Readit News logoReadit News
Posted by u/LinkedInSucks 4 years ago
Ask HN: What LinkedIn alternatives don't suck?
I've been using LinkedIn almost since Day 1 and I'm not sure why. I had ~10,000 e-mails from headhunters, only about 150 of which were somewhat relevant, of that 1 resulted in directly putting any money in my pocket.

In my connections I had ~6,000 connections, and about 150 of them I had worked with, 50-60 would pass the beer test, and maybe 25 I would recognize.

Meanwhile LinkedIn has pretty much become a business-oriented spammy Facebook, so I deleted my account.

Is GitHub the best place to show off my skills / hold a resume, or are there any other worthy alternatives which haven't just become Facebook clones?

K5EiS · 4 years ago
Remove your 6000 connections except the people you actually know. Linkedin is what you make it, and you have made yours like Facebook.
hliyan · 4 years ago
Agreed. I only accept people from my own industry, and whenever I see more than two professionally irrelevant or just plain annoying posts from a connection, I just unfollow that connection. My feed looks fairly informative. I've disabled Facebook because it was impossible to do that effectively on FB.
aikinai · 4 years ago
Why can’t you do that on Facebook? That’s what I do and it worked great. Whenever I log in, there are only updates from people that post actual life updates that I likely care about. I’ve unfollowed everyone else and Facebook respects that. My feed is normally only a page or two long and then they’re honest “that’s all for now.”
mohanmcgeek · 4 years ago
Not really.

LinkedIn shows random posts with 2k+ engagement unrelated to your connections and they are the cringiest post that end with "agree?"

K5EiS · 4 years ago
Looking at my feed i only see posts my connections like (although these are often cringy posts) and pages i follow. I do use an adblocker, so perhaps the random posts you see are promoted posts?
AzzieElbab · 4 years ago
LinkedIn is for recruiters not job seekers
K5EiS · 4 years ago
Is it though? No recruiters would use the site if there were no job seekers.
codegeek · 4 years ago
I actually accept invites randomly at times if the profile looks interesting. But I also cull the list once every 2-3 months. If an unknown contact didn't add any value after initial connection, I remove them from my connection.

Deleted Comment

ikooru · 4 years ago
100% agreed!
hurls87 · 4 years ago
Why would you accept 6,000 connections of mostly people you don't know and complain about it?
tomduncalf · 4 years ago
In the (excellent) Tech Resume Inside Out book [1], the author mentions that when recruiters perform a search on LinkedIn, you will be ranked higher if you are more closely connected to the recruiter (e.g. you are one degree of connection away), so in this sense it might make sense to accept every request, if you don't care about the actual newsfeed etc. Could do with a "Accept but don't show posts from this person" option, mine is super spammy and I'd never dream of using it as a social network because of this, but I still think it's a good way to make yourself discoverable.

[1] https://thetechresume.com/

throwaway98797 · 4 years ago
You get what you optimize for.
yonixw · 4 years ago
In some of my circles, it is considered rude to reject a LinkedIn connection. Probably came from the same mindset that you shouldn't miss any business opportunity. Which is what the OP hoped for, but instead found out that spam exists in every industry.

My suggestion would be to open a new LinkedIn. But, this time, filter heavy just like anyone would have done on Email.

the-dude · 4 years ago
It reminds me of something else : older people seem to feel obliged to answer the phone ( and the door ).
hurls87 · 4 years ago
Might be rude if you know them. Missed business opportunity or the need to feel wanted?
sys_64738 · 4 years ago
Then don't reject them but ignore them like most do.
jstx1 · 4 years ago
The best alternative is LinkedIn that you use with some restraint instead of connecting to thousands of people and opening up your profile and email to absolutely everyone.

Outside of that you probably won't find many alternatives because the large social network is the whole point - the value proposition of LinkedIn is that it's the one place where everyone goes to search for jobs and employees. A less well-known platform can't give you the same benefits by definition.

codingdave · 4 years ago
I have 200 connections, all of whom are either people I have worked with and would be happy to catch up with and work with again, or recruiters whom I have spoken directly to that are active in my area and have legit jobs to share. It has connected to me to both permanent jobs, and contract gigs.

