I don't see how people use social media apps with notifications turned on.
I just disable all notifications and it doesn't bother me to have LinkedIn because I only open it when I feel like it. Same with Facebook, etc.
Incredibly, the default is always for notifications to be enabled, and I don't know how people live like that.
My wife's phone, is just full of noise. Notifications, messages, email ... some folks just want to be in front of a fire hose of crap... I don't know why.
> I spent the day receiving over 500 (!) birthday greetings from LinkedIn contacts, whose names and faces I didn’t even recognize, who had clicked on a notification prompt
From the above, it appears that the harm is self-inflicted. Why would one have 500+ contacts who she does not recognize? Linkedin is a tool and every tool can be misused. My contact list is under 200 and those are the people I enjoyed working with and would not hesitate to ping if needed
I always accept friend requests in case they want to send me a message, which they sometimes do. Is that bad? Maybe I should go back and delete all those people.
I won't link it here, because... but the author has an active LinkedIn profile.
So there's that.
I'm only on there to once every few years look up old work friends / where they are ... or when I'm job hunting.
Otherwise app deleted, I'm not on there.
Pretty easy to do.
I find it soul crushing even when I do look, so many generic yay company posts full of BS, my feed is hell and I don't want to bother fixing it.
Don’t do it. I get tons of work opportunity outreach on LI. Maybe you don’t, but it doesn’t hurt to put your shingle out.
100% this.
People need to read "The Strength Of Weak Ties" before advocating extremely damaging courses of action such as deleting LinkedIn.
Humans are social animals and we cannot survive without a social network. Yet many in the West seem to ignore this obvious fact. It is baffling.
After so many years, I can't help but wonder if it's deliberate malice.
Is LinkedIn a "social network" beyond the technical term for a site like that?
I find I get zero social interaction that I would associate with humans being social animals from LinkedIn. Are you seeing genuine connections with people on there?
LinkedIn is not a social network, it’s a vehicle for spam, grifting, self-promotion and other useless garbage. I deleted my account years ago and I wish I had done it sooner.
It wouldn't be as bad if everyone wasn't trying to turn into a business microinfluencer with constantly upbeat posts not really adding anything of value and "What I messy divorce taught me about B2B synergy"
The sad thing is, this kind of stuff was encouraged in the previous company that I worked for when I got promoted to a certain level. 'Be a thought leader', 'represent the company and influence the industry' was the standard directives the leadership team were given.
On one hand, it's funny to see the ones that made the company their whole identity, only to then leave for a competitor and make the new place their identity.
On the other hand , it's sad that a lot of people that are hiring (in my line of work at least), are impressed by these crappy posts and the people posting it tend to get more exposure and get hired quicker.
My current job cold contacted me via LinkedIn. I use LI minimally, basically only to establish connections with my network, and it already gave me huge value back.
Are your skills particularly unique / unusual resume?
I could imagine that working.
For most people though I expect they're just one of many and odds of spam / scam contacts greatly outweigh legit communication.
My skills are alright, nothing too crazy. I've had messages that were more spammy/scammy, but the volume was not crazy high, they were usually fairly obvious, and I resolved by simply ignoring them. I would say that the random chance of getting an interesting job offer, however small, is probably worth it for most professionals.
However, one thing I haven't mentioned is that I am based in Europe. My small sample size of people reaching out to me is showing that US contacts are usually less serious (e.g. ghosting). Maybe the US experience is so much worse overall due to this?
Or just delete the app and log in once a year or whenever you’re job seeking?
I will say I agree that the platform is mostly spam and has definitely gotten worse sense 2021 when the article was written. But you can just not log in everyday and still have a profile. Also no reason to put your birthday on a social network IMO and you can reject requests for connections if you don’t know someone.
When recruiting, LinkedIn is useful for three things for me: 1. Propagating the job ad 2. Verifying that an applicant is real (profile picture, network, work history, etc.). I’m seeing more and more fake applications lately. 3. Letting candidates apply with just a LinkedIn URL (when they keep it reasonably up to date)
None of this is really about social networking.
Ideally, I’d much rather have a universal résumé platform with proper ID verification, and separately a job board with reach comparable to LinkedIn.
