> I spent the day receiving over 500 (!) birthday greetings from LinkedIn contacts, whose names and faces I didn’t even recognize, who had clicked on a notification prompt
From the above, it appears that the harm is self-inflicted. Why would one have 500+ contacts who she does not recognize? Linkedin is a tool and every tool can be misused. My contact list is under 200 and those are the people I enjoyed working with and would not hesitate to ping if needed
I always accept friend requests in case they want to send me a message, which they sometimes do. Is that bad? Maybe I should go back and delete all those people.
It is your choice, but for me, it is strictly professional. Some overlap with friends, but those who I never worked with, are not on my Linkedin contact list. Somewhat counterintuitively, no recruiters. Many/all recruiters have very "noisy" contact lists which complicates navigation via degrees of proximity, like 2nd, 3rd, etc. When the list of contacts is carefully curated, it adds value.
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.
It's not too bad after some (a lot of) adjustments, but I agree the problem is that the default is that notifications are on. I'm part of more than a dozen Discord servers, and only three of them have notifications enabled, and one of those are basically dead. If I joint a new one, the first thing I do is mute it, and then I'll maybe unmute it if I'm actually active in there (or if it's a large server, I'll unmute the specific channels I care about and mute everything else).
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.
I go even further: I only use the website. If I want to add or modify something, I go to my profile and do it. I only used 2 social network apps, and they are mostly for news and to check on tech people I follow.
My wife's phone, is just full of noise. Notifications, messages, email ... some folks just want to be in front of a fire hose of crap... I don't know why.
Is LinkedIn a "social network" beyond the technical term for a site like that?
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?
LinkedIn is not a social network, it’s a vehicle for spam, grifting, self-promotion and other useless garbage. I deleted my account years ago and I wish I had done it sooner.
LinkedIn has been high value to me. You just need to ignore the whole social feed, games, and garbage notifications. Use it as a resume platform and let recruiters / founders reach out to you. I’ve had great job offers in the last few years with basically zero time investment. 3 years ago I +50%’d my salary and went full remote on my tech stack of choice just thanks to LinkedIn. And I absolutely suck at networking and invest no time in it at all.
My current job cold contacted me via LinkedIn. I use LI minimally, basically only to establish connections with my network, and it already gave me huge value back.
My skills are alright, nothing too crazy. I've had messages that were more spammy/scammy, but the volume was not crazy high, they were usually fairly obvious, and I resolved by simply ignoring them. I would say that the random chance of getting an interesting job offer, however small, is probably worth it for most professionals.
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?
I suspect you may be onto something. I'm a run of the mill dev. At least in the past when I was last looking for a job and more active on linkedin, the volume of contacts did not represent legitimate interest, not at all.
I get exactly what the author says, but Linkedin is my only social network (no, HN is not a social network IMO) specifically because I am able to block out all of it's bad parts and focus only on the good parts:
- 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.
It wouldn't be as bad if everyone wasn't trying to turn into a business microinfluencer with constantly upbeat posts not really adding anything of value and "What I messy divorce taught me about B2B synergy"
The sad thing is, this kind of stuff was encouraged in the previous company that I worked for when I got promoted to a certain level. 'Be a thought leader', 'represent the company and influence the industry' was the standard directives the leadership team were given.
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.
When recruiting, LinkedIn is useful for three things for me:
1. Propagating the job ad
2. Verifying that an applicant is real (profile picture, network, work history, etc.). I’m seeing more and more fake applications lately.
3. Letting candidates apply with just a LinkedIn URL (when they keep it reasonably up to date)
None of this is really about social networking.
Ideally, I’d much rather have a universal résumé platform with proper ID verification, and separately a job board with reach comparable to LinkedIn.
Until something like that exists, deleting LinkedIn mostly means candidates lose out on discovering jobs and applying quickly to them.
You are optimizing for people (or bots) who use LinkedIn in that case
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)
Or just delete the app and log in once a year or whenever you’re job seeking?
I will say I agree that the platform is mostly spam and has definitely gotten worse sense 2021 when the article was written. But you can just not log in everyday and still have a profile. Also no reason to put your birthday on a social network IMO and you can reject requests for connections if you don’t know someone.
