Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
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Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
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Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#2>> 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.
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#3I quit using LinkedIn after realizing that just viewing pages spams people you know with emails... Talk about unprofessional.
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#4I 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.
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#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 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.
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#6If 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.
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#7The 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.
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#8Did 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.
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#9I 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...
Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn
#10I 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.