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Comment by drivingmenuts | Hacker News Reader

Well, that sucks. The one thing I hate about Linked in is being up-rated on my skills by people who barely know what I do and certainly have never worked with me in any capacity or even discussed my work in any sense beyond "What do you do for a living?".

From where I sit, it's a tool for marketers and recruiters to gather data and it's otherwise completely useless.

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One of my pet peeves are people who don’t understand what I call “gravity problems”. You may not like gravity. But that doesn’t mean you jump off of a 30 story building and hope to survive.

Whether I like LinkedIn or not is completely irrelevant. I play the game, add connections, post a few banal “Thought Leadership” posts, ask for recommendations, etc.

My remote job at BigTech fell into my lap in mid 2020 and at 46 because an internal recruiter reached out to me, I got my next job two years ago within a week after I started looking because of targeted LinkedIn outreach. My current job also fell into my lap two weeks after I started looking because an internal recruiter reached out to me.

It does absolutely no good being good at your job if no one knows it.

I think even in the current job market, someone would give me a job or a contract relatively quickly if I needed one based on my network, LinkedIn profile, and positive impressions I’ve made in my niche over the past 7 years.

None of your positive impressions are by virtue of linkedin though. Unless your profession is influencer I suppose.

How else would someone know about me and how would I connect with them? I can change my status to “Open to Work” and have 1200 people see it My specific niche is strategy consulting along with hands on keyboard work for smaller projects and before that, I was hired at 3 separate companies by a new to the company director/CTO to lead initiatives. At that level it’s all about knowing how to “influence” and communicate.

I’m not bragging, I’m old. I should have that type of experience and network.

> My specific niche is strategy consulting

I think that's the key difference. For strategy folks, it makes sense to demonstrate this kind of work through that kind of channel. But LinkedIn posts aren't relevant for non-networking roles.

The parent poster has “25 years of exp, director of engineering managerial/technical type”. He should be selling himself as a strategy person. In today’s market you have to be networking regardless especially for remote work. Even before I started doing the BS influencer mess, two of my last three jobs were based on internal recruiters reaching out to me.

All roles are networking roles

> experience and network

How does LinkedIn factor into your experience and network is what I mean. You can’t tell me people cold call you through linkedin. If people contact you it might be through linkedin, but that’s only because their friends have been talking about you. LinkedIn isn’t what gives you work, it’s the fact that you’ve done good work for others.

Recruiters will absolutely cold call from LinkedIn, it literally happened to me this morning.

"It does absolutely no good being good at your job if no one knows it."

Yeah and LI is a terrible way to show it.

There is a better way, and will be a better way. With time.

For now I agree - have to play the game.

So exactly how was a company in Seattle going to find out about me in Atlanta if not through LinkedIn to offer me a remote job paying 50% more than i was making? How were the next two companies where I worked remotely going to know anything about me?

What “better way” is there?

ha, I cant say. Im working on something related to this.

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