Here’s a fun thing that happened to me on LinkedIn:
A few years back, I was job hunting, using LinkedIn at bit to find leads. During this ongoing process, my father, who’d been receiving chemotherapy treatments passed away.
Being the “technical one” it fell to me to manage his various accounts. I logged into his gmail from the same browser I’d used LinkedIn, and started to contact people he knew but was out of touch with.
The next day, I started receiving email, from my dead father, from LinkedIn. Claiming he’d just joined the service and wanted to connect to me.
I still don’t have the words for this, years later.
What exactly is wrong with these folks at LinkedIn? They seem like caricatures of actual humans to me now, and I no longer even bother to visit the site.
If anything positive comes from cancel-culture, canceling LinkedIn would be my preference.
LinkedIn did some really dodgy shit before MS took over and started cleaning it up. Slowly.
They tricked you into giving them access to your email. They used endorsements to trick you into logging back in (and hitting the previous trick login...). The marketing bods who came up with that shit will occupy a special place in hell along with every other growth hacker.
The content is about as low value as on any other social network but compared to the toxic waste Twitter and FB spew out, the worst you'll see on LinkedIn is an annoying writing style where everyone seems to be drafting a motivational seminar or self help book.
I have another fun story. I have a contact at LinkedIn whose name matches a famous Bollywood star. One day I get a notification from LinkedIn "You contact xxx is in the news". I enthusiastically click the link, only to find out that the person in the news is the famous Bollywood celebrity. Who is writing these algorithms in LinkedIn ?
I almost fell for a similar trap when I installed their app and it was about to pull ALL the contacts from my phone. By default.
I killed the app instantly and uninstalled it, never to touch it ever again.
I cannot trust the app not to send unrequested connection requests, really.
I've kept the same mobile number since I was 12-13 (and I'll be 29 in some months). I have no idea about the number of people that got my phone number over the course of the years but surely I do not want to connect on LinkedIn with all of them.
Cancelling LinkedIn is super easy. I have a procmail entry that cans any mail from LinkedIn; I don’t have an account with them; and I have an entry in my hosts file that removes them from the internet for me.
But your story is disturbing. How might it have happened, technically speaking?
It's so disappointing because staying in touch with former work colleagues would be a really valuable service. Somehow it seems impossible to offer just that.
Similar story, my mother passed away 4 years ago and she was already on LinkedIn, but we weren’t connected. Without fail, LinkedIn sends me a bi-weekly email telling me that my mother is on LinkedIn and I should totally connect with her. It’s always the same, never any other suggestions. Haven’t figured out how to stop those emails.
One day, when you're not paying attention, your friend says to you, in a tonguetwister, "ifyoudontmindmelookingthroughyouraddressbookandcallingeveryonesaywhat?"
"What?" you reply.
"Nothing.", says friend.
Later that day, when you're not looking, your friend copies all the numbers out of your address book and starts calling everyone. If they pick up the phone, friend says:
"Good afternoon, Friend's Name, Your Name said you'd be interested in my new social network, would you like to sign up?"
If you found out that this had happened, would you still be friends with this person? Would you still talk to them? Would you still want to know what they have to say?
Yeah, this resonated with me. It's strange we need real-world equivalent stories to get a real sense for how strange some of this conduct is.
One problem I see is that the invasion/violation is abstract, instantaneous and committed by an inanimate thing. I wrote something about it here along the same lines:
It’s even worse than that, because LinkedIn actually pretended to be you —- its invitations to “connect” were crafted to look like they contained a personal note from you.
LinkedIn taught me, back in 2005, to never link my address book to anything. This has been so helpful because any time an app wants to do anything with my address book, I assume that they will do the dumbest, most embarrassing thing possible.
Also, I used to have the “I don’t care if people see what I do setting” turned on, because why not. Then LinkedIn started emailing people because I moused over their post and stuff. Some contact emailed me to ask what I needed from her and it was so weird. And the email it sent her was super incorrect and stupid and said something like “Prepend wants to get back in touch with you.”
