How would you validate the resumes? The power of LinkedIn is in the trust it establishes. Granted I still have a lot of validation to do before hiring/doing business with someone, but Linkedin is a great first filter. I know for software engineers, Github could be a better filter, but it's just a very small segment in the world of business.
I've never seen this done. I'd love examples for companies. Social media often augments folks, but I've never seen someone rejected for not having a LinkedIn.
A company I worked for started outsourcing a lot of its work to a certain Asian country last year. One of the issues we had when trying to recruit people is that they will just blatantly lie about their experience on their CV. Asking for a GitHub profile was an easy way to backup their claims, with minimal time wasted on my side - at least until they cotton on and start putting fake projects there.
(Admitidely trying to outsource work just to save money was dumb, but it wasn't my decision, so I had to make do)
"The power of LinkedIn is in the trust it establishes."
I feel the complete opposite way. I've had people claim I know PHP on my profile when I've never used PHP in my life. That's endorse stuff is major baloney. How can you trust that when anybody can just click Endorse for whatever they want?
> I know for software engineers, Github could be a better filter
For some engineers. There are many, many excellent developers who don't spend much time on Github. John Carmack doesn't even have an account, for example...
I've built a small tool to aggregate profiles together and I use it for my hiring. It builds a profile that is a bit more useful than LI. http://ars.io
One of LinkedIn strength is related to accessing your network though. Being able to have a sense of who does what and when is the only reason why I'm sill on their site. Any plan to have something similar?
It appears to me that LinkedIn is splitting their API into separate categories (Profile API, Company API, etc)
Going forward everyone will have to register and be approved in only 1 of the categories, meaning that if you are in the Company API, you won't be able to utilize features of the Profile API.
I don't know exactly what that means as far as specific features, but my guess is that if you're a company you won't be able to access personal profiles and feeds. I could be totally wrong about this but that's what it looks like.
But I wonder, is LinkedIn really "the" way to connect professionally? My personal bit of anecdotal experience is that it isn't for me. I was on LinkedIn for maybe 15 years? I accepted everyone on LinkedIn (I was not discriminating at all). And in that 15 years, I never found one job through it. Right now in Seattle (where I've been for 10 years), I go through my "people I drink beer with" network.
What I'd love to see is a network that would introduce me to people in other cities. I want to move to NYC, but I know no one there. So I don't know the good vs. bad neighborhoods, companies to stay away from (you know there is a list), etc.
Similarly, I've been using it for 15 years. While I don't get jobs from recruiters either, I use it to keep connected to former colleagues even as they change jobs, email addresses, marriages and inter-state moves. This network gets me work.
Ditto. LinkedIn is a self-updating Rolodex for me and it's useful for that. Plaxo sure wasn't any better and I do like having a service of this basic type.
I basically don't use it for anything else and generally ignore emails that they send me. (And only accept connection requests from those who I--within 5 seconds or so--see some reason to connect with. If I don't recognize your name or your company doesn't imply some good reason to connect, I'm ignoring you if you send me a canned request.)
I'm a Linux Sysadmin/Automation Engineer/"devops guru". My last 3 jobs (each better than the last) all came from recruiters finding me on LinkedIn.
2 years ago I was trying to move upwards in my career path. I had a good job, but boring and I could go weeks with doing almost no work. I was simultaneously considered a valuable employee while actually operating as fluff. I decided to move into the world of configuration management and "devops". I spent a few months implementing puppet in our lab and in a few places. Then I updated my Linked with puppet experience. A few months later, I got an offer at a local university that was implementing Puppet. I figured I would work there a year and get really solid Puppet Experience. I worked there about 3 months, got much better with puppet, but hated the place. I updated my LinkedIn resume again with my additional Puppet experience (all my responsibilities at the new job were puppet/automation related). I instantly started getting calls. Then I landed an awesome job with a large service company. I loved that job, hated the commute. I wasn't even looking but as I updated my resume, I started getting recruiters from Facebook, Netflix, Google, and finally a work-from-home one from EMC that I jumped on.
That was clear enough, and it was kind of sad; this is for many users a non-issue, so parodying the response to a surprise act of war seems a bit grandiose.
