I personally got contacted by Facebook, Google and LinkedIn themselves on LinkedIn with job opportunities.
I worked for LinkedIn for a bit and am now working at Facebook.
While I visit the site/app only every other week, I still think it's very valuable to connect to people I talked to at meetups and that I would like to stay connected with somehow. Some of the people I'd like to stay in touch with, don't have at twitter account or are so low frequency that I'd miss things I care about. I probably wouldn't connect with them on Facebook since to me it still feels a bit too "personal".
Considering that LinkedIn was instrumental in the two biggest "moves" in my career and fills a good niche for me, I personally like them as a network.
I agree that the UI is a bit annoying at times, but they're way better than they used to be in that regard. I don't even mind recruiter emails. I have a bit less than 5 years of experience, so I still think it's a bit flattering to receive them :)
While I don't want to be presumptuous it sounds like you are ostensibly just super talented and, at this point, have some solid accomplishments.
So while linkedIn may have opened doors, it is pretty unlikely through something like HN or your own irl network, you wouldve ended up unsuccessful. My own feelings towards linkIn aside, anecdotally it certainly seems that it was useful for you. It certainly has the ability to provide great things, or speed up connections/opportunity.
I agree with the article in that it is a soft requirement for a lot of things:
Entrepreneur: Helpful for hiring, networking looking at competition, finding investors.
Freelancer: Getting gigs, proving reputation.
Bigcompany: online presence, hiring.
Recruiter: obvious.
Etc.
So while you certainly aren't unique in finding value in linkedIn, it is utterly painful to use and sometimes i feel like if I put my cursor in the wrong place I'll accidentally agree to realtime uploading of all my data & that of my friend.
As an aside, it really can't survive much longer:
* Users hate using it
* it is totally unpleasant and insisistant on you conforming to what it demands.
* signal to noise is so out of alignment it is painful.
* Companies have to deal with the need to be on the platform and endorse enployees who are incentivized to self-promote sometimes to the company's detriment.
* I personally, and I largely suspect this to be very common, have connections I don't know. Either we have drifted apart, were breifly engaged in something, or I was just to lenient with accepting/reaching out.
* Increasingly, it is becoming less profitable as it struggles to give away enough data to be useful, but hold back enough to upsell premium packages.
While facebook certainly seems to care little about privacy, there is a compelling engagement and feeling of human connection that is just not there with linked in.
They should just sell to salesforce, that way the data and privacy could stay just as exploitive, but they could allow users latitude to enjoy/benefit from it a bit more.
> I probably wouldn't connect with them on Facebook since to me it still feels a bit too "personal".
This is an interesting angle. There was a time when Facebook was only friends and family. My impression is that (for better or worse) this is changing rapidly. I wonder if Facebook will try to get into one of the fields mentioned in the four points in rdli's comment.
I don't know what LinkedIn you're using that provides you with job offers, but the one I'm on has only lead to recruiter contacts which may or may not lead to interviews, which (so far) have never lead to an actual job offer.
LinkedIn is great if you just want to endlessly socialize with recruiters. Don't worry about finding them: They'll all try to connect with you and chat you up about one of their jobs that is just like the one you have but at another company. Hell, you might even get an interview out of it, but good luck turning that into an actual job in today's picky environment.
And if any of those LinkedIn recruiters are reading this, Try This One Neat Trick That Candidates Love: Instead of approaching someone with a job posting that's basically what he did 2 years ago or what he's doing today, approach him with what he might want to be doing 2 years from now. You'll get better responses, I guarantee it.
I agree with you about everything except the job offers. But even just the other three points are very good.
I have gotten to the point that whenever I consider a client, job offer or employee, I:
- google them for general information
- look them up on LinkedIn to see what they've done professionally and/or if we have anyone in common. (Yes, they may see I have checked out their profile--so what?)
- look for them on twitter (much lower hit ratio)
All this gives me a much rounder perspective on a person than I would have without these resources.
