I can only surmise they made this change to make it harder for (more) people to bail because they know how dreadful using their site is now and this is an easier "fix" than a Dominos-style mea culpa and positive changes.
I'm not saying that it's any worse than any other sites, but LinkedIn has always felt like a shady company, like they're not on the users side.
I was really hoping that the Google+ reboot would fulfill the niche market that LinkedIn dominates, but it did not.
Of course, I really don't want to spam them while I am rewriting prose about jobs until it's done, though, so it'd have been nicer if the spamming didn't happen until I pushed some kind of "publish" button.
Of course, that will only give you a public view of a profile, but it seems to hide your identity nonetheless.
While I don't think LinkedIn is the shining star, it's definitely not one of the worst websites I've ever used; it's actually been quite helpful for connecting with people.
Even if you consider the number of design dark patterns used and deliberate content obfuscation to be justifiable from a business perspective, they manage to screw up things they don't have an excuse for. The jobs board has an abundance of jobs, unrivalled data to match people with them, and yet shows me very few, with very poor relevance, and big, shiny logos in lieu of a decent headline. LinkedIn Groups was the clunkiest discussion service I've ever seen (although they seem to have tightened it up a bit) which must be part of the reason why article spam vastly exceeds anyone's desire to have significant discussions in there. The UI feels cheap, tacky and glossy and my browser feels like it's choking on the infinite scroll. Even the part of the site which is well executed also happens to be the repository of the world's dullest linkbait...
I'm a calm person but I needed serious gmail filter tinkering to catch all those we-want-you-to-join-or-feel-bad emails.
Ironically, LinkedIn is the only site I've encountered where non-members get more access than (free-tier) signed in users. I regularly open a profile in a private window via Google search because it won't show me 3rd-degree connections without paying for them, but will happily share those profiles with Googlers...
As with many others, I get these constantly: "I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn." with seemingly no way to disable them. You can stop them for that one person's 'invitation', but invariably someone else will start the process over again. I have a filter set up that sends all LI email to trash
> Ironically, LinkedIn is the only site I've encountered where non-members get more access than (free-tier) signed in users.
I can't even imagine how this is defensible. This kind of behavior doesn't give me any reason to want to make an account.
Interface-wise it's not that bad, but I don't use all the features (free user) and don't spend much time on there.
The website itself is awful to use, but the community is even worse. It is now just a tool for shameless recruiters to spam left and right.
I spent a lot of time working on my profile, clearly explaining that I reject connection requests from strangers, that I ignore messages for open jobs which don't include a certain set of items and I still get spammed all day long.
The problem is LinkedIn gets its money from recruiters who signed up for premium accounts so they cater to them.
I never thought about it that way, but it makes perfect sense. I deleted my account sometime last year (I think), and I deal with no shitty recruiters now.