As a user, I'm not terribly concerned about whether you (et al.) can build an application against some other site more easily, and your argument
> only works if that platform is open and your data portable
is undermined by your own link to their article on exporting data. ("Full name, email address, current employer, and position are exported") Can you help me understand why this is such a problem?
Articulate your anger more clearly. And if you're making a historical reference, make sure people get the gist of it even if they don't get the reference
I'm actually partially responsible for this. I actually designed that product at LinkedIn.
There are some people who need to stay anonymous for various reasons including lawyers, M&A people, etc. The setting for how you show up in other people's who viewed your profile is controlled by the individual user. It is a privacy thing.
The messaging when upgrading used to be much more clear - you would get to see more people who viewed you as opposed to just the last few - not de-anonymize people. They seem to have made it more ambiguous since I left.
I have the "anonymous" mode enabled on Linkedin. I do this for the same reason I am using a throwaway HN account, and - if I may presume - for the same reason you didn't put full name in your HN profile:
When I'm casually browsing around I don't want to think and worry about what the reaction might be to my name popping up everywhere.
* get connection request
* reset password
* log in
* accept connection
* log out
* do not think about linkedin again until the next connection request.
* get connection request
* open mobile browser
* switch to "request desktop page" mode
* log in
* accept connection
* log out
* do not think about linkedin again until the next connection request.
can't understand why do they block the browser from using the remembered password on mobile!
The default setting is that when you view someone's profile, it tells them who you are. I turned this off, as I would love to be able to browse without notifying every profile I go to.
Twitter should be on the list of alternatives. I have found twitter to be a more valuable professional tool than LinkedIn (though I doubt my experience is like others).
LinkedIn, like Twitter, is limiting API usage to specific use cases that dovetail with LinkedIn's own apps, instead of competing with them. The restrictions were imposed yesterday. The authors of this manifesto think that's a bad thing, but they don't give me, the reader, any more information.
Why is it a bad thing?
What cool stuff am I missing by using LinkedIn and its restrictive API?
I wonder if it has to do with the MASSIVE amount of head hunter spam that we may get from LinkedIn. Maybe they actually restrict its access for the Greater Good?
That spam IS the LinkedIn business model and it's not coming from 3rd party apps that have access to the API - it's coming from LinkedIn's main site and the (premium) features they offer.
Making potentially baseless claims and not explaining their impact beyond "they're bad!" is the kind of rhetoric a middle schooler uses before he or she learns to write proper persuasive prose.
While I agree that data should be as freely available as possible--so long as the person to whom the data belongs approves--I really can't get on board with this histrionic garbage.
Make an assertion. Back it up with evidence. Explain the consequences.
What did you tweak? I'm not a technical person so don't understand why those specific use-cases are bad. If you want the majority of Linkedin users to care about the cause, you ought to put it in language that the vast, non-technical majority will understand.
ResearchGate as a replacement for LinkedIn, on account of LinkedIn's spammy tactics? I can only hope this was meant in jest; if so: well-played, friend, well-played indeed. ResearchGate has taken dark marketing into the realm of high art.
I think the other question is: Will all of the alternatives presented guarantee they won't pull the same stunt? Is there legalese to this affect? Or are the suggestions basically "use these guys and hope they don't do the same thing" in which case, you are in the same boat as before.
I've dealt with vendors in other situations who felt they had a right to free and open access to the Mother Ship, even when they were competing with it. You can't get around that mindset. The only reason to be angry is when the Mothership makes explicit promises that it backs away from. And given how many platforms bring things in to control the user experience (even AirBnB is taking more ownership of the total experience) this shouldn't come as a surprise to the small players.
I actually couldn't tell if it was intended to be a joke, a trolling, or perhaps the rantings of a lunatic. Putting in stuff like "federated bodies of the internet" and the "empire of LinkedIn" makes it seem like it's supposed to be a gag.
If this site is supposed to be serious, they should perhaps remove the superfluous text and add some actual information about what LinkedIn is doing (aside from just linking to the image of the terms of service notification).
