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.
Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
21–30 of 466 posts
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#22did 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...
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#23Off 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.
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#24I 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…
I found that seeps through largely via HR people in the contacts. Dropping them reduces the feed to the usual corporate announcement buzz.
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#25The 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?
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#26If 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 h…
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.
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#27If 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.
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).
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#28From 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!
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#29[deleted]
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#30I 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…
YMMV.
"never anything remotely useful" is... quite a blanket statement.