My feeling is that you have to compare it with other sites in the same category. If you do that, I think it comes away looking really, really good. Pretty much everyone is on it, it does the things you listed, and the level of bs compared to any other site in the category is actually low, in my opinion.
Caveat: I'm unfamiliar with the US/EU status quo for this category; maybe there are better options in those markets?
The problem with LinkedIn is that they have multiple, conflicting business models each of which are too successful to kill outright.
1. They have an advertising business, that sells to marketers.
2. They have a recruiting business, which sells to recruiters.
3. They have a individual (networking) business, which sells to individuals.
4. They have a sales business, which sells to sales people.
While they all have a core basic similarity (use a rich database of professional people), when it comes to monetization of this core platform, there are little conflicts that add up over time. For example, for #2, they should make it as easy and free and valuable for people to join and update their profile. But then that conflicts with #3 a little bit, because a valuable feature is looking at other people's full profiles -- but that means you can't charge for individual subscriptions. And so forth.
"I don't have one because of principles" is an excellent answer. It's the answer I give whenever someone asks me for anything social media related whether the context is social or professional. You may be surprised to hear that I've experienced zero consequences for it.
I'm slightly on the fence with this one. Often employers are looking for someone "normal" who will fit into a team in a "normal" sort of way; and having a LinkedIn account is certainly "normal" (given the number of people who have them). On the other hand, obviously some employers are looking for someone weird and exceptional, and, on that basis, are prepared to have to deal with Richard Stallman and his problems with parrots (https://groups.google.com/a/mysociety.org/forum/#!msg/mysoci...).
Secondly, you absolutely do not want to start ranting about "principles" or "ethics" during an interview - or being overtly negative about fairly common-place things - unless you're pretty sure they're looking for RMS and your beard is looking exceptional that day.
But, all that said, I think you could probably get out of a "Why don't you have a LinkedIn profile?" scenario in a fairly anodyne way just by saying something like, "I'll be honest, I used to have one, but I got sick of the spam."
You can also say, "I played around with it in the past but it's not my thing, and I don't keep it up to date" if you're worried that the recipient is going to think you're a weirdo for not participating in the latest social media fad. Works with "Are you on Facebook?" too.
as far as you've noticed although its obviously impossible to prove a negative.
But you won't notice you've not received offers of employment on linkedin (because you don't have a linkedin account) or missed out on social events on facebook (because you don't have a facebook account - and won't necessarily see the photos/aftermath statuses etc).
I find LinkedIn very useful. I use it before every external meeting to get background on the others, and provide my profile to offer the same courtesy.
The frustration is that it could be so much more. They have the richest demographic of customers and the worlds best human capital map. They could be doing so much more than paid Lead Generation for salespeople and recruiters. (And this is coming from someone who has used it for both)
Agreed on all counts. I don't use it before every single meeting, but it's helpful to see who we have in common, etc.
And yes, it could have been (or could be) so much more than just recruiter-oriented. Something as basic as letting me keep notes about my relationship with someone - where did we meet, who introduced us, etc - would have made them truly indispensable to an entire generation.
I nuked my LinkedIn a couple of months ago. I had the same fear, but I decided fear is is not a good guide. Looking at it rationally, I never got a position through LinkedIn and I am very happy with the positions that I got so far.
If I ever end up in a world where it's only possible to get a job using LinkedIn, I can probably recreate my profile, along with contacts, and recommendations in a week or so.
What's funny is the same thing works in reverse but not enough to deter completely : "what (real life) shenanigans am I attracting by hoping this isn't a total timesuck?"
Clients from LinkedIn in are way more high maintenance on average compared to StackOverflow/SE and GitHub. Maybe it's not as bad for recruiters.
Except recently social networks, such as LinkedIn, takes note of any inactivity and will send periodic “enticer” emails in an attempt to increase you engagement with their site.