--EDIT-- I see that this is a re-wording of FDR's infamy speech which explains the text. I still can't tell if it's a joke or not though.
It would be helpful to have real-world examples of who is losing out due to this and why...beyond the entire free peoples of the internet (some of whom I'm sure do not use linked in).
Hmm. Interesting if this decision was ultimately responsible for Twitter's declining traffic. Perhaps the same will happen to Linkedin? Of course even if it does we won't have evidence of causation, but it's something to keep in the back of our minds.
>Stop using Linkedin
>Here is a list of 16 sites where you need to be registered at teh same time to have an access to the same audience as on linkedin
So I should stop using LinkedIn because they're restricting the amount of access that third parties have to my data?
As I see it, the only thing worse than LinkedIn spamming me based on my employment history is other companies spamming me based on my LinkedIn employment history.
There's many reasons to stop using LinkedIn, but this doesn't seem like one.
Linkedin has been known to shut down competing services prior to this. At hired.com, our API access was revoked (a long while ago), and many of our users were no longer able to login.
you guys rejected me as a customer even though my team is building data science stuff on open source technologies, because my employer does translation which is "a competing staffing service".
Likewise with us. Hypocritical to claim that Linkedin takes anti-competitive practices when Hired.com employs similar tactics. At least Linkedin still allows competitors to have Linkedin profiles.
API issues aside, I recently deleted my LinkedIn account and my life has been better off for it. My recruiter spam volume dropped from daily emails to maybe two or three times a month. I'm not sure if LinkedIn provides any value, I've never gotten a job that way.
I think stalking people on social networks is also a net negative experience. I realized I should spend less time worrying about what other people are doing with their lives and focus more on my own.
There was also a recent NY Times article about how employers use LinkedIn candidates contacts to disqualify them for employment[1]. So LinkedIn can actually be detrimental to your career.
I just don't think LinkedIn adds anything. Businesses and recruiters use it to get your email to target you for spam. But what do you get out of it and think, if there wasn't a LinkedIn would you be out of a job right now?
Agreed with all of your points, but I'd like to add that your employment history is very personal and can quite often be used against you in ways you wouldn't imagine ahead of time.
Just like any personal information, its best to keep it as private as possible and default to a "need to know" basis. The era of naively optimistic voluntary sharing of sensitive personal information ended when we saw the potential consequences.
Potential employers want to know where you worked? They can ask you themselves. I'd also like to know who the board members are playing golf with, what their future capitalization plans are and if/when they plan on jumping ship. Too bad none of that will ever be shared with me. So why should I share intimate details of my past?
Information asymmetry is power in the modern world. It is foolish to relinquish it voluntarily.
As someone who is looking for work and finds nearly all of it through LinkedIn, canceling my account is not something I can afford to do at this time. As much as I empathize with the Open Web mission, opting out of LI is the privilege of happily employed developers.
Sorry for my shameless plug here but we are developing a LinkedIn alternative for Developer, it's called devolio.net[1] and we will launch open beta in March. We will support the open jsonresume.org formats and unrestricted profile viewing experience (no sign in walls) . Plus we are just focusing on developers, so it has no annoying fake business people.
Dear programmers, if you are using linkedin you are doing it wrong. Use github, careers.stackoverflow, a plain html resume page, the ladders, and basically anything else that is not linkedin to showcase your skillset.
Oh I don't know... how about keeping track of former co-workers, people you meet at networking events, and other professional connections? How about finding useful interesting industry or topic specific news and discussion via groups? Or if you are job-hunting, for finding a path to somebody who works at the company you're targeting, so you can try to get an inside testimonial? Or getting a warm intro when trying to contact VC's or Angel investors? Or perhaps for looking up an individual before meeting them in a professional setting, so you have some background on their experience / interests / etc? I mean, really, there are a million ways that LinkedIn is useful. The fact that they suck in so many other ways is pretty much orthogonal.
Yeah, I think we'd all prefer a site like LinkedIn that somehow manages to avoid "recruiter spam" and all that, but for me personally, I can tolerate a little recruiter spam... and hell, every once in a while I get something like that, that is actually interesting enough to pursue.
