> I spent the day receiving over 500 (!) birthday greetings from LinkedIn contacts, whose names and faces I didn’t even recognize, who had clicked on a notification prompt
From the above, it appears that the harm is self-inflicted. Why would one have 500+ contacts who she does not recognize? Linkedin is a tool and every tool can be misused. My contact list is under 200 and those are the people I enjoyed working with and would not hesitate to ping if needed
I always accept friend requests in case they want to send me a message, which they sometimes do. Is that bad? Maybe I should go back and delete all those people.
It is your choice, but for me, it is strictly professional. Some overlap with friends, but those who I never worked with, are not on my Linkedin contact list. Somewhat counterintuitively, no recruiters. Many/all recruiters have very "noisy" contact lists which complicates navigation via degrees of proximity, like 2nd, 3rd, etc. When the list of contacts is carefully curated, it adds value.
People you don't know but who take the time to leave a considerate message explaining why they would like to connect, is also probably fine.
But some "Jeffrey Epstein" rando wanting to connect without even explaining why should be an instant ignore. You are the company you keep, so might as well know who your company are.
It's not too bad after some (a lot of) adjustments, but I agree the problem is that the default is that notifications are on. I'm part of more than a dozen Discord servers, and only three of them have notifications enabled, and one of those are basically dead. If I joint a new one, the first thing I do is mute it, and then I'll maybe unmute it if I'm actually active in there (or if it's a large server, I'll unmute the specific channels I care about and mute everything else).
I have email notifications on, but I actually read the few newsletters I get, and I barely get any mail beyond that. Meanwhile, everybody else I see has 4000 unread emails and the vast majority are unread rubbish that they could have unsubscribed to 700 emails ago, or just never subscribed to to begin with, but I guess signing up for that shit is just the default now.
I go even further: I only use the website. If I want to add or modify something, I go to my profile and do it. I only used 2 social network apps, and they are mostly for news and to check on tech people I follow.
My wife's phone, is just full of noise. Notifications, messages, email ... some folks just want to be in front of a fire hose of crap... I don't know why.
Is LinkedIn a "social network" beyond the technical term for a site like that?
I find I get zero social interaction that I would associate with humans being social animals from LinkedIn. Are you seeing genuine connections with people on there?
LinkedIn is not a social network, it’s a vehicle for spam, grifting, self-promotion and other useless garbage. I deleted my account years ago and I wish I had done it sooner.
My current job cold contacted me via LinkedIn. I use LI minimally, basically only to establish connections with my network, and it already gave me huge value back.
My skills are alright, nothing too crazy. I've had messages that were more spammy/scammy, but the volume was not crazy high, they were usually fairly obvious, and I resolved by simply ignoring them. I would say that the random chance of getting an interesting job offer, however small, is probably worth it for most professionals.
However, one thing I haven't mentioned is that I am based in Europe. My small sample size of people reaching out to me is showing that US contacts are usually less serious (e.g. ghosting). Maybe the US experience is so much worse overall due to this?
LinkedIn has been high value to me. You just need to ignore the whole social feed, games, and garbage notifications. Use it as a resume platform and let recruiters / founders reach out to you. I’ve had great job offers in the last few years with basically zero time investment. 3 years ago I +50%’d my salary and went full remote on my tech stack of choice just thanks to LinkedIn. And I absolutely suck at networking and invest no time in it at all.
It wouldn't be as bad if everyone wasn't trying to turn into a business microinfluencer with constantly upbeat posts not really adding anything of value and "What I messy divorce taught me about B2B synergy"
The sad thing is, this kind of stuff was encouraged in the previous company that I worked for when I got promoted to a certain level. 'Be a thought leader', 'represent the company and influence the industry' was the standard directives the leadership team were given.
On one hand, it's funny to see the ones that made the company their whole identity, only to then leave for a competitor and make the new place their identity.
On the other hand , it's sad that a lot of people that are hiring (in my line of work at least), are impressed by these crappy posts and the people posting it tend to get more exposure and get hired quicker.
Readit News
From the above, it appears that the harm is self-inflicted. Why would one have 500+ contacts who she does not recognize? Linkedin is a tool and every tool can be misused. My contact list is under 200 and those are the people I enjoyed working with and would not hesitate to ping if needed
People you don't know but who take the time to leave a considerate message explaining why they would like to connect, is also probably fine.
But some "Jeffrey Epstein" rando wanting to connect without even explaining why should be an instant ignore. You are the company you keep, so might as well know who your company are.
So there's that.
I just disable all notifications and it doesn't bother me to have LinkedIn because I only open it when I feel like it. Same with Facebook, etc.
Incredibly, the default is always for notifications to be enabled, and I don't know how people live like that.
I have email notifications on, but I actually read the few newsletters I get, and I barely get any mail beyond that. Meanwhile, everybody else I see has 4000 unread emails and the vast majority are unread rubbish that they could have unsubscribed to 700 emails ago, or just never subscribed to to begin with, but I guess signing up for that shit is just the default now.
People need to read "The Strength Of Weak Ties" before advocating extremely damaging courses of action such as deleting LinkedIn.
Humans are social animals and we cannot survive without a social network. Yet many in the West seem to ignore this obvious fact. It is baffling.
After so many years, I can't help but wonder if it's deliberate malice.
I find I get zero social interaction that I would associate with humans being social animals from LinkedIn. Are you seeing genuine connections with people on there?
I could imagine that working.
For most people though I expect they're just one of many and odds of spam / scam contacts greatly outweigh legit communication.
However, one thing I haven't mentioned is that I am based in Europe. My small sample size of people reaching out to me is showing that US contacts are usually less serious (e.g. ghosting). Maybe the US experience is so much worse overall due to this?
Otherwise app deleted, I'm not on there.
Pretty easy to do.
I find it soul crushing even when I do look, so many generic yay company posts full of BS, my feed is hell and I don't want to bother fixing it.
On one hand, it's funny to see the ones that made the company their whole identity, only to then leave for a competitor and make the new place their identity.
On the other hand , it's sad that a lot of people that are hiring (in my line of work at least), are impressed by these crappy posts and the people posting it tend to get more exposure and get hired quicker.