I think this is what author is saysing exactly. If you use it passively then there is no value (add?) and then the question is why to have a profile at all? Did not look like a rant to me.
Then I don't really get what the news value of this post is. Pretty much nothing that you don't actively use provides value. It comes across more as "LinkedIn has no value" to me.
The only value I get from the post it's that it may provoke a thought in other LinkedIn members about "What am I doing here too?" "Do I really need a LinkedIn profile?". But you cannot judge LinkedIn platform usefulness as a whole based on this post.
It is a personal account and an unusual move I guess. Try to reverse what you consider to be the cause and the effect here. The argument does not seem to be LinkedIn is usedless in all possible cases, but it has no value for the author that they cannot get otherwise.
Maybe you can provide your experience on why linkedin is of value to you and then there can be a discusion. I personally agree with the author and i am happy to read on this. From the stand point of a company, if they were actually paying attention to honest feedback they could learn a bunch.
> Maybe you can provide your experience on why linkedin is of value to you and then there can be a discusion
Sure, let me think of a couple of reasons:
1) The network effect of the timeline is HUGE. If people share/like your post, you can have a reach of ten of thousands of people. I scored new customers this way.
2) I often post something about something I've done (new certification, new project I launched, whatever). This almost always leads to replies from connections from unexpected people in my network. The thing I posted might have struck a chord with them, they may see ways for us to collaborate, it might be a product that they need, they may have valuable feedback on it, etc.
3) I interacted with many people over the course of my career. I may have forgotten about those people, but having them all together in an easily searchable "address book" proves pretty valuable to me when I am looking for people with a particular skillset.
4) In the past I did find jobs through linkedin. Either by applying to the job posts or by simply asking around with recruiters.
5) I use LinkedIn a lot to find out who works where, what role they have and who to address when I need something from another company.
There are also counter points to be made:
- I have received a ridiculous amount of recruiter spam over the years. Taking all skills I don't use anymore (like PHP) off of my LinkedIn has certainly helped.
- Advertising on LinkedIn is garbage. We were looking for Dutch speaking candidates in Amsterdam. We got 0 Dutch applicants. All we got is 100+ Indian coders who barely speak proper English.
I definitely wouldn’t have been contacted by an internal recruiter at $BigTech that led to the remote job that I will be starting in July.
My LinkedIn profile is relatively bare. I definitely use it passively. It has just enough keywords to get noticed by recruiters searching.