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Comment by codingdave | Hacker News Reader

I'm not clear why people who hate LinkedIn stay on it. If it is not useful to you, leave. If you want an account but hate the feed, don't read it.

I agree that it has problems. I've also gotten multiple jobs from it. But more importantly, it is my digital rolodex. I absolutely get back in contact with people from prior gigs and we talk, catch up, act as sounding boards for each other's ideas. That has value to me.

But it is just a web site. If you don't like it and it has no value to you, don't use it. Seems like a waste of energy to put this much effort into hating it.

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Quitting it completely would solve. The problem is it’s trying to be both a social site and a job utility. You may want the job utility and not the social feed. But they aren’t so disconnected. You land on the site, you’re on the feed. It’s engaging enough to catch your attention, but sloppy enough for you to not like it.

Maybe what we need is an unauthorized client, like nitter. Then we can just remove the feed.

Often a well crafted ublock: origin block does the trick.

https://github.com/jordwest/news-feed-eradicator

Been using this one for some eight years now, it's the best.

Applied for a contractor position the other day. CV was optional, LinkedIn mandatory.

> LinkedIn mandatory

Verified account with Persona?

I think mostly because it's as ubiquitous as it is performative.

Also, as you point out it can be both useful and largely ridiculous.

Many popular HR portals require mandatory LinkedIn profile in application form

Because of that you either use LinkedIn, or a lot of jobs are inaccessible to you

It's HR version of "living without an ID"

You can get around that by putting the LI URL to the joblisting; or any link - none of the ATS' reject the content in that field.

Yes, there's a risk of rejection but personally I don't mind being ghosted by companies that practice this unethical behavior.

Agreed. Once your profile is set (required if you want to give recruiters something to chew on), there's no need to use - except https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/ - any other part of the biome.

People are using it as a SOCIAL network, then grousing that it sucks as a social network. And?!!

Love it or Hate it, the most-accessible job listings are on LI - more so because that's where most (American) companies & recruiters post to, knowing it's where they'll find the most-accessible candidates. If you're serious about jobsearching, you canNOT not use LI's jobs service.

Sure, LI continually enshitts on that property also, like allowing "aggregators" and outright scrapebots to enshit into the listings pool; and soon forcing their AI version of jobsearch without opt-out. It's LI/Microsoft - what did we expect?

Fortunately there're some tools to make the experience bearable and almost useful.

Because for some areas, it's the table stakes for finding a job much less applying.

In some tech-adjacent sectors, the way you apply is through a thin wrapper around the linkedin API. Sure you can try manually entering the data but the API provides them Just Enough pre-sorted and classified data that it gets sold as "convenience"

Because recruiters have turned it into their platform and if your industry requires recruiters, they're all now on linkedin and that's where you have to go. You can try getting a job via other routes, but connecting to recruiters, it's the lowest effort/least friction.

Somehow I have a bit of reach on it. I don't really read the feed or even check messages anymore tho.

recruiters find you through it, and if you want to apply for jobs they're all on there

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