I don't think you're a programmer or maybe you were but are now at a higher level. My advice was more for practicing programmers than others. I personally get zero value out of linkedin. All the people I consider professional equals can be found on mailing lists, blogs, weekly digests, stackoverflow, meetups, etc. Keeping track of them is quite easy and I don't need a third party in that process that just spams me.
Just because you get no value out of LinkedIn, doesn't mean other programmers don't.
I get useful information about available jobs in my segment of the industry because LinkedIn knows what kind of work I do as opposed to just "he's a programmer." The recruiters who contact me from LinkedIn are looking for people in a specific domain, as opposed to "knows language X and framework Y." I consider that to be a hell of a lot more useful than the usual email job spam.
I also get to see if I know someone who knows someone else that I might want to be introduced to. It's a lot harder to do this on your own without a stack of cross referenced rolodexes.
Oh I'm definitely a programmer... but I do more than just program, yes. I have a startup I've been working on for a while, and I consider networking an essential activity... and LinkedIn has been a valuable resource in that regard.
That said, I think LI has value even if you're not interested in founding a startup or whatever. I mean, I'd rather keep a (more or less) master "rolodex" of people I know and have some connection to, on LinkedIn, than have to spend all sorts of time trawling through old email lists, Quora, Meetup, SO, etc., just to find somebody's info. But that's just me.
It indeed is just you. I don't know how you're going to find anyone worthwhile if all you do is keep everything restricted to linkedin. I've met plenty of awesome people at meetups, conferences, etc. that don't have a linkedin profile and maintain control of their own web presence. A simple bookmark and an email contact list is not much of a burden to keep track of such people in my opinion.
Now you are projecting otherness to people who do things differently than you. "Being a programmer" is not some weird club where everyone needs to behave exactly the same. Bytes and algorithms have zero tribal affinity, you know.
And you are misinterpreting everything I say and not even trying to address any of the points that are made in the original post and my subsequent comments.
To get things back on track here are the points. Cultivating a professional network does not require mediating parties like linkedin and can be accomplished by more decentralized and democratic means that lets each professional maintain control over their own digital presence. Linkedin does not do that and in fact diminishes everyones' ability to do so and therefore it is a bad trade-off to make in the long term since I've already outlined several other ways of cultivating professional connections that are just as easy as keeping everything in linkedin.
"All the people I consider professional equals can be found on mailing lists, blogs, weekly digests, stackoverflow, meetups,"
You have cultivated other networking channels. Great! But I would like to point out to you that now you make the basic cognitive fallacy thinking that anyone who is not doing it "your way" is doing it wrong.
They are indeed doing it wrong if the outcome is a company like linkedin. As technology professionals we can and should be doing much better but instead we are cultivating digital silos that add very little value.
I have opted out and nothing about my professional career has diminished so there is an alternative approach that requires nothing like linkedin. Since I'm a counter-example to all the claims your making and my way obviously leads to a more decentralized and democratic approach to professional development I don't really understand the continued support of digital silos like linkedin from people like you.
The claim that they are a digital rolodex is a very weak one since an email contact list serves that purpose just as easily. I'm starting to suspect you are PR spokesperson for linkedin.
Sorry, we are getting off track here. I apologize for my tone if it aggrieves you. It is obvious we have different values and considerations. No-one is a true scotsman I suppose :)
As I stated the main value proposition of LinkedIn for me is that most of my connections are there.
Replacing the said connections would require work and time, which I would rather spend on other things. The problem with an email list is that there is no automatic update if the email address changes. Therefore, changing to a email list would lead to a poorer result for me.
I prefer introversion to extroversion. Going out to meetings would therefore be a) mentally exhausting b) take time. The former is doable but the latter is really hard to come by with a 9-5 job and kids.
Now, as to the proposition of spending my energies trying to invent an open competitor to LinkedIn... Building communities takes a huge effort and seems to happen mostly by chance. Also, while being a technology professional my core skillset is in CAD and maths and I'm clueless when it comes to web technologies.
