Finally deleted my LinkedIn account!
After putting my account into “hibernation” for the past few weeks, I finally closed it. But I’m still looking for work. Thankfully I can still find positions (SRE and software dev) by just going directly to the company’s site and finding a Jobs page.
Good luck to everyone else out there looking for work!
I keep LinkedIn telling myself it’s necessary to find a job but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a job from LinkedIn, now that I think about it.
Got an amazing one thanks to a fellow alumni who proactively reached out.
Well played on this one, Microsoft… got me locked in, for now.
Can’t wait for the day login to LI is required to purchase something. A price discriminator’s wet dream.
but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a job from LinkedIn, now that I think about it.
Yeah that was it for me. I got loads of messages from recruiters but they were really low effort communication. I even put in things like “INCLUDE THE WORD
GLENDAIF YOU READ MY PROFILE” near the top of my profile/experience section. Out of the hundreds of messages, I’d say fewer than 10 actually wrote “GLENDA”!The conversations I did end up having were shitty anyway. Essentially I think the world got software fever over the past few years and it’s only just recently cooling down. People going into recruiting without any people skills, let alone industry knowledge. Companies desperate to hire people for no reason, including people who just did that “Quit your job and start coding!” nonsense.
I’ve never gotten a job from LinkedIn but I feel like that’s also one where potential employers might view not having one as a red flag? Like maybe it’s better to keep something up with a basic profile and job history matching your resume, but not actively using?
I’ve never gotten a job from LinkedIn but I feel like that’s also one where potential employers might view not having one as a red flag?
My hope is that any future employers may understand where I’m coming from by not having an account there. Not sure whether that really works out in the real world, though. Only one way to find out, I guess!
Where do you get jobs from?
I’ve usually found things on Indeed and am starting to have some success with freelance/contracts on Upwork. I’ve also had some personal network connections to jobs, but that’s never been through LinkedIn, just knowing someone at a company and then thinking I’d be a good fit for an opening.
Good to know, thanks, I’ll check out upwork. I just got laid off and they gave me basically no severance, so, I’d love to find something quick lol
deleted by creator
I’m not sure what a fresher is? In general I think it depends on what field you work in. If you’re in something where you might have to compete with a lot of competent people from low cost of living countries you might find your potential wages kept lower. On the other hand, national laws might help you. For instance, I see a lot of jobs that specify U.S.-applicants only.
The hardest part I think is getting that first job. You have to really tailor your proposal to catch the eye of the hiring person. Once you get that first job and it shows you as a verified individual and you start showing earnings on your page I think that helps build confidence. Then if you can successfully complete some contracts you can get flagged as rising talent or a high job success score, which opens additional opportunities.
The 10% commission takes a bite out of the paycheck, so you need to factor that in when setting your rate. Of course, a contractor should have a much higher hourly rate than a direct employee.
Defiantly this.
Depends on your job and the industry though I guess.
I got recruits to buy me coffee while I ranted at them about the tech industry. That was cool, but wasn’t worth how much noise is in the inbox nor the privacy concerns of having your data & network stored with Microsoft, so I deleted my account a few years ago.
I’d love to delete all accounts associated with Microsoft, but we need to bully projects off of MS GitHub that refuse to acknowledge the privacy concerns (as well as the mental health issues caused as a result of turning a code forge into a social media platform that your job probably makes you uses). npm falls in this same category but is easier to avoid.
I got recruits to buy me coffee while I ranted at them about the tech industry.
Hold on… that’s awesome. Shit maybe I deleted my account too soon…
I mean, I get physically sick of the idea of the worst mindless parts of the corporate world being spammed around the genuinely amazing project that is the Internet. But paying for coffee sucks, too ;)
Haha. It was only 2–3 times, but when they learned how niche my skillset was/what tech I would actually work with, I think they realized it was a waste of their time (like how actively writing object-oriented code is a waste of time)
I’ve gotten almost all my jobs, and probably a handful of offers, and more messages from recruiters than I can count, through LinkedIn…it’s definitely the easiest way to find and get a job IME. I don’t think I’ve gone “job hunting” since I was fresh out of university looking for my first job.
