So while linkedIn may have opened doors, it is pretty unlikely through something like HN or your own irl network, you wouldve ended up unsuccessful. My own feelings towards linkIn aside, anecdotally it certainly seems that it was useful for you. It certainly has the ability to provide great things, or speed up connections/opportunity.
I agree with the article in that it is a soft requirement for a lot of things:
Entrepreneur: Helpful for hiring, networking looking at competition, finding investors.
Freelancer: Getting gigs, proving reputation.
Bigcompany: online presence, hiring.
Recruiter: obvious.
Etc.
So while you certainly aren't unique in finding value in linkedIn, it is utterly painful to use and sometimes i feel like if I put my cursor in the wrong place I'll accidentally agree to realtime uploading of all my data & that of my friend.
As an aside, it really can't survive much longer:
* Users hate using it
* it is totally unpleasant and insisistant on you conforming to what it demands.
* signal to noise is so out of alignment it is painful.
* Companies have to deal with the need to be on the platform and endorse enployees who are incentivized to self-promote sometimes to the company's detriment.
* I personally, and I largely suspect this to be very common, have connections I don't know. Either we have drifted apart, were breifly engaged in something, or I was just to lenient with accepting/reaching out.
* Increasingly, it is becoming less profitable as it struggles to give away enough data to be useful, but hold back enough to upsell premium packages.
While facebook certainly seems to care little about privacy, there is a compelling engagement and feeling of human connection that is just not there with linked in.
They should just sell to salesforce, that way the data and privacy could stay just as exploitive, but they could allow users latitude to enjoy/benefit from it a bit more.