Ask HN: LinkedIn alternatives for engineers | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: LinkedIn alternatives for engineers

9 pointsrileyt9 comments

Are there any good LinkedIn alternatives? Any specifically targeted at engineers?

My major issues with LinkedIn are:

1. Data ownership and privacy (essentially selling data to paying customers)

2. Inability to easily export data

3. Spam from recruiters / people I don't know

4. Awful to use and ugly interface

5. Very bad developer relations and closed platform

6. Overall spammy and dishonest past

7. Out of control email spam (that continues after closing your account)

Does anyone else feel this way, or am I on my own here?

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To what end? The only audience - other than engineers - such a network would appeal to is recruiters looking for engineers, which at least in the long-term would cause pretty much the same problems you described. What's the purpose of engineers only networking among each other? Engineering is not a bubble that lives independently of other professions.

Another point is: Would you pay for such a service? The main reason why LinkedIn is as it is, is that nobody (well, nobody save for recruiters) wants to pay for their service. Hence, they had to find other avenues of monetization and started selling their users' profile data. XING - a European competitor - isn't entirely free but had a fairly successful premium offering right from the start. From what I'm seeing they don't have a prevalent spam problem, at least not to the extent LinkedIn has (LinkedIn spam probably isn't even seen as a problem by the company at all but rather encouraged, they just don't say so openly).

It doesn't have to be for just engineers. It just seems like most competitors to large services like linkedin start by targeting a specific group. The purpose of engineers networking amongst each other would be for referrals, which are arguably more important than recruiters reaching out to random people.

I would consider paying for the service, but not much (and im not sure many other people would). You definitely have a good point here. I'm not sure how you could make money without having the recruiters as your customers, which would put you back in the same bad place as linkedin. Maybe something along the lines of tying it to the refarral bonuses people are getting?

JSON Resume (https://jsonresume.org/) is a project that attempts to create a JSON standard for resumes. You also get total data control and ownership.

As far as the shared network aspect, you'd probably have to build the glue between it and something like AngelList or Stack Overflow Careers.

I agree with you on most of your points, but don't know an alternative. I actually accept all requests from recruiters and will hit them up if i ever need extra work, so the spam I get ends up paying off in the end. I've gotten a few gigs from recruiters on linkedin.

Do you not find that the recruiter noise gets in the way of keeping in touch with people you know though?

People actually use LinkedIn to keep in touch? I thought everyone used it as a static resume holder.

I meant as an easy way to check in on previous coworkers for things like referrals. People you aren't on a facebook or phone number level with, but don't want to forget about.

I do for some former coworkers. I don't use Facebook and have moved around a lot, so LinkedIn is actually an easy way to keep up with people I used to work with.

I'd say that the most obvious answer is StackOverflow Career.

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