Unpopular take: whether your LinkedIn experience is good or bad is a pretty strong indicator of how much you "get" online networking.
- If you see it as a place to mostly transact with recruiters, Yes, your feed is absolutely going to be crap. If you see it as a place to have conversations with your professional community, your feed is going to look like a constant streamed event with the best content.
- If you see online networking as shouting-from-rooftops self promotion, of course you'll notice the worst of the worst shouters. If you realize anyone you'll ever need to engage with professionally is basically a click away, you start looking at what on these people's mind. You don't care about Mark Cuban or whatever, because it's a whole lot more interesting to hear your real target audience talk about their pain points.
- "Performing professionalism" is the best. Of all the social networks, LinkedIn has the greatest built-in policing mechanism: its users' fear for their own reputation. Being an ass might end up costing real dollars, so maybe best avoided, the logic goes. You don't see trolling; you don't see fighting; no one will give you points for being shitty to others. There's a lot to like in that.
Plus, LinkedIn is nerdy. Text posts actually perform better than links. Attention is fairly aligned with follower count. (I've collected data for a year, and some pretty clear trends emerge)
So yeah, it's good that we have this variant of a social network, if anything I wish there were more like it.
LinkedIn is like every large internet gathering (Reddit, Facebook, Youtube, etc): 80% is a sea of thoughtless garbage, 15% is trivial but entertaining, and the remaining 5% is genuinely useful information and functionality that didn't exist 15 years ago. The stuff the article points out--hilariously--is the equivalent of browsing r/politics (or r/wallstreetbets the past 2 weeks).
For useful 5% LinkedIn my principles are:
- I unfollow all companies and people so the newsfeed is totally empty.
- I don't post, like, follow, or any other kind of interaction
- I add everyone I meet professionally (school, work, networking, etc) immediately after meeting them.
- I keep my profile updated with essentials only (pictures, work history, etc).
This has some nice benefits that are hard to replicate:
- In the event I need to reach out to that one person I used to work with, for whatever reason, I have a way to reach them without ever having to get personal contact info like an email address or phone number.
- If I need to put a name to a face for someone in a professional network, I can do a glance through LinkedIn. I think everyone appreciates when someone takes the time to remember you, so this is really valuable.
- The occasional "what is that one friend doing 5-10 years later". Just the other day I was browsing alumni from my school and saw a friend I haven't seen in about 10 years. Turns out, we both changed careers and went into software engineering!
This is generally spot on. Also, in my last life I only used LinkedIn when I needed a new job, but as a startup founder it became far more useful. The #1 feature is "who do I know that can give me a warm intro to person X?"
This requires, of course, keeping your LinkedIn network only full of people you actually know and not accepting all the random connections.
I treat everything on LinkedIn as a press release. Not just content from organizations, but especially that from individuals representing themselves or their (small) businesses.
It's all just a dishonest representation of their 'best self'.
The LinkedIn Crowd is just as bad as the Instagram influencer crowd and I hate what the internet is becoming.
> The LinkedIn Crowd is just as bad as the Instagram influencer crowd
No, it's more fake and forced.
I once sat through an hour meeting about "representing the company" better on LinkedIn which was triggered by a post by a sales guy which had been dutifully reshared by colleagues until a board member saw it and decided it was sexist. The post in question was one of those awful only-on-LinkedIn stories involving our hero, the sales guy, bumping into a distraught stranger recently laid off by the industry vertical he was selling into and comforting her with words of sage wisdom. It wasn't sexist per se, but it was pretty nauseating and probably bullshit.
After this, I think my colleague responsible for drumming up social media engagement better understood why I was uninterested in helping the company hit performance metrics by posting on a biweekly basis with random people in my network @mentioned to beg for likes.
Give me a feed full of poses in improbably expensive clothing in front of a Santorini sunset, 31st takes of overly technical "improvised" guitar solos and artfully posed kids any day.
I'm more self-conscious about posting to LinkedIn than any other network. I know will cross post content from Twitter, but even that needs to be re-written to be more "professional". It's strange.