I remember being utterly turned off by LinkedIn when I saw two of my colleges a few years using a script to approve everyone's "skills" (or whatever they call it) everyday in order to be more popular or whatever.
I thought if everyone is just gaming it like that, the whole platform is totally worthless and even worse.
Needless to say, I now have a very minimal presence on it and never anymore link with recruiters as they will suck you dry timewise.
That skill endorsement interface is like a videogame that I play every few months. I hit the affirmative button on people I like without really looking at the skills too closely. I have to have a really low regard for someone to not just give them a skill recommendation.
It's really just a "Hey" that I'm sending to some long-lost co-worker's mailbox. Often, endorsing someone will spur a reconnection or an email conversation with that person that I otherwise might not have had.
I would never consider the linkedin skills recommendations when looking to hire someone.
I use LinkedIn (tech recruiter) daily but I have most of the features blocked.
I use my personal network or inmails (paid for by my employer) to contact people and my personal page is a landing page for developers.
I disabled the scrolling facebook like front page and I use buffer to post articles for me during the workday.
It's mostly helpful for getting job offers and generating interest in yourself. Even I get multiple recruitment messages a day so I can only imagine what developers inboxes look like. The problem for some people who haven't found it useful is most recruiters only target the young developers who look like they will be easy placements.
"The problem for some people who haven't found it useful is most recruiters only target the young developers who look like they will be easy placements."
This would explain why I seem to get more add requests/inmails than nearly anyone else I speak to. Thanks for the clarity.
I like the idea of using my LinkedIn page as a way to highlight interesting articles to spark conversation. I'm not aticvely recruiting at the moment (but I do use Linked In when I am), so I could see having already built a "community" of my peers on MY page would beuseful for both recruiting for my current team, and also any future job searches I embark on. Where did you come up with the tweaks for your own page? I'm curious if there is a tutorial for this, or if you just kind of stumbled on to it? I did a little search for "linkedin disable scrolling", hoping to fin a MySpace style skinning tutorial, compelte with embedded HTML, but had no such luck.
I never understood the criticism of LinkedIn. It's the least intrusive of all the networks I am in and probably the most valuable when I look at who it gives men access to and it allows others who look for someone like me to find me.
I've been on linkedin almost from day one and I still haven't found anything even remotely comparable to Linkedin in value. It's like the google of professional networks. Sure you can use other networks that will make you feel like you are missing something.
I have been a linkedin user for about 10 years as well. Here are my thoughts:
Useful parts of linkedin (not that many):
- Ability to connect with people you have worked with and keeping in touch with them. Knowing who is doing what profesionally in your circle. This is useful if you know how to use the network to your advantage.
- Decent Job offers from good recruiters once in a while (very rare but it does happen). I call this "Good Recruiter spam"
Things that suck about linkedin:
- Endorsements
- Horrible UI and dark patterns.
- Bad recruiter spam. Basically the generic copy/paste messages or my favorite "I would like to connect with you on linkedin" generic message when trying to connect. Really ? You want to connect with a stranger but cannot bother writing why ?
- Groups (just another way of spam)
- The "App" spam on mobile phones. No linkedin, I don't want to use the App. Let me open linkedin.com ON mobile. there is such a thing right ?
I read a lot about recruiter spam but don't personally receive much of it. Most recruiters who contact me have reviewed my profile and present a job opening that aligns with my skills. Granted, I've never actually taken a job presented by a recruiter, but don't receive so many off-base contacts that I find them any sort of burden.
I'm not longer a developer, however, so I do wonder how much of the spam is concentrated just of filling technology positions. Dev positions are not easy to fill in just about any U.S. market, so it makes sense why they'd be so aggressively sought after.
A candidate with active LinkedIn profile can be seen unfavourable in many industries as peeps spill too many details of projects in order to glorify their profile, one can learn a lot about competitors ways of working and technology just by reading employee profiles. Not on LinkedIn, one headache saved...
