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Comment by danilocampos | Hacker News Reader

Slightly OT, but can someone explain to me what I'm getting from LinkedIn? I've codified a historical record of my coworkers. Occasionally a recruiter contacts me – 90% of the time, they're bozos carpet bombing by buzzwords.

I've given it something like five years to click and I'm still missing something. It's just not a fun web application to use. Twitter, Facebook, Stack Overflow, Quora and many others do a better job at the tasks LinkedIn half-heartedly attempts. If I want to connect with someone I don't know, I send them an email. The Rube Goldberg business where a chain of connections passes you around always felt weird and imposing to me.

At this point I feel like a cow at the feedlot, and LinkedIn sells me to staffing professionals.

Entirely willing to be put onto the right path, I'm just not seeing it right now.

edit: The score for jobs I've gotten through social sites:

LinkedIn: 0

Facebook: 0

Twitter: 2

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Maybe this sounds strange, but I couldn't be happier that people are paying for the privilege of contacting me. In my experience it keeps the signal/noise ratio high, and I'm perfectly happy to let LinkedIn keep the fees as long as I keep getting value out of the messages.

I've been contacted by recruiters from Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and many more through LinkedIn. When one of these guys contacts you, it's a free pass through the most frustrating part of a job search: getting someone to even give your resume a second glance. Those contacts have resulted in two job offers I didn't accept and one that I did. Considering that just one accepted job offer is a life-changing event, LinkedIn has justified all the time I've spent on it (not much) many times over.

My impression of LinkedIn is that it's only appeal is that it's where "everyone is" for work related references.

You get nothing at from it but you feel a need to be there anyway. I guess LinkedIn is OK with that. Like Facebook, you are not their customer but their product.

Like you, I get nothing from it but I know salespeople who couldn't live without it. Want to get a meeting with someone at X corp? Try LinkedIn. That line went cold? Get back on LinkedIn and find someone else.

Great for finding prospects you don't really know, pointless for people you know anyway.

I've gotten contacted by recruiters from Google, Facebook, and Microsoft through LinkedIn (well a lot of them have been via email, but I imagine that's where they got my contact info from).

Also, I've found it helpful when I need to ask for advice on a particular topic and am having trouble thinking of anyone to ask. Scanning through my contact list on LinkedIn will often jog my memory.

We use it all the time when researching prospective hires. It's surprising how often they're linked to somebody we know, so we can get references they weren't expecting.

Not off topic at all. LinkedIn has the reputation for being the goto site for business recommendations. And many who are technology inclined will flock there rather than building an online resume/presence -- or for people that have little time for the same.

Furthe, LinkedIn is all about getting you to pay the non trivial amount of $25 a month. It is a rip. Also, LinkedIn has a boring interface and hasn't changed much in years.

I'd love to see a new twist on professional networking. Linking it to facebook is bad (mixing social and work) and a pure job board has been done to death.

The bizarre thing about LI is you have all your current colleagues on it - why would you want them to know you were looking for another job?

Collectively, you don't. You'd be surprised however how much this can help individually, especially with former colleagues.

Well yes quite - so where's the mechanism to exclude "my boss" or "managers in my company" from such updates?

The Inbox?

Uh what?

If you edit your profile or set your status to "is looking for a new job" everyone gets notified. Have you used LI?

Linked in isn't facebook. If you are using your "status" as a glorified twitter account, you're doing it wrong.

If you are looking for a new job, contact the people you think may be able to help directly via message.

Status messages customized to an audience type in a world of public information being available on google is a bad idea in general, regardless of linked in's behaviors.

Erm yes I know how to send a message thanks. Nevertheless if I update the skills/experience section of my profile, everyone will be notified. There's no way around your cow-orkers knowing that you've updated your CV.

You can turn that off.

Yes but I want people outside the company to see it.

You are "building a personal brand" to assist with your current position. If, your work asks, that is..and if you can "spin" it that way. Perhaps you wish to look current for when asking programming advice.

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