[PaulHoule]

I joined LinkedIn early on. When I was working as an individual contributor I first thought it was super effective and I became a "LiON" who tried to build as large and as open a network as I possibly could.

At that time I got numerous jobs thanks to my LinkedIn profile. On top of that I would tell anybody who was listening, particularly anyone who was struggling in job searches, that they should join LinkedIn too.

I went through a phase of business development for a new idea and found that LinkedIn attracted an unlimited number of bullshitters to the point that I was starting to become a bullshitter. I was getting sick and tired of the spam email I was getting. I was angry and resentful all the time and starting to feel guilty for thinking horrible racist thoughts like "They should rename it to linked.in", etc. It just seemed everybody was a "consultant" named "Joe Blow" who had a company called "Joe Blow Incorporated" or a personal trainer, life coach, etc.

Around the time Trump got elected I deleted most of my social media accounts including my LinkedIn account.

Since then I did two job searches without LinkedIn. In one case I went from "damn i really have to get a job" to having a job in a month, in the other case it took a few months.