I got my current job through it, and it’s a great job I never would’ve found otherwise. So I think it’s absolutely worth keeping.
I keep forgetting about it though. I block all of their messages and only check it if I’m looking for a job.
Shit, I got almost half of my jobs through that site, though. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. 😆
I got a job from it once.
It was the worst experience of my life. I quit after a few weeks.
Went through a couple comments of both „still use it“ and „dont need it at all“.
We need a fedi linkedin clone
Its again totally obvious that we need a fediverse linkedin clone, especially geared towards work, with a full cv function, option to hide your personal data until you approve a future employer, ways like mastodon for companies to prove they are legit to even be able to see a persons personal data so they dont dox themselves to some rando.
I cant do it on my own but willing to help
I‘m unable to set this up so please take the idea and run with it. Probably just a mastodon fork tbh with specific features. If anyone feels like doing this and needs business knowledge from an entrepreneur/CEO perspective, lmk.
Thank you for reading and have a good one!
Just imagine responding to LinkedIn post from Lemmy
That would be both frightening and funny. But I dont know which one is more.
I agree that LinkedIn is shit, but I’m not sure it’ll be resolved by going fedi. IMO what would be more important is a better job posting board. LinkedIn job search sucks galactic balls. The “remote jobs” search option is a fucking joke. Keywords are so blatantly spoiled by SEO and LinkedIn refuses to clean it up.
Not sure if a federated job search board would improve the situation though…
“galactic balls” - I am so going to use this phrase…
I might as well
Its you again! Your signature always identifies you instantly.
I agree that linkedin is shit. Any form of alternative would be good but honestly, I‘m not using any social media that isnt democratic anymore. So my only chance at it is making it democratic.
Have a good one.
Its you again! Your signature always identifies you instantly.
😂 Thanks, I was hoping it would’ve caught on by now, but that’s fine.
I‘m not using any social media that isnt democratic anymore
Respect. LinkedIn shouldn’t have been social media, but they went ahead and did it. I too would like an alternative.
You have a good one too 🙂
So… how do you add an automatic signature? Asking for a friend…
It’s a keyboard shortcut that sends the keystrokes to the active window 😉 I wish there were a lemmy client that did it for me, but this is what I have to do for now.
Fair. I added it to my bio for now. Baby steps is how we learn to run.
I just went ahead and did something. Since I consider you very knowledgeable I would like to invite you to look at it and share your opinion. I‘ll send you the link if you‘re interested.
I agree that going fedi doesn’t automatically solve the issues. However, moving it away from a multi tiered paid platform (they really tailored it so they could do this) and controlling the bots/scam accounts would be a completely different experience. I think fedi would at least solve the first one, and I’d expect would help controlling the second.
option to hide your personal data until you approve a future employer
I think this is impossible in a fediverse context. Data is either shared publicly or only shared with your home instance’s admins. There’s no other sharing model as far as I know.
Thats no issue. You can make only public data federate and use p2p for sensitive data.
Public would be your skills, some text about yourself, your industries and amount of employed years in each industry without dates or companies.
Think of it like a puzzle. First part the employer gets to see. They can search „java dev 5 yrs exp“ and get 100 peeps, in state/country/remote, for xxx$ per year/month/hour.
Then they can send you a request but only if they have authenticated through their own public website like on mastodon. If you accept, they can ask you questions and talk. If you reach common ground, they can request your full cv which could be self deleting or something in case the job falls through.
Its not a perfect system but its a lot safer than sending a cv per unencrypted email imo. or answering to some rando on linkedin. Also, anyone who knows you can find you on linkedin with your clear name. Its totally crazy to decline the potential of such a project in light of the current situation.
