65 karma · joined May 13, 2008
> I don't think the network should be reporting views to profile owners. Of course I'm spooked by this.
So you're essentially freaked out that a prospective employer or business contact is looking at your CV.
> Not finding employees.
HR departments are paying for those premium accounts because they use it to find employees. Are you suggesting they don't know what they are doing?
> Not finding work. Can I even separate my contacts into people-that-can-see-that-im-looking and people-that-shouldnt nowadays?
You can update your profile without broadcasting the change to your contacts, and you can answer job offerings privately too.
A lot of people use it as the de-facto rolodex: you can learn a lot about who you're going to meet without being "stalkish" because people expect to be searched (well, not you apparently). You can use it to contact people in specific positions (cold call), I've done it with great success to get past unresponsive customer services.
Many people don't agree with their growth tactics, but few would say it's useless.
Starting with irrelevant video footage: big-city homelessness and world hunger are different problems; a healthy newborn baby is hardly an example of a malnourished child; several scenes attempt to associate being black with hunger but show well fed kids instead, one even being fed with a spoon by an overweight caregiver...
Then, the video never explains how the system works. Could have explained the idea while you had me watching.
Not to mention that world hunger is not something you can simply throw cash at. It's been done, doesn't work. This is a very complex problem, involving distribution costs, poverty, corruption and many other factors.
And Deepak Chopra? Seriously? You lost any credibility you might have had.
The whole thing reeks of "for every forwarded email Bill Gates will pay $1 to X". Except Deepak gets that $1.
I do have all of those cards scanned and stored in dropbox with 1password, but I don't have good 3g coverage so I carry them just in case.
I carry my fat wallet in a fanny pack. Not very elegant, but incredibly practical.
I carry 19 cards, of which 16 are essential. Some of them are not for swiping so they wouldn't benefit from Coin. The solution for me is a wallet that can hold 20 to 30 cards, but as far as I can tell there's no such thing.
Also, the start page shows that the right pane is for the camera view of the participants. Why would I want to see the interviewee's face? I want to know how they think, not how they look.
A better use of that space would be a drawing tool, as sometimes it's easier to explain something by making a diagram. Build that and I'll use it.
Seriously though, your perception depends very much on the quality of your peers. I'm lucky enough to be immersed among the very best, so the average developers I regularly interview seem - to me - incapable of programming their way out of a paper bag, even though they hold normal positions in normal companies, presumably successfully.
Anyone starting a Kickstart project for a better system can have my money.