Hello Developers 🖐🖐
In this article, I'm discussing why I don't use LinkedIn much and why you should also stop using it. LinkedIn is used by millions of humans, as I am a developer I can only write about the perspective of a developer. Disclaimer everything in this article will be from the point of view of a developer.
Why you should have a LinkedIn account.
First and foremost, let's discuss why everybody tells you to have a LinkedIn account.
- You will gain exposure to Hiring Managers and Recruiters
- You will get offers from your LinkedIn profile.
- You will get to know about Job Postings.
- You can gain social proof of your skills and talents
- LinkedIn can help rank your name on Google
These points seem fair and promising, but this is not the reality of LinkedIn today.
The Reality Check 🙀 !
It's all fake, fake, and fake. Yeah, you heard me right. It's all fake, what I see whenever I open my LinkedIn. MOTIVATION, Some random dude did some small thing and shared it by over-exaggeration, someone likes or comments on something, random job posting, which I would never apply to.
What I hate about LinkedIn
MOTIVATION, the number of motivational quotes that are there in my feed just makes me irritating. There are more people wanting to motivate than the number of people who want to get motivated.
Job alerts, I wonder who is posting tens of jobs on a daily basis. And the information about the job is useless. They want you to have the knowledge of all the programming languages from the time they are made 🙂🙂🙂. And the cherry on the cake it the pay range is not disclosed by the company. If the employers of LinkedIn read my blog (It will not reach them probably) please make the requirement limited and make the pay range mandatory.
Some likes or comments on something. For the sake of humanity I don't want to know what my connections are linking and commenting on, please just remove this feature or make it an optional feature so that people who want it can enable it (Hopefully no one wants to).
It's all fake. There is no measure to check if something is fake or not. For instance, I have added in my experience that I am working at Google as a Frontend Architecture from Jan 2020 and It is showing on my profile. Check it here.
I could go on like this for hours, but I think you get my point.
Alternatives of LinkedIn.
- Github. Github is a great website to show your coding experience and your consistency through daily commits. However, it is only limited to developers.
- Dev Community. Dev.to is a great blogging site, and I get plenty of offers from my Dev profile.
- Hashnode. It is also a blogging site. It offers a lot of features free of cost.
- Twitter. I don't promote Twitter as much as Github and Dev, but I would say it is better than LinkedIn.
Let me know what are your thoughts, agree, or disagree. Let me know in the comments.
Closing here
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Top comments (47)
I use LinkedIn a lot as part of my job as developer advocate. I did hire once through LinkeIn. I do get a lot of job offers through LinkedIn which I probably wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
I use Twitter a lot too and I'm not sure if it's any better though.
Social networks are marketing apps where you are the product. If you fully understand that and take everything said there with a huge salt mountain... Then it's good.
It's the huge salt mountain that always get's me. You're totally right of course Shai it's a marketing app and at that it's great at what it does.
Yeah!
Thanks for sharing your view. 😊
When it comes to programming and IT field, linkedin + github is a great combination
despite the cringe social media features of linkedin, it's one of the best websites to find job offers you probably won't know about otherwise
I kind of agree with your point. LinkedIn is fake. But all platforms are.
I tried using Twitter, but I don't have words to describe how horrible it is. So much fake people and posts. This threads are incredibly annoying and everything feels like robotic and without soul. Also so many people without opinion and just riding the wave..
Don't get me wrong.. I am not hating Twitter only, I am hating all of them - Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram.. I have accounts, but don't really use them and I don't see how someone can make a meaningful connection there.
I started using blogging site, as u mentioned and find this one- Dev.to the best one.
Is it the platform that is fake or the cultures? There are certainly real people, posting real things on social platforms and the platform does not somehow make their content fake?
I doubt you meant it that way! But great to ensure we're framing shit the way it really is. As cultures we follow and express the fact that personally we all often forego our authenticity for perceived gain.
I agree with you and Dev is the best of all.
I can relate with all the points here. LinkedIn was a good platform but now all we see there is some sort of chaos!
Pardon me for my shameless plug here, but there is something we started a year back because of these issues only! You should once try peerlist.io
We are building this platform specifically for the people in tech!
On a side note, loved every animation on your portfolio site. You made them flawless 🙌
I haven't heard about peerlist. Will give it a try in the near future. Thanks for the review. 😊
So am I worng or you are suggesting people to stop using LinkedIn and to use Twitter instead? 😂😂😂
Enough internet for today.
Now being serious, LinkedIn is the biggest platform to be in order to get job alerts to jump to a new job.
I simply disabled all the notifications but messages on LinkedIn, still check it once a week to politely reject any job request and that's all.
If I suddenly want to jump to a different company it's easier going to LinkedIn and check the inbox or already known recruiters.