Why? My timeline is exclusively about professional interests. Blog posts, interesting papers, etc. Sure there's marketing crap in there, but that's also nice as I get to see what my contacts are building / hustling. I find it inspiring. After all, most of them I know as actual people doing cool stuff.
Meanwhile Twitter/Facebook are negativity cesspools, it's hard to spend much time there.
That's because people's careers are tied to their Linkedin profiles, so naturally you're only going to get the most positive, shiny things being propped up on it.
This feature also inhibits sharing though, which is why Linkedin has such an artificial feel about it.
It would be kind of cool to see a more reddit-y or hackernews-y professional networking site.
Like, I'm glad I have a professional connection to my friends who've went into healthcare, but honestly I have no intellectual curiosity about medicine and I ignore it if it comes on my feed. I'd rather see the stuff you're talking about - interesting papers, blog posts, etc - in a professional context with possibly the opportunity to network. The culture is somewhat here on hackernews, although more geared towards startups and computer science, but I'd like to see it available for other professional fields.
I think we're almost at the point where the predictive text bots could all chat with each other in the LinkedIn echo chamber. I look forward to the day where I get a notification from "me" on LinkedIn saying we just had a great interview and start at the new company next Monday.
We are absolutely at that point. People are optimizing their content for the algorithm, and using keywords and hashtags so the machine recognizes patterns batter.
Even on a mostly non-algorithmic feed like Reddit, the highest upvoted comments on popular subs always feature an extremely predictable response, like a dad joke, followed by similarly predictable sub-comments written solely to garner upvotes.
Unlike what the author thinks linkedin revenue isn't largely fueled by recruiter business. It is driven by where he thinks they are weak: linkedin marketing solutions, or in friendlier words "feed interactions". See the most recent microsoft earnings report:
And unlike what the author thinks linkedin navigated the current climate around social networks pretty well. Not only they've succeeded in keeping the network out of the political environment, and showed strong growth in user base and engagement (see above report), they also ranked as the most trusted social network consistently according to Business Insider Digital Trust study:
1) If you are looking for a job then it’s great to use linkedIn since a lot of companies put their listings on the platform and its also perfect to remain in touch with your old colleagues
2) If you are a passionate technologist/programmer who loves to discover new technologies ,software , tools or what’s happening in the industry then I must say linkedIn might not be a great place since its more like filled with people who are just posting content to gain likes or visibility just like every other social media.
Using LinkedIn does become depressing when you start seeing posts from people saying “ohh they landed their dream jobs while you might be searching for jobs and then you start comparing yourself with other people on linkedIn. You become depressed.
And that’s one of the reasons I stopped using LinkedIn its nothing but a place full of
people who are chasing likes
LinkedIn is great for marketing and looking for jobs but if you are technologist/programmer who wants to learn something new or expand their knowledge I would suggest using specific programming related subreddits or hackernews
Honestly I have gained so much knowledge just by using these platforms and I’m really thankful to people who contribute to hackernews with amazing links
You're lucky. I got so many junk job offers over the years, mostly secretive "amazing opportunities" they would only talk about over the phone.
I one (rare) time replied that I receive several such messages per week and that if recruiters want our attention, maybe they should reveal more about the offer (sometimes they reveal literally __nothing__, not the industry, not the tech stack, nothing).
The recruiter got extremely offended and said I was rude and that I just missed out on a great opportunity.
I rarely ever log in to LinkedIn, but do have their app on my phone (which I also rarely use). And I always ignore whatever stupid notifications it triggers (it seems they are almost as needy as Facebook). About a month ago, this LinkedIn notification pops up on my phone:
"Ding! You're distracted (again). Here are tips for staying focused."
I'm not distracted. I'm using my phone. And interrupting what I'm doing to tell me I'm distracted is...impressively oblivious.
I don't find much value in the LinkedIn timeline, for reasons well-described by this article.