So, in order to do a fancy LinkedIn replacement would require a) time to improve on my web skills, which is really wasteful considering lots of people are good at it already, b) create the product c) move all my dear colleagues to the new network.
The last parts are actually the hardest, I have no idea how to build social sites or how to motivate people.
So, to rephrase why I use LinkedIn: It currently provides me value, and I do not see sufficient benefit to spend time changing mine and my colleagues habits when it comes to networking. Most things in life are morally ambiguous and all one can do is to try to do more good than harm within ones limits. Sometimes all an individual can do is go with the flow.
People have different internal motivations. Mine run completely against social things. I prefer to twiddle on algorithms, draw, play the guitar and play with my kids. I use the social frameworks that exist because I see the value they provide but have no energy to change them nor am I motivated to design alternatives to them.
Yeah, middle age, definetly :)
Most peoples are not motivated by ambiguous "this is evil because..." arguments. Most behavioural changes are best driven by positive motivators - one cannot drive people away from anything by saying "the thing is evil". Eating meat is evil and still people do it, including me. What needs to be done is to provide better alternatives that wean people away from option a) (the evil) to option b) over time.
Dear fellow, if you - Oh, screw with the wordplay. I use Linkedin as a friendly reminder of who I know and how they are positioned careerwise. I'm pretty sure in case I need a new job I can contact the people I know and something will turn up. People who know me professionally respect my skills and I don't need to flaunt them around github or anywhere else.
I'm sorry, but it's just not about skills but who one knows and Linkedin is a really handy rolodex.
Rather than write stuff to Github, a much better advice to build career is to do a good job at ones current gig and co-operate and respect your colleagues. Those are the references one needs to get a job. Not a random github account with yet another blog engine. Unless the repo is really astoundingly good and usefull and called 'Clojure' or in that caliber.
Just like in startup scene, small time players like individual engineers want to target a niche. The easiest niche to reach are ones colleagues. And I don't mean this in a sociopathic sense,just that be professional, be good at what you do, don't be a dick and remember the people you work with will be around for a long time to come.
Like I said: the main feature of LinkedIn is a contact list of known people who I can approach easily.
To rephrase:
LinkedIn is a professional tool. The revenue model which makes Facebook a bit creepy (sell the contact info of the users to the world) is actually, in professional context a feature. LinkedIn helps its users maintain a professional brand and market it to other professionals. The difference is between an olde phonebook that would also contain info on all the personal details and the yellow pages.
Typically, professional indices have charged for inclusion. Linkedin provides the minimum feature set for free.
If one does not have any contacts in LinkedIn then the value of the service of course drops to near zero for the individual professional user.
I think we're talking past each other here. There are many programmers that I could connect to on linkedin but there is no value that linkedin is adding since I also can get in touch with them through email and through friends or friends of friends that I know from other settings like meetups and conferences. The fact that I can do this and that it doesn't even require that much effort means there is some kind of disconnect between how you see linkedin and how I see it.
To me linkedin is just another digital silo capitalizing on the fact that it is de facto middle man between professionals because of network effects. Defending their actions in my opinion is also a very weak position to hold when even someone like me that tends to be on the anti-social side of spectrum has managed to build up a network of professional friends without linkedin's help.
Is anyone really surprised? Ideologically upset? Sure, but we learned this with Twitter and tons of other companies. The APIs are there's to support or pull
I think one of the most frustrating things is hearing how many people seem to dislike LinkedIn, but use it because it's the best thing out there. Most only use it as their online resume, but between recruiter spam messages and constant annoyances from emails and to "keep up to date", they tolerate it at best.
Facebook had similar rumblings (people saying they'd switch off as soon as possible if something better came along), but Google Plus showed us the social costs of switching was higher than the frustration most people felt.
Does LinkedIn have that same social cost of switching to another service? I'm not so sure -- and I think it means they might be more susceptible to falling flat on their face if they push users too far.[1]
[1] This may just be my own hope and bias, since I built a job website of my own.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 245 ms ] threadI.e., I'm sure someone out there does it, but they are dumb.
