I Don't Have LinkedIn | Hacker News Reader

I Don't Have LinkedIn

i-dont-have-linkedin.com

72 pointsshafyy74 comments

Every time I think about linkedin I get this exhausted feeling thinking about dealing with it, updating, that horrible feed of generic "rah rah <empty emotional statement> company" posts that feel cold as ice ... all the unsolicited email they send me. I can't think of another site that makes me feel like that.

I have a profile, but it is as old as the last job I got and I have no desire to go to that site but I still feel tied to it to some extent.

I can't think of another site that has that weird combination of undesirable factors that I'm stuck with.

I go there maybe once every 6 months, accept those 30 new connections while ignoring anything they wrote to me during that time, completely ignore the rest of the page, log off. Or maybe its cca once every year, don't know really.

All those few times, when I looked by accident on timeline or whatever its called, it was just very facebook-like self-promotion crap (and thats a polite word) from people I know damn well are not honest in it at all... We already have 1 cancer called facebook, why the desperate need to participate in another one, while glaringly obvious its just for the show and dishonesty?

If anything such people would get automatic NO in hiring since bullshit level present is very high and it won't go down. Maybe MBAs hiring other MBAs have some wet experiences about their 'reach' or whatever, but for technical roles, thats song of the past.

LinkedIn, on its face was a great idea. A social network for colleagues. It was a Facebook with better spelling and fewer lost neighborhood cats.

Then it degenerated into...this. A place where every connection request I get (and refuse) is from recruiters I never met. How the hell am I going to benefit by knowing I'm 3 levels removed from the manager at the job I'm seeking, if all those 3 levels are recruiters I never met? People ever accepting a connection from a recruiter instantly broke the one useful feature of LinkedIn: finding out if you were connected to someone professionally. So ironically, recruiters, the people for whom LinkedIn was a godsend, instantly broke it by trying to infiltrate peoples circles.

I won't even get into the "content" that's posted on the Facebook-style home feed of LinkedIn. I can't imagine anyone actually reads that stuff, but it sure does keep me from ever visiting the site. Like it gives me a negative physical reaction even skimming the feed page. Anyone else feel this? There are really few pages on the entire internet where you get that feeling that makes you activcely avoid visiting.

You can just treat it as a hosting service for your c.v. like everyone else. If other people are getting value from the social network aspect then I am glad, even if I don't see that value and don't use it like that.

I never dared updating my CV because I waited too long and now I just fear it would seem I was on the verge of quitting my job if I suddenly moved even a millimeter on LinkedIn.

If your employer thinks you are ready and able to leave, would that necessarily be a bad thing?

I need this for Instagram. I’ve had so many weird looks from people when they ask for my Instagram and I say don’t have it.

Why must I upload pictures of myself for other people to view? I don’t care about the number of likes or followers I have or that other people have.

> Why must I upload pictures of myself for other people to view?

IG is hardly about that any more. These days it's mostly just a feed for new content just like HN, YouTube, Twitter etc. - Not worse, not better.

As a young engineering student, I picked up the extremely strong impression that linkedin was for MBA students, not me, so I enthusiastically never joined yet another obviously suit-centered social network thingie.

I have yet to be convinced that this impression was wrong.

I mean sure, you can take the “high road” and belittle its users and how they have a different area of focus than yours, but the reality is that skipping linkedin will 100% make you miss engineering opportunities.

But you still get to scoff, so that’s something.

> I mean sure, you can take the “high road” and belittle its users and how they have a different area of focus than yours

"people can like things" but for vapid MBAs who are hand in hand gutting society.

It'll make you miss engineering opportunities you don't want anything to do with.

Maybe the social aspect is, but it's just another place to have your resume listed for recruiters to search and look for jobs on.

Readers, Spare me the stories of how you just phone your friends for nearly 7figure jobs please and how job searches imply your not worth hiring please...

I got my current role from a linkedin recruiter and it's practically my dream job. ymmv

I also never log in unless I'm job searching.

LinkedIn as a host of your CV with potential recruiters finding you is pretty ok to be honest, there's nothing else there to experience though, I don't ever want to look at my feed, I ignore 90% of the recruiter spam. Still, I got my current job from a recruiter contacting me, at a major tech company you are probably aware of.

You don't need it to be a social network thingie, it can just be a showcase of your CV that you can check messages from recruiters/other people hiring when you feel like it, ignoring them is also quite expected so you don't lose anything in the end.

