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!

#privacy @privacy

  • Oliver Lowe
    4•3 months ago

    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
    • RBG
      7•3 months ago

      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.