LI has to be among the worst social media. The amount of constant self aggrandizing and obviously fabricated stories is insane(cue 'that homeless man was my boss!' memes).
That said, it's not completely valueless. I keep it around to see what old coworkers are up to these days(career wise). I've also gotten a job from a recruiter who found me there. I'm guessing one or both of those are the only reasons anyone keeps it around. The content is pretty bad.
It's absolutely the worst, the posts are pure cancer. But I've got like 5 of my 7 jobs over the past 15 years from LI. In conclusion, it is a land of contrasts.
Why don’t you unfollow people without removing the connection? It’s easy. I have zero fake story in my feed, only my IRL friends. I really don’t understand why people complain about that all the time. LinkedIn may suck, but they don’t push random people on your front page.
I found my dream (and current) job via a recruiter who messaged me on LI. I couldn't to this day tell you why I opened that one message where I ignored dozens of others, but yeah.
I will say though the social aspects in specific are completely value-free, IMHO. It's just business-Facebook. I've never read nor made a single post on LinkedIn, and can't envision a time I would, and every post I've seen elsewhere screenshotted seems fucking unhinged.
So like, these features: professional networking, private messaging, as an archive of your work history: sure. Those work and are good. Everything else where it tries desperately to be a social network nobody asked for: garbage. Bin it. Could probably cut the operating cost of the website by 96% if you did, too, with the added benefit of not needing to send me dozens of fucking emails begging for engagement.
Recently I came to the conclusion that I needed to change jobs, but I held off because I didn't want to deal with the psychotic ramblings of LinkedIn posters.
I'm sure in real life they are all perfectly normal indiviuals but something about LinkedIn insists that every poorly worded fable is gateway to wisdom, that methaphorical socratic dialog is to mechanism to describe human behaviour, and starting every second post with 'I'm sure this is a contraversional opinion but hear me out...'
In the end I got fired, so I'm actually forced back into the LinkedIn maelstrom of mediocrity but against my will, and without even the grace of my own grim resignation to spur me in to action.
It's the primary method for connecting with recruiters, and all the jobs I've had in the past fifteen years have been due to connections through LinkedIn.
It's not "social media" in the same vein as other platforms.
I almost feel like it's two things -- the recruiter interface that you mention, and separately a social network where people are posting about their professional, and even personal, achievements and adventures -- true or imagined -- completely separate from the recruiting part but sharing a brand and identity provider.
Allowing you to sign up and then immediately locking or shadow banning your account is a dark pattern to force you to provide a mobile phone number or other identification (for extra advertising targeting of course).
Nah. Shadowbanned users normally don't even realise they're shadow-banned; it's not a growth hacking strategy, and the point of ID is to validate details already provided for advertiser filtering. It doesn't even push the "verification" feature particularly hard. OP is unlucky enough to have IDs that span a couple of countries so probably triggers some half-baked algorithm aiming at weeding out fake profiles (LinkedIn loves AI slop, but it's in the business of selling expensive ways of messaging people, so it doesn't want too many fake profiles).
Not that LinkedIn has great ethics around dark patterns: LinkedIn's original dark pattern growth hacks like the "find contacts" feature linked to your email that made it very easy to accidentally send connection requests to anyone you'd ever been included in an email chain with were particularly inappropriate and the "someone from x looked at your profile" stuff always strikes me as a bit creepy. But nobody shadowbans users as part of their growth funnel.
And whilst LinkedIn is actually surprisingly useless for genuine business conversation, I'm not sure the mad people recounting Things That Didn't Happen which impart Important Business Lessons for likes are any worse than that sort of person on other social networks pushing much weirder and angrier stuff these days....
LinkedIn is full of worthless posts full of users wanking each other off. Its the only place full of "get out of bed early, quite drinking soy lattes, inherit wealth" type of posts where it doesn't get challenged (maybe X is another one).
I genuinely might prefer reading AI-generated crap, because then I feel better about humanity.
It's funny since if it were any other platform, it would have collapsed by now. But because we all use it to find work, well, what other choice do we have? Sure, most of us don't post, but we're still clicking on the website, and we're still seeing the feed -- apparently that's enough for advertisers, for now.
For what it is worth, I do not. I have only had an account there for a brief period of time when I was first looking for a job after university. Then, when Microsoft bought it, I deleted my account.
When I was looking for a job afterwards, I had to go on an active look-out. I reached out to 10s of companies manually. I got ignored or immediately rejected most of the time. My success rate from me reaching out to an actual offer was about 3 %. But I guess for an average person that is to be expected.
Looking for any job is easy. Looking for a good job takes time.
"My success rate from me reaching out to an actual offer was about 3 %"
Back in the olden days that hit rate would have seemed quite normal. I can remember mailing (mail not email) 20-100 letters with CVs for job applications. Each covering letter was hand signed and some were personalised for the target. Each envelope would have had something like a 30p stamp on it and running my printer was rather more expensive and slower than now.
This week, I posted about a women in engineering conference happening in my hometown and got zero engagement. 1000+ connections on my profile, used hashtags, and tagged the organization and received zero engagement on the post?
I hate to assume the worst but something stinks. When I open my feed, 9 out of 10 posts are from others that I don't follow or have never engaged with. Reading about your experience has confirmed my suspicions that something nefarious is going on under the hood.
I don't use it much and I haven't had your issues but I'm sick of the political and stupid, irrelevant content. It was supposed to be about professional networking and finding work. It's turning into Facebook and not the original Facebook,the horrible bloated mess it's become.
My linked-in is 10 years out of date, and I agree that killing it off is mighty attractive.
Does anybody here have any experience searching for jobs without a linked-in? I'd be curious to know how much an effect that would have on future job searches.
I deleted my account fifteen or so years back, and it's worked out fine. I talk with friends to see if they've heard about anything interesting, and I look around for companies working on whatever it is I think I might like to do next, then try to get in touch. It's never taken more than a couple of months to find something.
Over the past few years it has become more important to many recruiters.
The idea that your network is your net worth is unfortunately a common belief.
Oh the irony: The submission was default hidden but I hang out on the https://news.ycombinator.com/newest page and vouched for it. So another example of automated blocking rules for a new user account.
LinkedIn has sunk lower than Facebook. Like Facebook, every once in a while I use it to look up somebody I used to know or to remind myself of a name I've forgotten. If I look somebody up and see that they're actually posting and engaging on the platform, I feel bad for them.
I say it's lower than Facebook because I know people who rely on Facebook for legitimately useful things — niche communities and local groups that just happened to coalesce on Facebook and were vital enough to survive the decline of the platform. I've never heard of anything similar on LinkedIn.
There's no legitimate use of LinkedIn that will keep people on it if they stop seeing it as a necessity.
Post-Twitter, in my corner of the world, scholarly publishing technology, people have moved to BlueSky, Mastodon and LinkedIn.
I agree, LinkedIn is full of people performing their career as social media and posting selfies. But there is also useful information from orgs and people who moved off Twitter and shifted their weight to LinkedIn.