However, LinkedIn has been of tremendous value to me as a founder of an enterprise software company. I see two primary areas for value:
1) Sales - LinkedIn allows me to quickly understand who I'm dealing with. Size of company, positions, org chart, etc. This is important information to know when trying to move along the sales process.
2) Recruiting - LinkedIn profiles are essentially a public resume directory. When folks are recommended or referred, I can often get a good sense of their resume by checking LinkedIn. This saves time for everyone when the connection does not need to be made due to lack of fit.
Whatever value you think you are finding on LinkedIn is negative value. Anyone of value is too busy producing value to give an eff caring about the epitome of a dead social network.
"what happens when you have a literally captive audience and the company can do whatever they want in terms of data abuse and features"
If you are employed, you cannot fathom how dependent on linkedin some people are. It is when you are most vulnerable that they get that $5 to see who viewed your profile (I didn't even know they had that feature until some out-of-work friends were talking about it)
LinkedIn weirds me out. It's like there's a machine somewhere churning out bubbly young blondes and they all wind up as recruiters on LinkedIn. There was even one that billed herself as part of a combination job-search and matchmaking service: get an interview and a date! It's not surprising that some guys are getting confused, because there are users who are intentionally recreating an "enterprise" version of the thirst/influence dynamic of other social networks.
I don't like LinkedIn as a social network but as a hiring manager, there's nothing else close to it. Sometimes we wish there were, but it definitely fills a niche.
Out of curiosity, what niche does Linkedin fill for your day-to-day work? Personally I only have a profile so people can see I physically actually exist, outside of that I don't think I've ever used the site for anything.
I like LinkedIn. It's one of the few places on the internet which still has this 'wild west' vibe. I enjoy the random connection requests and scam attempts.
It's the only social network which actually allows me to meet smart interesting people outside of my immediate network.
Maybe LinkedIn doesn't work so well if you're a rich person, but as a regular person I really like it.
I've established many successful personal and business connections through LinkedIn.
It honestly got better after Microsoft bought them, it's less scammy. Sure they want you to pay for certain parts, but that's perfectly reasonable in my mind.
You're right about the wild west vibe, people still seems try to navigate LinkedIn. It's like Facebook, but then again certain posts simply don't sit well with people on LinkedIn. Political debates are pretty much shot down instantly, even those from politicians. So try to promote their business, some want to get hired, and a ton of people are trying to hire. It's all a big mess with a corporate vibe but somehow targeted at the small /medium business segment.
The thing about LinkedIn I find extremely amusing is "social media managers" and "online marketing experts" who are looking for work on LinkedIn and get nothing but silence, while technical people are booked for job interviews within hours if not minutes.
I dropped my LinkedIn years ago because they either tricked me into connecting my email contacts or did it without my permission.
Every time I logged in it would ask "Do you want to find new connections from your mail list?"
Every. Time.
One day it stopped asking. Week or so later I got a suggestion for random people I emailed once years earlier. Got curious and checked settings and saw it was connected to my email contacts.
No idea how, maybe I accidently clicked it? Maybe they decided they knew better than I did. Whatever caused it I closed my account that day.
Couple years later (I think?) MS purchased linkedin and I smiled to myself safe in the knowledge it was only a matter of time until MS ruined it and every abandoned the platform. I was mistaken on that one.
My experience with LinkedIn is remarkably positive. I am contacted a few times a month for professional opportunities and two of my most recent jobs started from recruiters contacting me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a chance to put forward your best self to the professional world. It is a serious force multiplier - do the work once to make your profile really shine and reap continual benefits.
Knowing who is looking at your profile (and hence who might be interviewing you for a new job) is incredibly useful information. Does this person have a technical or a business background? Do we know the same people from previous jobs? Do we have similar interests or did we go to the same school?
All of that information is very powerful when meeting someone for the first time and can give you that 5%-10% edge during an interview. It's the kind of information that allows you to make a great first impression.
I am not affiliated with LinkedIn but would recommend it to anyone struggling to find the right opportunity in the technology world.
