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Comment by MarkPNeyer | Hacker News Reader

> If you don't have a LinkedIn profile, I assume you're either very junior, shady, or clueless, and none of those is good.

pg's is basically empty.

don knuth doesn't have one.

bruce schneier doesn't have one.

and thomas ptacek's declares:

I hereby declare LinkedIn bankruptcy. LinkedIn sends me so much spam that my mail client refuses to show me its messages anymore. If you try to ping me here, I may never notice. Sorry!

You'd be able to get away with it, if it wasn't for us meddling kids.

> Expecting everyone to have and maintain their own domain probably isn't practical,

for web developers? why would you hire a web developer that didn't have their own domain?

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> why would you hire a web developer that didn't have their own domain?

As stated in my other comments, I'm in the not-Linked-In camp. But still, I must take issue with the above. I happen to own a number of domain names, but I don't have a personal site at the moment. That's simply because I don't need one. At the moment, I successfully rely on other signals of my trustworthiness as an engineer.

When would I want to create a personal site? If I worked on many small projects for many small clients, I'd constantly be in a sales cycle, so I'd have a personal site for that purpose.

So in answer your question: "why would you hire a web developer that didn't have their own domain?" I'd hire such a web developer if she were qualified, quite simply. If she lacked a personal site because she had to practical reason to create one, I wouldn't hold that against her. I'd think it reflected well on her judgment of priorities.

pg, knuth and schneier are practically household names, and ptacek is very googlable. If they're looking for employment, I don't think that a scanty LinkedIn profile is going to be the dealbreaker.

...so there is another category?

I think so: if your name is famous enough, hiring managers will ignore their own rules.

Also, if you went to a top tier school for your subject, most of the rules are ignored. My profile is partially completed, and I haven't updated most of it in a while. I always get a callback when I submit a resume; even if it's a position I'm grossly underqualified for.

If someone knows you, then you have a good chance of scoring an interview; otherwise it's almost impossible, at least in phd-level computer science.

So... no work experience?

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