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Ask HN: What LinkedIn alternatives don't suck?

58 points by LinkedInSucks ↗ HN
I've been using LinkedIn almost since Day 1 and I'm not sure why. I had ~10,000 e-mails from headhunters, only about 150 of which were somewhat relevant, of that 1 resulted in directly putting any money in my pocket.

In my connections I had ~6,000 connections, and about 150 of them I had worked with, 50-60 would pass the beer test, and maybe 25 I would recognize.

Meanwhile LinkedIn has pretty much become a business-oriented spammy Facebook, so I deleted my account.

Is GitHub the best place to show off my skills / hold a resume, or are there any other worthy alternatives which haven't just become Facebook clones?

62 comments

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necovek
My LinkedIn account has ~250 connections, all of which I either worked with or at least have been at the same company at the same time. I'd still struggle to recognize many of them but I think that's mostly due to working with most of them remotely.

My approach: do not accept random people without an introductory message, including recruiters, keep my profile visible only 2 levels deep, and clean up recruiters which I ended up not doing anything with.

Result: only a few dozen or so messages every month, most of them relevant, even if I am not interested (probably only a third with unrelated stuff).

jstx1
The best alternative is LinkedIn that you use with some restraint instead of connecting to thousands of people and opening up your profile and email to absolutely everyone.

Outside of that you probably won't find many alternatives because the large social network is the whole point - the value proposition of LinkedIn is that it's the one place where everyone goes to search for jobs and employees. A less well-known platform can't give you the same benefits by definition.

codingdave
I have 200 connections, all of whom are either people I have worked with and would be happy to catch up with and work with again, or recruiters whom I have spoken directly to that are active in my area and have legit jobs to share. It has connected to me to both permanent jobs, and contract gigs.

If you just spam connect to thousands of strangers, of course it won't be useful to you. It isn't a site to build a portfolio and show off skills, it is a site that can be used every few years to reconnect with old contacts when you are seeking work.

qwerty456127
All social networks which expose your real life suck and I hope they are just a long-living fad which will go away occasionally.
oliverjudge
I've moved over to Polywork. Which has a bit more of a tongue in cheek feel, but definitely feels better thank Linked in does, with a better community.

Invite link for the curious https://www.polywork.com/invite/olliejudge-hypno

dairyleia
How many "connections"/friends do you have on there, considering you have to join a waitlist?
aloisdg
"Wow, looks like Ollie's looking out for you... but they're out of invites. Sign up for the waitlist today "
oliverjudge
I only had 10, sorry looks like they've all been taken.
new_guy
What a weird way to lose business.

They get mentioned in a random HN comment, they'd potentially get a few hundred new members but it's impossible to sign up so everyone moves on and in a few minutes will forget that site even exists.

Aeolun
Cue the founder showing up here in a few hours with unlimited invites when it is already too late.
shantnutiwari
I created an account, not sure what its about. Another form of Twitter?

Another account that will not be used for more than a day...

hurls87
Why would you accept 6,000 connections of mostly people you don't know and complain about it?
yonixw
In some of my circles, it is considered rude to reject a LinkedIn connection. Probably came from the same mindset that you shouldn't miss any business opportunity. Which is what the OP hoped for, but instead found out that spam exists in every industry.

My suggestion would be to open a new LinkedIn. But, this time, filter heavy just like anyone would have done on Email.

sys_64738
Then don't reject them but ignore them like most do.
the-dude
It reminds me of something else : older people seem to feel obliged to answer the phone ( and the door ).
aargh_aargh
TIL: I'm officially old
asah
Android has one click "I'll call you back" and "text me" sms replies.
mosselman
> older people seem to feel obliged to answer the phone

Haha I don't know if the generalisation holds true, but one time me and my daughter were Skyping with my mother and my mother's phone rings and she picks it up and starts talking, we found it rude so after a minute or two (my daughter was doing a puzzle) I told her to just close the laptop.

My mother never did it again while Skyping, but she still feels a strong need to answer ringing phones.

I don't really feel obliged to open the door for people who ring the bell, but I would find it rude if they could see me ignoring them. I do close the door again pretty freely if someone tries to sell me something at the door.