Twitter was a unifying platform (maybe that was just accumulated through time) and the shakeup has benefited LinkedIn.
Meta has legions of people working tirelessly to give it's users mental disorders, be it on Facebook turning your elderly relatives into racists and transphobes or Instagram giving young women body image disorders, and yet somehow everyone on those sites is a paragon of logic and reason compared to the average linkedin poster.
It's insane how it got this bad with no competitor trying to take its place.
Reading a few comments it occurs to me that these platforms e.g. Linkedin / Facebook are so big they have multiple uses. Linkedin is mainly buying and selling. There is a lot of sales going on there and programmers generally would not take kindly to that. As a means of recording connections and connecting with companies / recruiters it seems to work fine. In the same way, fb works fine as a friends list, photo repo, events organiser and marketplace. It's just ok, but it's free and has a massive userbase. All the other stuff isn't relevant to me and needs to be ignored at all costs. However for some people it is useful I guess.
Your website is a little confusing because when I opened the link, the page shows the title and a link to the garden. I thought it was a 404 page. It'd be better if a part of the post showed up as well.
Either way, I enjoyed that post. You're correct about people not closing their accounts because of fear. I'm in the same position right now. I never got anything out of my account. I'm a freelancer and I can't even get past clients to leave recommendations on my profile. They'd rather send me an email with the testimonial for some reason. Also never got any opportunities from LinkedIn.
The FOMO is super strong because even as I write this, I'm not convinced about deleting my account...
I can relate to your frustration with LinkedIn. I’ve been actively writing on the platform for the past two years, building my visibility and engagement, even earning a recognition badge from LinkedIn. However, despite putting in the effort, I haven’t gained much beyond that. The community feels like it’s structured in a way where top influencers form closed groups and don’t promote outside their circle, almost like a hierarchical system that reminds me of the dynamics we sometimes see in Asian companies.
For me, LinkedIn is useful primarily for job opportunities, but outside of that, it feels like a platform full of noise with not much else to offer. The real support system seems lacking, and I’ve found that engagement can be difficult to generate unless you're already in those top circles. So, I agree—there’s definitely a lot of room for improvement.
LinkedIn is not a “social media” site for me. I have my profile up and respond to recruiters and that’s about it. I’ve never posted anything to it.
I’ve had a profile since 2012 after leaving my third job. My fifth job in 2015 came from my reaching out to an internal recruiter who posted a job opening. My 8th and 10th job came from my responding to recruiters who messaged me in 2020 and last year and my 9th job came from targeted outreach to a couple of companies where they were looking for my combination of skills.
On the other hand, when I was looking for my last two jobs both last year and the year before, LI is horrible for applying for jobs blindly unless you have a niche skillset. Every application gets literally hundreds of applications within the first few hours after posting and it’s impossible to stand out. It still works pretty well for responding to inbound messages.
It might have been better before 2020 and even now if I were looking for an in office or hybrid role.
I've used it since they launched it and have paid for premium for years. I probably use it multiple times a day and have never had a single issue. Yes, it's a commercial social network and the self-aggrandizing posts are terrible, but I don't really pay attention to them. I feel the same way about Instagram and other social media which I don't pay attention to.
I use it as a way to maintain and leverage my network and learn about people and companies. I don't know how I'd stay current with the many thousands of people I've met over the years otherwise. Manually curate a mailing list?
I get that it doesn't work for people who don't work in tech and/or don't see the value in maintaining work connections. I find it's often those people asking me how they can find a job when they've put zero effort into it over the years.
It is by far the worst platform I’ve seen…ever. I use it only as a resume fallback and to find job positions. That’s it. If someone has an extension that blocks all social media aspect of it, please let me know.
Correct me if I’m wrong but the dumb thing was literally but to help people find and apply to jobs. I login then to go search for jobs in my city and the 1st 200 pages of recommended jobs are all labeled US. We really need to mass delete our LinkedIn’s and all agree to utilize indeed because unlike LinkedIn they’ve gotten significantly better at helping the user.
Also, if anyone hates LinkedIn and the current hiring process with a burning passion. I’ve been working on a software that auto applies to jobs for users and could use help. I’ve been working on it for 2 years and am honestly almost done but want to make it divine. The idea you ask? A user fills out 1 job application and just waits for emails to come in.
No i disagree X.com is the worst, was the other guy on this sub and I think you are correct on the whole point is the people that have a right and the people that do have the ability and ability are not necessarily people that have a responsibility.
I kept Linkedin profile since 2018, and it LI content made sense back then.
2 years ago I got more active, and noticed it turn to worse: much AI slop (premium users group full of polls with questions like high-school essay titles -- probably LLMs talking to each other). Every interesting job posting already having 200+ applications, and requirements inflated (because if you demand less than masters degree, you have to walk through and seriously read 1000+ applications).
But you could still get at least something.
Until about half a year ago it got its vacancy search broken, that it always shows the same list, no matter what keywords you type in the search field.
I wouldn't want to be new to the Internet these days.
Everything requires your phone number, sometimes photo or even ID. You can get flagged as a bot randomly and they won't even tell you.
When I signed up for Instagram, I was banned before I could even log in, but they didn't tell me about it, so I thought the sign up process had just failed. I only found out after googling it.
I had similar problems creating a Twitter account. On Reddit, you can't even post threads on most subreddits at first.
Conversely, signing up on Tumblr, Pinterest, Bluesky, and Mastodon was pretty easy and didn't require a phone number or app.
> made me take a photo of myself and of my passport
I'm not sure how this has become the go-to method for every site that needs person verification, and it's kinda terrifying because you just know they keep all of it stored somewhere forever with half assed security and the whole DB will get leaked sooner or later like it always is, leading to so much identity theft it's not even funny. The only camera that should ever get to see anyone's passport is the border police scanner.
And I'm sure they say they delete all of it after verification, and then probably laugh about it afterwards if anyone believes that bullshit.
I've worked on some of this stuff. It was mandated by Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) regulation on the finance industry, who developed smoother UX patterns and white-label vendors for doing such a thing, which helped normalize and simplify the process for other data-greedy sectors to adopt. Yes, marketing tried to pretty-please their way into data that should only have been for verification. To my knowledge they didn't succeed. On that attempt. At that company.
That most financial regulations targeting bad actors end up constraining or disempowering regular people is a feature, not a bug. This is a really good thread: There is no freedom without the freedom to transact.
Sort of reminds me of hollywood. They used their power to push music/movie drm. This then was pushed into the computer industry (to play media), and then phones and tables became locked up/normalized (to play media), and then the locks have made all this other (disempowering regular people) stuff possible.
Ran into a similar ban recently and it has infuriated me to a level I have trouble describing - except I've been a paying user of this site for 10+ years. It seems to me what triggered it was enabling MFA + password change, which is a completely normal thing to do. It also seems like they're flagging people for VPN usage now. Persona, the application they use to "verify" you, has a really gnarly privacy policy and it does seem completely intentional to just sell the shit out of your data.