Social networks are just vacuums of interest and I think they'll continue on that trajectory until an inevitable societal disinterest in centralized information sharing platforms.
The internet will never reflect reality.
- If you walk around venting to everyone all the time, you will have no friends.
- If you walk around virtue signaling and one-upping people all the time, you will have no friends.
- If you walk around telling people all the prestigious companies and schools you've attended, you will have no friends.
Except on the internet all of the above is totally acceptable and even encouraged. People love to share information about themselves, there's a psychological component to this. It feels good.
- It feels good to let people know exactly how frustrated and slightly nihilistic with the world you are.
- It feels good to unload on the political opposition and get likes and shares in return.
- It feels good to have reductionist arguments that get cited on mainstream news.
You can delve into plenty of reasons why people do this stuff. Personally, I don't think it matters and I say that as someone who detests social media so much that I stay off of it. People come to the internet for different reasons and those reasons find an intersection on social media. I love IRC primarily for this but also because it couples anonymity with the service. We get some abusers and manipulators but even the stalking and harassment attempts that people have tried on me are worth the stay. I can speak freely and relate to people in a way that would not be possible otherwise, and largely I thank the culture of Freenode and it's channels for that. Yet, Freenode is also a vacuum of interest, just one designed for nerds that communicate over ASCII anonymously.
Join the network that's right for you, just like you would in real life.
[+] [-] srswtf123|5 years ago|reply
A few years back, I was job hunting, using LinkedIn at bit to find leads. During this ongoing process, my father, who’d been receiving chemotherapy treatments passed away.
Being the “technical one” it fell to me to manage his various accounts. I logged into his gmail from the same browser I’d used LinkedIn, and started to contact people he knew but was out of touch with.
The next day, I started receiving email, from my dead father, from LinkedIn. Claiming he’d just joined the service and wanted to connect to me.
I still don’t have the words for this, years later.
What exactly is wrong with these folks at LinkedIn? They seem like caricatures of actual humans to me now, and I no longer even bother to visit the site.
If anything positive comes from cancel-culture, canceling LinkedIn would be my preference.
[+] [-] ljm|5 years ago|reply
They tricked you into giving them access to your email. They used endorsements to trick you into logging back in (and hitting the previous trick login...). The marketing bods who came up with that shit will occupy a special place in hell along with every other growth hacker.
The content is about as low value as on any other social network but compared to the toxic waste Twitter and FB spew out, the worst you'll see on LinkedIn is an annoying writing style where everyone seems to be drafting a motivational seminar or self help book.
[+] [-] kube-system|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eeZah7Ux|5 years ago|reply
This is just a strange word to describe customer's choice.
[+] [-] dmode|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] znpy|5 years ago|reply
I killed the app instantly and uninstalled it, never to touch it ever again.
I cannot trust the app not to send unrequested connection requests, really.
I've kept the same mobile number since I was 12-13 (and I'll be 29 in some months). I have no idea about the number of people that got my phone number over the course of the years but surely I do not want to connect on LinkedIn with all of them.
[+] [-] leephillips|5 years ago|reply
But your story is disturbing. How might it have happened, technically speaking?
[+] [-] tonyedgecombe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justsid|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forgotmypw17|5 years ago|reply
One day, when you're not paying attention, your friend says to you, in a tonguetwister, "ifyoudontmindmelookingthroughyouraddressbookandcallingeveryonesaywhat?"
"What?" you reply.
"Nothing.", says friend.
Later that day, when you're not looking, your friend copies all the numbers out of your address book and starts calling everyone. If they pick up the phone, friend says:
"Good afternoon, Friend's Name, Your Name said you'd be interested in my new social network, would you like to sign up?"
If you found out that this had happened, would you still be friends with this person? Would you still talk to them? Would you still want to know what they have to say?
[+] [-] jessems|5 years ago|reply
One problem I see is that the invasion/violation is abstract, instantaneous and committed by an inanimate thing. I wrote something about it here along the same lines:
https://jessems.com/hairdresser-analogy
[+] [-] throwaway09223|5 years ago|reply
Including the automatically generated page-$USER@ aliases, which would send a page to the related employee?