Twitter only makes some sense if you are selling any product, i.e. if you are an indie game dev. The rest is a fake parallel reality.
You make valid points in that there are no legitimacy checks on LinkedIn, and how these days it's quickly becoming "professional Facebook", which is undeniably aggravating considering the platform should be focused on career-related matters and not personal affairs.
However, I think you are incorrect in saying ANY of those sites serve as a real alternative to LinkedIn. If used properly, LinkedIn can be the only tool you need to find your next job. You don't have to follow LinkedIn influencers, just like you don't have to post your wedding pics on LinkedIn; It's all about how you use it, and honestly falsely claiming to work at Google is just contributing to the problem.
It is a disservice to your readers to suggest Twitter is a feasible option for the average person to find a job, and is likely far more hindering to their search than having to filter through the occasional JS meme or personal post on LinkedIn.
You have made a good point.
Yeah, I know Twitter is not a perfect alternative to LinkedIn.
I got offers from my Dev and GitHub profiles.
Thanks for sharing your views 😊.
I agree with you on all the points above and LinkedIn is the new "Facebook", lots of crap and the new trend is posting course completion certificate which indirectly saying "I'm open for new opportunity".
I never look into my notifications as I know all it has is "someone viewed your profile", "congratulate someone for work anniversary", "changing jobs" "blab..."
I get lots of job offers on LinkedIn message from recruiters and all of them are for the roles that I don't play anymore.
Job search is not useful for me as it does not mention salary range and the skills expectation is so much that only one who is next/close to GOD may have it.
Sooner or later I will be deleting my LinkedIn profile!
Thanks for sharing your view 😀 ☺
I'm not sure if this is intentional (hey, it got me to click) but I feel like the title of this article is worded a bit confusingly. Do you mean to say "Why I don't use LinkedIn and Why you Shouldn't Either"?
Just a heads up. Feel free to let me know and I'll delete my comment if it's not helpful :0)
Yeah! You have a point. I think it is a mistake made because of my poor grammar 😕.
Thanks for pointing it out
Not a big deal. People understood it anyway ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Constant feed of success stories and requiters spamming without even looking into my About section.
I feel sick of it and considering to #DeleteLinkedin.
Last year I did #DeleteFacebook and guess what... I don't feel I am missing something. Should be the same with #DeleteLinkedin. :)
Yeah! Totally agree with you. ☺
LinkedIn help me find 5 successive jobs in past 10 years. Each time my salary went up minimum of 10%q
😮😮😮
Good for you.
Thanks for sharing that info.
I sort of agree but I also believe that it depends on your network. I used to hate my LinkedIn but now it feels much closer to tech Twitter because I have so many developer connections. It was much worse when it was like 95% recruiters because I could not relate with all of the content they were putting out 😅
I agree with most of your points. The "inspirational" trend on LinkedIn is getting too much lately. But still, LinkedIn is one of the most efficient tools for looking for a job or getting contacted by recruiters and potential employers. Similar to all the other social media, LinkedIn it's all about marketing and branding. You need to attract and engage your followers to increase visibility and promote yourself.
About the job descriptions, you're right. As an IT recruiter myself, I struggle with clients who don't want to share detailed info about the required roles, so I usually avoid them. Sloppy and unclear job descriptions are just a waste of time, both for candidates and employers.
👉 Follow and connect with me for future open remote positions and quality content
Savvina Drougouti
IT Recruiter & Project Manager
LinkedIn
Sometimes you got to play the game, use what the tool provides but don't let them consume you.
What I mean? LinkedIn is probably the best tool to get jobs and attract recruiters. You don't need to enter everyday or check people updates because I have selected connections.
With that said LinkedIn works just like any social network. Notifications, what other people are doing, liers (anyone can lie every where we can put we are developers at CERN and created HTML but you would have to to prove with your skills in an interview)
Spot on until you got to the part about Twitter. Twitter is an utter abomination that is killing humanity. Few people I know are capable of serious, in-depth thought or discussion anymore. It's just people tweeting at each other but not really caring what the other person tweets except as a launching pad for their own. In short, each shouting his or her own views without let up.
LinkedIn is awful. It used to be about putting up your CV so you could stop rewriting it over and over again, and maybe someone might see it. Now it's just more Facegoop. Dozens of posts every day about nonsense I have zero interest in, and virtually all the "connections" I get are people trying to sell me something or recruiters who didn't even bother to read my profile, not that they would know what any of it meant anyway.
I've almost given up on it entirely. But I'm too lazy to put up my own site, so...
i hate LinkedIn because all i see in my feed is "like for mom comment for dad" or "like for Ferrari comment for Lamborghini" ... like, motivational quotes is far better than what i get on my feed lol
Totally relatable!