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.
this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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Privacy
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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 GLENDA IF 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
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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 ;)
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 @[email protected] 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 [email protected]. This you can also only do if you know who works where.
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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.
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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.
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