Ask HN: Do you use LinkedIn and are active on it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you use LinkedIn and are active on it?

29 pointstomaytotomato54 comments

I am a Senior Software Engineer and in my career so far I have been fine without using LinkedIn when applying for a job.

There are some downsides to not being on the platform though:

- Lack of alternative networking options at conferences. Keeping in touch with cool presenters or people you meet (email is ok, but requires pro-active messaging).

- Perhaps missing more lucrative job offers?

- FOMO

However the negatives I see are:

- Shallow and egotistical content being posted by "high flyers" etc.

- Cold messaging or soliciting / spam

- Data privacy concerns (as with any social media platform)

Interested to know what people think as a whole of LinkedIn.

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I’m just collecting people and use it to contact folks and figure out who knows who. It’s like a 1980 Rolodex.

The content is useless unless you are into reading business and self help books. Nothing wrong with it, but learning about whatever is “humbling” people is meaningless to me.

The content is utter trash. It's the "synthetic" look-how-happy-i-am Facebook equivalent but for work life.

But, I use it pretty heavily to hire people. I basically paste an image of the JD of what I'm looking for, and ask my network to refer anyone they know who might be interested.

I found two AMAZING devs who were outnof my network that way.

The content is interesting. It’s not as negative, cynical and aggressive as on much of social media. But people have still ruined it because they push self-promotion and promotion of their companies way too hard.

Unless I am too picky, which may very well be the case, it feels to me like there simply is no way to have a healthy and large social network.

It's not as negative, cynical, and aggressive in large part because people are self-promoting in a work context and most people are self-aware enough to understand it'd have a very negative effect on their careers if they came across as aggressive and controversial in that context.

But yeah, it does also mean LinkedIn has huge amounts of vapid, self-congratulatory "look at how successful I am, you should hire me / buy my services / join my company" content.

I look at it as the Yellow Pages. I engage when I need services or need to find a company to work for. I don't expect editorial content - I expect wall-to-wall ads and at best "advertorials".

I used to be a big fan of LinkedIn. I've posted, here and elsewhere, expressing these views. But some of the value LinkedIn used to offer is definitely eroding.

The feeds have become really terrible. This wasn't always the case. Before, a lot more weight was given to posts from people you were connected to, vs. the weight given to their overall engagement. This offered two kinds of value: One, you were more likely to keep updated on what's happening within a professional niche (assuming lots of your connections were in that niche too.) Two, your own writing would be shown mostly to people in your business niche, which helped foster trust.

I've formed a lot of useful connections this way. A lot of client relationships, past and present, started out this way. A bunch of people helped me in a bunch of ways (intros, advice) because they felt I was a real person, not a rando profile image.

That's mostly gone now. A useful post is now so rare, and the rest is "engagement" fodder. Eventually, I turned off the feed, and that's how it stays most of the time. (I installed an extension someone once posted about here.)

The chat feature, which was always really powerful, is still there. But it used to be that the flow was written insights -> chat -> in person/Zoom. Without that slower process of getting acquainted, the connecting itself has less potential to become really useful.

> The feeds have become really terrible. This wasn't always the case. Before, a lot more weight was given to posts from people you were connected to, vs. the weight given to their overall engagement.

Isn't that just, like, the (apparently inevitable) enshittification of all social media?

And since in each case it's governed by the platform's algorithm, and algorithms don't write or approve themselves, seems it's invariably intentional.

I have a profile, I keep it up to date. I read and politely reply to messages from recruiters. I ignore the feeds of crap from my network because they have zero value.

It's a directory not a social media platform.

It's a directory not a social media platform

It used to be a directory; nowadays it seems to be becoming more of a social media platform.

This is exactly how I use it. I never log in unless it's to reply to the occasional recruiter who E-mails me. Usually they don't reply back. It seems to be pretty useless but low-effort to use. Not sure if there's any value there as someone who is employed but passively keeping an eye out. Maybe if I was unemployed I'd be more obsessed with it.