Until something like that exists, deleting LinkedIn mostly means candidates lose out on discovering jobs and applying quickly to them.
You are optimizing for people (or bots) who use LinkedIn in that case
The only reason I would use it for any kind of similar purpose would be to check network overlap. A profile picture would only signal that it is an old picture or from someone looking for a job (or a bot)
There is not a social media platform I have regretted leaving.
same! I have withdrawals now from the highs I have experienced over the years leaving every 'social' media platform
Having a relatively new LinkedIn account now is probably a very bad move if you don't have an established network to reach out to for jobs. There are tons of AI generated profiles flooding every job post (particularly remote) from scammers who create new LinkedIn profiles. It's one of the most frequent signs of a fake submission.
When did we start referring to social media platforms like this? “Delete LinkedIn” should be “delete your LinkedIn account.” There’s also things like, “do you have Instagram?” I have an account, but I don’t have the whole company. I’m probably just too old.
Most of these are used through an app. I read it as “delete the app from your phone”.
My only regret is I get more spam about 'found you on linkedin' than before I deleted my account.
+1 Funny
As much as I am aware of how much low value, bottom-of-the-barrel shit flows via LinkedIn - my connections, and the resulting feed, are well curated, and I actually enjoy using LI and for me it's become a genuinely useful news feed for my industry, and in terms of getting work, it's great.
But, shit in, shit out.
I don't believe in LI "reach" because I don't post for reach - I post for meaningful reactions and exchanges of opinions, and my connections are strictly limited to people I physically did work with or have met, and I screen my connections to weed out any nutters I wouldn't want to associate myself with. It works wonders.
So no, I'm not deleting my LinkedIn, but the author perhaps should ;)
I did in 2022 and never looked back
To this day I don't know why people tolerate that garbage platform.
I had a whole pile of recommendations from people on LinkedIn - only one of whom I had ever worked with and the rest were from people who knew me socially, but otherwise had little or no knowledge of what I actually do.
Any aspiring startup founders should ignore this terrible advice.
I don't have LinkedIn. But I'd consider creating an account if I was to leave my current job. I'm told it's a good way to get work, though I'm sure like all other social media it's 99% full of shit.
Well if you just create brand new account with no/random connections you'd be pretty disappointed… that’s how they get ya. It’s totally fine as a sort of virtual rolodex, maybe some content marketing, mediocre as job board although all job boards seem to have turned into a total lemon market so there’s that
So I did this, straight up deleted my account with all my connections. I eventually came crawling back years later. It's crazy to me, I had an interview with a CISO a few weeks ago and he was critiquing my profile. I told him: dude I consider LinkedIn to be a complete joke and its sole purpose it serves for me is job acquisition. The emotional investment people have in that platform is weeeird. The ThOuGhT LeAdErShIp posts are insane.
I don't know, if it wasn't for Linkedin I wouldn't be in my current job of almost ten years.
On a totally unrelated note if you're looking for someone who can blacksmith up something that approximates a web frontend to a DB or some audio DSP code or some embedded code for various microcontrollers, or actually blacksmith stuff up with hammers and a welder, I'm putting out feelers for a new gig. Network engineer, jobbing mathematician, and database mangler, open to offers.
The fact you have to post your second paragraph to me proves for all of LinkedIn’s bluster, it’s really a sub-par platform and unfortunately has too much market power to be challenged.
Yup.
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(2021)
and if you have a network and if you do delete LinkedIn,
yes you will regret it.
I have a 25+ year career history with lots of contacts, and I deleted my LI account years ago. I do not regret it one bit; in fact I wish I had done it sooner.
No, you’ll just reach out to those people through direct contact. If LI is your only link to someone you aren’t really networked with them.
Fully agree, its just a spam platform now filled to the brim with AI/Human slop.
Curate your connections, yeet anyone who is posting slop and add people that make quality spicy posts you enjoy.
It's that simple to make a LinkedIn feed have posts and comments you enjoy!
Is there a switch to turn off the social media/posting element on linkedin altogether? I don't see why I should be spending my time engaging with their algorithm just so it's bearable to use
Just don't open the home page except to navigate to the specific thing you need and when you do, don't look at the slop? The social media/posting element of linkedin is totally disconnected from the useful part of the site and you can just ignore it.