This post from 2021 is highly irrelevant. In today's age where a lot of bad actors try mass submitting apps with fake information using AI, having an actual LinkedIn profile up is important.
Having a relatively new LinkedIn account now is probably a very bad move if you don't have an established network to reach out to for jobs. There are tons of AI generated profiles flooding every job post (particularly remote) from scammers who create new LinkedIn profiles. It's one of the most frequent signs of a fake submission.
When did we start referring to social media platforms like this? “Delete LinkedIn” should be “delete your LinkedIn account.” There’s also things like, “do you have Instagram?” I have an account, but I don’t have the whole company. I’m probably just too old.
As much as I am aware of how much low value, bottom-of-the-barrel shit flows via LinkedIn - my connections, and the resulting feed, are well curated, and I actually enjoy using LI and for me it's become a genuinely useful news feed for my industry, and in terms of getting work, it's great.
But, shit in, shit out.
I don't believe in LI "reach" because I don't post for reach - I post for meaningful reactions and exchanges of opinions, and my connections are strictly limited to people I physically did work with or have met, and I screen my connections to weed out any nutters I wouldn't want to associate myself with. It works wonders.
So no, I'm not deleting my LinkedIn, but the author perhaps should ;)
I don't have LinkedIn. But I'd consider creating an account if I was to leave my current job. I'm told it's a good way to get work, though I'm sure like all other social media it's 99% full of shit.
Well if you just create brand new account with no/random connections you'd be pretty disappointed… that’s how they get ya. It’s totally fine as a sort of virtual rolodex, maybe some content marketing, mediocre as job board although all job boards seem to have turned into a total lemon market so there’s that
I had a whole pile of recommendations from people on LinkedIn - only one of whom I had ever worked with and the rest were from people who knew me socially, but otherwise had little or no knowledge of what I actually do.
So I did this, straight up deleted my account with all my connections. I eventually came crawling back years later. It's crazy to me, I had an interview with a CISO a few weeks ago and he was critiquing my profile. I told him: dude I consider LinkedIn to be a complete joke and its sole purpose it serves for me is job acquisition. The emotional investment people have in that platform is weeeird. The ThOuGhT LeAdErShIp posts are insane.
I don't know, if it wasn't for Linkedin I wouldn't be in my current job of almost ten years.
On a totally unrelated note if you're looking for someone who can blacksmith up something that approximates a web frontend to a DB or some audio DSP code or some embedded code for various microcontrollers, or actually blacksmith stuff up with hammers and a welder, I'm putting out feelers for a new gig. Network engineer, jobbing mathematician, and database mangler, open to offers.
The fact you have to post your second paragraph to me proves for all of LinkedIn’s bluster, it’s really a sub-par platform and unfortunately has too much market power to be challenged.
Is there a switch to turn off the social media/posting element on linkedin altogether? I don't see why I should be spending my time engaging with their algorithm just so it's bearable to use
Just don't open the home page except to navigate to the specific thing you need and when you do, don't look at the slop? The social media/posting element of linkedin is totally disconnected from the useful part of the site and you can just ignore it.
I have a 25+ year career history with lots of contacts, and I deleted my LI account years ago. I do not regret it one bit; in fact I wish I had done it sooner.
> I spent the day receiving over 500 (!) birthday greetings from LinkedIn contacts, whose names and faces I didn’t even recognize, who had clicked on a notification prompt
From the above, it appears that the harm is self-inflicted. Why would one have 500+ contacts who she does not recognize? Linkedin is a tool and every tool can be misused. My contact list is under 200 and those are the people I enjoyed working with and would not hesitate to ping if needed
I always accept friend requests in case they want to send me a message, which they sometimes do. Is that bad? Maybe I should go back and delete all those people.
It is your choice, but for me, it is strictly professional. Some overlap with friends, but those who I never worked with, are not on my Linkedin contact list. Somewhat counterintuitively, no recruiters. Many/all recruiters have very "noisy" contact lists which complicates navigation via degrees of proximity, like 2nd, 3rd, etc. When the list of contacts is carefully curated, it adds value.
Friends and people you know are fine.
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.
When you're looking for a job, you're going to wish for more connections.
I don't see how people use social media apps with notifications turned on.
