limbs, say).

Doing that shows my interest in particular fields and may (perhaps!) lead to
interactions I'd like. And I'll interact with things posted by people I like
or respect, because helping each other is a thing.

So it's all genuine. But it's not everything I think.

If someone posts something more "social media-ish", i.e. like Facebook, or
some controversial commentary, I avoid interacting actively with it on LI
regardless of my opinions, because that's not what I want people to see about
me in the quasi-professional realm. And as it happens it's also not what I
want to see more of on LI either.

One of the things I like about LinkedIn is you can actually get your personal
data (when that feature isn't broken - it has bugs too), and you can easily
browse what other people can see about you, including your trail of likes and
comments etc. Being informed about my trail, I feel the platform is less
misleading, and in some ways less abusive, than some other social media
platforms.

------
sevensor
I never really got into Facebook, but as far as I can tell LinkedIn is
mandatory Facebook for work. TFA hit the nail on the head with "I don't want
people to think I'm a weirdo" being the reason to use LinkedIn. The only value
in having the account is in not having to explain to colleagues why I don't
have one.

------
sdan
I was thinking of closing my Linkedin, but it came down to this: Suppose I
wanted to join a company / get to know someone and didn't realize that someone
I already knew, knew them?

How could I figure out who knew who to give me warm intro w/o Linkedin? For
that reason I'm probably going to keep my Linkedin until I find it
unnecessary.

------
game_the0ry
This blog post comes off whiny and weak, with a tone of unearned moral and
social superiority, all while making sweeping generalizations and false
claims. The author used LI poorly, then complained publicly about being
dissatisfied.

I get that randoms invites and messages are annoying, but the inconvenience
shouldn't outweigh the benefit from LI replacing resumes for professional
branding.[1] The 1 page resume is an obsolete concept. LI is like a living
resume, with the added benefit of having employers reach out to you.

The resume needs to die. LI should replace resumes. Maybe it will replace
recruiters too (where hiring manager reach out to you directly).[2] But it
won't happen if you think like the author.

The flip side is waisting time by applying to job, and you'll get ghosted
either way.

Yes, the feed is annoying. Yes, sometimes recruiters suck. But those
annoyances should be tolerable considering the benefits.

FWIW, I got a very good job from a recruiter that messaged me on LinkedIn.
Great companies reach out to me bc I use LI effectively.[3]

[1] Yeah, I hate the word "brand" too. Pro tip - figure it out and use it to
your advantage, bc you certainly wont be able to change it. This blog post is
an example - the irony is that the author's blog post will do more harm to his
image than his LI profile ever did.

[2] Recruiters are not bad people. They're hustling hard just like everyone
else.

[3] How to use LI effectively: buzzwords, appropriate profile pic, readable,
accept lots of recruiter connections so it looks like you're popular and
special.

~~~
jiofih
I just got a job using my one-page resume. It looks almost the same as my
LinkedIn profile. What’s the difference?

~~~
FlaSheridn
Your LinkedIn profile is public, and your contacts might notice if you padded
it conspicuously. Even more important, it’s _one_ thing, whereas a targeted
résumé is what the target wants to hear.

When reviewing résumés for a software quality assurance position in a trendy
sector, I saw numerous résumés from people with no apparent desire to do
software quality assurance, but plenty of desire to move into the trendy
sector. One was from a senior manager, who had sometimes supervised
departments that included lots of stuff, including QA. His targeted résumé
differed from his public profile basically by appending “& QA” in several
places. After that, I largely ignored targeted résumés.

------
thelittleone
I hadn't checked LinkedIn for months. After reading this post I decided to
login. First thing I saw was a post from a former colleagues hiring a position
that fits my experience at one of the few companies I'd really love to work
at. Messaged him on LinkedIn, spoke 15 minutes later and the process has
begun.

------
simonkafan
Like any social network, the value you get out of it is the cumulative value
your connections bring in (through news postings, recommendations, leads). If
you don't have much connections and the few you have are basically just
celebrating themselves ("look mum, I got promoted!") the value gain is
limited.

------
millette
Same here.

5-6 years ago, I started a website/service (also closed, now) at the
intersection of LinkedIn and GitHub. Then Microsoft bought the former. A few
years passed, and they also bought the latter. It kind of justified my idea
(not that those two services are being merged), but nonetheless I had to close
my little initiative.