I feel bad for those people who don't know how to turn off email notifications from LinkedIn, either by having their email client remove them or by some setting on LinkedIn.
We often forgot the burden of online life of those without technical skills. Imagine having all those LinkedIn mails end up in your inbox.
I've never been on LinkedIn and I received email from them harvesting other peoples' address books, and nothing short of shouting at them made them stop.
I've found LinkedIn to be very useful for keeping track of former teachers and managers. For example, a tutor who helped me a great deal in 1980 is now the head of his department and I have watched the slow but steady decline of a former manager who was a real challenge to work with.
I also use it to keep track of former colleagues who were difficult to work with and avoid applying for jobs where they are working now. Even if I don't end up working with them again, it's an indication to me that those companies have a defective HR department so they've probably hired other difficult people too.
Is "here's my resume, I'm not on linked-in" really not good enough for some people? I've not encountered any problems with it. If asked why, the "dark patterns" page can be mentioned.
No seriously, I remember reading articles about their shady behaviour from the very beginning. They were never useful for any kind of social interaction and from as far as I remember, their website was terrible.
I can't even remember at this point how long ago I deleted my linkedin profile; it was never anything more than a spam factory in my experience. What surprises me is not that they're still terrible, but that they are still - somehow, years later, despite seemingly everyone in the industry knowing they are a complete waste of time - not yet out of business.
[+] [-] rb2k_|10 years ago|reply
I worked for LinkedIn for a bit and am now working at Facebook.
While I visit the site/app only every other week, I still think it's very valuable to connect to people I talked to at meetups and that I would like to stay connected with somehow. Some of the people I'd like to stay in touch with, don't have at twitter account or are so low frequency that I'd miss things I care about. I probably wouldn't connect with them on Facebook since to me it still feels a bit too "personal".
Considering that LinkedIn was instrumental in the two biggest "moves" in my career and fills a good niche for me, I personally like them as a network.
I agree that the UI is a bit annoying at times, but they're way better than they used to be in that regard. I don't even mind recruiter emails. I have a bit less than 5 years of experience, so I still think it's a bit flattering to receive them :)
[+] [-] vonklaus|10 years ago|reply
So while linkedIn may have opened doors, it is pretty unlikely through something like HN or your own irl network, you wouldve ended up unsuccessful. My own feelings towards linkIn aside, anecdotally it certainly seems that it was useful for you. It certainly has the ability to provide great things, or speed up connections/opportunity.
I agree with the article in that it is a soft requirement for a lot of things:
Entrepreneur: Helpful for hiring, networking looking at competition, finding investors.
Freelancer: Getting gigs, proving reputation.
Bigcompany: online presence, hiring.
Recruiter: obvious.
Etc.
So while you certainly aren't unique in finding value in linkedIn, it is utterly painful to use and sometimes i feel like if I put my cursor in the wrong place I'll accidentally agree to realtime uploading of all my data & that of my friend.
As an aside, it really can't survive much longer:
* Users hate using it
* it is totally unpleasant and insisistant on you conforming to what it demands.
* signal to noise is so out of alignment it is painful.
* Companies have to deal with the need to be on the platform and endorse enployees who are incentivized to self-promote sometimes to the company's detriment.
* I personally, and I largely suspect this to be very common, have connections I don't know. Either we have drifted apart, were breifly engaged in something, or I was just to lenient with accepting/reaching out.
* Increasingly, it is becoming less profitable as it struggles to give away enough data to be useful, but hold back enough to upsell premium packages.
While facebook certainly seems to care little about privacy, there is a compelling engagement and feeling of human connection that is just not there with linked in.
They should just sell to salesforce, that way the data and privacy could stay just as exploitive, but they could allow users latitude to enjoy/benefit from it a bit more.
[+] [-] weinzierl|10 years ago|reply
This is an interesting angle. There was a time when Facebook was only friends and family. My impression is that (for better or worse) this is changing rapidly. I wonder if Facebook will try to get into one of the fields mentioned in the four points in rdli's comment.