To me it's really weird they're taking such elaborate measures to ban legitimate paying users when the site is completely infested with AI/bot spam anyway. They seem out of their depth. Oh, and as an extra screw you, they're still billing me, because of course they are.
Same happened to me, but by the time they gave me my account back (though now “unverified”, even though I had to scan my DL for them to unsuspend my account - and even though I was premium and verified before the suspension btw - though the hatred is still there, the rage-motivation to document the insanity had devolved into apathetic sadness (with much help of the general state of the current incarnation of the job market) so I’ve said nothing until this meager reply.
But specifically, what had occurred was that I noticed I had nearly fallen for an LLM-bot clone or takeover account from my contacts in my DM directing me to this “great recruiting firm” that looked to be just an identity docs siphoning scheme.
That caused me to notice a bunch of new 1st-degree connections I hadn’t added, all of which were profiles purporting to be Chinese AI researchers. No clue if they were real people and I didn’t spend time to investigate before doing exactly what you describe - change of password and enable 2FA, with the added step of trying to report the suspicious circumstances to the obvious security@ etc email addresses… ALL attempts of which bounced with messages telling me to use the LinkedIn platform to report security issues, as those email addresses are not monitored. (lol)
Of course, when I reluctantly tried to capitulate and report the matter using the links from the bounce messages, I found I could not, since my account was suddenly suspended for “suspicious activity”, and the kicker was that in order to unsuspend it, they wanted me to upload scans of my government ID! Yes, they wanted me to do the suspicious sort of activity I was wanting to report was happening on their platform in order to use the very platform I suspected someone had already pilfered my identity through. I waited a week or so, too disgusted and angry and ready to write them off until, well.. oh yeah, a job. my contacts. sigh
Of course, that’s also another example of the insecure patterns companies force on their users and employees while at the very same time giving them training to not do
exactly those things, and exhibiting all the red flags they point out the employee needs to be aware of as indicators of phishing, etc.
I was with a company that outsourced their security policy training and compliance to a company that sent “URGENT” emails from phish looking custom domains incorporating our company’s name, and all the other red flags that told me not to do the things it asked. (so I didn’t, and instead reported each one to our internal security team. It was funny until it wasn’t.)
Hey… Nice. There’s that therapeutic rage-typing I never got around to, and this comment almost brings my comment back on topic. I feel a little better anyway. Thanks all!
honestly seeing someone else go through similar made me feel a lot better and not like I was under some bizarre cyberattack - I also encountered some weird behavior like that too, but being a part time security researcher, and long time user, didnt consider the platform would react to fairly benign use of the platform in such a severe manner. I have actual damages I can prove, live in a state where I’m fairly certain they’re violating privacy laws, and just seeing stuff like this confirms the issue is more widespread than just dumbass old me, who is completely harmless and definitely a real user that anyone of any competence over there should be able to figure out. I’m dealing with outsourced overseas support just giving me chatgpt scripts. Trying to figure out how to escalate further - I’d be interested in chatting with people like you on more info, because like you, I am also (rightfully) very mad. my side business has been generated mostly using my linkedin, which is why I’ve always paid for it.
I've started blocking people in LI for doing a typical LI post. It hasn't improved the experience as those things are endless.
Some time ago, they added another new feature that is dark pattern where every time re-enter the site, I have 10-20 new update notifications, all of which are complete fluff.
Perhaps a time for a new platform for business communication. A slightly customized Lemmy, perhaps?
Linkedin is horrible, but rarely do I see a post like this that doesn’t get a smackdown. LinkedIn surely doesn’t do public smackdowns, so I’ll ask - what kind of content were you sharing? Were you doing anything you may consider not-super-approved of? Have you previously scraped LinkedIn or potentially have your ip flagged by any security computers for unscrupulous behavior in the internet?
I hate it, but it's a job search engine basically?
What's wrong with just sticking to that one use case? Posting about how you're a "problem solved, founder, writer, sports fan, recruiter , marathon runner -- and father" gets old quickly. That stuff can mostly be ignored and there's always Gaviscon or Tums when it gets really bad.
But yes, I use it for letting recruiters contact me.
I kept catching myself scrolling down their idiotic feed and wondering what the hell I was doing. Mindless dreck, all of it. Yet I still get cold inbound from it that turns into business, so I can't just abandon the platform entirely.
I wrote a ~50 LOC browser extension that always redirects away from the feed to your profile. Works great, sideload and forget.
Dev of the mentioned extension here, I've been getting emails from bad actors offering to "buy" the extension for years. It really has made me far less trusting of browser extensions.
If I can be bothered replying, I tell them it's open source, they can just use the code for free. Eventually if I push them on it, they tell me they just want to acquire the users, and don't care about the extension. I wonder just how many extensions are compromised this way, it's a mess.
Like others here, I dislike the content but find LI useful for finding new opportunities and staying in touch with former colleagues. One effective way for me to reduce irrelevant posts was to set the feed to display posts chronologically rather than by popularity. You barely see any click-baity posts before losing interest and moving on.
The actual jobs and networking aspect is fine imo, but I loathe the feed/content, even the SWE-related stuff is a lot of times bad or clickbaity.
I hide the feed + sidebar with a uBlock Origin filter and it's a much nicer experience:
linkedin.com##main[aria-label="Main Feed"],aside[aria-label="Add to your feed"]
So don't read the feeds. My LinkedIn exists as an easy way for other folks in my field to contact me who might not have my email. Works quite well for that process. I don't read any posts.
I dont understand the hate either. Yes it sucks if you follow people you don’t know, but LinkedIn allows you to hide literally everything without breaking the connection. It’s not like Twitter where you are forced to see the updates of the CEO.
it still works pretty well for its intended purpose.
i voluntarily left work for several months last year, when i was ready to enter the workforce again i made the template “open to work” post. within a day or so a VP who I know saw the post and offered me a job on his team. pretty much every job i’ve gotten is via linked in
I fucking hate LinkedIn so much it's unreal. When it comes to that platform, I lose all rationality altogether. Perhaps I need to go to therapy, but not before LinkedIn influencers are all assembled in the town square and publicly executed for their crimes upon humanity.
Over the years, I’ve applied to over a thousand jobs through LinkedIn, ‘earned’ dozens of skill badges; but all I’ve had to show for it was a compromised social security number. LinkedIn has proliferated the scammer.
Meanwhile, Indeed has connected me with real employers who’ve actually interviewed me. Most who started interviewing me had conducted multiple rounds, enough to get to the mature conclusion that it’s not a good fit. I’ve interviewed my way into two great fitting roles over the years via that platform.
Deleted my account years ago, and I'm not surprised LI has become even more of a cesspit.
I'll continue to find meaningful things to spend my time doing by talking with actual humans by email, phone, and in person.
LI is the worst, but it has the reach and revenue. I don't know what works for it. But it's where professional world (cringe at times) resides. So love it or hate it, it's here to stay.
I was on LinkedIn for years. I quit a couple of years ago and have not regretted it one bit. I hasn't resulted in a single sale or new client for me. It's really for salesmen and headhunter and perhaps government officials, not technical people.