Fun times.
[+] [-] byset|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcun4128|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onlyrealcuzzo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prepend|5 years ago|reply
Also, I used to have the “I don’t care if people see what I do setting” turned on, because why not. Then LinkedIn started emailing people because I moused over their post and stuff. Some contact emailed me to ask what I needed from her and it was so weird. And the email it sent her was super incorrect and stupid and said something like “Prepend wants to get back in touch with you.”
[+] [-] he11ow|5 years ago|reply
- If you see it as a place to mostly transact with recruiters, Yes, your feed is absolutely going to be crap. If you see it as a place to have conversations with your professional community, your feed is going to look like a constant streamed event with the best content.
- If you see online networking as shouting-from-rooftops self promotion, of course you'll notice the worst of the worst shouters. If you realize anyone you'll ever need to engage with professionally is basically a click away, you start looking at what on these people's mind. You don't care about Mark Cuban or whatever, because it's a whole lot more interesting to hear your real target audience talk about their pain points.
- "Performing professionalism" is the best. Of all the social networks, LinkedIn has the greatest built-in policing mechanism: its users' fear for their own reputation. Being an ass might end up costing real dollars, so maybe best avoided, the logic goes. You don't see trolling; you don't see fighting; no one will give you points for being shitty to others. There's a lot to like in that.
Plus, LinkedIn is nerdy. Text posts actually perform better than links. Attention is fairly aligned with follower count. (I've collected data for a year, and some pretty clear trends emerge)
So yeah, it's good that we have this variant of a social network, if anything I wish there were more like it.
[+] [-] jlos|5 years ago|reply
For useful 5% LinkedIn my principles are:
- I unfollow all companies and people so the newsfeed is totally empty.
- I don't post, like, follow, or any other kind of interaction
- I add everyone I meet professionally (school, work, networking, etc) immediately after meeting them.
- I keep my profile updated with essentials only (pictures, work history, etc).
This has some nice benefits that are hard to replicate:
- In the event I need to reach out to that one person I used to work with, for whatever reason, I have a way to reach them without ever having to get personal contact info like an email address or phone number.
- If I need to put a name to a face for someone in a professional network, I can do a glance through LinkedIn. I think everyone appreciates when someone takes the time to remember you, so this is really valuable.
- The occasional "what is that one friend doing 5-10 years later". Just the other day I was browsing alumni from my school and saw a friend I haven't seen in about 10 years. Turns out, we both changed careers and went into software engineering!
[+] [-] mizzao|5 years ago|reply
This requires, of course, keeping your LinkedIn network only full of people you actually know and not accepting all the random connections.
[+] [-] poidos|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Proven|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] neals|5 years ago|reply
It's all just a dishonest representation of their 'best self'.
The LinkedIn Crowd is just as bad as the Instagram influencer crowd and I hate what the internet is becoming.
[+] [-] notahacker|5 years ago|reply
No, it's more fake and forced.
I once sat through an hour meeting about "representing the company" better on LinkedIn which was triggered by a post by a sales guy which had been dutifully reshared by colleagues until a board member saw it and decided it was sexist. The post in question was one of those awful only-on-LinkedIn stories involving our hero, the sales guy, bumping into a distraught stranger recently laid off by the industry vertical he was selling into and comforting her with words of sage wisdom. It wasn't sexist per se, but it was pretty nauseating and probably bullshit.
After this, I think my colleague responsible for drumming up social media engagement better understood why I was uninterested in helping the company hit performance metrics by posting on a biweekly basis with random people in my network @mentioned to beg for likes.
Give me a feed full of poses in improbably expensive clothing in front of a Santorini sunset, 31st takes of overly technical "improvised" guitar solos and artfully posed kids any day.