Things could be encrypted. But yeah, that’s my biggest issue with the fediverse, it’s just not designed around privacy. It’s also why I’m working on my own lemmy alternative, I want something a bit more privacy-friendly.
I don’t think working on a LinkedIn alternative is worthwhile because it relies even more heavily on the network effect. The only point I see in LinkedIn is in finding jobs, and getting employers to look at something else is an uphill battle I don’t want to fight.
My understanding is that Activitypub federation and that sort of privacy are somewhat incompatible. Because someone could always just create a new instance and then federate the stuff you don’t want shared with them.
The point would be sharing data that’s not useful without the key. So you could share your public key and public metadata, but to access private data you’d need to get approved first. An approval request would be encrypted with your public key and contain a response key, and your response would contain your response encrypted with their key.
You obviously wouldn’t be able to control what they do with your data once decrypted, but all of that back and forth can happen in the clear without giving up private information. It’s the same way GPG/PGP works over email, just on a fediverse instead of SMTP.
It really wouldn’t be all that hard to implement, I just don’t think it would get any meaningful traction because LinkedIn is so reliant on the network effect.
What difference does the federation make in this case? Either way the personal data is in someone else’s computer.
Federated means democratic. We‘re on lemmy because free association. Its obvious that all other social media, including work related, should be federated, in fact it should be outlawed to have anything public-non-federated. We need to destroy all walled gardens.
On the other topic of personal data: the critical data like real name, home address, phone number, email address, former employers etc. should absolutely not be federated, thats a need to know basis.
The public profiles are the same as mastodon and don’t constitute personal data in my book: your skills, the industries and length of employment.
The important part is that you can put your personal data on an instance (which might or might not be your own) and encrypt it so nobody except you can read it and if you get an offer, the future employer gets an encypted view of your data which could also be on auto delete if the job falls through.
Federation isn’t the magic bullet you make it out to be. In fact I disagree with pretty much everything you said, but we probably agree on some fundamental concepts. I just believe federation isn’t democratic, not even a little bit, it’s just silos of control.
I think we need distributed platforms where data is owned through encryption and signatures. Think gossip protocol with PGP encryption and web of trust based moderation. It’s still not democratic, but it puts control in the hands of individual users, not instance admins.
Similar to what Churchill said of democracy, Lemmy/ActivityPub is the worst form of social media, except for all the others. Federation isn’t the goal imo, decentralization is. It just turns out that a ActivityPub and Lemmy are available today, which is why I’m here. Reddit was the best option before now (open source frontend, friendly API, etc), but that changed so now I’m here.
So no, don’t enshrine a particular solution into law, focus on the principles of privacy and decentralization.
Yeah, there we really have to agree to disagree.
You will always have silos of control and that is a good thing. The fact that makes it democratic is that you have access to it. If you dont like the rules of the instance, you move or spin up your own.
What you‘re saying is just everyone for themselves, diverting the already thinly stretched attention of fedi-capable folks even more.
Again, I think its okay to disagree. I‘m just saying „but i want“ is not a valid reason to reinvent the wheel imo.
Our problem is not a system, it is certain behavior of certain people corrupting the system until itself becomes the problem. The solution is not bringing down the system but outlawing the behavior (the dark triad) because although I consider myself a leftist and close to anarchism, I recognize that we have a lot of narcissists and psychopaths in that space as well. Those who are willing to take any measure to bring the current people in power down to take power themselves. Bullying people into submission is no different than being rich and paying them for it.
everyone for themselves.
I’m not suggesting that at all. What I want is the next logical step after federation, which is basically data being distributed.
Basically, I want BitTorrent, but for social media. So there would be no instances, only communities (so no community@instance, just community). Right now, if lemmy.ml goes down, all of the communities hosted there go down and people would need to migrate elsewhere. With a distributed system, if someone drops out, the community goes on because it doesn’t live on any one system. Lemmy could mitigate that with a feature to move a community, but you still have the fragmentation issue.