Most of the value is when actively looking, but I feel there's some (limited) value in keeping your network "warm" by occasionally popping up there and reminding people you're here. It does semi-regularly result in people re-connecting after years and it turning into work even outside of actively chasing people down.

Im over it. Posts are either “here’s something that self-promotes how fantastic I think I am” or “I got married / divorced / ate a meal and this is what it taught me about b2b sales”. I don’t find any content on there that makes me better at my job, which was meant to be the whole point.

The content is crap. I loved the linkedin from the time where you could as some of your contacts to introduce you to a connection. At that time, the network was valuable.

Try posting on LinkedIn as though you are on Hacker News. That’s how I approach it. Authenticity is rare on the platform and there a shortage of relatable, likeable content.

I do fairly well just posting about the problems I’m working on and the puzzles I’m trying to solve.

I follow a few environmental researchers, climate scientists, and several large mining companies relevant to my role. I find Linkedin to be a pretty good way to get information I wouldn't otherwise seek out that is relevant to my industry niche. The trash inspirational stuff is rare for me and it is easy to bypass. I use scrolling and liking stuff to train the algorithm to keep giving me industry news.

> I do fairly well

That's an interesting statement. I don't use LinkedIn at all any more (deleted my account when MS bought it), so I'm wondering what "do fairly well" means?

Is it a measurement of attention or something?

I'm on it. I have gotten multiple jobs from it. I log in regularly, but am not "active".

As far as the downsides - nothing is forcing you to read anything on the site, so that is an easily avoided problem. I find cold messaging to be a good thing - ignore it if you are not looking, reply with your desired role if you are looking. Data privacy is a valid concern, so only post the public information you want people to have to find jobs.

So sure, if you try to use it as social media it is problematic. If you think of it as a directory to let recruiters know when you want work, it works just fine. Just don't make it anything more than it really is.

I'm also a senior dev. I deleted my LinkedIn account years ago because the amount of recruiter and other spam I got through it was too much for me.

Deleting it had no effect on my career or ability to find and get work. I'm really glad that I did it.

How do you find work otherwise? Just personal connections and word of mouth?

A combination of my professional network, cold applying to companies that interest me (whether or not they claim to have open positions), and through a recruitment agency I've worked with for decades.

I've gotten jobs through LinkedIn but I've found recruiters will still cold message you via email or phone if they can find it. I also don't post anything. I just try to keep the profile updated and treat it like a living resume. I was job hunting in April and got a job outside of LinkedIn but I had initially talked to the recruiter on LinkedIn a few months ago so I count it as an assist.

One thing to note, I never updated my profile to have that "open to work" banner. My other coworkers who were laid off at the same time still seem to be job hunting.

I’m on LinkedIn. I do connect with people and accept connects that make sense (I know you, worked with you, could work with you or think you’re awesome in some way)

I posted a few articles years back. I no longer do really but do when I get/refresh a cert or change jobs.

I look at jobs when they pop in through messages or job alerts that look interesting. Always be open to that.

I do not however log on everyday and consume what others are posting. Low return and mostly find they’re self serving posts.

Use it for it’s strengths

Some recruiters exclusively use LinkedIn as a source. You will be overlooked by them. It's difficult to demonstrate this matters, but I suspect it does.

I wouldn't bother with any of the social networking aspects of LinkedIn. Turn off every notification you possibly can.

I've gotten instructions accidentally mailed to me by recruiters indicating to only accept candidates with a profile photo. I've yet to decide if this means I should have one or not.

I technically have a profile. My profile picture is 10 years old, and significant chunks of my resume are missing. Though since I updated it to say I'm my own boss I got less recruiter spam though, so that's neat. Don't really actively use it, though some people have used it to reach out to me (like in a non-spam way).

Whole platform seems like a bit of a parody of itself to be honest.

I go through phases of regularly posting and just lurking, depending on whether I'm working on something that I want to promote. I wouldn't say I've had significant success, but it's helped me on some occasions. For example, I posted that I wanted to work on a startup idea and my former boss gave some really good feedback in the comments that made me realise it's not worth going ahead.