I'm technical. I've gotten numerous interviews and a very good job through LinkedIn. I don't post, I don't read posts. My mere presence there with somewhat up-to-date information is valuable as an easy place to connect with people who are looking for individuals with my particular experience.
Of course, worldwide, setting up new profiles is (burecratically) discouraged, due to fake profiles with AI help hammering the networks and marketplaces. Harder than even to set up a new profile for any purpose.
Since they added a "videos for you" section they completely acknowledged they've given up on trying to be the professional site they once were. I can't even open this at work because as soon you scroll it auto plays a video with titles likes "following elon musks lead to become an alpha male and slay it in the bedroom".
LinkedIn is a place where you can say anything you like in a political sense, even if your employer has policy, if your voice sounds off the same rattle as everyone else
The people who regularly post and comment on linked in about how great their company is are the ones who will take your job when you go on paternity leave.
> Kenneth Yuan-Ke Cheng is a British-Chinese former professional poker player and comedian. Cheng has won the 2017 Funniest Joke of the Fringe, and a 2023 BBC Audio Drama Award for Best Comedy. He additionally became popular on LinkedIn in 2024 for his satirical posts in which he poses as a CEO.
take two biege pills and try again tommorow, if you are still feeling enthusiastic or creative and energetic in any way, the dose can be adjusted till you achive total blandness, then you can start to slowly build your contacts, to some completely improbable number and achive biegevana
Anything MSFT touches goes to shit, and LI is no exception.
One day I randomly checked my credit card and found that LI had charged me $60 for having a PREMIUM BUSINESS plan! I'm not a business owner, and last time I had any subscription was one month in 2024. Their system is totally unreliable.
And anytime a website blocks basic functionalities (e.g., who viewed my profile) for non-paying users, I know enshitification has already taken place.
> Besides being full of AI-generated, useless content
I've found some pretty decent content if you're able to tune the recommender algo - the content reaches mid-2010s HN's noise-to-signal ratio if done right.
After Twitter/X degraded, a lot of Policy, VC, IB, PE, and DevTools+Cybersecurity shifted to used LinkedIn for posts, and a lot of unfiltered criticism does arise.
It does require an extreme commitment to tuning the algo (proactively removing content from your feed AND upvoting content you like).
That said, I don't think you'll find much purely technical content, but even HN sucks for that now. I'd use Lobste.rs for that (which reminds me of pre-COVID HN).
> the platform is also riddled with dark patterns
Yep, but that's expected for most platforms who's success metrics are judged based on usage.
> almost all posts are programming related. It's very narrow
Absolutely, and that's why it's great.
I worked in the policy space and later entered the business aspects of tech - conversations on policy and business aspects of tech are horrid on HN, yet those kinds of conversations have become heavily promoted on HN.
At least on lobste.rs you have technical domain experts chatting about programming.
I personally had a decent presence some years ago ( upwards of 10k followers ), but I dropped it, when it became clear that noise far outweighed the signal. I will admit that I am in a weird spot now, because soon I will be coaching kids to real job interviews ( and they are normally instructed to use LinkedIn to connect with their coaches ).. and I will feel obligated to point out that they may want to benefit from a different type of exposure ( github, portfolio page, email ).
TLDR: I dislike LinkedIn and what it has become ( because it did bring me some value before.. and I fear that is coming for github too ), but I struggle to offer a good alternative to people that are just starting since HR depts effectively EXPECT you to have one.
LinkedIn is the corporate equivalent of a bureaucratic nightmare—shadow bans, mandatory passport selfies, and rankings that seem engineered by someone with a vendetta against real professionals. I rarely use it by choice, and when forced, it feels like navigating a labyrinth designed to obscure rather than showcase talent. No wonder your post got buried; it's just another casualty of their dark pattern playbook.
Ah yes, LinkedIn, the site that, after my father passed away, harvested contacts from me and then sent me email purporting to be from my recently deceased father asking me to join LinkedIn.
LI has to be among the worst social media. The amount of constant self aggrandizing and obviously fabricated stories is insane(cue 'that homeless man was my boss!' memes).
That said, it's not completely valueless. I keep it around to see what old coworkers are up to these days(career wise). I've also gotten a job from a recruiter who found me there. I'm guessing one or both of those are the only reasons anyone keeps it around. The content is pretty bad.
It's absolutely the worst, the posts are pure cancer. But I've got like 5 of my 7 jobs over the past 15 years from LI. In conclusion, it is a land of contrasts.
This is the only reason people are on LunkedIn. It's terrible, but somehow successful for finding work.
cryingpicture.jpg
I'm in ER, my father has just died.
This is what it thought me about B2B sales.
Read more
Amazing great work!
EPolanski is one of the best b2b sales people in the universe!
#goodtogreat
— /s of course :)
Why don’t you unfollow people without removing the connection? It’s easy. I have zero fake story in my feed, only my IRL friends. I really don’t understand why people complain about that all the time. LinkedIn may suck, but they don’t push random people on your front page.
If you found even a single job off of it, doesn’t that mean it’s great? This is its main purpose.
Perhaps it could be better, but a lot of people would pay a lot for a single good job offer. And you accepted it.
I found my dream (and current) job via a recruiter who messaged me on LI. I couldn't to this day tell you why I opened that one message where I ignored dozens of others, but yeah.
I will say though the social aspects in specific are completely value-free, IMHO. It's just business-Facebook. I've never read nor made a single post on LinkedIn, and can't envision a time I would, and every post I've seen elsewhere screenshotted seems fucking unhinged.
So like, these features: professional networking, private messaging, as an archive of your work history: sure. Those work and are good. Everything else where it tries desperately to be a social network nobody asked for: garbage. Bin it. Could probably cut the operating cost of the website by 96% if you did, too, with the added benefit of not needing to send me dozens of fucking emails begging for engagement.
Recently I came to the conclusion that I needed to change jobs, but I held off because I didn't want to deal with the psychotic ramblings of LinkedIn posters. I'm sure in real life they are all perfectly normal indiviuals but something about LinkedIn insists that every poorly worded fable is gateway to wisdom, that methaphorical socratic dialog is to mechanism to describe human behaviour, and starting every second post with 'I'm sure this is a contraversional opinion but hear me out...'
In the end I got fired, so I'm actually forced back into the LinkedIn maelstrom of mediocrity but against my will, and without even the grace of my own grim resignation to spur me in to action.
Are you? Does anyone find a job with LinkedIn? They were sort of heading in that direction for a while, but don't seem to be anymore.
It's the primary method for connecting with recruiters, and all the jobs I've had in the past fifteen years have been due to connections through LinkedIn.
It's not "social media" in the same vein as other platforms.
I almost feel like it's two things -- the recruiter interface that you mention, and separately a social network where people are posting about their professional, and even personal, achievements and adventures -- true or imagined -- completely separate from the recruiting part but sharing a brand and identity provider.
Depends where you are. LinkedIn is absolutely the only place to go for tech jobs in Australia for example.
What alternative do you recommend?