------
okareaman
Linkedin is absolutely useless after a person retires when it could be used to
connect people to volunteer projects and meaningful non-profit groups looking
for experienced free help. I'd go so far as to say it's ageist because it
sends the message that once you're retired, you're worthless.

------
say_it_as_it_is
I want to make genuine new connections with people but it's hard.

> "Hey, who is this random person contacting me? What does he _really_ want? I
> better not entertain the possibilities."

If you're on LinkedIn but you don't wish to meet new people, you probably
should do as the author did and close your account.

------
thrownaway954
if you are looking for a job, linked in is invaluable. lots of recruiters i
know, now check resumes against linkedin to see if there is anything dishonest
going on. with that point, i find it very imperative that i keep me linkedin
updated.

another thing i have found is that some job searching platforms (like indeed)
allow you to import your linked in profile instead of uploading a resume. then
you can import your indeed profile into ziprecruiter.

so when i was looking looking for a job, the first thing i did was get my
linkedin profile updated and corrected. next i signed up for indeed and
imported my linkedin profile to it. after that, i signed up for ziprecruiter
and imported my indeed profile into that. now all my information was correct
and up to date across all platforms.

not only that, but there are so many linkedin to resume builders out there.

------
ultim8k
I got my last few good-paying contracts from LinkedIn, so I can't complain.
I've even started paying the premium plan. I know ...privacy and a lot of
noise, can't disagree. But that's the price to pay if you want a career. Can't
become rich by living an easy and private life.

~~~
hyko
I’d say you can’t really be rich without living an easy and private life :)

------
NotSammyHagar
He says people switch jobs around the 2 years time frame, which is surprising
and short. Is that true, an avg say in tech? I have been doing that but I
didn't realize it was that common. In SF I've heard staying a year is the goal
to get stock, then after that look for the next thing.

~~~
cactus2093
Well there's not one single "the goal" that everyone follows. Some people are
genuinely happy to be working for a company they really believe in, some
people are looking for experience to level up their career/rise up the
corporate ladder/start their own company in the future.

If you're just looking for a payout, going to a bunch of startups for 1 year
and then moving on and collecting equity from all of them is an interesting
approach. It potentially improves your odds of a > 0 payout compared to going
all in on one startup and staying in one place for many years. But I suspect
if you're optimizing for a combination of expected value + downside risk, you
really can't do better than FAANG or a large unicorn. I suspect a very, very
small number of people who have worked at any combination of various startups
for the past 5 years will have outperformed someone who worked at Google that
whole time. And that's before even taking into account the time
value/liquidity of the public stock - even if some of the startups over that
time period do go on to be successful, you might have to wait 5+ years after
you leave to cash it out.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
I think you are right that fang companies are the place to make money, better
than startups. I've spent 2/3 of my career at fang and 1/3 in startups.
Startups are fun but I really benefitted by a solid engineering start.

------
droobles
I only really get on LinkedIn when I need a job which I hope I don't see any
need for in a long, long time.

That said, LinkedIn got me my first job out of college and continues to
provide opportunities, so I drop in once in a while to like colleagues'
accomplishments when prompted. I see value in it.

------
thedanbob
> Having only 100 connections probably does more harm than good

Ha! I had probably an order of magnitude fewer when I closed my account in
2013. My motivation was their underhanded spamming of all my contacts with
connection requests, but I guess it's nice to know I didn't miss out on
anything.

------
bookmarkable
I ran an experiment last year. I messaged over 100 of my 500+ LinkedIn
connections with an invitation to reconnect and a link to book a call or in-
person meeting. I got two responses - 2% success rate! - and zero followed
through with even scheduling a call.

I’ll be deleting my profile soon, as well.

~~~
nafix
I would ignore a message like that as well. I would expect someone to state
their purpose in a message before proposing some kind of call or in-person
meeting. I don't think general "reconnecting" is a meaningful purpose.

------
shafyy
I've deleted my LinkedIn several years ago, as it was annoying and didn't
bring any value to me. I do have a fake account to overcome their auth wall to
see other people's profiles (useful once in a full moon).

As others have said, LinkedIn should have stopped as a digital rolodex.