I'd say it's worth being active when you have a specific goal in mind. It requires much lower effort than Twitter because you don't have to build up your list of followers - your connections are your followers by default.

And, like everyone else says, you need to keep in mind that it's just a social media platform like Facebook and Instagram. Outrage/feel-good posts will tend to dominate the feed, so don't get discouraged when your post only gets a dozen likes. The post was still probably viewed by hundreds of people.

I've avoided social media for ten years.

I created a LinkedIn for my most recent job to repost ads for the company.

Now that I am no longer employed by them, I have deleted the account again.

Reason: I just don't care about social networks. I don't like their business model, or their addictiveness.

LinkedIn was funny in a way, because toxic and sarcastic positivity are indistinguishable from a distance.

For job searching, not being on it won't hurt you in any way, but you're missing out on potential upside in terms of recruiting. You can have a LinkedIn, use it only for job searching, and not read the bizarre cringe content.

If you find value in networking or keeping in touch with people, simply put it is the directory for many industries (including SV tech) and a good way to stay in contact, and I think that you are definitely missing out on the network value if you aren't on it. Like you called out, unlike email it does not require anything proactive and in my experience people are often excited to hear from you years later. I'm not here to tell you what to value though.

Hell no. I suspect I got my current job so easily because I didn't distract the hiring manager with a LinkedIn profile that says exactly the same corporate gibberish as everyone else so I really stood out.

Anyone who reads this though please don't do this. You need to have a Linkedin profile to get a job and it needs to be tailored with language so specific to your industry that anyone outside your industry has no idea what it actually is talking about or what you actually got paid to do. If you don't do this you are a missing out.

You don't need to be active. Just put your resume up there and update it once in a blue moon. Accept any random connection requests just to bump your connection count, and don't bother with anything else.

If you have a good resume you'll get a stream of recruiter messages. You can ignore them unless you're looking for a job in which case they are invaluable because they are a free ticket past the resume screening part of the application process.

I have a LinkedIn profile but I'm not actively managing it. I prefer to maintain my own portfolio website (+resume and blog) https://ivylee.github.io/. As my former co-worker who uses LinkedIn for sourcing candidates said - you won't discover me as an expert ML engineer from my LinkedIn profile. And I'm fine with that :)

LinkedIn seems great for people who have had a relatively straightforward career path, or where they know they want their next job to be in a specific direction.

Maybe that's most of humanity and I'm not their target market and that's fine. I just find it an absolute pain because there's no one way to summarize what I did in past roles that is universally clear to all the roles I might be considering that I have the requisite skillset.

I use linkedin for jobs. I also have a private profile with some connections.

All the spam and social media content is not a concern because: I disable linkedin notifications, so no alerts, no emails, no nothing. I use it when I need it. If someone writes me there, I’ll know when I visit the website (twice per month or so). I don’t use the app.

I have one but I rarely use it. If I meet someone at a conference or through work we might connect via LinkedIn but it feels more like creating a rolodex I'll never use. Presently I have 50 connections via LinkedIn, any more than that I'm not sure how I will keep up.

I think it matters less for senior people/people in high demand. I think it is a pretty valuable tool for juniors and people with less experience

When I first switched careers to tech, I got some great LinkedIn advice: You don't have to like it, but you should know how to use it.

I tried using (paid) LinkedIn to find candidates once. It was not very helpful. Other than that I've never looked at anyone's LinkedIn profile when hiring/interviewing. Nor have I ever applied for a job using LinkedIn.

Some people swear by it, but they mostly seem like MBA types that post the annoying content mentioned in other threads.

I'm active on it in brief spurts when I'm looking for contract work or a new job, like now. Then I hardly log in for months or years.

It's perfectly possible not to use it, but it's been pretty helpful for me over the years.

Most notifications from LinkedIn never reach my inbox, though.

I use LinkedIn and I spend about 10 minutes a week on it. All I do is build my network of recruiter acquaintances for when I’ll be looking for work.