You can use LinkedIn for job search and completely ignore the posters. There are relatively fine-grained settings of what to get notified about.
I’m not saying that LinkedIn is great, but the post feed is entirely optional.
> There are relatively fine-grained settings of what to get notified about.
Anecdotal, but it seems the mobile app resets those settings every so often so you start to get spammed with crap you don't want to read.
I eventually just blocked the linkedin app from sending any notifications and rely on the emails which I have filters on.
Allowing you to sign up and then immediately locking or shadow banning your account is a dark pattern to force you to provide a mobile phone number or other identification (for extra advertising targeting of course).
Nah. Shadowbanned users normally don't even realise they're shadow-banned; it's not a growth hacking strategy, and the point of ID is to validate details already provided for advertiser filtering. It doesn't even push the "verification" feature particularly hard. OP is unlucky enough to have IDs that span a couple of countries so probably triggers some half-baked algorithm aiming at weeding out fake profiles (LinkedIn loves AI slop, but it's in the business of selling expensive ways of messaging people, so it doesn't want too many fake profiles).
Not that LinkedIn has great ethics around dark patterns: LinkedIn's original dark pattern growth hacks like the "find contacts" feature linked to your email that made it very easy to accidentally send connection requests to anyone you'd ever been included in an email chain with were particularly inappropriate and the "someone from x looked at your profile" stuff always strikes me as a bit creepy. But nobody shadowbans users as part of their growth funnel.
And whilst LinkedIn is actually surprisingly useless for genuine business conversation, I'm not sure the mad people recounting Things That Didn't Happen which impart Important Business Lessons for likes are any worse than that sort of person on other social networks pushing much weirder and angrier stuff these days....
LinkedIn is full of worthless posts full of users wanking each other off. Its the only place full of "get out of bed early, quite drinking soy lattes, inherit wealth" type of posts where it doesn't get challenged (maybe X is another one).
I genuinely might prefer reading AI-generated crap, because then I feel better about humanity.
It's funny since if it were any other platform, it would have collapsed by now. But because we all use it to find work, well, what other choice do we have? Sure, most of us don't post, but we're still clicking on the website, and we're still seeing the feed -- apparently that's enough for advertisers, for now.
> we all use it to find work
For what it is worth, I do not. I have only had an account there for a brief period of time when I was first looking for a job after university. Then, when Microsoft bought it, I deleted my account.
When I was looking for a job afterwards, I had to go on an active look-out. I reached out to 10s of companies manually. I got ignored or immediately rejected most of the time. My success rate from me reaching out to an actual offer was about 3 %. But I guess for an average person that is to be expected.
Looking for any job is easy. Looking for a good job takes time.
"My success rate from me reaching out to an actual offer was about 3 %"
Back in the olden days that hit rate would have seemed quite normal. I can remember mailing (mail not email) 20-100 letters with CVs for job applications. Each covering letter was hand signed and some were personalised for the target. Each envelope would have had something like a 30p stamp on it and running my printer was rather more expensive and slower than now.
That was the early 1990s in the UK.
[Edit: grammar]
These days looking for any job is hard especially if you are looking for remote only.
This week, I posted about a women in engineering conference happening in my hometown and got zero engagement. 1000+ connections on my profile, used hashtags, and tagged the organization and received zero engagement on the post?
I hate to assume the worst but something stinks. When I open my feed, 9 out of 10 posts are from others that I don't follow or have never engaged with. Reading about your experience has confirmed my suspicions that something nefarious is going on under the hood.
I don't use it much and I haven't had your issues but I'm sick of the political and stupid, irrelevant content. It was supposed to be about professional networking and finding work. It's turning into Facebook and not the original Facebook,the horrible bloated mess it's become.
Enshittification touched everything
And here I am thinking about deactivating my Linkedin profile for good. That platform has never been useful, most people use it to spy on others.
I did and it took ages for the damn thing to die off. It kept on resurrecting itself! I dare not try to login to it just in case it arises again.
Prepare for a long mission!
You will not regret it. You will not miss it. I did the same to LinkedIn a couple of years ago, and just recently left FaceCrook and Twitter.
My linked-in is 10 years out of date, and I agree that killing it off is mighty attractive.
Does anybody here have any experience searching for jobs without a linked-in? I'd be curious to know how much an effect that would have on future job searches.
I deleted my account fifteen or so years back, and it's worked out fine. I talk with friends to see if they've heard about anything interesting, and I look around for companies working on whatever it is I think I might like to do next, then try to get in touch. It's never taken more than a couple of months to find something.
Over the past few years it has become more important to many recruiters. The idea that your network is your net worth is unfortunately a common belief.
linkedin is still the defacto way to quickly check if a candidate is being truthful about their employment history.
If they don't list the companies they claim to have worked at or have no connections to them its a red flag.
I think providing references after passing the interviews works very well too.
I'd have to login again for the first time in over a decade to do that. I probably should be I have better things to do than figure out my password.
> most people use it to spy on others.
ThatsThePoint.jpg
Oh the irony: The submission was default hidden but I hang out on the https://news.ycombinator.com/newest page and vouched for it. So another example of automated blocking rules for a new user account.
Most people are only there because they are finding a job. When I have a job I just can’t be bothered with LinkedIn
Same here. LinkedIn is the labor market masquerading as social media. It isn't really "social" in any meaningful sense of that word.
LinkedIn has sunk lower than Facebook. Like Facebook, every once in a while I use it to look up somebody I used to know or to remind myself of a name I've forgotten. If I look somebody up and see that they're actually posting and engaging on the platform, I feel bad for them.
I say it's lower than Facebook because I know people who rely on Facebook for legitimately useful things — niche communities and local groups that just happened to coalesce on Facebook and were vital enough to survive the decline of the platform. I've never heard of anything similar on LinkedIn.
There's no legitimate use of LinkedIn that will keep people on it if they stop seeing it as a necessity.
Post-Twitter, in my corner of the world, scholarly publishing technology, people have moved to BlueSky, Mastodon and LinkedIn.
I agree, LinkedIn is full of people performing their career as social media and posting selfies. But there is also useful information from orgs and people who moved off Twitter and shifted their weight to LinkedIn.
Twitter was a unifying platform (maybe that was just accumulated through time) and the shakeup has benefited LinkedIn.
Meta has legions of people working tirelessly to give it's users mental disorders, be it on Facebook turning your elderly relatives into racists and transphobes or Instagram giving young women body image disorders, and yet somehow everyone on those sites is a paragon of logic and reason compared to the average linkedin poster.
It's insane how it got this bad with no competitor trying to take its place.
It’s quite hilarious. I clicked on a linkedin link in one of the comments and it opened the app (which I haven’t opened for a while)
The app then proceeded to show me a cookie banner.
The ‘refuse’ button in the cookie banner responds to my click (it changes color while pressed) but does not remove the banner.
I guess I can only remove the banner by clicking “accept”?