[+] [-] henrik_w|10 years ago|reply
- contact information for professional contacts in one place, updated by them
- job offers (yes, mostly good or at least decent)
- can look up people to see their experience and common contacts
- updates on what previous colleagues are up to.
More here: http://henrikwarne.com/2013/08/21/linkedin-good-or-bad/
[+] [-] ryandrake|10 years ago|reply
LinkedIn is great if you just want to endlessly socialize with recruiters. Don't worry about finding them: They'll all try to connect with you and chat you up about one of their jobs that is just like the one you have but at another company. Hell, you might even get an interview out of it, but good luck turning that into an actual job in today's picky environment.
And if any of those LinkedIn recruiters are reading this, Try This One Neat Trick That Candidates Love: Instead of approaching someone with a job posting that's basically what he did 2 years ago or what he's doing today, approach him with what he might want to be doing 2 years from now. You'll get better responses, I guarantee it.
[+] [-] mooreds|10 years ago|reply
I have gotten to the point that whenever I consider a client, job offer or employee, I:
- google them for general information
- look them up on LinkedIn to see what they've done professionally and/or if we have anyone in common. (Yes, they may see I have checked out their profile--so what?)
- look for them on twitter (much lower hit ratio)
All this gives me a much rounder perspective on a person than I would have without these resources.
[+] [-] jfoster|10 years ago|reply
Caveat: I'm unfamiliar with the US/EU status quo for this category; maybe there are better options in those markets?
[+] [-] rdli|10 years ago|reply
1. They have an advertising business, that sells to marketers. 2. They have a recruiting business, which sells to recruiters. 3. They have a individual (networking) business, which sells to individuals. 4. They have a sales business, which sells to sales people.
While they all have a core basic similarity (use a rich database of professional people), when it comes to monetization of this core platform, there are little conflicts that add up over time. For example, for #2, they should make it as easy and free and valuable for people to join and update their profile. But then that conflicts with #3 a little bit, because a valuable feature is looking at other people's full profiles -- but that means you can't charge for individual subscriptions. And so forth.
[+] [-] compactmani|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bshimmin|10 years ago|reply
Secondly, you absolutely do not want to start ranting about "principles" or "ethics" during an interview - or being overtly negative about fairly common-place things - unless you're pretty sure they're looking for RMS and your beard is looking exceptional that day.
But, all that said, I think you could probably get out of a "Why don't you have a LinkedIn profile?" scenario in a fairly anodyne way just by saying something like, "I'll be honest, I used to have one, but I got sick of the spam."
[+] [-] pc86|10 years ago|reply
That you know of. The most common negative response would most likely be an eye roll and going elsewhere/talking to someone else.
[+] [-] ryandrake|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] octo_t|10 years ago|reply
But you won't notice you've not received offers of employment on linkedin (because you don't have a linkedin account) or missed out on social events on facebook (because you don't have a facebook account - and won't necessarily see the photos/aftermath statuses etc).
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mathattack|10 years ago|reply
The frustration is that it could be so much more. They have the richest demographic of customers and the worlds best human capital map. They could be doing so much more than paid Lead Generation for salespeople and recruiters. (And this is coming from someone who has used it for both)
[+] [-] mgkimsal|10 years ago|reply
And yes, it could have been (or could be) so much more than just recruiter-oriented. Something as basic as letting me keep notes about my relationship with someone - where did we meet, who introduced us, etc - would have made them truly indispensable to an entire generation.
[+] [-] miseg|10 years ago|reply
"What if I lose out on an opportunity, or seem strange, because I'm no longer on LinkedIn?"
[+] [-] microtonal|10 years ago|reply
If I ever end up in a world where it's only possible to get a job using LinkedIn, I can probably recreate my profile, along with contacts, and recommendations in a week or so.