LinkedIn can be very valuable if you use it as a tool, with a professional purpose.

There isn’t a shred of genuine human experience on that platform though.

> There isn’t a shred of genuine human experience on that platform though.

I haven't read a more true thing about LinkedIn. Since launching my app (https://neurtureapp.com) on ProductHunt I've posted on their a couple times and each time I nauseate myself.

I'll also say that the fact that I can't comment or like something without LI telling the whole world makes me less likely to do those things. Maybe that's how all social media works, I wouldn't know though.

I use LinkedIn for news, being connected to the industry leader and also for job search. However, lately is seems to be a more polished Facebook. However, I still keep my profile up to date and sometimes I peek on others profiles/ job changes/ updates.

Surprisingly, it's not widely known, but you can also use it as a dating app.

I've been thinking of building a LinkedIn competitor for a decade.

2025 might be the right time.

If anyone wants to network and try build a relationship for potential co-founders shoot me an email. (profile)

I've got lots of ideas and can code almost anything.

I think maybe only this week for the first time in like a decade has anything valuable come out of it, thanks to a recruiting manager posting about a job and me being able to contact them. Otherwise nah, not really.

I use it purely as a “networking for jobs” tool. If I’m not actively looking for jobs, I might scroll through my feed a few times per week, but it’s mostly a time killer in that regard.

Your responses here are going to be biased towards a subset of hackernews that vocally hates this type of thing many of whom aren’t interested in the signaling. I’ll try to balance it.

Every technical person I know building a company is active on LinkedIn and most technical people I know employed at FAANGs are active on LinkedIn.

Every event I go to in SF has people trading LinkedIn or Twitter.

I myself have had multiple previous job opportunities through LinkedIn and still get high quality job opportunities through it regularly.

No I don't use it. LinkedIn is a waste of time, I deleted my account years ago when it started becoming a spam mill.

The contacts list and job board are useful. The feed is utter trash and is dragging the rest of the platform down.

I'm on it, but my resume hasn't been updated for at least 5 or 6 years. It hasn't really hurt my career.

I mostly use it for job search. I do check it out regularly but don't really post stuff on it.

I consider LinkedIn to be a great case study in the value and perils of social networking. On one hand, maintaining a list of all the people I've worked with and their up-to-date CVs is incredibly valuable, and LinkedIn has enough network effects to make it irreplaceable.

On the other hand, despite the fact that Microsoft makes plenty of money from other business, and LinkedIn all of the above value would be effectively free to maintain and generate an immeasurable sum of relevance and good will, somehow it's still subject to the same Capitalist-American-tech cultural incentives to engage in a short-sighted McNamara fallacy to drive engagement. This means that the feed in LinkedIn is every bit as bad as any other social network as folks jockey for visibility and influence, but with the added wrinkle that peoples careers depend on this, and it's well understood in the corporate world that negativity is counter-productive to large group efforts, thus leading to an extremely saccharine and "toxic positivity" vibe that can come off extremely dystopic to independent thinkers.

Personally more than anything I just find it funny people try to do real marketing on linkedin. I also think it's funny people post stuff that should be on facebook on linkedin. Thankfully I don't have many of them, I still keep connected with those people because: I genuinely find it amusing.

What I like and see less and less of: I have this one open position I really super need filled, if you know anyone who has done this <insert very specific mission> plz connect me. - That I can actually do something with vs I'm hiring for <insert every open role that could ever exist in a company>

I'm looking to join <insert very specific thing> because I care about this <very specific thing> and I'm willing to beg borrow and steal because <insert very good reason>

So yeah, I think linkedin is fine, and I keep my network super tight, I'm pretty sure I've met everyone I'm connected with IRL or know someone IRL who knows that person very well.

Don't have one, never needed it.

No. I don't see the value of it

Not really. I've never gotten a job or anything on the platform. Messaging people often gets ignored, as well.

I deleted my LinkedIn account fifteen years ago, disgusted by their spammy, underhanded behavior, and I have never regretted it.

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