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Comment by koofdoof | Hacker News Reader

How usable is LinkedIn with a pseudonym? Is that a security industry only practice or could a regular dev get away with that too? I've always been shy about having a profile with my actual name but id consider one with a thin veil of anonymity.

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Same, although my perception is that LinkedIn has moved past its peak usefulness, and it would be better to spend time on other platforms than creating a LI account. All I hear about LinkedIn these days is spam.

which other platform?

There's a lot of platforms that do sort of related things, so it's a hard thing to answer. For "finding a job" I've been looking at HN, remoteok, and a bunch of others. For professional networking I use various tools run by former coworkers (mostly Slack and Google Groups). For "blogs" I use HN and Reddit. etc. I don't think LinkedIn does any of those better (my perception, I'm not a current user).

Personally, I'm probably not interested in a LI clone for many of the reasons I stopped using LI. I deleted my LI account maybe 8 years ago, after getting too much spam (and I think some security issue?)

LinkedIn sceptic here -- I would assume that in 2022, the closer you are to real, legal Microsoft-ecosystem roles, the more useful it is.. meanwhile, the independent people in tech get splashed with mud. No comment in this discussion has indicated to me that LinkedIn is not useful for certain swathes of established professions, even now.

As an engineer I never found LinkedIn useful. But during college I made sure to connect with everybody, even if I barely knew them. The only jobs I’ve had I got through other means, in some cases even “connections,” in the traditional sense of the word, which incidentally exist on the LinkedIn graph, but that’s just a mirror of real life and it’s not like the coordination occurs over LinkedIn messages anyway.

As a startup founder, it’s effective in some contexts, like as a contact point or promotional tool. We never felt the need to use it for recruiting. At least in the software industry, GitHub is a much more effective marketplace of talent. But LinkedIn can have some benefits for a startup outside of recruiting. Posting content about your product is a good way to stay in front of investors you’ve connected with who doomscroll their LinkedIn feed like a dev does HN. :) (it’s also something I need to automate because I block LinkedIn on /etc/hosts for productivity purposes..)

I’m not sure I’ve ever _sourced_ an opportunity from LinkedIn. I also never accept connections without at least one prior interaction. For me it’s a tool for following up and keeping in touch, not introductions. It might also be useful in some rare sales contexts, for some specific archetype of audience especially susceptible to the psychological tactics commonly deployed to the LinkedIn newsfeed. Developers are definitely not that audience (well, not on LinkedIn at least…)

But every single time there is an AskHN on the topic of how people got their current gigs, LinkedIn overwhelmingly dominates other channels.

Just something to keep in mind. This post will have a lot of negative LI reviews simply because it was used as a sort of attack vector.

I really wish I could just dump LI and delete my account; it's just spam and another service for those who love to self promote themselves. I won't do it because I'm not sure how it will impact by ability to get a job.

How many of you have gotten jobs with no LI account? YEO?

i've never felt the need to use linkedin.

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