Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn • Hacker News Board

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#241

Post by DailyHN » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 1:37 PM UTC

karussell wrote: post #169

DailyHN wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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

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.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#242

Post by say_it_as_it_is » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 1:38 PM UTC

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.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#243

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 1:39 PM UTC

inglor wrote: post #217

scarface74 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#244

Post by majewsky » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 1:40 PM UTC

maelito wrote: post #70

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…

> 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. This is an unpopular and very interesting situation, could you write a blog post about it ?

Depends on the circumstances. I'm 30 years old and I don't have a driver's license. Public transit, biking and walking work just fine.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#245

Post by majewsky » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 1:42 PM UTC

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #225

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.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Island

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#246

Post by reportgunner » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 1:43 PM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #171

distances wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy enough to block the feed in your browser. I've done exactly that with Facebook. I haven't deleted my FB account as I still get some random messages from old acquaintances that don't have my phone number, but I removed the feed with uBlock to make sure I'm not exposed to that.

FYI your Facebook profile and Messenger account seem to be decoupled now. I deleted my profile but still have a Messenger identity that people can message.

Are you sure you deleted it ?

The behavior you are describing reminds me of the behavior that happens after deactivating your account, not deleting it.

I deleted my facebook last year so maybe things have changed.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#247

Post by lildata » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

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...

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#248

Post by falcor84 » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #237

antonyh wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of late (this year) in my experience the job section is mostly reposts of other jobs or positions already filled or fake roles. Any post by a company with no logo is virtually guaranteed to be spam. I'm seeing them side-by-side with the real post. It's highly polluted by these bad actors.

LinkedIn has their own job platform with the “Easy apply” feature, but also seems to scrape job ads from a lot of third-party sites. The scraped ones are the bad ones. Bad formatting and categorisation, not kept up to date (the job might be expired on the original site but still displayed on LinkedIn) and you have to register and apply on an external site. It’s quite ironic that LinkedIn is so against scraping despit…

I'm not sure what you're seeing is scraping. There are various services where companies can upload a job posting once and it's automatically posted across multiple job platforms, with LinkedIn being one of them. Formatting often gets lost on the way.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#249

Post by jlokier » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #191

madengr wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying the filter was useless, or you couldn’t find a single candidate out of hundreds?

Sorry. What I meant by "resume filter" was us manually scanning through the candidates. We put some criteria for C programmers into LinkedIn and got a bunch of web and .NET devs who had also mentioned C someplace. Perhaps skilled C devs just aren't looking for jobs on LinkedIn (totally possible! I wouldn't if I were looking), but I was kind of surprised that we got literally zero viable candidates. I expected at leas…

That's really interesting. I'm a highly skilled C dev (not bragging, it's just genuine) on LinkedIn, yet I don't tend to get "found" much, except by recruiters.

One thing I found both awkward and fascinating was a job rejection from somewhere I never applied to or had any prior contact with! That was a strange feeling.

Someone internally recommended me for a robotics position. I didn't ask them to, but it was a glowing recommendation I was told. HR looked at my LinkedIn profile and concluded that since it mentions web (I do different things at different times), I received a surprise mail telling me I was unsuitable for the role and I should watch their company site in case webdev positions come up. But I'm not often a webdev, it's just up there for those times when I am!

From that strange incident as well as the types of approaches I get from recruiters (we think you are a perfect match for... our client asked me to write to you... oh, having now looked at your profile I see you are not... etc),

I'm inclined to think LinkedIn profiles for those with a variety of experience just confuse people looking to hire.

I haven't figured out a way to solve this dilemma and from talking with others at a conference, it's a common problem. The way it's done outside LinkedIn is tailored CVs, which focus on relevant items to each role and leave out the less relevant. But you can't do this on a big shared profile.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#250

Post by inglor » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #243

inglor wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 ou…

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"?