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Comment by robinhood | Hacker News Reader

I've hated Linkedin for years, but what's interesting is to understand why. I think it's a mix of - really, really bad UX resulting in an ugly product - the level of emptiness of the news feed, full of people talking about respectful bosses and good work condition while quoting Steve Jobs (oh, the irony) - seeing people becoming apparently more successful than me (if I have to be honest) - the level of intrusiveness of the platform in general

Despite all that, I've been afraid of missing job opportunities if I left the platform. And I don't know why, because I've only found one job through Linkedin in 10 years.

I wish I had the guts to leave it entirely.

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What bothers me the most about LinkedIn is how vapid everyone seems to be.

Everone has a job title like 'dynamic individual searching for creative opportunities' when they really mean unemployed. It's like a game where everyone pretends while simultaneously knowing that everyone else is pretending too.

I've long thought of an alternative, but I don't think we can do better than this actually, as people are, by nature, vapid, in the sense that they will always pretend to be someone they are not. I wish someone will create an alternative where, unlike Facebook, people don't feel miserable after visiting the site.

There are alternatives[1][2], it's just that it doesn't feel like they have critical mass outside certain markets.

XING is focused on German speakers and claims circa €150 million in revenue. Viadeo claims 65 million users. They're not exactly small or overtly failing entities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XING

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viadeo

> It's like a game where everyone pretends while simultaneously knowing that everyone else is pretending too.

To be fair, that sounds a lot like job-hunting, in general. The whole process can be filled with rituals meant to obfuscate the fact that you just want a job.

Pretty much. When searching around for advice on how to market yourself on LinkedIn, that sort of title, though full of shit, is what is recommended.

I wish I could have an alternate profile or A/B test. I think my current one is detrimental to the job search because I list jobs going back 17 yrs vs my resume which is tailored to my current field. With a second profile, I'd narrow it down. Maybe I should do that anyway.

Sounds like half the workplaces, too.

Sounds like dating.

I don't like the company and I don't like the app, but I vastly prefer a single spammy point of contact for headhunters over "hey our recruiting software scraped your email address, how are you?"

> I wish I had the guts to leave it entirely.

Just get it done. Maybe see if you can export your data first, just for your own peace of mind. :)

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