Why I Downgraded LinkedIn
I’ve been on LinkedIn since around 2007 or so. I don’t even remember. I once found it useful and even now, I use it to somewhat the existence of people I meet but overall, my opinion of LinkedIn has dropped over the years to an all-time low. I flat don’t like it, and consider the site a mostly useless rip-off. It’s also become a Facebook wannabe for the chronically unemployed. It’s a place to hang out if you feel like need to get some attention, virtue signal, brag, or just try and sound important. It’s Facebook, while wearing a nicer but badly fitted shirt.
I realized I was paying about $60.00 a month and for what? $720 a year for that nonsense and that constant spam? I was continually bombarded, and still am, by everyone and their dental-challenged cousin trying to sell me something and most of all, people selling services that are a derivative of what I already do for a living. It would be like Burger King trying to sell hamburgers to McDonald’s because they think they like burgers. No, the spammers don’t read the profiles, they just send out mass blasts to everyone on LinkedIn.
The most annoying of them all is the one who hits you up for a, “professional connection” with some line intended to flatter you, followed by the sale pitch the second you accept their invite, while always claiming to be an “expert” or “ninja” at something. I’m weary from paying to be hit up by scams. They have a “Sorry I’m not interested” button, but they should have a, “F*ck-off” button for everyone selling lead generation services.
It’s turned into the site packed with the middle-management horn-tooting, brown-nosing types who think it’s a useful career platform, like someone honking their horn through every intersection. Maybe if you’re a recruiter, but as a real, and serious professional contact site, it’s been gamed too many times. One of the key selling points they try and make, is that you get to see who’s looking at your profile. Well, not really. You see a few. Most people keep that information private so you only see those people who are sales prospecting, and besides, so what?
I’ve now come across too many people with completely fake or exaggerated profiles, with hidden jobs that earned them a deserved bad reputation they now want to cover up, or where they take credit for something they didn’t do. Most of those people hitting you up for lead generation services, don’t exist. There is no verification of anything so if you want to be a doctor, you can be a doctor! Who’s going to challenge you?
I even know of someone who claims to be a co-founder of something a friend and I started, and he was not at all, and never was a co-founder. One company has dozens of people listed who never worked there or left years ago! One bad actor claims to have done a lot of work under a company he didn’t own, start or run. He uses a different company name to avoid a reference check. So, you end up linking to only those who you know and trust, and because you already have their information, what’s the point?
Microsoft in their continuation of the practice of over-promising and under-delivering, (Skype, Teams, Bing, Zune…) treats the site like they are giving you this great value because it’s tied to education, when it’s turned into a pile of noise they expect you to somehow love. It doesn’t matter what it is, I know if Microsoft buys it, they will add their own dash of arrogance, customer disconnect, and over politicize functionality, to the point where customers leave in droves. LinkedIn, you’re a crap product, and it’s time I let you know with my wallet.