As someone in this industry for 20+ years, you are not gaining anything by enthusiastically ignoring it, it doesn't take my attention or care and it can give you pretty good opportunities sometimes.

In summary: in my opinion your impression is wrong, LinkedIn is definitely not a necessity but just by sheer volume you'll find many great opportunities there, at least in the tech/tech-adjacent industry.

I do kind of find it odd, though that, having seen my profile said recruiters don't just forward that to their client/hiring manager.

They still want to check that you are contactable and open to a new position.

Finally a way to enter an URL in those forms that require LinkedIn, but you don't have it. Because it sucks ass.

What if they have regex'd that field?

Ends in LinkedIn.com so that'll pass some of them at least.

Hopefully they just match on linkedin.com

If they use a regex? https://linkedin.com@i-dont-have-linkedin.com?linkedin.com/

If they do it the proper way? It's all ogre

You shouldn't use regex to parse URLs, you should use the URL handler that comes with your language (ex: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/URL/URL)

```js

    const linkedin = new URL("https://linkedin.com@i-dont-have-linkedin.com?linkedin.com/");
    console.log(linkedin.host);
    // => "i-dont-have-linkedin.com"

```

Neat trick. Firefox does give a warning about it:

> You are about to log in to the site “i-dont-have-linkedin.com” with the username “linkedin.com”, but the web site does not require authentication. This may be an attempt to trick you.

> Is “i-dont-have-linkedin.com” the site you want to visit?

If those sites are even more clever than a regex, they might bin your application for this.

What kind of HR writes scripts to check for weird URLs in people's links

They're orders of magnitude more likely to bin your application for a thousand arbitrary reasons than to have specifically implemented something that weird

You shouldn't live your life around things that will likely never happen

I was considering creating one, recently. The thought alone depresses me. I don't even like having a GitHub account.

This page validates my choices a bit more.

I actually made a project to generate github use as much of the time I'm issuing GitLab or an enterprise git for a client somewhere.

one can snark about linkedin, but it's an almost unimaginable luxury to not need a profile on it and it punks-off good people trying to make their way. it's best not to be cruel about it, as reality is for most of us our best is still pretty humble.

that said, my personal definition of success is to be able to delete it, and I'm not there yet.

something I've come to resent about tech and cybersecurity business culture is middling talents without real responsibilities squandering social capital on punk-ass signalling because there are few other meaningful differentiators available to them, and so they shit on people who can't afford to blow off recruiters and who have to maintain durable professional relationships that don't bear being meta- about or sarcastic commentary. sure linkedin is hell, but have some compassion, and imo build something better or stfu.

I'm not here to "shit on" you, I'm here to tell you that _you_, in your current state, _do not need LinkedIn_.

You don't need to attain some master-level of status for this. Get out there, go to real events, meet real people, make real connections, and you can "blow off recruiters" too.

A recent phenomenon that I am seeing on LI is that these so called LinkedIn top voices take some random tiktok kind of videos, and then wrap some generic management spiel around it to give what we call here in India as "gyan", or, sharing their supposedly vast management knowledge with their followers. Totally hollow and cring-worthy. Yet, there is sometime some good content. So, like with everything else, take what works for you, ignore, what does not.

Huh, every time I load that page my phone throws a "Did you mean LinkedIn.com? This might be a scam" message

i hate linkedIn also but sometimes feel like it's a necessary evil if you want to land a job. But maybe I'm looking at it wrong. It might be possible that giving a potential picky employer your LinkedIn will give them more reasons to NOT hire you instead of the opposite.

I deleted my account fifteen years ago, disgusted by their underhanded spammy "growth-hacking" tactics, and I've never had any trouble getting work despite that (nor felt any regret about doing it). YMMV... but LinkedIn hasn't been necessary to me at all.

Seems like sort of a red flag for hiring, if a person can't even be bothered to adopt the free c.v. hosting service that everyone else use. It makes me wonder if after hiring such a person they will reveal a bunch of other out-of-the-mainstream behaviors like sending non-MIME text emails only, interquoting replies, demanding a weird laptop that works well with openbsd, or wanting to be paid in crypto.

Bullshit. If they want a CV they can have my CV, as a PDF or in website form. LinkedIn not a CV, it’s a for-profit company disguised as a social network. It’s perfectly reasonable not to be interested in engaging in it.

