Ask HN: Do you use LinkedIn and are active on it?

It's a directory not a social media platform.

All the spam and social media content is not a concern because: I disable linkedin notifications, so no alerts, no emails, no nothing. I use it when I need it. If someone writes me there, I’ll know when I visit the website (twice per month or so). I don’t use the app.

As far as the downsides - nothing is forcing you to read anything on the site, so that is an easily avoided problem. I find cold messaging to be a good thing - ignore it if you are not looking, reply with your desired role if you are looking. Data privacy is a valid concern, so only post the public information you want people to have to find jobs.

So sure, if you try to use it as social media it is problematic. If you think of it as a directory to let recruiters know when you want work, it works just fine. Just don't make it anything more than it really is.

The content is useless unless you are into reading business and self help books. Nothing wrong with it, but learning about whatever is “humbling” people is meaningless to me.

The feeds have become really terrible. This wasn't always the case. Before, a lot more weight was given to posts from people you were connected to, vs. the weight given to their overall engagement. This offered two kinds of value: One, you were more likely to keep updated on what's happening within a professional niche (assuming lots of your connections were in that niche too.) Two, your own writing would be shown mostly to people in your business niche, which helped foster trust.

I've formed a lot of useful connections this way. A lot of client relationships, past and present, started out this way. A bunch of people helped me in a bunch of ways (intros, advice) because they felt I was a real person, not a rando profile image.

That's mostly gone now. A useful post is now so rare, and the rest is "engagement" fodder. Eventually, I turned off the feed, and that's how it stays most of the time. (I installed an extension someone once posted about here.)

The chat feature, which was always really powerful, is still there. But it used to be that the flow was written insights -> chat -> in person/Zoom. Without that slower process of getting acquainted, the connecting itself has less potential to become really useful.

I posted a few articles years back. I no longer do really but do when I get/refresh a cert or change jobs.

I look at jobs when they pop in through messages or job alerts that look interesting. Always be open to that.

I do not however log on everyday and consume what others are posting. Low return and mostly find they’re self serving posts.

Use it for it’s strengths

Deleting it had no effect on my career or ability to find and get work. I'm really glad that I did it.

It's perfectly possible not to use it, but it's been pretty helpful for me over the years.

Most notifications from LinkedIn never reach my inbox, though.

Anyone who reads this though please don't do this. You need to have a Linkedin profile to get a job and it needs to be tailored with language so specific to your industry that anyone outside your industry has no idea what it actually is talking about or what you actually got paid to do. If you don't do this you are a missing out.

I do fairly well just posting about the problems I’m working on and the puzzles I’m trying to solve.

One thing to note, I never updated my profile to have that "open to work" banner. My other coworkers who were laid off at the same time still seem to be job hunting.

I created a LinkedIn for my most recent job to repost ads for the company.

Now that I am no longer employed by them, I have deleted the account again.

Reason: I just don't care about social networks. I don't like their business model, or their addictiveness.

LinkedIn was funny in a way, because toxic and sarcastic positivity are indistinguishable from a distance.

When I first switched careers to tech, I got some great LinkedIn advice: You don't have to like it, but you should know how to use it.

Whole platform seems like a bit of a parody of itself to be honest.

Every technical person I know building a company is active on LinkedIn and most technical people I know employed at FAANGs are active on LinkedIn.

Every event I go to in SF has people trading LinkedIn or Twitter.

I myself have had multiple previous job opportunities through LinkedIn and still get high quality job opportunities through it regularly.

Maybe that's most of humanity and I'm not their target market and that's fine. I just find it an absolute pain because there's no one way to summarize what I did in past roles that is universally clear to all the roles I might be considering that I have the requisite skillset.