~~~
prepend
How was it annoying? I turned off LinkedIn’s notifications probably 10 years
ago and they’ve been surprisingly not bad about coming up with new categories
of messages that I need to block.

I think I only use it as a digital Rolodex and it’s been helpful as that. I
can’t think of another site as useful for that purpose.

~~~
shafyy
Yeah had all notifications turned off also for a while before. Still, I found
myself getting back on it and reading all the mindless shit people posted on
my timeline :-)

------
ssm008
I tried creating a LinkedIn profile some time ago. After having updated
everything in the profile, it was restricted. To activate it again I have to
verify my ID by sending pictures of my passport or something. I wonder which
wire I tripped to get banned like that

------
teekert
I also got/get a lot of value out of LinkedIn, I see what my old classmates do
and that helps a lot at approaching a new company. Also, our own recruiters
use it to send me lists of applicants that I can judge with stars or yes/no
very fast. I like it.

------
wreath
Thanks, I just needed a teeny tiny push for me to close it too. One less thing
to think about it.

------
mothsonasloth
I left LinkedIn over 2 years ago now, never looked back since. A lot of what I
wrote is similar in theme -
[https://tomaytotomato.com/linkedout/](https://tomaytotomato.com/linkedout/)

------
lildata
Just from a performance point of view, opening LinkedIn webpage is a traumatic
experience. I've rarely seen something so slow & heavy. It's quite sad because
LinkedIn gave birth to a lot of fantastic techs, such as Apache Kafka...

~~~
jlokier
The loading is heavy, though since lockdown I'm finding HN takes almost as
long to load for me, which suggests they have been reasonably smart about
parallel loading.

LinkedIn is also buggy in many areas too. Search is wild - search for the same
thing twice and get completely different numbers of results. This is good to
know, when a job search notification shows 5 results, it's not real. Just
click the search button and get 100 the second time for the same search!

But the fact it's an SPA works really well I think. Clicking around within
LinkedIn seems much faster than the initial load, and things like open message
windows keep their state. I like that. You can still right-click just about
everything that looks like it could be a link to open a new tab or save the
link. So I think they've done a great job of SPA.

It's a shame it's so buggy that I have to reload it from time to time anyway.
LinkedIn is probably the only company where I use a product with so many
obvious low-hanging-fruit bugs I'd actually consider working there just for
the satisfaction of fixing them.

------
philshem
“If a LinkedIn account is deleted, and no one is there to hear it, does it
still make a sound?”

(I previously deleted my account and then waited 12 months to see if anyone
noticed. No one did. I did have to create a new one in order to create a
company page.)

~~~
tcbasche
This was my experience too. Same thing happened with Facebook. No-one really
noticed the account was gone. Doesn't mean I instantly lost all of my friends
either ...

------
bulka
"Finally, after I cofounded a company, I closed my LinkedIn account". It does
seem that author never tried to use LinekdIn other than as an online copy of
the CV. In my expirience it can be an ok job board replacement for example.

------
mark_l_watson
I feel the almost same about LinkedIn as Facebook: I have privacy concerns and
concerns about wasting my own attention/time on those sites. My compromise is
to keep my accounts but to spend less than 15 minutes per month on each site.

------
NietTim
Did the same years ago, LinkedIn had next to 0 value for me. The only linkedin
invites I still get are from a guy that I had a financial disagreement with
_years_ ago when I freelanced for him and who has blocked me on twitter. Heh.

------
jlokier
Heh, I have my Hacker News profile listed as a main contact on LinkedIn.

Recently a recruiter who didn't get a response on LinkedIn itself wrote an
email, which began:

 _I 'm writing because I found your Hacker News profile from your LinkedIn..._

That just felt right somehow.

------
bigasscoffee
Politely disagree. In my local market, my current job and other offers came
through there. Working with recruiters made job searching extremely easy. It
may not be for everyone, but in my city it worked/works extremely well for me.

As always YMMV.

------
nickthemagicman
Is social media addiction really that serious?

My solution to all social media is treat it as a rolodex and not GAF about it
the rest of the time.

Why do people blame these companies for being the problem when there's an
element of personal responsibility involved?

------
magwa101
Name, picture, background enforces instant bias in recruiting. This is a known
fact. LinkedIn enables our perceptive biases. The feed that is full of thought
leaders shouting how to be successful is just pablum for the drones.

------
Animats
I got off LinkedIn years ago. I'm neither looking for work or hiring, so
what's the point? They used to have a questions section, like Stack Overflow,
but when they dumped that, there was nothing to do there.

------
therealmarv
If you are searching for a job there is no choice: Expose all your personal
data everywhere on every job searching platform and job social network and
confirm the usage of your data in every way.

It's a privacy nightmare basically.

------
xavk
> I'm fairly certain LinkedIn has never helped me in my job search. This is
> likely not true for everyone, but I'd go so far as to say that unless your
> profile is exceptional for some reason, it probably does more harm than
> good. You and I are just another candidate in a tall stack—ie. our profiles
> are more useless information they can use to cross our name off.

This is exactly the problem that sparked us starting
[https://otta.com](https://otta.com) \- we speak to job seekers on a daily
basis and the overwhelming feedback we hear is that LinkedIn really doesn't
_help_ people. We're doing our best to change that - just in London right now,
and just for tech companies, but soon (hopefully) everywhere.