(Admitidely trying to outsource work just to save money was dumb, but it wasn't my decision, so I had to make do)
I feel the complete opposite way. I've had people claim I know PHP on my profile when I've never used PHP in my life. That's endorse stuff is major baloney. How can you trust that when anybody can just click Endorse for whatever they want?
For some engineers. There are many, many excellent developers who don't spend much time on Github. John Carmack doesn't even have an account, for example...
So, no I don't care either. LinkedIn is THE way to connect professionally. Some API rant is not going to change that.
Going forward everyone will have to register and be approved in only 1 of the categories, meaning that if you are in the Company API, you won't be able to utilize features of the Profile API.
I don't know exactly what that means as far as specific features, but my guess is that if you're a company you won't be able to access personal profiles and feeds. I could be totally wrong about this but that's what it looks like.
But I wonder, is LinkedIn really "the" way to connect professionally? My personal bit of anecdotal experience is that it isn't for me. I was on LinkedIn for maybe 15 years? I accepted everyone on LinkedIn (I was not discriminating at all). And in that 15 years, I never found one job through it. Right now in Seattle (where I've been for 10 years), I go through my "people I drink beer with" network.
What I'd love to see is a network that would introduce me to people in other cities. I want to move to NYC, but I know no one there. So I don't know the good vs. bad neighborhoods, companies to stay away from (you know there is a list), etc.
I basically don't use it for anything else and generally ignore emails that they send me. (And only accept connection requests from those who I--within 5 seconds or so--see some reason to connect with. If I don't recognize your name or your company doesn't imply some good reason to connect, I'm ignoring you if you send me a canned request.)
2 years ago I was trying to move upwards in my career path. I had a good job, but boring and I could go weeks with doing almost no work. I was simultaneously considered a valuable employee while actually operating as fluff. I decided to move into the world of configuration management and "devops". I spent a few months implementing puppet in our lab and in a few places. Then I updated my Linked with puppet experience. A few months later, I got an offer at a local university that was implementing Puppet. I figured I would work there a year and get really solid Puppet Experience. I worked there about 3 months, got much better with puppet, but hated the place. I updated my LinkedIn resume again with my additional Puppet experience (all my responsibilities at the new job were puppet/automation related). I instantly started getting calls. Then I landed an awesome job with a large service company. I loved that job, hated the commute. I wasn't even looking but as I updated my resume, I started getting recruiters from Facebook, Netflix, Google, and finally a work-from-home one from EMC that I jumped on.
As a user, I'm not terribly concerned about whether you (et al.) can build an application against some other site more easily, and your argument
> only works if that platform is open and your data portable
is undermined by your own link to their article on exporting data. ("Full name, email address, current employer, and position are exported") Can you help me understand why this is such a problem?
Articulate your anger more clearly. And if you're making a historical reference, make sure people get the gist of it even if they don't get the reference
There are some people who need to stay anonymous for various reasons including lawyers, M&A people, etc. The setting for how you show up in other people's who viewed your profile is controlled by the individual user. It is a privacy thing.
The messaging when upgrading used to be much more clear - you would get to see more people who viewed you as opposed to just the last few - not de-anonymize people. They seem to have made it more ambiguous since I left.
Someone viewed your profile. Pay to see who.
You show up when you view others' profile. Pay not to.
Someone viewed your profile, but pays to not be visible. Out bid them to see their profile. Pay to actually see who.
You pay not to show up when you view others' profiles, but they pay to still see you. Pay more?
Do you see how this seems deceitful?
When I'm casually browsing around I don't want to think and worry about what the reaction might be to my name popping up everywhere.
I'm going to go see what's involved in deleting my LinkedIn profile, I think. Github should be my resume anyway.
- Get connection request
- Open private tab in firefox
- Temporarily disable noscript blocks for linked-in domains
- Accept the connection
- Close tab, re-enable script blocks
They are way too creepy.
What?
To get the average user to change their behavior, you must show them:
- why doing nothing will be bad for them (try to show how it will impact their daily life)
- why doing what you recommend will be good for them
There are lot of angry people on the internet, the challenge is to make me care.Why is it a bad thing?
What cool stuff am I missing by using LinkedIn and its restrictive API?
