Delete LinkedIn – you'll have zero fucking regrets (2021) (thenextweb.com)

(2021)

and if you have a network and if you do delete LinkedIn,

yes you will regret it.

Don’t do it. I get tons of work opportunity outreach on LI. Maybe you don’t, but it doesn’t hurt to put your shingle out.

To this day I don't know why people tolerate that garbage platform.

There is not a social media platform I have regretted leaving.

> I spent the day receiving over 500 (!) birthday greetings from LinkedIn contacts, whose names and faces I didn’t even recognize, who had clicked on a notification prompt

From the above, it appears that the harm is self-inflicted. Why would one have 500+ contacts who she does not recognize? Linkedin is a tool and every tool can be misused. My contact list is under 200 and those are the people I enjoyed working with and would not hesitate to ping if needed

I don't have LinkedIn. But I'd consider creating an account if I was to leave my current job. I'm told it's a good way to get work, though I'm sure like all other social media it's 99% full of shit.

I don't know, if it wasn't for Linkedin I wouldn't be in my current job of almost ten years.

On a totally unrelated note if you're looking for someone who can blacksmith up something that approximates a web frontend to a DB or some audio DSP code or some embedded code for various microcontrollers, or actually blacksmith stuff up with hammers and a welder, I'm putting out feelers for a new gig. Network engineer, jobbing mathematician, and database mangler, open to offers.

I won't link it here, because... but the author has an active LinkedIn profile.

So there's that.

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So I did this, straight up deleted my account with all my connections. I eventually came crawling back years later. It's crazy to me, I had an interview with a CISO a few weeks ago and he was critiquing my profile. I told him: dude I consider LinkedIn to be a complete joke and its sole purpose it serves for me is job acquisition. The emotional investment people have in that platform is weeeird. The ThOuGhT LeAdErShIp posts are insane.

When recruiting, LinkedIn is useful for three things for me: 1. Propagating the job ad 2. Verifying that an applicant is real (profile picture, network, work history, etc.). I’m seeing more and more fake applications lately. 3. Letting candidates apply with just a LinkedIn URL (when they keep it reasonably up to date)

None of this is really about social networking.

Ideally, I’d much rather have a universal résumé platform with proper ID verification, and separately a job board with reach comparable to LinkedIn.

Until something like that exists, deleting LinkedIn mostly means candidates lose out on discovering jobs and applying quickly to them.

Having a relatively new LinkedIn account now is probably a very bad move if you don't have an established network to reach out to for jobs. There are tons of AI generated profiles flooding every job post (particularly remote) from scammers who create new LinkedIn profiles. It's one of the most frequent signs of a fake submission.

I had a whole pile of recommendations from people on LinkedIn - only one of whom I had ever worked with and the rest were from people who knew me socially, but otherwise had little or no knowledge of what I actually do.

My only regret is I get more spam about 'found you on linkedin' than before I deleted my account.

My current job cold contacted me via LinkedIn. I use LI minimally, basically only to establish connections with my network, and it already gave me huge value back.

I did in 2022 and never looked back

It wouldn't be as bad if everyone wasn't trying to turn into a business microinfluencer with constantly upbeat posts not really adding anything of value and "What I messy divorce taught me about B2B synergy"

As much as I am aware of how much low value, bottom-of-the-barrel shit flows via LinkedIn - my connections, and the resulting feed, are well curated, and I actually enjoy using LI and for me it's become a genuinely useful news feed for my industry, and in terms of getting work, it's great.

But, shit in, shit out.

I don't believe in LI "reach" because I don't post for reach - I post for meaningful reactions and exchanges of opinions, and my connections are strictly limited to people I physically did work with or have met, and I screen my connections to weed out any nutters I wouldn't want to associate myself with. It works wonders.

So no, I'm not deleting my LinkedIn, but the author perhaps should ;)

Any aspiring startup founders should ignore this terrible advice.

Or just delete the app and log in once a year or whenever you’re job seeking?

I will say I agree that the platform is mostly spam and has definitely gotten worse sense 2021 when the article was written. But you can just not log in everyday and still have a profile. Also no reason to put your birthday on a social network IMO and you can reject requests for connections if you don’t know someone.

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I don't see how people use social media apps with notifications turned on.

I just disable all notifications and it doesn't bother me to have LinkedIn because I only open it when I feel like it. Same with Facebook, etc.

Incredibly, the default is always for notifications to be enabled, and I don't know how people live like that.

When did we start referring to social media platforms like this? “Delete LinkedIn” should be “delete your LinkedIn account.” There’s also things like, “do you have Instagram?” I have an account, but I don’t have the whole company. I’m probably just too old.