~~~
mcv
I do almost nothing on LinkedIn. I used to keep it up to date; I still have
hundreds of outdated, barely relevant contacts. My CV hasn't been updated in
years.

And yet recruiters keep finding me through LinkedIn, and I keep getting
freelance positions through those recruiters. I put very little effort in
finding new positions, but they're always available.

A coworker on my current project who is also a freelancer is much more active.
He tries to contact people in companies he wants to work for and gets
interesting jobs that way without having recruiters as middlemen. That takes
more effort but saves money. Maybe I should do that too.

Maybe it's different for freelancers. Maybe the Dutch market is different from
the author's market. I'm no fan of LinkedIn, but it seems to work for me.

------
growlist
Me too. The level of corporate virtue signalling is beyond obnoxious to the
point of becoming risible, but worse, I started seeing former colleagues that
I respect buying into this Stepford Wives crap.

------
era86
I don't know, I like keeping up with what my old co-workers are up to without
actually hitting them up. It's also my go-to place for job hunting. It seems
like the most popular.

------
nottorp
I don’t see what’s wrong with keeping a LinkedIn profile. Just turn off all
notifications and ignore the corporate speak self promotion drivel in your
feed.

This goes for any social networking site btw.

------
rodolphoarruda
As a business developer, I see LinkedIn more like a business network than a
job seek Website. LinkedIn favor networking above all, which eventually leads
you to get a new job.

------
k__
The good: I got good jobs from CEOs/VPs

The bad: I didn't really understand what to post there

The ugly: I got a bunch of messages by recruiters who didn't read my profile
and offered me crap.

------
bjarneh
I still cannot believe they are trying to push that premium version on me. 14
years I've turned it down now. If it was free I still wouldn't be interested.

------
markstos
LinkedIn is on the top of my list of social networks I should quit next.

After being on the site for many years, I don't think it helped me find a job
or attract recruits.

------
unixhero
LinkedIn generated offers for me. It's all I can say.

------
rileyt
If you are sick of recruiter spam, another useless feed, having your personal
information sold to strangers and having to send links to your LinkedIn
profile that looks like shit and has ads on it, you should check out
[https://standardresume.co](https://standardresume.co).

I'm one of the founders and it's a super simple web resume builder. You can
import your LinkedIn profile, pick a resume design that you like and publish
it as a responsive website, in minutes.

We make money by charging for our product, not selling your personal
information.

------
2rsf
> LinkedIn is a glorified resume site.

And what's wrong with that ?

------
petters
"Having only 100 connections probably does more harm than good"

Is this true? Does anyone care about this? Serious question.

Should I close my read-only Twitter account as well?

------
prepend
This is curious to me as I’m not sure the benefit from deleting. If author
stated some negative value, then that would make sense, but he doesn’t call
out any real downsides that can’t be trivially mitigated.

I’ve found LinkedIn useful for learning about where previous colleagues are
now working. I’ve also found it useful as a quick way to learn about people’s
past experiences that might be relevant to the issue at hand.