Reading a few comments it occurs to me that these platforms e.g. Linkedin / Facebook are so big they have multiple uses. Linkedin is mainly buying and selling. There is a lot of sales going on there and programmers generally would not take kindly to that. As a means of recording connections and connecting with companies / recruiters it seems to work fine. In the same way, fb works fine as a friends list, photo repo, events organiser and marketplace. It's just ok, but it's free and has a massive userbase. All the other stuff isn't relevant to me and needs to be ignored at all costs. However for some people it is useful I guess.
Link to close your account: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a1379064/closi...
What I wrote about closing mine: https://pcmaffey.com/finally-i-closed-my-linkedin
5 years later no regrets.
Your website is a little confusing because when I opened the link, the page shows the title and a link to the garden. I thought it was a 404 page. It'd be better if a part of the post showed up as well.
Either way, I enjoyed that post. You're correct about people not closing their accounts because of fear. I'm in the same position right now. I never got anything out of my account. I'm a freelancer and I can't even get past clients to leave recommendations on my profile. They'd rather send me an email with the testimonial for some reason. Also never got any opportunities from LinkedIn.
The FOMO is super strong because even as I write this, I'm not convinced about deleting my account...
I can relate to your frustration with LinkedIn. I’ve been actively writing on the platform for the past two years, building my visibility and engagement, even earning a recognition badge from LinkedIn. However, despite putting in the effort, I haven’t gained much beyond that. The community feels like it’s structured in a way where top influencers form closed groups and don’t promote outside their circle, almost like a hierarchical system that reminds me of the dynamics we sometimes see in Asian companies.
For me, LinkedIn is useful primarily for job opportunities, but outside of that, it feels like a platform full of noise with not much else to offer. The real support system seems lacking, and I’ve found that engagement can be difficult to generate unless you're already in those top circles. So, I agree—there’s definitely a lot of room for improvement.
LinkedIn is not a “social media” site for me. I have my profile up and respond to recruiters and that’s about it. I’ve never posted anything to it.
I’ve had a profile since 2012 after leaving my third job. My fifth job in 2015 came from my reaching out to an internal recruiter who posted a job opening. My 8th and 10th job came from my responding to recruiters who messaged me in 2020 and last year and my 9th job came from targeted outreach to a couple of companies where they were looking for my combination of skills.
On the other hand, when I was looking for my last two jobs both last year and the year before, LI is horrible for applying for jobs blindly unless you have a niche skillset. Every application gets literally hundreds of applications within the first few hours after posting and it’s impossible to stand out. It still works pretty well for responding to inbound messages.
It might have been better before 2020 and even now if I were looking for an in office or hybrid role.
I've used it since they launched it and have paid for premium for years. I probably use it multiple times a day and have never had a single issue. Yes, it's a commercial social network and the self-aggrandizing posts are terrible, but I don't really pay attention to them. I feel the same way about Instagram and other social media which I don't pay attention to.
I use it as a way to maintain and leverage my network and learn about people and companies. I don't know how I'd stay current with the many thousands of people I've met over the years otherwise. Manually curate a mailing list?
I get that it doesn't work for people who don't work in tech and/or don't see the value in maintaining work connections. I find it's often those people asking me how they can find a job when they've put zero effort into it over the years.
It is by far the worst platform I’ve seen…ever. I use it only as a resume fallback and to find job positions. That’s it. If someone has an extension that blocks all social media aspect of it, please let me know.
This post feels like it should be on linkedin. Have we reached the point of LinkedIn-ify'ing HN?
Correct me if I’m wrong but the dumb thing was literally but to help people find and apply to jobs. I login then to go search for jobs in my city and the 1st 200 pages of recommended jobs are all labeled US. We really need to mass delete our LinkedIn’s and all agree to utilize indeed because unlike LinkedIn they’ve gotten significantly better at helping the user.
Also, if anyone hates LinkedIn and the current hiring process with a burning passion. I’ve been working on a software that auto applies to jobs for users and could use help. I’ve been working on it for 2 years and am honestly almost done but want to make it divine. The idea you ask? A user fills out 1 job application and just waits for emails to come in.
The one upside is it generates so much amazing content for the r/LinkedinLunatics subreddit
No i disagree X.com is the worst, was the other guy on this sub and I think you are correct on the whole point is the people that have a right and the people that do have the ability and ability are not necessarily people that have a responsibility.
How is X worse?
They don't censor people. You can say anything as long as its legal.
Nope, it's just the weird outlier where "cis" falls foul of its hate speech guidelines but Great Replacement Theory doesn't
https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardhomonoff/2025/02/14/marke...?
You can’t say anything, there are still rules.
You want them to censor more people?
I kept Linkedin profile since 2018, and it LI content made sense back then.
2 years ago I got more active, and noticed it turn to worse: much AI slop (premium users group full of polls with questions like high-school essay titles -- probably LLMs talking to each other). Every interesting job posting already having 200+ applications, and requirements inflated (because if you demand less than masters degree, you have to walk through and seriously read 1000+ applications).
But you could still get at least something.
Until about half a year ago it got its vacancy search broken, that it always shows the same list, no matter what keywords you type in the search field.
You haven’t quite finished the saga though. When you finally decide to quit (I did, having suffered a lot less pain than you), you can’t.
They follow you. They email you, they are relentless. I’m 10+ years on the outside and still they spam.
I wouldn't want to be new to the Internet these days.
Everything requires your phone number, sometimes photo or even ID. You can get flagged as a bot randomly and they won't even tell you.
When I signed up for Instagram, I was banned before I could even log in, but they didn't tell me about it, so I thought the sign up process had just failed. I only found out after googling it.
I had similar problems creating a Twitter account. On Reddit, you can't even post threads on most subreddits at first.
Conversely, signing up on Tumblr, Pinterest, Bluesky, and Mastodon was pretty easy and didn't require a phone number or app.
Visit https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics/ to improve your mood :)
old.reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics/
> made me take a photo of myself and of my passport
I'm not sure how this has become the go-to method for every site that needs person verification, and it's kinda terrifying because you just know they keep all of it stored somewhere forever with half assed security and the whole DB will get leaked sooner or later like it always is, leading to so much identity theft it's not even funny. The only camera that should ever get to see anyone's passport is the border police scanner.
And I'm sure they say they delete all of it after verification, and then probably laugh about it afterwards if anyone believes that bullshit.
I've worked on some of this stuff. It was mandated by Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) regulation on the finance industry, who developed smoother UX patterns and white-label vendors for doing such a thing, which helped normalize and simplify the process for other data-greedy sectors to adopt. Yes, marketing tried to pretty-please their way into data that should only have been for verification. To my knowledge they didn't succeed. On that attempt. At that company.
That most financial regulations targeting bad actors end up constraining or disempowering regular people is a feature, not a bug. This is a really good thread: There is no freedom without the freedom to transact.
https://nitter.net/punk6529/status/1494444624630403083#m
Sort of reminds me of hollywood. They used their power to push music/movie drm. This then was pushed into the computer industry (to play media), and then phones and tables became locked up/normalized (to play media), and then the locks have made all this other (disempowering regular people) stuff possible.