Why should I put effort into an alternative?
Making potentially baseless claims and not explaining their impact beyond "they're bad!" is the kind of rhetoric a middle schooler uses before he or she learns to write proper persuasive prose.
While I agree that data should be as freely available as possible--so long as the person to whom the data belongs approves--I really can't get on board with this histrionic garbage.
Make an assertion. Back it up with evidence. Explain the consequences.
LinkedIn competitors - Viadeo (big in Europe, LatAm, Asia) and Xing (big in German-speaking countries).
If this site is supposed to be serious, they should perhaps remove the superfluous text and add some actual information about what LinkedIn is doing (aside from just linking to the image of the terms of service notification).
--EDIT-- I see that this is a re-wording of FDR's infamy speech which explains the text. I still can't tell if it's a joke or not though.
http://www.wired.com/2015/02/linkedin-api/
tl;dr: LinkedIn is pulling a Twitter.
I can't say I'm surprised. It's a common pattern: Step 1: plant a nice open garden that attracts lots of people. Step 2: put wall around garden.
And more details with a clear explanation of why the website wants us to stop using LinkedIn would be appreciative.
As I see it, the only thing worse than LinkedIn spamming me based on my employment history is other companies spamming me based on my LinkedIn employment history.
There's many reasons to stop using LinkedIn, but this doesn't seem like one.
I think stalking people on social networks is also a net negative experience. I realized I should spend less time worrying about what other people are doing with their lives and focus more on my own.
There was also a recent NY Times article about how employers use LinkedIn candidates contacts to disqualify them for employment[1]. So LinkedIn can actually be detrimental to your career.
I just don't think LinkedIn adds anything. Businesses and recruiters use it to get your email to target you for spam. But what do you get out of it and think, if there wasn't a LinkedIn would you be out of a job right now?
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/technology/on-linkedin-a-r...
Just like any personal information, its best to keep it as private as possible and default to a "need to know" basis. The era of naively optimistic voluntary sharing of sensitive personal information ended when we saw the potential consequences.
Potential employers want to know where you worked? They can ask you themselves. I'd also like to know who the board members are playing golf with, what their future capitalization plans are and if/when they plan on jumping ship. Too bad none of that will ever be shared with me. So why should I share intimate details of my past?
Information asymmetry is power in the modern world. It is foolish to relinquish it voluntarily.
And likely favors those who place lots valid information into the world, not those who keep it secret.
[1] https://devolio.net/
Yeah, I think we'd all prefer a site like LinkedIn that somehow manages to avoid "recruiter spam" and all that, but for me personally, I can tolerate a little recruiter spam... and hell, every once in a while I get something like that, that is actually interesting enough to pursue.
I get useful information about available jobs in my segment of the industry because LinkedIn knows what kind of work I do as opposed to just "he's a programmer." The recruiters who contact me from LinkedIn are looking for people in a specific domain, as opposed to "knows language X and framework Y." I consider that to be a hell of a lot more useful than the usual email job spam.
I also get to see if I know someone who knows someone else that I might want to be introduced to. It's a lot harder to do this on your own without a stack of cross referenced rolodexes.
That said, I think LI has value even if you're not interested in founding a startup or whatever. I mean, I'd rather keep a (more or less) master "rolodex" of people I know and have some connection to, on LinkedIn, than have to spend all sorts of time trawling through old email lists, Quora, Meetup, SO, etc., just to find somebody's info. But that's just me.
Now you are projecting otherness to people who do things differently than you. "Being a programmer" is not some weird club where everyone needs to behave exactly the same. Bytes and algorithms have zero tribal affinity, you know.
To get things back on track here are the points. Cultivating a professional network does not require mediating parties like linkedin and can be accomplished by more decentralized and democratic means that lets each professional maintain control over their own digital presence. Linkedin does not do that and in fact diminishes everyones' ability to do so and therefore it is a bad trade-off to make in the long term since I've already outlined several other ways of cultivating professional connections that are just as easy as keeping everything in linkedin.
You have cultivated other networking channels. Great! But I would like to point out to you that now you make the basic cognitive fallacy thinking that anyone who is not doing it "your way" is doing it wrong.
