Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

Thank you LinkedIn. Good riddance. While you are at it, how about fixing/retiring the following things as well:

- Endorsements. They serve no purpose other than "look I am so cool" and for recruiter to find you by keywords that does not make much sense. Plus I have no interest in getting endorsed by my uncle for something he has no clue about.

- Groups: These end up being nothing but recruiter spam.

- Stop the spam of "Please join linkedin premium trial for 30 days". I get this email every other week. If I am interested, I would have joined by now. Don't you get it.

- And the classic one. It is ok for you to spam my gmail contacts but I cannot even send a group email to all my connections at once (you have a stupid cap)? One use case is that during the Christmas/new Year time, I like to send a note to all my contacts saying hi. Yes not very pesonalized but for me the whole point of linkedin is to stay in touch with my professional connections. Guess what ? You limit the number of connections I can send a note to in one message. really ?

I found a great way to cut down on this spam: Delete your LinkedIn account.

I removed mine 3 years ago and I never once regretted it.

I removed mine about the same time frame too. No regrets. It has not hindered my networking or hireability.

I just applied to several jobs within the last few days; Jobvite lets me "one-click" apply with my LinkedIn profile, which is so much easier than those "upload your resume and we're going to mangle it in our web form".

Disclaimer: Received several calls back same day/next day, in my mind that means its working as its supposed to.

Why not tie it to an e-mail you can more easily filter (or choose not to look at)?

Endorsements serve a purpose for LinkedIn. They keep users coming back to the site when they receive the "X has endorsed you for Y" emails.

You can tell endorsements are mostly for LinkedIn's benefit when you notice they don't even expose them in their API.

Yep. Endorsements are very clearly built as a LinkedIn engagement and retention feature.

I think people are able to endorse you for anything. The more keyword-rich a profile is, the better targeted the advertising. ;-)

Yes. Endorsing your friends for the most bizarre thing you can think of, is always great fun.

Never accept an endorsement for anything boring like work.

I'm gay, and a friend and former colleague went through a period of regularly endorsing me with anything that sounded at all that could sound either camp or gay. I can't seem to figure out how to find them now, and off the top of my head the only one I can think of is Pearl (I'm not a programmer, and I doubt he even knows Pearl is there as a programming language). Meanwhile I'd return the favour with anything that hinted towards the fact that he's a massive pervert.

Was great fun for a while, and the only use I've ever had from endorsements, which I've now completely disabled.

My favorite is "Problem Gambling." I don't even know why it'd be in their list of endorsable things.

Counselors can specialize in treating gaming addictions.

>Stop the spam

So its not ok for LinkedIn to spam you but its ok for you to spam all your contacts with a mass holiday greeting to "stay in touch"? Ok.

I've never understood complaining about recruiters.

"Woe is me: I have to spend a few minutes deleting emails from people trying to hire me into well-paying professional jobs."

It's probably the most first world problem that could possibly exist. Ughhh fuck I'm so tired of making six figures while someone else offers me that!!

Just wanted to say I hate endorsements as well.

I never accept any endorsements and I think some person actually removed me off his contact list because:

a) I didn't accept his endorsement.

b) Didn't endorse him in return (people seem to expect this?)

I didn't even know you had to accept endorsements. And as ridiculous as they are, I never did bother to return the 'favor.' Perhaps this is just another incarnation of "you didn't Like my post" Facebook drama.

Groups is a good idea that's being poorly used. Some groups are set up to promote a single person or group, yet have generic names. Others are used by people not familiar with Stackexchange for asking technical questions.

They make sense for a professional networking site, but they have to be guided towards relevance.

I agree. This could be of great value if they would cultivate it and see what works.

Are endorsements faked? I've deleted my account, but next time I would ask your uncle if he actually endorsed you for X, because I have a strange feeling they are completely fabricated.

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