If you just spam connect to thousands of strangers, of course it won't be useful to you. It isn't a site to build a portfolio and show off skills, it is a site that can be used every few years to reconnect with old contacts when you are seeking work.

fecak · 4 years ago
It really depends what you use LinkedIn for.

Discovery: You say you had lots of incoming messages from recruiters but few of any use, so it sounds like you may have interest in discovery (being found by recruiters for opportunities). Unfortunately, LinkedIn is pretty much the standard and there aren't many other places recruiter can go to find candidates en masse. Angel.co is perhaps the closest thing I've seen there.

Resume - If you want to post a resume somewhere that you can quickly send a link to someone looking for it, you could of course use GitHub or any number of other options like a personal website on any platform like Angel.

Contact storage (Rolodex) - You said you had 6K connections, which is a huge number compared to most. It doesn't necessarily matter how many of them you actually knew - what matters more (it seems anyway) is how many of the 6K would be useful to you depending on what you wanted to do. If you want to find a job, or if you wanted to hire someone (which is another reason people use LinkedIn), putting out a message that has the potential to reach 6K people is pretty powerful.

Brand building - Some people use LinkedIn as a publishing method to build some kind of brand or reputation, and either publish material direct to LinkedIn or link material off the site. The competitors for that would probably be social media sites or blogging.

cpach · 4 years ago
Spot on.

I’ll add to that: Networking / making connections. IMHO, that kind of stuff probably doesn’t happen so much on LinkedIn. Better venues are probably local meetups (see meetup.com) or good old conferences.

benjaminwootton · 4 years ago
I invested about a decade in my LinkedIn profile, putting stacks of reasonably high quality posts and articles on there. I got up to around 20k fairly organic connections/followers. The content was good too. All in all it was a big part of my career and business.

About 2 years ago I really started to feel that LinkedIn jumped the shark. The (left leaning) virtue signalling, constant boasting, aggressive sales just destroyed the signal to noise ratio and it felt like a time sink. Their algorithm also became very unpredictable in terms of reach of your content.

I ended up putting the profile in the bin, and will concentrate on other platforms. I think YouTube in particular is still early for B2B content in the grand scheme of things.

pickle-wizard · 4 years ago
It is funny you notice a lot of left leaning virtue signaling. I notice a lot of right leaning virtue signaling.

I'm going to guess that the geographic differences of our connections are likely the main difference there.

lwn · 4 years ago
For developers there's the "stackoverflow developer story" https://stackoverflow.com/users/story/join and for start-up related roles there is https://angel.co. I hardly encountered recruiters, while being able to keep track of my (limited) network and job opportunities.
certeoun · 4 years ago
This is Jason Turner's SO CV: https://stackoverflow.com/cv/lefticus

I added it for inspiration. :)

oliverjudge · 4 years ago
I've moved over to Polywork. Which has a bit more of a tongue in cheek feel, but definitely feels better thank Linked in does, with a better community.

Invite link for the curious https://www.polywork.com/invite/olliejudge-hypno

new_guy · 4 years ago
What a weird way to lose business.

They get mentioned in a random HN comment, they'd potentially get a few hundred new members but it's impossible to sign up so everyone moves on and in a few minutes will forget that site even exists.

Aeolun · 4 years ago
Cue the founder showing up here in a few hours with unlimited invites when it is already too late.
shantnutiwari · 4 years ago
I created an account, not sure what its about. Another form of Twitter?

Another account that will not be used for more than a day...

aloisdg · 4 years ago
"Wow, looks like Ollie's looking out for you... but they're out of invites. Sign up for the waitlist today "
kn0thing · 4 years ago
I got you - use my code: ALEXISVIP
oliverjudge · 4 years ago
I only had 10, sorry looks like they've all been taken.

Dead Comment

lucis · 4 years ago
My invites as well: https://www.polywork.com/invite/lucis-electabuzz

So far, have been liking the platform. But I don't know, LinkedIn's ide was nice in the first place, and then came people...

simon_k_ · 4 years ago
Here’s another invite link with code for the curious: https://www.polywork.com/invite/simonkastl-weezing
dairyleia · 4 years ago
How many "connections"/friends do you have on there, considering you have to join a waitlist?