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Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

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Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#211

Post by bonoboTP »

colek42 wrote: post #166
smhmd wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did something similar lately. But it's hard to keep up with local news, now. I couldn't find a news aggregator for my country/province. Maybe, I need to build that myself.

I went through an "unfollowed" everyone in my feed except very close family and friends, the local farmers market, and my local newspaper. Facebook is actually useful now.

Some people don't believe it when I say this, but when I unfollowed lots of people, after some time Facebook just automatically re-follows a few.

It has happened multiple times. I explicitly unfollow someone, never interact with them in any way, and then they again pop up in my feed after two weeks. Somehow if you follow too few people, Facebook just picks some more people for you to follow without ever asking you or telling you.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#212

Post by MattGaiser »

ravenstine wrote: post #204

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 int…

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.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#213

Post by Hoasi »

moksly wrote: post #178
ThePhysicist wrote: post #28

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…

LinkedIn is the only social media that has had a positive impact on my career. I’m being followed by possibly future employers, networking with peers and talking about shared issues, planning working lunches at conventions and getting job offers. I never scroll through the news feed.

> LinkedIn is the only social media that has had a positive impact on my career.

It looks as if the site is beneficial when used strictly for professional contact(s), it's working as expected most of the time. The marketing side, which is part of its business model, is annoying. Groups used to provide valuable and interesting information in some professional fields. Now, not so much. When everyone tries to push their agenda all of the time, it is just noise. Despite this, some people are still surprisingly listening and engaging, so it still works from a marketing standpoint.

> I never scroll through the news feed.

That's the way to use it.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#214

Post by Nextgrid »

chrismatheson wrote: post #119
NalNezumi wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something you got to give to LinkedIn is at least that this is the default behavior (as far as I know, I haven't changed any notification setting since I got it) It's great for someone that just want to have a "easy CV" so that recruiters at least know where/what you've worked with without back&forth mailing. Recently I tried to get Twitter for the first time and my gosh what a mess that platform is. I only wanted it…

This has not been my experience. Any recruiter I talk to asks for a CV. If I tell them my linked in is up to date they just ask me to convert it into a CV

The recruiter asks for a CV so they can redact any identifying details from it. They don't want to send your LinkedIn profile directly to the client to prevent them from talking to you directly.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#215

Post by banifo »

matsemann wrote: post #83
sk0v wrote: post #63

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…

> This is valueless content. I disagree. It poses several questions about the value of LinkedIn. And it spurred a discussion. If anything your comment really adds nothing here.. (Maybe some discussion, but a useful one?)

I read that because hn showed it on spot 1.

I think it was a waste of time.

I also started to think in this direction more the last few years: If we as a socity would be better of creating less but better, we would not have facebook or linkedin feets full of waste. We would have perhaps 10 hn articles per day, 10 world news, 1-2 local news and thats it.

I would have the rest of my time 'free' of the burden of trying to make sure i'm not missing something.

Every idiot thinks something created and shared is worth while while i'm often enough think 'oh now one would care for something like this' or 'a few people might wanna read it but wouldn't act on it anyway'.

I also started to comment less. It costs time, i don't have the feeling that a lot of peole read comments and honestly, i had plenty of discussions which just stoped and there was never ever any feedback (besides 'likes' like wtf.) on 'was that helpful'.

Did i add value to our society or was it purely for entertainment?

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#216

Post by 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.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#217

Post by inglor »

scarface74 wrote: post #113
inglor wrote: post #39

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…

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-…

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.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#218

Post by 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.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#219

Post by MattGaiser »

pnako wrote: post #175
anthonybennis wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always exit HN with a positive mental head space. The discussion is generally informed, balanced and insightful . I wonder how the positive and respectful space here may be reproduced in other social media platforms.

That's precisely what I hate about the LinkedIn feed. It's way too positive. The fake kind of positive. I don't understand why people do that. They're trying to fool other human beings by pretending that everything is awesome, positive, etc.

Because if you let yourself believe it for a little while, you continue believing it for the rest of time.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#220

Post by 42_ »

Hoasi wrote: post #189
42_ wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Now that I think about it, most of my complaints about LinkedIn is about the "news feed". I am always wondering who reads that? It turns out that a lot of people do read (or at least see) the feed.

I don't read it any more :) I used to go through the feed in search of quality content. Tried configuring it, but the signal to noise ratio is too low.
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