I have opted out and nothing about my professional career has diminished so there is an alternative approach that requires nothing like linkedin. Since I'm a counter-example to all the claims your making and my way obviously leads to a more decentralized and democratic approach to professional development I don't really understand the continued support of digital silos like linkedin from people like you.
The claim that they are a digital rolodex is a very weak one since an email contact list serves that purpose just as easily. I'm starting to suspect you are PR spokesperson for linkedin.
As I stated the main value proposition of LinkedIn for me is that most of my connections are there.
Replacing the said connections would require work and time, which I would rather spend on other things. The problem with an email list is that there is no automatic update if the email address changes. Therefore, changing to a email list would lead to a poorer result for me.
I prefer introversion to extroversion. Going out to meetings would therefore be a) mentally exhausting b) take time. The former is doable but the latter is really hard to come by with a 9-5 job and kids.
Now, as to the proposition of spending my energies trying to invent an open competitor to LinkedIn... Building communities takes a huge effort and seems to happen mostly by chance. Also, while being a technology professional my core skillset is in CAD and maths and I'm clueless when it comes to web technologies.
So, in order to do a fancy LinkedIn replacement would require a) time to improve on my web skills, which is really wasteful considering lots of people are good at it already, b) create the product c) move all my dear colleagues to the new network.
The last parts are actually the hardest, I have no idea how to build social sites or how to motivate people.
So, to rephrase why I use LinkedIn: It currently provides me value, and I do not see sufficient benefit to spend time changing mine and my colleagues habits when it comes to networking. Most things in life are morally ambiguous and all one can do is to try to do more good than harm within ones limits. Sometimes all an individual can do is go with the flow.
People have different internal motivations. Mine run completely against social things. I prefer to twiddle on algorithms, draw, play the guitar and play with my kids. I use the social frameworks that exist because I see the value they provide but have no energy to change them nor am I motivated to design alternatives to them.
Yeah, middle age, definetly :)
Most peoples are not motivated by ambiguous "this is evil because..." arguments. Most behavioural changes are best driven by positive motivators - one cannot drive people away from anything by saying "the thing is evil". Eating meat is evil and still people do it, including me. What needs to be done is to provide better alternatives that wean people away from option a) (the evil) to option b) over time.
I'm sorry, but it's just not about skills but who one knows and Linkedin is a really handy rolodex.
Rather than write stuff to Github, a much better advice to build career is to do a good job at ones current gig and co-operate and respect your colleagues. Those are the references one needs to get a job. Not a random github account with yet another blog engine. Unless the repo is really astoundingly good and usefull and called 'Clojure' or in that caliber.
Just like in startup scene, small time players like individual engineers want to target a niche. The easiest niche to reach are ones colleagues. And I don't mean this in a sociopathic sense,just that be professional, be good at what you do, don't be a dick and remember the people you work with will be around for a long time to come.
Then why do you need to flaunt it on linkedin?
To rephrase:
LinkedIn is a professional tool. The revenue model which makes Facebook a bit creepy (sell the contact info of the users to the world) is actually, in professional context a feature. LinkedIn helps its users maintain a professional brand and market it to other professionals. The difference is between an olde phonebook that would also contain info on all the personal details and the yellow pages.
Typically, professional indices have charged for inclusion. Linkedin provides the minimum feature set for free.
If one does not have any contacts in LinkedIn then the value of the service of course drops to near zero for the individual professional user.
To me linkedin is just another digital silo capitalizing on the fact that it is de facto middle man between professionals because of network effects. Defending their actions in my opinion is also a very weak position to hold when even someone like me that tends to be on the anti-social side of spectrum has managed to build up a network of professional friends without linkedin's help.
Facebook had similar rumblings (people saying they'd switch off as soon as possible if something better came along), but Google Plus showed us the social costs of switching was higher than the frustration most people felt.
Does LinkedIn have that same social cost of switching to another service? I'm not so sure -- and I think it means they might be more susceptible to falling flat on their face if they push users too far.[1]
[1] This may just be my own hope and bias, since I built a job website of my own.