So what am I? Half old?

nautilius
Half old could be a sound diagnosis, I have the same symptoms.
the-dude
What percentage of times you feel happy you answered the door?
mosselman
More than 80%, I get a lot of packages. Also, when there are sales people, I enjoy interrupting them and telling them I have better things to do. It makes me feel in control or something. So I guess I can go up to even 95%

Also, I think I should also think about what percentage of times I wouldn't feel happy answering the door and split it up in:

- % of times I have to go to the neighbours because I ignored the postman: 0% happy probably. Pretty rude to the neighbours to delegate my door opening to them

- % for when the person knows I am home and I ignore them: probably >10% happy in those cases depending on the person of course

- % for when the person doesn't know I am actually home: probably >50% happy then because of the paranoia of being discovered/having to sneak around/diving behind the couch and sneaking up stairs

All in all it feels like an awful amount of trouble to behave like a child. If you want to prevent having to behave like an adult, you'd be better off playing with DUPLO, which is great fun as well! "What percentage of times you feel happy you played with DUPLO?" probably 100%.

the-dude
I live on the second floor. If I am not expecting anything ( delivery, somebody with an appointment ) I am not answering the door.

No drama.

danuker
> feel obliged to answer the phone

I did this for a long time, then made a friend who would regularly keep me on the phone for more than half an hour.

I sometimes reject his calls now (but usually follow up with a message).

hurls87
Might be rude if you know them. Missed business opportunity or the need to feel wanted?
tomduncalf
In the (excellent) Tech Resume Inside Out book [1], the author mentions that when recruiters perform a search on LinkedIn, you will be ranked higher if you are more closely connected to the recruiter (e.g. you are one degree of connection away), so in this sense it might make sense to accept every request, if you don't care about the actual newsfeed etc. Could do with a "Accept but don't show posts from this person" option, mine is super spammy and I'd never dream of using it as a social network because of this, but I still think it's a good way to make yourself discoverable.

[1] https://thetechresume.com/

K5EiS
Remove your 6000 connections except the people you actually know. Linkedin is what you make it, and you have made yours like Facebook.
hliyan
Agreed. I only accept people from my own industry, and whenever I see more than two professionally irrelevant or just plain annoying posts from a connection, I just unfollow that connection. My feed looks fairly informative. I've disabled Facebook because it was impossible to do that effectively on FB.
aikinai
Why can’t you do that on Facebook? That’s what I do and it worked great. Whenever I log in, there are only updates from people that post actual life updates that I likely care about. I’ve unfollowed everyone else and Facebook respects that. My feed is normally only a page or two long and then they’re honest “that’s all for now.”
AzzieElbab
LinkedIn is for recruiters not job seekers
K5EiS
Is it though? No recruiters would use the site if there were no job seekers.
mohanmcgeek
Not really.

LinkedIn shows random posts with 2k+ engagement unrelated to your connections and they are the cringiest post that end with "agree?"

K5EiS
Looking at my feed i only see posts my connections like (although these are often cringy posts) and pages i follow. I do use an adblocker, so perhaps the random posts you see are promoted posts?
mohanmcgeek
I don't think so.

These are just popular posts from "influencers"

codegeek
I actually accept invites randomly at times if the profile looks interesting. But I also cull the list once every 2-3 months. If an unknown contact didn't add any value after initial connection, I remove them from my connection.
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AlchemistCamp
I deleted LinkedIn about a year ago when they made it impossible to use without adding a location to my profile. My contacts were all people I either had worked with, knew in person, or knew online.

The reduction in email spam was noticable.

Even better, the types of professional opportunities I actually find compelling hasn't decreased at all. Only the garbage outreach from people who want to put me into the beginning of lengthy hiring funnels for the wrong jobs has.

moralestapia
LinkedIn for job hunting sucks, I guess. I use it for networking and for cold contacting that I don't know. For me, it does it job well.
shafyy
I've deleted my LinkedIn for similar reasons years ago and never looked back. My alternative is email for strictly professional relationships, Signal / calling / texting for friends.
nikivi
I used and loved https://otta.com. It's ways better than LinkedIn although Otta is only London focused right now.
lopatin
If your intention is to show off your skills and network, you're doing yourself a disservice by deleting your LinkedIn on the basis of it being "spammy like Facebook".

