[scientifik]

LinkedIn is totally useless at this point.

- If you're a job seeker, most of the jobs are fake for pretend growth optics. - If you're a senior level or executive you're targeted non-stop by sales people telling you about "the conversations they're having ..." - If you're looking for actual thought leadership or interesting information, you're bombarded with random tik-tok style videos, totally contrived stories and "lessons" to how ordering at Starbucks is like managing cloud infrastructure

It's turned into a completely artificial and useless community because Microsoft chased the same growth and engagement metrics as Facebook did, now no one considers it to be a place for serious discussion.

[mhitza]

It's good for connecting through the network and picking up new projects. I have a small ~100 people network and even I get results. Stricly through my network, not jobs, not direct service requests or their sales tools.

They could even make it more useful if they'd put actual thought in their paid Sales Navigator product, currently I find it hard to make it useful without better filtering and blacklisting mechanisms.

Though I'm put in a strange situation with the EU intent to roll out age verification, as LinkedIn might force me to verify through Thiel's Persona platform. Which I very much would not want to do, and have to plan for some form of exit strategy while still having a way to network professionally.

As far as AI content goes, the platform is drowning in it. I can only hope that once the AI Act disclosure requirements comes into play at least I can flag content that is not AI tagged.

[PaulHoule]

I found smashing the "not interested in this" button consistently for a few days greatly reduced "slop about AI" if not AI slop. It's irksome that so many people are having convo's with ChatGPT about "What AI all means" who don't know enough to have a worthwhile opinion and then posting blog posts based on this as if anyone cares. I hardly see it anymore. But then again, I am just on LinkedIn to post photos and connect with students because... they're the last LIONs.

[Chris_Newton]

I also prefer to have a smaller network of people I actually know. I haven’t found LinkedIn to be a very valuable channel for finding new clients, but it’s always nice to see past colleagues being successful at finding new roles or starting new ventures, and occasionally it’s been helpful for finding someone to provide a reference for me or vice versa.

For reasons unknown, LinkedIn seems to have decided that I’m not me a few months ago and blocked my account, though it would apparently be willing to reconsider as long as I provide whatever it is that Persona wants these days. (Evidently contacting me directly via my company — where my role as one of the directors is a matter of public record and my email address was listed in my LinkedIn profile — was too much trouble. :sigh:) Since I have no interest in giving any personal information to Persona, I no longer use LinkedIn and remain blissfully ignorant of all the AI-driven content that I keep seeing complaints about, but I do miss the occasional good news stories about people I actually know. I should probably send a formal GDPR request at some point, since my profile is probably quite misleading by now.

[post-it]

> If you're a job seeker, most of the jobs are fake for pretend growth optics.

Maybe, but it continues to be one of the best places to find work.

[disgruntledphd2]

Yeah I would say I've gotten basically all my jobs through LinkedIn, over a fifteen year career where I've moved around a lot.

[butlike]

Yeah, just not work you want to do

[jimt1234]

> Microsoft chased the same growth and engagement metrics as Facebook

Yep. My LinkedIn feed is now polluted with the same political, rage content that made me exit Facebook 10 years ago. It sucks.

[burningChrome]

Came here to say the same thing which I was pretty shocked at. Engaging in flame wars on a site that's supposed to be for professionals was really eye opening.

I barely go on there any more its gotten so bad.

[larodi]

If you're a job seeker - create a prototype as close to a problem that the target company may be solving - call them, and show them. Works a charm.

[j2kun]

In my view, LinkedIn has never really been a place for serious discussion.

[georgemcbay]

> LinkedIn is totally useless at this point.

I agree, though in the context of this thread I'd add that LinkedIn was already useless before LLMs.

The site was already lost to nearly infinite corporate bro platitude posting long before LLMs started to see widespread use.

LLMs likely increased the overall amount of worthless posts on LinkedIn by a significant amount, but I don't think they changed the percentage as very nearly 100% were already worthless for a decade or so now.

[skimmed_milk]

Where is? I've gotten about 2 interviews via Linkedin, wellfound has little which are the two I know most, Indeed is more useless than even LinkedIn.

I used to have decent luck with Who is hiring threads but not recently as there's relatively little for mid level engineers.

[newbie578]

Who is hiring has become a scam. I followed it for years and lately I noticed a large cohort of companies (including YC startups) doing shadow listings. The same positions being constantly advertised, month by month, not being filled in this job market?

I hardly doubt it is legit. I do not know why they are doing it, are they scraping data or just showing off, some are plain scammers but it is visible and HN doesn’t help by not allowing discussions about it.

My suggestion is to have a separate discussion thread so people can be aware of it and share their experiences.

[wyclif]

Ghost jobs are a real thing, and they create so much noise and make it harder to find the signal when job searching. Also, a lot of job search websites don't even have a category for "remote anywhere." When they say "remote" what that usually means is "remote in the USA" or "remote in the EU" which isn't helpful to someone living outside of those regions.

[reactordev]

The job market is completely out of whack

[tayo42]

Where are you all successfully looking for jobs? Indeed was even worse then LinkedIn.

Though LinkedIn really pissed me off a few weeks ago when it popped up something saying I shouldn't apply for a job because it doesn't match my profile well.

[nickvec]

I've managed to get quite a few interviews through LinkedIn jobs, though I'm looking for DevOps roles in particular, which may be an exception to the rule.

[AaronAPU]

It’s so bad I can’t even believe they allow it. It’s just slop everywhere, even the posts complaining about AI slop are also AI slop which is pretty incredible.

[27183]

I'm pretty sure the rot was festering floridly well before the msft acquisition

[aitor1717]

I hate LinkedIn so I wanna agree with you but it's actually a good place to get preliminary info. I doubt anyone actually reads the long feed content, though.