[+] [-] josefresco|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] softwaredoug|5 years ago|reply
Why? My timeline is exclusively about professional interests. Blog posts, interesting papers, etc. Sure there's marketing crap in there, but that's also nice as I get to see what my contacts are building / hustling. I find it inspiring. After all, most of them I know as actual people doing cool stuff.
Meanwhile Twitter/Facebook are negativity cesspools, it's hard to spend much time there.
[+] [-] minsc__and__boo|5 years ago|reply
This feature also inhibits sharing though, which is why Linkedin has such an artificial feel about it.
[+] [-] totemandtoken|5 years ago|reply
Like, I'm glad I have a professional connection to my friends who've went into healthcare, but honestly I have no intellectual curiosity about medicine and I ignore it if it comes on my feed. I'd rather see the stuff you're talking about - interesting papers, blog posts, etc - in a professional context with possibly the opportunity to network. The culture is somewhat here on hackernews, although more geared towards startups and computer science, but I'd like to see it available for other professional fields.
[+] [-] ed312|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rchaud|5 years ago|reply
Even on a mostly non-algorithmic feed like Reddit, the highest upvoted comments on popular subs always feature an extremely predictable response, like a dad joke, followed by similarly predictable sub-comments written solely to garner upvotes.
[+] [-] Kaze404|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] indymike|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emrekzd|5 years ago|reply
Unlike what the author thinks linkedin revenue isn't largely fueled by recruiter business. It is driven by where he thinks they are weak: linkedin marketing solutions, or in friendlier words "feed interactions". See the most recent microsoft earnings report:
https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://c....
And unlike what the author thinks linkedin navigated the current climate around social networks pretty well. Not only they've succeeded in keeping the network out of the political environment, and showed strong growth in user base and engagement (see above report), they also ranked as the most trusted social network consistently according to Business Insider Digital Trust study:
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-digital-trust-study-from-...
I'm not going to argue the author does not have valid points, but the main argument doesn't connect with actual results.
[+] [-] throwawaycuriou|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mr_o47|5 years ago|reply
1) If you are looking for a job then it’s great to use linkedIn since a lot of companies put their listings on the platform and its also perfect to remain in touch with your old colleagues
2) If you are a passionate technologist/programmer who loves to discover new technologies ,software , tools or what’s happening in the industry then I must say linkedIn might not be a great place since its more like filled with people who are just posting content to gain likes or visibility just like every other social media.
Using LinkedIn does become depressing when you start seeing posts from people saying “ohh they landed their dream jobs while you might be searching for jobs and then you start comparing yourself with other people on linkedIn. You become depressed.
And that’s one of the reasons I stopped using LinkedIn its nothing but a place full of people who are chasing likes
LinkedIn is great for marketing and looking for jobs but if you are technologist/programmer who wants to learn something new or expand their knowledge I would suggest using specific programming related subreddits or hackernews
Honestly I have gained so much knowledge just by using these platforms and I’m really thankful to people who contribute to hackernews with amazing links
[+] [-] edoreld|5 years ago|reply
I set it to "Open to Finding New Jobs", and then get 1 to 2 applications per week. I found my last two jobs by recruiters contacting me.
It works great for that. I never had any use for all the social networking.
[+] [-] lopis|5 years ago|reply
I one (rare) time replied that I receive several such messages per week and that if recruiters want our attention, maybe they should reveal more about the offer (sometimes they reveal literally __nothing__, not the industry, not the tech stack, nothing).
The recruiter got extremely offended and said I was rude and that I just missed out on a great opportunity.
... bye Felicia
[+] [-] folkrav|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diggernet|5 years ago|reply
I rarely ever log in to LinkedIn, but do have their app on my phone (which I also rarely use). And I always ignore whatever stupid notifications it triggers (it seems they are almost as needy as Facebook). About a month ago, this LinkedIn notification pops up on my phone:
"Ding! You're distracted (again). Here are tips for staying focused."
I'm not distracted. I'm using my phone. And interrupting what I'm doing to tell me I'm distracted is...impressively oblivious.