The tricky part is moderation, but I’m thinking that could be done through votes and reports/blocks. Basically, if you vote the same way as someone consistently, you’ll start to trust their votes, reports, and blocks more than other uses, and you could enable automatic moderation to hide stuff based on someone else’s moderation.
So you would no longer need to rely on a centralized set of mods for a community, you’d instead pick mods yourself based on who you agree with. So you and I could have a separate set of “mods” for the same content. At any time, you could inspect the moderation to see if you agree with it, and your account would learn what you like and don’t like. This kills the “power hungry mods” issue that kills so many communities (i.e. I’ve left subreddits purely because of mods), though I’m a little worried it’ll push people even more into echo chambers.
The important thing, though, is that it puts the control directly into the hands of the users, with a set of tools to customize it. And there could be multiple competing clients to handle the moderation differently. I think it’s a bit more democratic than what Lemmy provides.
its okay to disagree
I absolutely agree.
My point is that I see federation as a stopgap to something better, not the destination, and it’s totally reasonable to disagree. I just think federation will have similar problems as centralized services, and that it’s inevitable once it grows to a certain size.
I agree. Federation isnt the end. But right now, we have to build this up and abolish the old, not abolish the new imo. Thats why I say federation everywhere now, concentrate everything on making this work and worry about the next thing afterward.
The reason I say this is also because I founded a couple of very successful businesses because my autistic brain has a very significant advantage: intense focus. Focusing your efforts on one thing is insanely important and the only way to really get somewhere.
Have you ever wondered why there are better systems, fairer systems but they never take hold? The reason imo isnt (only) because the 1% actively fight them and lead the rest to fight them as well but because the anarchists and leftists cant agree on a goal to pursue.
They burn themselves out without much to show for it. Constantly shaming each other for not being leftist enough, voting, not voting, etc. Thats the only reason why autocracy works. Right wingers have one enemy: leftists. Leftists have hundreds because they’re all different shades of left.
If we actually for some reason got the idea to ask what our smallest common denominator is, we would actually het somewhere. But the little narcissist in most of us doesnt want that because their idea was „better“. Its the old curse of „too smart for your own good“.
leftist
Maybe you’re just using this as an example, IDK, but I’ve seen a lot of people here on lemmy seem to conflate technology and political ideology. Technology can be a means to a political end, but equating the two just encourages dogmatic loyalty, and discourages diversity of thought.
But maybe I’m projecting here, IDK.
And yeah, I totally get the concern over splitting the community with too many different ideas (i.e. the Standards XKCD). My concern is that federation won’t scale. Users have demonstrated that they’ll largely join a handful of big instances, and those instances are poorly funded (often run by some generous benefactor) and fairly expensive to run. And that’s with just 50k or so monthly active users, imagine what’s going to happen if it ever gets to Reddit scale…
So that’s why I’m interested in distributed social networks, they scale really well with lots of users, in fact, they can work even better the more users they get (e.g. BitTorrent). So if we’re looking for a grassroots tech stack, it should be distributed. I’d really like someone else to build it (hence why I bring it up, to hopefully get someone to do it), but I’ll hack on it in the meantime because I find it fun.
That said, lemmy is good enough for now, hence why I’m here. I just don’t see it as a long term solution.
On the other topic of personal data: the critical data like real name, home address, phone number, email address, former employers etc. should absolutely not be federated, thats a need to know basis.
Wait till you hear about yellow pages and white pages!
Shout less, please.
Also, no I won’t develop your app. Could (maybe), won’t.
I‘m not shouting. I‘m using proper headlines.
I could also not care less what you would or could do.
I‘m using proper headlines.
Ma man 🫰
I‘m not shouting. I‘m using proper headlines.
Seen anyone else using them ?
I could also not care less what you would or could do.
But you use social media…
Yes.
I‘m interacting with you. That doesnt mean I care. I would care if you had anything constructive to offer, so feel free to start.