I just disable all notifications and it doesn't bother me to have LinkedIn because I only open it when I feel like it. Same with Facebook, etc.
Incredibly, the default is always for notifications to be enabled, and I don't know how people live like that.
It's not too bad after some (a lot of) adjustments, but I agree the problem is that the default is that notifications are on. I'm part of more than a dozen Discord servers, and only three of them have notifications enabled, and one of those are basically dead. If I joint a new one, the first thing I do is mute it, and then I'll maybe unmute it if I'm actually active in there (or if it's a large server, I'll unmute the specific channels I care about and mute everything else).
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.
I go even further: I only use the website. If I want to add or modify something, I go to my profile and do it. I only used 2 social network apps, and they are mostly for news and to check on tech people I follow.
My wife's phone, is just full of noise. Notifications, messages, email ... some folks just want to be in front of a fire hose of crap... I don't know why.
I won't link it here, because... but the author has an active LinkedIn profile.
So there's that.
Don’t do it. I get tons of work opportunity outreach on LI. Maybe you don’t, but it doesn’t hurt to put your shingle out.
100% this.
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.
Is LinkedIn a "social network" beyond the technical term for a site like that?
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?
LinkedIn is not a social network, it’s a vehicle for spam, grifting, self-promotion and other useless garbage. I deleted my account years ago and I wish I had done it sooner.
LinkedIn has been high value to me. You just need to ignore the whole social feed, games, and garbage notifications. Use it as a resume platform and let recruiters / founders reach out to you. I’ve had great job offers in the last few years with basically zero time investment. 3 years ago I +50%’d my salary and went full remote on my tech stack of choice just thanks to LinkedIn. And I absolutely suck at networking and invest no time in it at all.
My current job cold contacted me via LinkedIn. I use LI minimally, basically only to establish connections with my network, and it already gave me huge value back.
Are your skills particularly unique / unusual resume?
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.
My skills are alright, nothing too crazy. I've had messages that were more spammy/scammy, but the volume was not crazy high, they were usually fairly obvious, and I resolved by simply ignoring them. I would say that the random chance of getting an interesting job offer, however small, is probably worth it for most professionals.
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?
I suspect you may be onto something. I'm a run of the mill dev. At least in the past when I was last looking for a job and more active on linkedin, the volume of contacts did not represent legitimate interest, not at all.
I'm only on there to once every few years look up old work friends / where they are ... or when I'm job hunting.
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.
I get exactly what the author says, but Linkedin is my only social network (no, HN is not a social network IMO) specifically because I am able to block out all of it's bad parts and focus only on the good parts:
- 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.
It wouldn't be as bad if everyone wasn't trying to turn into a business microinfluencer with constantly upbeat posts not really adding anything of value and "What I messy divorce taught me about B2B synergy"
The sad thing is, this kind of stuff was encouraged in the previous company that I worked for when I got promoted to a certain level. 'Be a thought leader', 'represent the company and influence the industry' was the standard directives the leadership team were given.
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.
When recruiting, LinkedIn is useful for three things for me: 1. Propagating the job ad 2. Verifying that an applicant is real (profile picture, network, work history, etc.). I’m seeing more and more fake applications lately. 3. Letting candidates apply with just a LinkedIn URL (when they keep it reasonably up to date)
None of this is really about social networking.
Ideally, I’d much rather have a universal résumé platform with proper ID verification, and separately a job board with reach comparable to LinkedIn.
Until something like that exists, deleting LinkedIn mostly means candidates lose out on discovering jobs and applying quickly to them.
You are optimizing for people (or bots) who use LinkedIn in that case
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)
There is not a social media platform I have regretted leaving.
same! I have withdrawals now from the highs I have experienced over the years leaving every 'social' media platform
Well, I've never used linkedin outside of job hunts, and for that it was useful.
The social media part seems trash tier and I want no part of it though.
Or just delete the app and log in once a year or whenever you’re job seeking?
I will say I agree that the platform is mostly spam and has definitely gotten worse sense 2021 when the article was written. But you can just not log in everyday and still have a profile. Also no reason to put your birthday on a social network IMO and you can reject requests for connections if you don’t know someone.
