[MIKarlsen]

Not as much as LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a fairytale-land for adults, and it's bizzare (to me) that anyone wants to participate. It's not even humblebragging anymore. It's "Look what I made, and what I achieved" packed into casual "Oh this thing? Yeah it's just my perfect life"-packages...

[wutbrodo]

Why would anyone browse LinkedIn? This is actually a serious question. I'm pretty good about keeping mine updated, but the only viewers I'm planning on are recruiters, who would be getting the same information regardless.

[geodel]

I don't know exactly why I do that. But every few weeks I login and browse through 100s of profiles starting with people I know, to suggestions I may know and then acquaintances of acquaintance and so on. I guess it is a mix of gossip and research for my personal consumption.

[runT1ME]

Because Facebook/Twitter/Instagram is blocked at a lot of work places, while LinkedIn is not...

[uep]

That's ironic. To me, the implication of browsing LinkedIn at work is that you're looking for another job. Whereas if you're browsing Facebook or Instagram you're just wasting time.

[taneq]

That's how I've seen it, definitely. At my old job it was at the point where you could tell who was pissed off at what time by seeing who'd been working on their LinkedIn profile... and after a company-wide announcement, everyone would update within a day or two.

[kikoreis]

A lot of inside sales teams use LinkedIn for active prospecting. It's reasonably successful.

[MIKarlsen]

It's a good place to share information I guess. I would've liked it to be a bit more academic if I were to browse it more often. If you work in consulting etc., it's also a nice place to get updates on what people are doing, because everyone (over)shares so much.

[bootlooped]

I think some people that just treat it like another Facebook. I've had several of people I barely know, and who I have nothing professionally in common with, try to add me.

[TallGuyShort]

And then people share that "solve this simple order of operations problem to prove you're a genius" bullshit on it, just like Facebook.

[Spooky23]

LinkedIn is like baseball cards when I was a kid.

There’s two metrics for dick-measuring contests, size of network and quality of network. Linkedin is there to show, yeah I’m a badass who got the <insert big shot here> to link to me, or look at me, I have lots of cards.

There is some actual stuff happening there, but the bread and circus that brings the crowd are those two metrics.

[Diederich]

Huh. I have never heard anyone brag about the size of their linkedin network.

[olympus]

LinkedIn network size is almost treated as a binary big/little category to recruiters, because after 500 connections it just shows "500+" instead of the actual number of connections.

So a recruiter sees "500+ connections" and thinks, "this person is serious about [finding a job/networking with professionals/staying connected with colleagues]," or the recruiter sees "79 connections" and thinks, "this person is only on LinkedIn as a formality."

It's not really something to brag about and if you're a perfect fit for a job I doubt your network size will keep you from getting hired (unless you are in a social-heavy career like marketing). But, if you've got 475 connections it's probably worth it to send out 26 more random connection requests to get past past 500 and into that space where the recruiter doesn't know exactly how big your network is.

[drharby]

Really?

I found it a great resource to reach out and break into the tech sector. It only becomes a dick measuring contest when you've no clear goal on the platform.

[ben_w]

How do you do that? I get bombarded with recruiters who don’t read my profile.

“I’m moving to Berlin because of Brexit and looking for iOS roles” -> “Would you like this job in London as a python developer?”

(Given I’m now back in the UK helping family look after a parent with Alzheimer’s while she can still recognise me, I should probably update my profile...)

[rebeccaskinner]

It's really just a special case of the general spam problem. It costs recruiters very little to send out their listing to as many people as possible. People who are unqualified or uninterested in the specific job, or not looking, will typically just not respond. All the recruiters need to do is filter the dunning-krueger responses, pass along a hoard of largely self-filtered candidates to the hiring manager, and try to collect a paycheck.

The only real solution is to somehow make the cost of contact more expensive. I'm not sure of any way to do that other than simply trying to convince enough people to waste enough recruiter time collectively to make the dragnet approach unprofitable. And to be honest, given the churn in the industry, it might be unprofitable anyway- but there are always hoards of new graduates ever year without any particular marketable skills looking to leech onto the industry who become recruiters only to burn out after a few years anyway.

[raugustinus]

The real solution would be for companies to start giving a shit to whom they hire and put some effort into finding them.

[peoplewindow]

Either that or they don't believe you will really move, or they believe that with a different job you would stay.

[blibble]

that vote was 18 months ago

if he's still looking after that long in this market they're probably right

[ben_w]

I started looking seriously about 5 months ago. I moved back to the UK one month ago.

And, hard as moving is, I see no future for me in the UK, only a dead parent.

[peoplewindow]

I hate to point this out, but Germany's government collapsed last year essentially because there's no consensus there for Merkle's ultra-pro-EU ultra-pro-migrant policies. She's still struggling to form a coalition months later. This is by far the longest German government collapse in history.

So if you think Germany is going to be radically different to the UK, I would suggest thinking again. Anti EU sentiment is rising everywhere.

[whatshisface]

Maybe they are guessing that you might not have updated your profile, when they recruit you inaccurately. (More realistically, they have a quota to fill...)

[gaius]

It’s amazing how many people have a “Senior” prefix that I don’t remember from when I worked with them... or are claiming sole responsibility for a team or even a different team’s project... There is also a trick used by people who attended college but never graduated, list the years and the subject and leave the reader to fill in the blanks, not technically lying but...

The average LinkedIn profile is just if not more fictitious than Facebook. And everyone knows it but plays along anyway.

[rinze]

It's the culprit of corporate self-help. I don't look at it as anything else.

[chillfox]

The worst thing about LinkedIn is the guys who think it is a dating site. I have completely stopped replying to "recruiters" who contact me on LinkedIn. I still keep it updated though.

[tonyedgecombe]

If you aren't using it for career opportunities then why be on it at all?

[macspoofing]

It's not the same. LinkedIn is a network for recruiters, job-seekers, execs and folks from biz-dev and sales. They dynamics are different. It's very work oriented.

[akhilcacharya]

I definitely do this and it is not helping.