[HeyLaughingBoy]

Just because you get no value out of LinkedIn, doesn't mean other programmers don't.

I get useful information about available jobs in my segment of the industry because LinkedIn knows what kind of work I do as opposed to just "he's a programmer." The recruiters who contact me from LinkedIn are looking for people in a specific domain, as opposed to "knows language X and framework Y." I consider that to be a hell of a lot more useful than the usual email job spam.

I also get to see if I know someone who knows someone else that I might want to be introduced to. It's a lot harder to do this on your own without a stack of cross referenced rolodexes.