Requiring LinkedIn is a clear red flag about the employer. What’s next, they will ask me to make a TikTok video with a little dance using the company’s T-shirt? Or post some meaningless LLM-generated praise for my company every 6 months or so?

> free

But it is not "free" Jeff. That's the entire point - a gaming of our professional lives beyond "free c.v. hosting service".

> that everyone uses

I wonder how that happens. "Must use this 'free c.v. service' or Jeff and likeminded corporate drones will think you be 'odd' and 'not a cultural fit'".

"You want red flags? HOLD MY BEER" - some guy on hn

It sounds like this could be an effective bidirectional filter!

Right? It absolutely is! If you are strongly opposed to it, you should simply not apply to positions at companies that expect you to have a LinkedIn profile.

I feel that the context here is someone was filling out job applications, and there was a required field for their linkedin profile.

You could probably also just enter "https://www.linkedin.com" if that's required somewhere. It has the advantage of not making you look like an ass.

Or maybe, if someone thinks you are an ass for putting this in, then they are probably a humorless individual not worth working for.

I don't get it. This is a job application and you're trying to make a good first impression. Complying with their requirements is the first step towards doing that. A lot of people don't have the freedom to pick and choose their employers based on their style of humor. You know what a lot of people don't want to hear? "lol this part of the application is annoying"

"humorless individual not worth working for."

I probably have 10 other things I consider before taking into account my employer's style of humor. Not to mention, the person (machine) looking at your application may or may not be the person you're going to be working with. So, by doing this, you're potentially filtering yourself out based on an algorithm or temperament of an HR person. The idea that this necessarily represents the quality of the employer is kinda strange.

Well, I understand the point, but as an applicant you DO have the luxury of applying to hundreds of jobs, and at least when I'm applying, I'm trying to weed out potential employers just as much as they are trying to find the best candidate. So, I stand by my point.

Actually, all my job applications are "here's what I think" sort of applications. I don't much care about complying, only showing who I am. Yes, I didn't get some jobs and probably some of my applications DIDN'T help much, but looking back, I'm glad I didn't get those jobs anyway because in the end after hundreds of applications I ususally found something that was more my style.

Not sure some misconfigured submission form ("Required" checkbox) is a big indicator of company quality.

>I'm glad I didn't get those jobs anyway because in the end after hundreds of applications I ususally found something that was more my style.

As somebody else mentioned, it depends on the size of the company. In some cases, you have no information about the culture or quality of the employer based on something like this. The strong pushback I'm seeing for something this obvious is wild.

Priorities vary, that's the beauty of it. For me personally, treating this kind of stuff sternly would be a very serious red flag. I might put this link in my CV.

Of course, I'm not the type of person to complain and panic when a job search takes a long time. On the other hand, I'd say that I had some incredibly good luck with my jobs so far [regarding culture fit, generally meeting great people, etc].

If the requirement is having a linkedin page and they don't appreciate this type of humor (they think it's a bad first impression or whatever), then there is no compensation that makes me want to work there.

A company that lets a HR person filter out my application based on a thing like that? Again, they can't pay me enough to work there.

Good on you for having the financial security to select and filter employers so aggressively.

> "Good on you for having the financial security to select and filter employers so aggressively."

It may not even always about having financial security at that moment. Sometimes it may be about already having a cruddy job, and not wanting to just move into another cruddy job, so you suffer with the current job for as long as it takes to find the right job to replace it.

It's more about applying to thousands of jobs, unfortunately. Hahahha

The person reviewing the first pass of resume and the person you are actually working for may be three people removed.

If you intend to work for companies less than 50 people, this is a good strategy, but it will fall apart past that. That said, that's a valid choice if a little difficult in the current environment.

One icky thing about linkedin. I moved to London as a sort of "young professional" and moved in with two other similar people. I was working at a big tech, my flatmates were at a soft drink startup and an NGO respectively. We had zero connection before and no common friends or colleagues, totally different industries. But linkedin recommended us as contacts. The only information it could possibly have been using is our shared IP address. I mean I guess it's not that surprising but it gave me a bad feeling.