I have turned off all notifications and only visit it when I need something.
That is normally to add a contact to my Rolodex or to look someone up I’m
meeting with.

~~~
paulgb
> This is curious to me as I’m not sure the benefit from deleting.

The way I looked at it when I deleted my account is that having LinkedIn means
having another inbox that attracts a disproportionate amount of crap. It got
to the point where I turned off notifications and treated my inbox like a spam
folder. By deleting my profile, people who actually do have something to tell
me aren't under the false impression that they can contact me on LinkedIn, and
people that just want to spam me generally don't make the effort to track down
my email (which I make pretty easy to do).

------
abjecton
I never liked linkedin. There's is a strange 'race' of getting 500+
connections, even if you're not connected at all to them

------
FpUser
I just used LinkedIn to find some people I knew from before. In theory I
could've done the same with Facebook but I am not using it.

------
quijoteuniv
I am so glad people/blog like this one that explain very clearly matters
experienced by lot of us! Good job! Thanks for sharing.

------
kazinator
> _Nothing actually happens there_

That is false; one thing that happens on LinkedIn is that you can find people
from your distant past.

------
danday
My current employer's internal recruiter found me randomly on linkedin. I
wouldn't have my job without being on there :)

------
eplanit
As a consultant, I find linked in useless; they're only about fte. Dice.com
has always been far more valuable.

------
Damogran6
There was never an underperforming employee of failed project on Linked-In.

That said, it got me two jobs, so it's not ALL bad.

------
mcs_
Congratulation!

I remember to close all my social networks when my daughter was two years old,
about 12 years ago.

I will never know what I missed.

------
yepthatsreality
I do this all the time and create a new one when I switch jobs. Otherwise I
get near 0 benefit from LinkedIn.

------
cdmp
I don't have a LinkedIn profile.

The only obvious difference that's made to my life is that I never get emails
from my "CEO" asking me to drop what I'm doing and buy him some iTunes gift
cards. Which is something my LinkedIn-using colleagues get fairly regularly.

LinkedIn is a huge centralised database of phishing targets. Whatever upside
it might provide to the world, that's a pretty big downside.

------
johnward
The value of LinkedIn is getting contacted by clueless recruiters and "wealth
managers" /s

------
Havoc
Much like FB I keep it open as a coms channel. Doesn't mean I need to interact
with it beyond that

------
bitwize
You sure this isn't because LinkedIn was recently revealed to be a festering
cesspool of racism?

------
leriksen
I couldn't disagree more. He wants privacy, I don't, at least as far as job
opportunities.

------
robinduckett
My linked in is a constant source of anxiety and is never a source of
employment

~~~
tcbasche
Then get rid of it ;) it's a worthwhile decision

------
hidiegomariani
linkedin has been an invaluable tool for me professionally. The day I'll be
able to delete it is when I'll be retiring or not having to seek employment..

------
kup0
It never helped me. Was very glad to get rid of my account.

------
RoutinePlayer
Has this been posted to LinkedIn yet?

------
sk0v
I really consider getting rid of my car. I bought it a year ago, but it's only
ever sat in the driveway, I never use it.

The funny meta-thing about his post, is that the content he feels adds 0
value, is in fact his own post. He is literally making a post about a tool he
doesn't use. It's the equivalent of a person making a blog post about a tv
series they don't watch but have seen the trailer for; no actual value to add
to the discussion about the topic.

This is valueless content.

~~~
bonoboTP
The "I deleted my [Facebook, Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok]
account and this is why" is a genre in itself. They rarely say anything new.

Social media is a waste of time, the news feed is enraging, people put on a
fake perfect persona, FOMO, insecurity, inauthentic connection, signaling,
controversy, drama, dopamine, addiction. Unplug yourself, use analog tools,
read books, have real life fun and deep bonding with your partner, friends and
family etc.

It's all true, but we've heard it countless times and read it in the lifestyle
columns of magazines all the time.

Indeed I think this is the next generation of self promotion and branding. You
are above the plebs and the uniform little boxes that people package
themselves into. You cannot be represented as a row in a database table, you
are unique and special, you think outside the box, you go your own way, know
what you want, think critically and independently and can refuse lowly
temptations. You are not under the powers of the corporate machine. You delete
your social media.

