Hacker News Reader

Comment by qbqetell | Hacker News Reader

I would commend you for that. However, from past experiences, when you refuse to provide your LinkedIn profile, people often assume you are sketchy and have something to hide. But at this point, I have no choice but to figure out a way to work without LinkedIn

View on HN

Strange. It’s rather straightforward to create a (fake) linkedin profile with a couple of hundred of connections (I have one of such profiles, just for fun). I cannot understand companies that think having a linkedin profile makes you look more “legit”

The first time I heard about LinkedIn was when I was in university. A lot of students made profiles and would all “endorse” each other, even when they barely knew the other person. The whole thing seemed super silly to me and I didn’t bother to make a LinkedIn profile. Even after university I’ve stayed away from LinkedIn. The only time I see LinkedIn in my life is when people on Reddit are criticizing it. Of course, Reddit is an echo chamber of its own, so I’m not saying that this alone is reason to disregard LinkedIn.

I know that to some LinkedIn is very important. But to me, I’ve managed completely fine. Been able to get work and have jobs without ever having a LinkedIn profile.

When I apply for a job, I provide CV, cover letter and a link to my GitHub profile.

Maybe some of the places I’ve applied to in the past have passed on me for not having a LinkedIn profile included. I wouldn’t know. No one ever said anything about it to me. But they may have filtered out my application for it. Regardless, I have been able to get work and get jobs.

Up until a couple years ago in Germany (probably most of D/A/CH) many more people had an account on XING (ex OpenBC) and LinkedIn was relatively rare. I'd say 5-10% of my "business" contacts and endorsements are basically never used, even after 90% of the people switched to LinkedIn.

That said, I've also never been directly asked for such a profile, if it was a field in a form I don't remember it being mandatory and I don't even remember when I made my LI account, or when I actually started to input more than my name...

Just another counter-example, if it helps. I have never used LinkedIn once in 20 years in the industry, and I have never felt like I had a hard time finding, applying to, or getting good jobs that I was excited about.

If asked, I honestly said that I didn't want to associate myself with a site that made such heavy use of dark patterns and felt so very, very sketchy to use, and everyone respected that answer (at least to my face).

(I did have to create a LinkedIn account once, for the sake of a previous employer who wanted their small company to not look like it was just the founders who worked there, but I made it using the company email address and never updated it after creation, so I don't really count that as ME using LinkedIn, more my employer through me.)

What is your definition of a “good job”? Every single non solicited outreach I’ve gotten from the top paying companies in the industry came from LinkedIn.

Our company requires you have a LinkedIn because we’ve been burned by multiple engineers who accepted our offer and (months later) never actually quit their previous job. The common thread between people who have had multiple jobs at once has been they hide their LinkedIn

Reply on news.ycombinator.com