[+] [-] zwass|5 years ago|reply
However, LinkedIn has been of tremendous value to me as a founder of an enterprise software company. I see two primary areas for value:
1) Sales - LinkedIn allows me to quickly understand who I'm dealing with. Size of company, positions, org chart, etc. This is important information to know when trying to move along the sales process.
2) Recruiting - LinkedIn profiles are essentially a public resume directory. When folks are recommended or referred, I can often get a good sense of their resume by checking LinkedIn. This saves time for everyone when the connection does not need to be made due to lack of fit.
[+] [-] throwawaycuriou|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glsdfgkjsklfj|5 years ago|reply
If you are employed, you cannot fathom how dependent on linkedin some people are. It is when you are most vulnerable that they get that $5 to see who viewed your profile (I didn't even know they had that feature until some out-of-work friends were talking about it)
[+] [-] lopis|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Igelau|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaaron|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Etheryte|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cryptica|5 years ago|reply
Maybe LinkedIn doesn't work so well if you're a rich person, but as a regular person I really like it. I've established many successful personal and business connections through LinkedIn.
[+] [-] mrweasel|5 years ago|reply
You're right about the wild west vibe, people still seems try to navigate LinkedIn. It's like Facebook, but then again certain posts simply don't sit well with people on LinkedIn. Political debates are pretty much shot down instantly, even those from politicians. So try to promote their business, some want to get hired, and a ton of people are trying to hire. It's all a big mess with a corporate vibe but somehow targeted at the small /medium business segment.
The thing about LinkedIn I find extremely amusing is "social media managers" and "online marketing experts" who are looking for work on LinkedIn and get nothing but silence, while technical people are booked for job interviews within hours if not minutes.
[+] [-] nemacol|5 years ago|reply
Every time I logged in it would ask "Do you want to find new connections from your mail list?" Every. Time.
One day it stopped asking. Week or so later I got a suggestion for random people I emailed once years earlier. Got curious and checked settings and saw it was connected to my email contacts.
No idea how, maybe I accidently clicked it? Maybe they decided they knew better than I did. Whatever caused it I closed my account that day.
Couple years later (I think?) MS purchased linkedin and I smiled to myself safe in the knowledge it was only a matter of time until MS ruined it and every abandoned the platform. I was mistaken on that one.
[+] [-] AlexDanger|5 years ago|reply
Knowing who is looking at your profile (and hence who might be interviewing you for a new job) is incredibly useful information. Does this person have a technical or a business background? Do we know the same people from previous jobs? Do we have similar interests or did we go to the same school?
All of that information is very powerful when meeting someone for the first time and can give you that 5%-10% edge during an interview. It's the kind of information that allows you to make a great first impression.
I am not affiliated with LinkedIn but would recommend it to anyone struggling to find the right opportunity in the technology world.
[+] [-] kodah|5 years ago|reply
The internet will never reflect reality.
- If you walk around venting to everyone all the time, you will have no friends.
- If you walk around virtue signaling and one-upping people all the time, you will have no friends.
- If you walk around telling people all the prestigious companies and schools you've attended, you will have no friends.
Except on the internet all of the above is totally acceptable and even encouraged. People love to share information about themselves, there's a psychological component to this. It feels good.
- It feels good to let people know exactly how frustrated and slightly nihilistic with the world you are.
- It feels good to unload on the political opposition and get likes and shares in return.
- It feels good to have reductionist arguments that get cited on mainstream news.
You can delve into plenty of reasons why people do this stuff. Personally, I don't think it matters and I say that as someone who detests social media so much that I stay off of it. People come to the internet for different reasons and those reasons find an intersection on social media. I love IRC primarily for this but also because it couples anonymity with the service. We get some abusers and manipulators but even the stalking and harassment attempts that people have tried on me are worth the stay. I can speak freely and relate to people in a way that would not be possible otherwise, and largely I thank the culture of Freenode and it's channels for that. Yet, Freenode is also a vacuum of interest, just one designed for nerds that communicate over ASCII anonymously.
Join the network that's right for you, just like you would in real life.