The same has occurred to me numerous times. I’m not the guy to lead the project, but I’d certainly be willing to dive in and help.
Honestly, I’m somewhat surprised there isn’t one, or at least a zygote of one, already.
Feel free to help. I just spun something up. Whoever else is interested, dm me.
I “deleted” my LinkedIn a couple years ago, and last year I started getting fucking connection request emails again.
I went to LinkedIn and lo and behold my login worked. I fucking deleted my account again. I’m sure it’s still there. Assholes.
Change your employer to a company based in Europe, and send them a GDPR takedown request.
IMO LinkedIn is a garbage for mental health, too. Where everyone wants to show off their achievements to others.
Sadly that’s true for all social media.
Sadly that’s true for all social media.
Some are worse than others. Every now and then I log on to Instagram because I can sometimes see fun dirtbike clips. I can comment on YouTube videos of conference talks.
I know people go to supposedly “adventurous” places on motorbikes just for clout, and I know that people at conferences often do talks that could just as easily be recorded themselves at home or even just as a text article. But at least I know, deep down, they want to share stuff with people who have a shared passion.
The stuff that gets shared around via LinkedIn feels so, so hollow in comparison. Not a lot, if anything, beneath the surface.
LinkedIn is probably the social media platform where I get a migraine going the quickest. I only quickly glance over everything over every month or so
I still keep an account there though. It’s pretty much required in the tech industry
Sure, if you actually use it to post. I never do, I just use it to submit applications and respond to recruiters’ messages.
Worst of both worlds, the one-upping bootlicking culture, the fear of missing out on job prospects fueled by economic anxiety, with corporate enshittification liberally sprinkled in, all combined into one giant pile of turd.
And I say this as I’m also guilty of having an account on it. I also want to get rid of it, but can’t afford to risk my chances while looking for better jobs. Fuck all this.
It’s pretty much a place where everyone pats themselves on the back.
Only issue with LinkedIn is the prospect of finding jobs. I got my last job through LinkedIn actually.
Same. I keep mine, but I don’t actively use it unless I’m looking for a job.
I got a couple of jobs thanks to LinkedIn, I don’t know what problem people have with it. Yeah, the content is questionable, but nobody asks you to spend time scrolling the feed.
Do you post your achievements there?
I’d love to do this, but I used LinkedIn to find my current job, & I’ll probably need it to find the next one (when the time comes).
I keep it up to date, like a kind of running CV, but otherwise I don’t interact with it.
This is how I use it. I’ve found a couple of jobs on LinkedIn. I’m currently happy at my job and not interested in dealing with passive searching so I check in maybe once a week to see visitors. Otherwise I don’t touch it at all.
running CV
Little bit off-topic and nitpicky, but a CV is by nature a running thing. The name even comes from a Latin word for “run”.
TIL
Linkedin is Facebook with a necktie and a blazer on.
Agree? (Lol)
Lemmy is Reddit running on an old ThinkPad instead of Azure Cloud
(upvotes to the left)
Clap for yes, Like for hell yes!
@DeadNinja I hate that I laughed at that “Agree?” hahaha
It’s 2 facebooks in a trench coat
French national necktie
Nice! LinkedIn is disgusting!
Microsoft owns LinkedIn
Nothing wrong with it if you just ignore the spam and karmawhore social feed. I use it for visibility, so employers can find me if they wish. My current job was from a LinkedIn search from my employer. I get around 2 or 3 legit offers a month.
Is there a specific problem with linkedin?
Its been turning into Facebook for a while now. I used to have a relevant work feed, but more and more I have these feel good posts and even memes popping up.
Oh, and its pretty toxic in content too. Had this post the other day where some woman director of some company posted how tough it was to lose her husband to some disease, how tough it is to take care of the kids alone, finishing with how it helps her to be engrossed in her work.
Like half of that was about her work actually. A very very weird read.
Another post on woman’s day celebrating the working women who open their laptop again (for work) when the kids are in bed.