Ran into a similar ban recently and it has infuriated me to a level I have trouble describing - except I've been a paying user of this site for 10+ years. It seems to me what triggered it was enabling MFA + password change, which is a completely normal thing to do. It also seems like they're flagging people for VPN usage now. Persona, the application they use to "verify" you, has a really gnarly privacy policy and it does seem completely intentional to just sell the shit out of your data.
My situation to avoid posting the same thing in multiple places: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43050578
To me it's really weird they're taking such elaborate measures to ban legitimate paying users when the site is completely infested with AI/bot spam anyway. They seem out of their depth. Oh, and as an extra screw you, they're still billing me, because of course they are.
Same happened to me, but by the time they gave me my account back (though now “unverified”, even though I had to scan my DL for them to unsuspend my account - and even though I was premium and verified before the suspension btw - though the hatred is still there, the rage-motivation to document the insanity had devolved into apathetic sadness (with much help of the general state of the current incarnation of the job market) so I’ve said nothing until this meager reply.
But specifically, what had occurred was that I noticed I had nearly fallen for an LLM-bot clone or takeover account from my contacts in my DM directing me to this “great recruiting firm” that looked to be just an identity docs siphoning scheme.
That caused me to notice a bunch of new 1st-degree connections I hadn’t added, all of which were profiles purporting to be Chinese AI researchers. No clue if they were real people and I didn’t spend time to investigate before doing exactly what you describe - change of password and enable 2FA, with the added step of trying to report the suspicious circumstances to the obvious security@ etc email addresses… ALL attempts of which bounced with messages telling me to use the LinkedIn platform to report security issues, as those email addresses are not monitored. (lol)
Of course, when I reluctantly tried to capitulate and report the matter using the links from the bounce messages, I found I could not, since my account was suddenly suspended for “suspicious activity”, and the kicker was that in order to unsuspend it, they wanted me to upload scans of my government ID! Yes, they wanted me to do the suspicious sort of activity I was wanting to report was happening on their platform in order to use the very platform I suspected someone had already pilfered my identity through. I waited a week or so, too disgusted and angry and ready to write them off until, well.. oh yeah, a job. my contacts. sigh
Of course, that’s also another example of the insecure patterns companies force on their users and employees while at the very same time giving them training to not do exactly those things, and exhibiting all the red flags they point out the employee needs to be aware of as indicators of phishing, etc.
I was with a company that outsourced their security policy training and compliance to a company that sent “URGENT” emails from phish looking custom domains incorporating our company’s name, and all the other red flags that told me not to do the things it asked. (so I didn’t, and instead reported each one to our internal security team. It was funny until it wasn’t.)
Hey… Nice. There’s that therapeutic rage-typing I never got around to, and this comment almost brings my comment back on topic. I feel a little better anyway. Thanks all!
honestly seeing someone else go through similar made me feel a lot better and not like I was under some bizarre cyberattack - I also encountered some weird behavior like that too, but being a part time security researcher, and long time user, didnt consider the platform would react to fairly benign use of the platform in such a severe manner. I have actual damages I can prove, live in a state where I’m fairly certain they’re violating privacy laws, and just seeing stuff like this confirms the issue is more widespread than just dumbass old me, who is completely harmless and definitely a real user that anyone of any competence over there should be able to figure out. I’m dealing with outsourced overseas support just giving me chatgpt scripts. Trying to figure out how to escalate further - I’d be interested in chatting with people like you on more info, because like you, I am also (rightfully) very mad. my side business has been generated mostly using my linkedin, which is why I’ve always paid for it.
I've started blocking people in LI for doing a typical LI post. It hasn't improved the experience as those things are endless.
Some time ago, they added another new feature that is dark pattern where every time re-enter the site, I have 10-20 new update notifications, all of which are complete fluff.
Perhaps a time for a new platform for business communication. A slightly customized Lemmy, perhaps?
Linkedin is horrible, but rarely do I see a post like this that doesn’t get a smackdown. LinkedIn surely doesn’t do public smackdowns, so I’ll ask - what kind of content were you sharing? Were you doing anything you may consider not-super-approved of? Have you previously scraped LinkedIn or potentially have your ip flagged by any security computers for unscrupulous behavior in the internet?
I hate it, but it's a job search engine basically?
What's wrong with just sticking to that one use case? Posting about how you're a "problem solved, founder, writer, sports fan, recruiter , marathon runner -- and father" gets old quickly. That stuff can mostly be ignored and there's always Gaviscon or Tums when it gets really bad.
But yes, I use it for letting recruiters contact me.
I kept catching myself scrolling down their idiotic feed and wondering what the hell I was doing. Mindless dreck, all of it. Yet I still get cold inbound from it that turns into business, so I can't just abandon the platform entirely.
I wrote a ~50 LOC browser extension that always redirects away from the feed to your profile. Works great, sideload and forget.
https://github.com/classvsoftware/nofeeds
Nice. I use one in the chrome store called News Feed Eradicator. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/news-feed-eradicato...
Looks nice, but that extension is a high-value acquisition target for bad actors, and there's nothing but an email for contact information.
Sideloading eliminates this risk completely.
Dev of the mentioned extension here, I've been getting emails from bad actors offering to "buy" the extension for years. It really has made me far less trusting of browser extensions.
If I can be bothered replying, I tell them it's open source, they can just use the code for free. Eventually if I push them on it, they tell me they just want to acquire the users, and don't care about the extension. I wonder just how many extensions are compromised this way, it's a mess.
Like others here, I dislike the content but find LI useful for finding new opportunities and staying in touch with former colleagues. One effective way for me to reduce irrelevant posts was to set the feed to display posts chronologically rather than by popularity. You barely see any click-baity posts before losing interest and moving on.
Stop complaining and post examples of good social media geared towards professional contacts and career development below.
The actual jobs and networking aspect is fine imo, but I loathe the feed/content, even the SWE-related stuff is a lot of times bad or clickbaity.
I hide the feed + sidebar with a uBlock Origin filter and it's a much nicer experience: linkedin.com##main[aria-label="Main Feed"],aside[aria-label="Add to your feed"]
So don't read the feeds. My LinkedIn exists as an easy way for other folks in my field to contact me who might not have my email. Works quite well for that process. I don't read any posts.
I dont understand the hate either. Yes it sucks if you follow people you don’t know, but LinkedIn allows you to hide literally everything without breaking the connection. It’s not like Twitter where you are forced to see the updates of the CEO.
it still works pretty well for its intended purpose.
i voluntarily left work for several months last year, when i was ready to enter the workforce again i made the template “open to work” post. within a day or so a VP who I know saw the post and offered me a job on his team. pretty much every job i’ve gotten is via linked in
deleted linkedin in 2017 and havent thought twice about it since
Sorry to break the bad news, it’s still there
https://www.linkedin.com/
I fucking hate LinkedIn so much it's unreal. When it comes to that platform, I lose all rationality altogether. Perhaps I need to go to therapy, but not before LinkedIn influencers are all assembled in the town square and publicly executed for their crimes upon humanity.
This.
