Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn • Hacker News Board

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#31

Post by rakkhi » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 10:29 AM UTC

pulkitsh1234 wrote: post #23

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

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#32

Post by kuu » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 10:29 AM UTC

outime wrote: post #19

lordnacho wrote: post #15

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 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.

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

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#33

Post by ultim8k » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 10:30 AM UTC

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.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#34

Post by saos » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 10:31 AM UTC

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.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#35

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 10:31 AM UTC

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.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#36

Post by bad_user » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 10:32 AM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #17

bad_user wrote: post #12

> " 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…

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.

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.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#37

Post by bulka » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 10:32 AM UTC

Avalaxy wrote: post #25

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?

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.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#38

Post by C1sc0cat » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 10:33 AM UTC

xavk wrote: post #5

> 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 htt…

That's interesting, I get a lot of job offers via LinkedIn. For my last job search I did very little direct searching for jobs I had enough just from linked in.

I think Linked in helps more if you are experienced and have a decent network - it probably not going to help a new graduate or some one looking for a second job.

The agencies using it can be a bit variable, pre covid-19 I was pitched a Grade 7/6 Job in the UK civil service and the agency seemed clueless - Grade 7 and 6 are very senior positions Think the sort of Gig Mat Cuts Has

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#39

Post by inglor » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 10:34 AM UTC

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.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#40

Post by mcv » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 10:35 AM UTC

xavk wrote: post #5

> 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 htt…

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.