People need to read "The Strength Of Weak Ties" before advocating extremely damaging courses of action such as deleting LinkedIn.
Humans are social animals and we cannot survive without a social network. Yet many in the West seem to ignore this obvious fact. It is baffling.
After so many years, I can't help but wonder if it's deliberate malice.
I find I get zero social interaction that I would associate with humans being social animals from LinkedIn. Are you seeing genuine connections with people on there?
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
People you don't know but who take the time to leave a considerate message explaining why they would like to connect, is also probably fine.
But some "Jeffrey Epstein" rando wanting to connect without even explaining why should be an instant ignore. You are the company you keep, so might as well know who your company are.
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.
So there's that.
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.
The only reason I would use it for any kind of similar purpose would be to check network overlap. A profile picture would only signal that it is an old picture or from someone looking for a job (or a bot)
I could imagine that working.
For most people though I expect they're just one of many and odds of spam / scam contacts greatly outweigh legit communication.
However, one thing I haven't mentioned is that I am based in Europe. My small sample size of people reaching out to me is showing that US contacts are usually less serious (e.g. ghosting). Maybe the US experience is so much worse overall due to this?
On one hand, it's funny to see the ones that made the company their whole identity, only to then leave for a competitor and make the new place their identity.
On the other hand , it's sad that a lot of people that are hiring (in my line of work at least), are impressed by these crappy posts and the people posting it tend to get more exposure and get hired quicker.
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 ;)
Those who delete LinkedIn are either retired, 2-5+ years unemployed or both.
The market is shifting to an employers market and it's going to be much harder when there is no network to employ these people.
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.
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.
I have email notifications on, but I actually read the few newsletters I get, and I barely get any mail beyond that. Meanwhile, everybody else I see has 4000 unread emails and the vast majority are unread rubbish that they could have unsubscribed to 700 emails ago, or just never subscribed to to begin with, but I guess signing up for that shit is just the default now.
Otherwise app deleted, I'm not on there.
Pretty easy to do.
I find it soul crushing even when I do look, so many generic yay company posts full of BS, my feed is hell and I don't want to bother fixing it.
Not quite deleted, they want me to upload a govt id to login again, or some kind of affidavit.
I won't do the first and can't be bothered to do the second.
- Blocking the Linkedin feed is as easy as setting a few rules up on uBlock Origin. I don't see any posts, comments, etc, neither do I get to create posts or comments. There are settings available to not get unneeded notifications, and I disallow people mentioning me, so I do not get stupid "happy birthday" comments. This makes Linkedin very peaceful and manageable for me.
- I connect only with people I want and ignore everyone else. I explicitly unfollow everyone I am connected with. Connections sometimes end up being valuable because some recruiters know them and sometimes my profile is pushed higher up their list.
- I live in a location that is a backwater for software roles; there aren't enough good roles or consulting opportunities in my local physical network, so I have to leverage online ones. Linkedin is, while not the best avenue, it is good enough.
For me, leaving Linkedin unfortunately is not an option, but I've been able to tame it exactly to my liking.
How do you find jobs?
The social media part seems trash tier and I want no part of it though.
colesantiago•1mo ago
and if you have a network and if you do delete LinkedIn,
yes you will regret it.
JojoFatsani•1mo ago
throw-12-16•1mo ago
simfree•1mo ago
It's that simple to make a LinkedIn feed have posts and comments you enjoy!
Avicebron•1mo ago
plorkyeran•1mo ago
throw-12-16•1mo ago
JojoFatsani•1mo ago
Probably a good idea for a chrome extension actually
throw-12-16•1mo ago
JojoFatsani•1mo ago
I imagine if the posts on LinkedIn inspire someone, that they probably are they kind of person to have a lot of “live laugh love” word art on their walls as well.
colesantiago•1mo ago
and their email isn't available or their phone number changed. tough luck. maybe you didn't really network with them.
LinkedIn is more easier IMO, don't understand why we need to make things harder for yourself.
angoragoats•1mo ago