Over the years, I’ve applied to over a thousand jobs through LinkedIn, ‘earned’ dozens of skill badges; but all I’ve had to show for it was a compromised social security number. LinkedIn has proliferated the scammer.
Meanwhile, Indeed has connected me with real employers who’ve actually interviewed me. Most who started interviewing me had conducted multiple rounds, enough to get to the mature conclusion that it’s not a good fit. I’ve interviewed my way into two great fitting roles over the years via that platform.
Deleted my account years ago, and I'm not surprised LI has become even more of a cesspit. I'll continue to find meaningful things to spend my time doing by talking with actual humans by email, phone, and in person.
Linkedin used to be business. Today is just idiota trying to sound smart or business influencers.
Seems like LinkedIn boost people with less useful content ever seen.
There are ton of people (mostly Indians) who just copy good articles from internet and put into Linkedin without quoting the real authors.
LI is the worst, but it has the reach and revenue. I don't know what works for it. But it's where professional world (cringe at times) resides. So love it or hate it, it's here to stay.
I was on LinkedIn for years. I quit a couple of years ago and have not regretted it one bit. I hasn't resulted in a single sale or new client for me. It's really for salesmen and headhunter and perhaps government officials, not technical people.
I'm technical. I've gotten numerous interviews and a very good job through LinkedIn. I don't post, I don't read posts. My mere presence there with somewhat up-to-date information is valuable as an easy place to connect with people who are looking for individuals with my particular experience.
Every experienced LinkedIn user knows that you're not supposed to actually use LinkedIn.
SuckedIn or ChainedIn would be more appropriate as a name.
Exactly
Of course, worldwide, setting up new profiles is (burecratically) discouraged, due to fake profiles with AI help hammering the networks and marketplaces. Harder than even to set up a new profile for any purpose.
Since they added a "videos for you" section they completely acknowledged they've given up on trying to be the professional site they once were. I can't even open this at work because as soon you scroll it auto plays a video with titles likes "following elon musks lead to become an alpha male and slay it in the bedroom".
But how will people possibly know how successful I am without it?!?
You forgot to add this:
"Agree?"
It is actually not a social media at least not mainly.
The only real value for most people is when you need a job, and sometimes it works.
I do agree the social media part of LinkedIn is among the worst.
LinkedIn is a place where you can say anything you like in a political sense, even if your employer has policy, if your voice sounds off the same rattle as everyone else
I fight back against cringe content by leaving cringe comments.
The people who regularly post and comment on linked in about how great their company is are the ones who will take your job when you go on paternity leave.
Counterpoint: it is the perfect platform for Ken Cheng
lol
> Kenneth Yuan-Ke Cheng is a British-Chinese former professional poker player and comedian. Cheng has won the 2017 Funniest Joke of the Fringe, and a 2023 BBC Audio Drama Award for Best Comedy. He additionally became popular on LinkedIn in 2024 for his satirical posts in which he poses as a CEO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Cheng
Every social network finds its own luminary
The chain mail kidnapping of peoples' Hotmail accounts should have told us enough about the integrety of the site from the get go.
"Growth hack".
Genuinely curious what's a decent platform to keep in touch with companies and handle your career. Any tips?
take two biege pills and try again tommorow, if you are still feeling enthusiastic or creative and energetic in any way, the dose can be adjusted till you achive total blandness, then you can start to slowly build your contacts, to some completely improbable number and achive biegevana
Anything MSFT touches goes to shit, and LI is no exception.
One day I randomly checked my credit card and found that LI had charged me $60 for having a PREMIUM BUSINESS plan! I'm not a business owner, and last time I had any subscription was one month in 2024. Their system is totally unreliable.
And anytime a website blocks basic functionalities (e.g., who viewed my profile) for non-paying users, I know enshitification has already taken place.
> Besides being full of AI-generated, useless content
I've found some pretty decent content if you're able to tune the recommender algo - the content reaches mid-2010s HN's noise-to-signal ratio if done right.
After Twitter/X degraded, a lot of Policy, VC, IB, PE, and DevTools+Cybersecurity shifted to used LinkedIn for posts, and a lot of unfiltered criticism does arise.
It does require an extreme commitment to tuning the algo (proactively removing content from your feed AND upvoting content you like).
That said, I don't think you'll find much purely technical content, but even HN sucks for that now. I'd use Lobste.rs for that (which reminds me of pre-COVID HN).
> the platform is also riddled with dark patterns
Yep, but that's expected for most platforms who's success metrics are judged based on usage.
Lobst.rs seems much quieter, and almost all posts are programming related. It's very narrow.
> almost all posts are programming related. It's very narrow
Absolutely, and that's why it's great.
I worked in the policy space and later entered the business aspects of tech - conversations on policy and business aspects of tech are horrid on HN, yet those kinds of conversations have become heavily promoted on HN.
At least on lobste.rs you have technical domain experts chatting about programming.
I personally had a decent presence some years ago ( upwards of 10k followers ), but I dropped it, when it became clear that noise far outweighed the signal. I will admit that I am in a weird spot now, because soon I will be coaching kids to real job interviews ( and they are normally instructed to use LinkedIn to connect with their coaches ).. and I will feel obligated to point out that they may want to benefit from a different type of exposure ( github, portfolio page, email ).
TLDR: I dislike LinkedIn and what it has become ( because it did bring me some value before.. and I fear that is coming for github too ), but I struggle to offer a good alternative to people that are just starting since HR depts effectively EXPECT you to have one.
all of them are the worst, dude.
you know, like that famous quote: some people are more equal than others.
or something like that anyway, I cannot be arsed to check for the exact one, because it's pathetic shit, not important.
iirc it is from either of these two books by George Orwell: animal farm or 1984.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
> all of them are the worst, dude.
Most social media doesn’t tie directly to your work and profession. They all suck, but LinkedIn has a way uniquely painful way of hurting people.
Though there seems to be a steady stream of people who have a sick day then post photos on IG of what they were actually doing.
From your description, you created from another country? Perhaps non-western?
I am not familiar with their internals but am assuming they deal with spam/scams and you are an unfortunate casualty.
LinkedIn befits the managerial class it serves.
LinkedIn is the corporate equivalent of a bureaucratic nightmare—shadow bans, mandatory passport selfies, and rankings that seem engineered by someone with a vendetta against real professionals. I rarely use it by choice, and when forced, it feels like navigating a labyrinth designed to obscure rather than showcase talent. No wonder your post got buried; it's just another casualty of their dark pattern playbook.
What did you do to get shadow banned?
so while we are all here: what do you people wish LinkedIn had and had not?
The content of LI is absolute horseshit. I keep my profile for job seeking purposes but I do not use it.
Ah yes, LinkedIn, the site that, after my father passed away, harvested contacts from me and then sent me email purporting to be from my recently deceased father asking me to join LinkedIn.
Classy move guys. Been shitty sonce ‘15 at least!
It's useless as a social media or to interact with but excellent when you're looking to reach out to John at Corpo Corp who you met somewhere.
...or to check what your high scool girlfriend is up to 20 years later.
The worst