Oh! I hate linked-in. Never used it and am now "retired". Never did not work a day in my professional 39-yr work period. What do I hate about it? the resume embellishment, the spam recruiter's, and my observation (poking around without a linkedin account) of people in my work group who hated each other but were linked together on their individual linked-in accounts. If you don't like someone at work, perhaps you do not need to recommend them on social media.

Lol, Chrome asking me "Did you mean linkedin.com?" in a popup and 'helpfully' offering me to redirect to the linkedin.com URL is the icing on the cake.

_You do not need LinkedIn!_ I can not put enough emphasis on this. So many people think you can't be a professional without a LinkedIn account, it's depressing.

Word of mouth trumps everything. Build up your _real_ social and professional network, and you will never be at the mercy of any of these so-called tools. And yes, I built mine up without LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a place to upload your resume and show employers that you're a real person. You don't need to use it beyond that. You're not special or cool if you refuse to make an account.

> show employers that you're a real person

...how would LinkedIn be able to figure out that this isn't a fake profile made by a dog?

And how is a LinkedIn URL any different from any other URL that shows my CV?

FWIW, I had an account for a couple of years and eventually deleted it (don't remember when, but probably some time between 2010 and 2015) because it added exactly zero value (actually negative value because of all the spam).

Also just from a few days ago: https://www.pcmag.com/news/linkedin-is-quietly-training-ai-o...

It’s an interesting perspective, but the precise opposite of mine. During my short time in there all I saw were fake-looking pictures of fake-looking people, with profiles full of fake-looking (or at least embezzled) information and, more than anything else, fake texts and updates full of fake, empty statements with a bunch of fake likes and fake comments/congratulations. I never felt more like a real human being than when I shut it down.

I've only ever looked at my own profile and the profiles of old classmates to make myself feel bad.

I would probably have a LinkedIn account, but for their super annoying viral tactics. Many of my professors and co-workers have sent me LinkedIn invites, without their knowledge. LinkedIn may no longer be doing this, only because it's harder now, but in the past, their app would scrape your contacts and then blast all of them with a LinkedIn invite. They're not the only company that does/did this, but it's a detestable tactic.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252914656

Don't know about "special or cool" (do _you_ think they're special or cool?) but it certainly tells me enough about the person to be more interested in hiring them. What they're saying is "I will not subscribe to this obvious scummy scam site, despite being pressured to do so".

I have a CEO acquaintance who bumped up their LinkedIn posting substantially in the last year - tons of long form “this is what I’ve learned running my company” posts. I asked a friend there how much time that CEO spends crafting these multiple posts a week and they said 0, he hired a ghostwriter to post on his behalf.

Smart I guess but feels totally disingenuous.

The only time I go there is when I get an email request for a new contact that is someone I work with. My company is huge and every 6-12 months I'm on a new project with 10 new people so that usually triggers a bunch of new connections.

When I login 99% of the posts are from a handful of small business owners and senior managers. It's all press release garbage about how they or their company is doing an awesome job and you should talk to them about whatever they are selling or doing. No thanks.

today linkedin marketed me linkedin Games... bed smell. what is next things to start switching?

LinkedIn activity reads like millions of scent marking animals rubbing each other 24/7.

I don't "have" linkedout, AND I don't click meme URLs...

and that's all it took for your application to get thrown out

That filtering cuts both ways.

I closed my LinkedIN down after a few years of having it. An absolutely useless website where post wooden versions of themselves celebrating their climb to the top of global destructive capitalism.

The last cold outreach I got was from a YouTube marketer who wanted to sell me "fake" subscribers and comments. Goes to show what a disgusting and rotten place it is. And the icing is, it's owned by Microsoft. Hope it burns.

WAOW!!!

I only use LinkedIn for the games now lol

Hilarious.

Chrome warns me about possible phishing when visiting this site: https://i.imgur.com/vinigSP.png

"Did you mean linkedin.com? Attackers sometimes mimic sites by making hard-to-see changes to the web address."

Clicking [Learn more] opens this: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/99020?p=safety_tip&...

I wonder if Chrome has a hard-coded list of domains against which it checks for phishing attempts, or if it sends visited urls to Google for that...

Documentation for the feature:

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs...

> Chrome attempts to detect these lookalike domains by comparing the URL you visited with other URLs that are either very popular, or that you have visited previously. These checks all happen within Chrome -- Chrome does not communicate with Google to perform these checks.

“Very popular” does make it sound like they have preloaded some list of the top 1000 or whatever domains.

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