Such things, just ugh. And those gets lots of likes too.
I used to see such things only in the linkedinlunatic subreddit , but now I see it my feed.
I get sick from the sleazeball slimey replies like ‘‘I’m so happy to have been part of project a’’. People chiming in to shamelesly self promote on other people’s posts.
To be fair, company culture is a lot of self promotion. But there are OK ways to do that and terrible ways, what you describe is more of a terrible one.
Yeah there’s something that feels so wrong about the site. One of my (fake) favourites by @SecureOwl@infosec.exchange when LinkedIn was down a couple weeks ago:
LinkedIn was down. A lot of people were panicking.
But rather than panic, I saw an #opportunity. Using all of my strength I ran to the nearest LinkedIn datacenter. I was able to gain access because I made a #personal #connection with the security guard. I actually invested in their ceramics business while I was talking to them.
Once I’d gained access to the servers I was able to deploy a fix I’d written using ChatGPT #AI #genAI.
I fixed LinkedIn, and walked out of the datacenter where everyone was applauding.
I say this not to brag or show off, but to share a story of how you have to show #leadership in the moment, and step up when you can. The CEO of LinkedIn called me that night to thank me. #influencer #hustle #horseownership
Apart from the absurd types of text being shared around there, most features of LinkedIn seemed redundant to me:
- list of “connections”: contacts app (portable data format, too)
- job applications: many other job sites, or direct on company website
- messaging: email
- finding who works/worked where: I don’t care
So I am definitely not trying to defend LinkedIn but a lot of arguments you make are basically: other sites or services can do that too. Which isn’t a great argument to make since monopoly on these will not lead to more usefulness.
The last one I can give a counterargument. You should care because if you are looking for a new job you can try and find people to talk to, which can help figure out if a job you didn’t consider so far might be interesting. Maybe the area you work in is not helped with that. I work in R&D and had students reach out to me via LinkedIn just to ask about what kind of work I do at this company and what does the day to day look like. Now not everyone will be happy to talk and not everyone will give you useful answers but then you just go and message the next person.
Downside of this is that LinkedIn makes it artificially difficult to just message people, either promoting their paid subscription or not allowing you to contact people because they are 3rd rate connections or worse. So that’s crap again but if you get enough relevant connections this might be better. You can also get sneaky about it and just email a person on their work account by sending a message to firstname.lastname@companyurl.TLD. This you can also only do if you know who works where.
Assuming that directors post was real, I am sure she wanted to properly grieve for her husband and have enough time to heal and provide for her children, to tie loose ends and close that chapter of her life in privacy.
But all she had was a sanitized corporate billboard where all she knew was to unconsciously make her post into a self congratulatory advertisement, of a heroic single mother sacrificing her mental health for her work.
It’s all tragic.
deleted by creator
I think its OK if you are looking for a job, yes. Not fully minus the feeds really, because I used to also see a lot of people advertising jobs in th feeds or saying they are leaving their jobs and looking for something. That is drowned out slowly by those shitty posts I mentioned.
deleted by creator
But they’re adding games!
In the early days they would quietly take all your contact info on your phone and send emails in your name that made it seem like you were reaching out to those contacts. Something like “(your name) is trying to reach you on LinkedIn”.
Back then, Android didn’t have app permissions like it does now where you have to ask the user explicit permission for access to certain data. It would only show up on the very first app install and only if you’d be looking for that.
I cancelled my account back then and never looked back.
Android not having proper permissions back from KitKat era caused a lot of contact lists being leaked like rainwater. I’m still jaded at Google for that one.
deleted by creator
Fun fact: linkedin is banned in Russia
And China. They only allow the direct messaging function, so you don’t have to live without spam.
Given the context of OP, that’s good for them, no?
Why?
That’s great, friend! Congrats! I am looking forward to doing that, it is one of the last 3 social media accounts I have a left.
deleted by creator
