Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn • Hacker News Board

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#421

Post by felipemnoa » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 7:17 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #357

dghughes wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it seems like (in no particular order): Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, Richard Branson, Guy Kawasaki.

Did you choose to follow those people at some point? I get regular "recommendations" on who to follow on LinkedIn, including Gates, Nadella, and Branson, but I never take them. And I don't have any content in my feed from any of those folks. All the content in my feed is from my connections or interactions by my connections. Of course there is plenty of vapid "thought-leader" content from them too. Actually I've gott…

>>Kind of funny to observe the (sometimes very large) gap between what they post and what I know they used to do in their day jobs

And hence the saying "Nobody is a prophet in their own land".

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#422

Post by dddw » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 7:22 PM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #403

What led me to killing my LinkedIn account back then was the near constant email notification spamming of nothing. It just kept asking me whether I worked with some stranger over and over again. Notifications of no importance and no relevance to me is the same reason why I stopped using Facebook. Same company, but Instagram was way better for that reason alone.

This! Also all those invites on vaccuumed addressbooks made me furious. I was very disappointed that Lynda.com was bought by linkedin

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#423

Post by lma21 » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

I've had many positive experiences because of LinkedIn, whether noticing new interesting people or companies. Though most importantly, I got connected to good companies through LinkedIn and went through their recruitment process. I don't think that would have been possible without it, unless I was actively applying and searching for a job myself. It's not a bad thing to thrown with some new opportunity without being the one actively applying.

What would be the downside of keeping a LinkedIn profile?

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#424

Post by sarah180 » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

I wouldn't drop it altogether, but getting dozens of connection invites daily from people I've never met is very obnoxious. Even somebody from LinkedIn bizdev spammed me after I asked them to stop; I had to block them…. I've since adopted a "have we directly interacted or had a known introduction?" policy and refuse any other connections.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#425

Post by bigasscoffee » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 7:41 PM UTC

Politely disagree. In my local market, my current job and other offers came through there. Working with recruiters made job searching extremely easy. It may not be for everyone, but in my city it worked/works extremely well for me.

As always YMMV.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#426

Post by loughnane » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 7:44 PM UTC

allanbreyes wrote: post #321

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.

I use uBlock Origin to completely block out the news feed and messaging, and it makes my LinkedIn experience orders of magnitude better. When I visit linkedin.com, now, I'm greeted with a navigation header bar and a blank page where the news feed used to be. It's perfect. I personally found messaging to not be very useful or relevant, and I just couldn't keep up with the backlog of messages. If they really want to co…

I use UBO a bunch but I've not considered to focus on linkedin. This is excellent. Thanks so much!

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#427

Post by opportune » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 7:52 PM UTC

gregdoesit wrote: post #299

It’s clear from the comments that many people have no positive experiences with LinkedIn. For me, LinkedIn was the tool that not only helped me get into better companies, but also introduced me to Hacker News. I joined Skype/Microsoft, then Skyscanner, then Uber: all after a LinkedIn recruiter reachout. They were opportunities I did not know or think about and I would have never applied to any of them at the time. I…

Same for me. I got my current job because of a recruiter on LinkedIn (where my previous applications to the company got no follow up). They also make it easy for me to interview at hedge funds because they spam me a lot about that, which I don’t mind except for when they somehow call me. I don’t even particularly care if these are semi-automated because when I follow up it results in genuinely getting added to the interview pipeline

It’s already delivered a lot of value to me. I know they use lots of creepy/dark patterns and there are a lot of things I don’t like, like the news feed or teasing features behind paywalls. But it’s still worth it IMO. I have got tens (maybe hundreds?) of thousands of dollars of value out of it without paying a cent, just filtering through some spam

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#428

Post by boopk » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #212

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.

Exactly. I'm in a completely different field than the demographic of HN users; however, easy apply does give me the ability to apply to a bunch of random positions at various tiers. Now I've never had an offer from LinkedIn and a handful of interviews out of the 500+ applications but it does give me the the ability to apply quickly. For cool companies I find that have jobs I am not qualified for I just book mark them into my companies bookmark and periodically check or reach out to a recruiter.

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#429

Post by drivebycomment » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 8:30 PM UTC

jasonv wrote: post #348

I deleted LinkedIn about 5 years ago when I went totally independent. I was super happy not to have it. I recently re-created it because a consulting engagement put me back in the center of "Are you on LinkedIn?" discussions. I do look forward to closing my account again. There's a lot of "professional posting" that goes on -- professional signaling, and uplifting daily posts. Knowing the people who are posting these…

What's the point of closing the account ? Your history proves that you'll open it again in the future - in which case, why not just keep it and don't use it till you need it again ?

Re: Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn

#430

Post by HenryBemis » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 9:03 PM UTC

zenhack wrote: post #411

gonehome wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the recruiters are on LinkedIn and pretty much use it exclusively. There’s a similar network effect problem with Facebook, but it’s a lot easier to leave Facebook because you presumably can still message your real life friends in other ways. With LinkedIn you can’t leave without also seriously hurting your ability to get in touch with recruiters. That said, you basically don’t have to spend any time on it after y…

Fwiw, I still get recruiter emails now and then years after having shut off my LinkedIn account. If they mention how they found me, it's usually through GitHub. ...not that I've ever had anything useful come from talking to a recruiter. The useful bits have always come through my existing personal network more directly, or through meatspace networking. I shut down my LinkedIn because I basically started to view recru…

Perhaps you are a dev, then GitHub/Lab is a good place to search for something specific, if your recruiter knows what the they exactly seek. In my line of work (audit/sec/GRC) most of my contracts start as "6 months of THIS" and they end 2-3 years later after I have worked on their operational model, on the manner their control framework is defined and executed, their deliveries to their external auditor are defined and scripted, and some more process-control-audit related parts are etched in stone (oh and some SOX 404 just because I was in the neighborhood)..

So in my world, having a CV with the necessary keywords (SOX, HIPAA, GDPR, COBIT, NIST SP 800/XX/yy/zz, NIST CSF, etc.) is a life saver because I always have headhunters calling me. I don't see them as spam. I just tell them to ring me 30 days before my contract/extension ends, and they gladly do so, and I stay working like this.

I don't spend more than 10minutes per month, and only to accept/ignore/reply to messages. I use it. I don't let it use me (apart from the fact that they sell my data to anyone who is willing to pay them).