LinkedIn's value isn't in it's website or app, it's the fact that you, your mother, your boss, and your boss's boss all have a profile too.

If you don't want to get spammed by people in your network who treat it like a business-oriented Facebook, mute/delete them. If you don't want to receive recruiter spam, I think there's a setting for that too.

TLDR: There are no good LinkedIn alternatives

anothernewdude
You don't need one. The problem of finding a job is a search problem, not a social network one.
fecak
It really depends what you use LinkedIn for.

Discovery: You say you had lots of incoming messages from recruiters but few of any use, so it sounds like you may have interest in discovery (being found by recruiters for opportunities). Unfortunately, LinkedIn is pretty much the standard and there aren't many other places recruiter can go to find candidates en masse. Angel.co is perhaps the closest thing I've seen there.

Resume - If you want to post a resume somewhere that you can quickly send a link to someone looking for it, you could of course use GitHub or any number of other options like a personal website on any platform like Angel.

Contact storage (Rolodex) - You said you had 6K connections, which is a huge number compared to most. It doesn't necessarily matter how many of them you actually knew - what matters more (it seems anyway) is how many of the 6K would be useful to you depending on what you wanted to do. If you want to find a job, or if you wanted to hire someone (which is another reason people use LinkedIn), putting out a message that has the potential to reach 6K people is pretty powerful.

Brand building - Some people use LinkedIn as a publishing method to build some kind of brand or reputation, and either publish material direct to LinkedIn or link material off the site. The competitors for that would probably be social media sites or blogging.

cpach
Spot on.

I’ll add to that: Networking / making connections. IMHO, that kind of stuff probably doesn’t happen so much on LinkedIn. Better venues are probably local meetups (see meetup.com) or good old conferences.

benjaminwootton
I invested about a decade in my LinkedIn profile, putting stacks of reasonably high quality posts and articles on there. I got up to around 20k fairly organic connections/followers. The content was good too. All in all it was a big part of my career and business.

About 2 years ago I really started to feel that LinkedIn jumped the shark. The (left leaning) virtue signalling, constant boasting, aggressive sales just destroyed the signal to noise ratio and it felt like a time sink. Their algorithm also became very unpredictable in terms of reach of your content.

I ended up putting the profile in the bin, and will concentrate on other platforms. I think YouTube in particular is still early for B2B content in the grand scheme of things.

pickle-wizard
It is funny you notice a lot of left leaning virtue signaling. I notice a lot of right leaning virtue signaling.

I'm going to guess that the geographic differences of our connections are likely the main difference there.

softwaredoug
LinkedIn is one of my favorite social networks

- it’s got a clear purpose (business networking)

- it’s the new defacto resume

- it’s the new business card

- people frequently share only professional interests and don’t share political news

The thing is, I’m not sure, unless you’re actively networking, why you would even log in. Just keep it dormant until you need a job or to grow your network.

gmuslera
It used to be a lot of those things. For me it's still an extended business card/resume, but the part of being just business networking and professional interests had been a bit deprecated.

It may depend on your profile, but I get a lot of contact spam (just to have more followers), headhunters messages, motivational or other kinds of non exactly professional interest posts because contacts of contacts or just "promoted" content, and that is after being very selective on who you are connected to and muting/disconnecting the noisiest contacts.

I can't put a finger on who's responsible, the users community as a whole or how it is built/promoted, but the end result is having too much noise and not enough signal.

sdevonoes
I do have a Linkedin account and I use it for 2 things:

- occasionally search for jobs

- add my colleagues as connections

I never:

- read posts

- give likes

- share, follow, post anything

- enable notifications

It works great!

stunt
Just don't use the features that you don't like (e.g. the feed) and don't accept random connections. I only accept my colleagues and no one else, even the recruiters.

Keep your profile, and update your status when you want to look for a job. That's the only feature you need from LinkedIn.