~~~
bogomipz
>"Indeed I think this is the next generation of self promotion and branding"

I'm unsure if this is meant to be sarcasm. Do you actually believe the next
generation of self-promotion will be offline, in-person as kind of a reform
movement or backlash? The optimistic side of frequently likes to entertain
this idea but my cynical side thinks the dopamine addiction is only getting
stronger. That cynical view is mostly informed by observations of the number
of folks I see on sidewalks staring and scrolling at their phones as they
walk.

~~~
bonoboTP
No I mean just promoting on other platforms that you are outside the cookie
cutter stuff and you do your own thing. Regardless of OP, whom I don't know,
there is a recurring pattern of people announcing leaving various platforms
but still reach to other platforms and with a performative contradiction try
to get widespread social validation for the radical idea of not needing social
validation.

It was also typical in the 90s, when people always announced that they are now
really really done with a forum, ragequit and then kept coming back.

The point is, HN likes this type of posts because it's contrarian and quirky.
Tons of people don't use linkedin or just have a crude profile and never log
in.

------
daodedickinson
>Hiring is broken. People leave their jobs every 2 years or less. The
corporate work culture survives on people's fears. If you don't play by the
rules of the people in power, how will you make money, how will you feed your
family, how will you contribute to society? It's a viscious cycle perpetuated
by our willingness to outsource our values.

I've never worked for someone that didn't love me for anything longer than a
weekend gig. Was amazing in school all the way into the #1 ranked grad school
for my major and when I got there... I realized even my assigned "mentor" did
not care for me. I spilled my soul to her, after experiencing so much contempt
and hate, and she had no fucking reaction whatsoever. No advice, no...
nothing! These hateful fucks wanted over $60,000 a year to give me no advice,
consolation, compassion, NOTHING!

After recovering from that, as a last ditch effort to obtain a career where I
could afford a family I tried get a CS degree at the local uni that I could
afford.

It's a complete shitshow of no standards and professors would open their
lectures with emails from graduates explaining how employers saw a degree from
this school as worse than NOTHING. The "weed out" filter test after 2 years
was such a fucking joke they gave us 3 hours and I aced it in 10 minutes and
then resigned myself to taking a nap for the next 2 hours and 50 minutes until
someone asked to leave and was let out so I learned even the bluff about not
letting people out early so that they could message people still taking the
exam was bullshit, too.

There were over 80 people taking CS in my cohort... I was one of only 3 that
seemed competent, top guy, only one that actually stayed in CS was a sociopath
who was constantly hacking and stealing from the university and local
businesses and expecting to be lauded despite taking his plunder. Then there
was a gal who decided to stick with mathematics and give up on the creepy CS
department, prolly most of all for the creepy lecturer trying to get a Ph.D.
talking about how the only real way to get money he could manage with the
knowledge he was teaching us was with his porn sites, and how his personal
hero is Howard Stern. After he was already under investigation for gender
bias, she decided to stop trying in CS and just focus on math. So during the
final exam, this guy realizes that there are only 3 females in this class of
about 85 because any female willing and able to learn all this would be
accepted and paid to go to far better schools... he's been told that if the
grades of the 82+ guys are much better than the 3 gals he will lose his job
and Ph.D. spot... and then as he walks the room during the final he walks
right to her and sees she hasn't studied and doesn't give a fuck because she
finally decided on Math and not CS.

So he panics and starts just outright literally in earshot of the whole room
telling her every answer and begging her to write it down on her test.

That's when I decided to nope out of the major. They offered me a job Ph.D.
spot and I went back to my janitor job for people who love me.

When they die I have no idea what I'll do. My best friend is someone ten years
older than me that I've never been within 2500 miles of, and sometimes he
really creeps me out, but I have no one else to voice chat with or watch
movies with IRL or online.

At work... lately I mostly think about how I'm drowning in sweat having to
wear a mask all the time but also I often feel glad I'm not working on some
tech thing I oppose, or having to hear hate speech against me like at
school...

The bad thing is not being able to have an IRL relationship, much less family,
but that's due to a ton of factors... in the US, it was guaranteed by NSC 68,
which reacted to the Soviet, communist goal of full employment of both men and
women with trying to keep women in the workforce permanently (for the ultimate
purpose of winning an arms race with the USSR) as they had been forced into it
during WWII. According to this plan, the US dollar was devalued so that men
AND women would have to work an hour each to obtain roughly the same relative
purchasing power as one hour of work by a man before.

If someone wanted to keep goosing up the stock market and employment numbers
further by various extrapolations upon this theme... anyone see where I'm
going?