[+] [-] decentrality|10 years ago|reply
Clients from LinkedIn in are way more high maintenance on average compared to StackOverflow/SE and GitHub. Maybe it's not as bad for recruiters.
[+] [-] staticelf|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1337biz|10 years ago|reply
https://evertpot.com/resume.html 404 File not found
[+] [-] L-four|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] treve|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvehent|10 years ago|reply
Without them, I'd pretty much never open the site.
[+] [-] Saad_M|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cubano|10 years ago|reply
I thought if everyone is just gaming it like that, the whole platform is totally worthless and even worse.
Needless to say, I now have a very minimal presence on it and never anymore link with recruiters as they will suck you dry timewise.
[+] [-] crusso|10 years ago|reply
It's really just a "Hey" that I'm sending to some long-lost co-worker's mailbox. Often, endorsing someone will spur a reconnection or an email conversation with that person that I otherwise might not have had.
I would never consider the linkedin skills recommendations when looking to hire someone.
[+] [-] AlwaysRock|10 years ago|reply
I use my personal network or inmails (paid for by my employer) to contact people and my personal page is a landing page for developers.
I disabled the scrolling facebook like front page and I use buffer to post articles for me during the workday.
It's mostly helpful for getting job offers and generating interest in yourself. Even I get multiple recruitment messages a day so I can only imagine what developers inboxes look like. The problem for some people who haven't found it useful is most recruiters only target the young developers who look like they will be easy placements.
[+] [-] katpas|10 years ago|reply
This would explain why I seem to get more add requests/inmails than nearly anyone else I speak to. Thanks for the clarity.
[+] [-] violentvinyl|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThomPete|10 years ago|reply
I've been on linkedin almost from day one and I still haven't found anything even remotely comparable to Linkedin in value. It's like the google of professional networks. Sure you can use other networks that will make you feel like you are missing something.
[+] [-] kbart|10 years ago|reply
Are you joking? I've never been on LinkedIn and still get spam from it constantly (though less nowadays than few years back).
[+] [-] arethuza|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codegeek|10 years ago|reply
Useful parts of linkedin (not that many):
- Ability to connect with people you have worked with and keeping in touch with them. Knowing who is doing what profesionally in your circle. This is useful if you know how to use the network to your advantage.
- Decent Job offers from good recruiters once in a while (very rare but it does happen). I call this "Good Recruiter spam"
Things that suck about linkedin:
- Endorsements
- Horrible UI and dark patterns.
- Bad recruiter spam. Basically the generic copy/paste messages or my favorite "I would like to connect with you on linkedin" generic message when trying to connect. Really ? You want to connect with a stranger but cannot bother writing why ?
- Groups (just another way of spam)
- The "App" spam on mobile phones. No linkedin, I don't want to use the App. Let me open linkedin.com ON mobile. there is such a thing right ?
[+] [-] ssharp|10 years ago|reply
I'm not longer a developer, however, so I do wonder how much of the spam is concentrated just of filling technology positions. Dev positions are not easy to fill in just about any U.S. market, so it makes sense why they'd be so aggressively sought after.
[+] [-] nowprovision|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wodenokoto|10 years ago|reply
We often forgot the burden of online life of those without technical skills. Imagine having all those LinkedIn mails end up in your inbox.
[+] [-] maxwellito|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yoo1I|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hartator|10 years ago|reply
I don't know if it's an obligation, I think it doen't become suddenly okay to spam people whenever it's in your interest.
[+] [-] mrlyc|10 years ago|reply
I also use it to keep track of former colleagues who were difficult to work with and avoid applying for jobs where they are working now. Even if I don't end up working with them again, it's an indication to me that those companies have a defective HR department so they've probably hired other difficult people too.
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runn1ng|10 years ago|reply
No seriously, I remember reading articles about their shady behaviour from the very beginning. They were never useful for any kind of social interaction and from as far as I remember, their website was terrible.
[+] [-] marssaxman|10 years ago|reply