This post from 2021 is highly irrelevant. In today's age where a lot of bad actors try mass submitting apps with fake information using AI, having an actual LinkedIn profile up is important.
For people who actually have no Linkedin account...
How do you find jobs?
Having a relatively new LinkedIn account now is probably a very bad move if you don't have an established network to reach out to for jobs. There are tons of AI generated profiles flooding every job post (particularly remote) from scammers who create new LinkedIn profiles. It's one of the most frequent signs of a fake submission.
To this day I don't know why people tolerate that garbage platform.
My only regret is I get more spam about 'found you on linkedin' than before I deleted my account.
+1 Funny
When did we start referring to social media platforms like this? “Delete LinkedIn” should be “delete your LinkedIn account.” There’s also things like, “do you have Instagram?” I have an account, but I don’t have the whole company. I’m probably just too old.
Most of these are used through an app. I read it as “delete the app from your phone”.
As much as I am aware of how much low value, bottom-of-the-barrel shit flows via LinkedIn - my connections, and the resulting feed, are well curated, and I actually enjoy using LI and for me it's become a genuinely useful news feed for my industry, and in terms of getting work, it's great.
But, shit in, shit out.
I don't believe in LI "reach" because I don't post for reach - I post for meaningful reactions and exchanges of opinions, and my connections are strictly limited to people I physically did work with or have met, and I screen my connections to weed out any nutters I wouldn't want to associate myself with. It works wonders.
So no, I'm not deleting my LinkedIn, but the author perhaps should ;)
I did in 2022 and never looked back
I don't have LinkedIn. But I'd consider creating an account if I was to leave my current job. I'm told it's a good way to get work, though I'm sure like all other social media it's 99% full of shit.
Well if you just create brand new account with no/random connections you'd be pretty disappointed… that’s how they get ya. It’s totally fine as a sort of virtual rolodex, maybe some content marketing, mediocre as job board although all job boards seem to have turned into a total lemon market so there’s that
LinkedIn deleted me, and I have zero regrets.
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.
I had a whole pile of recommendations from people on LinkedIn - only one of whom I had ever worked with and the rest were from people who knew me socially, but otherwise had little or no knowledge of what I actually do.
So I did this, straight up deleted my account with all my connections. I eventually came crawling back years later. It's crazy to me, I had an interview with a CISO a few weeks ago and he was critiquing my profile. I told him: dude I consider LinkedIn to be a complete joke and its sole purpose it serves for me is job acquisition. The emotional investment people have in that platform is weeeird. The ThOuGhT LeAdErShIp posts are insane.
I don't know, if it wasn't for Linkedin I wouldn't be in my current job of almost ten years.
On a totally unrelated note if you're looking for someone who can blacksmith up something that approximates a web frontend to a DB or some audio DSP code or some embedded code for various microcontrollers, or actually blacksmith stuff up with hammers and a welder, I'm putting out feelers for a new gig. Network engineer, jobbing mathematician, and database mangler, open to offers.
The fact you have to post your second paragraph to me proves for all of LinkedIn’s bluster, it’s really a sub-par platform and unfortunately has too much market power to be challenged.
Yup.
Any aspiring startup founders should ignore this terrible advice.
The only rational voice here.
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.
(2021)
and if you have a network and if you do delete LinkedIn,
yes you will regret it.
No, you’ll just reach out to those people through direct contact. If LI is your only link to someone you aren’t really networked with them.
> No, you’ll just reach out to those people through direct contact.
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.
Fully agree, its just a spam platform now filled to the brim with AI/Human slop.
Curate your connections, yeet anyone who is posting slop and add people that make quality spicy posts you enjoy.
It's that simple to make a LinkedIn feed have posts and comments you enjoy!
Is there a switch to turn off the social media/posting element on linkedin altogether? I don't see why I should be spending my time engaging with their algorithm just so it's bearable to use
Just don't open the home page except to navigate to the specific thing you need and when you do, don't look at the slop? The social media/posting element of linkedin is totally disconnected from the useful part of the site and you can just ignore it.
Remind me what the useful part is again?
That sounds exhausting and pointless.
I have a 25+ year career history with lots of contacts, and I deleted my LI account years ago. I do not regret it one bit; in fact I wish I had done it sooner.
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