I Finally Deleted my LinkedIn Account

I'm a recruiter and I simply do not understand things like this. Sure, many of my colleagues have given us a reputation for being incompetent assholes. But many of my friends contact me the second they are looking for a new job because they know I like to help people out. Isn't pressing archive on a couple annoying emails worth meeting someone like that?<p>When the market isn't so good, maybe people will stop thinking of these people as annoyances (though I understand 95% of them ARE worthless annoyances) and realize that these people can be a valuable tool to help them get a job. Hell, I don't charge for a single placement I make where it is a friend being placed. If a friend says "hey do you know a recruiter/hiring manager at place x? I'd like to work there." My answer is usually "yes" and they do. Call the people in the field annoying all you want, but I imagine someday people will realize they were being a bit immature with stuff like this. It's almost as if people need to pad their ego by bragging about how many of these annoying emails they get and then start doing things like writing blogs about how theyre deleting a useful tool because of it. Makes no sense to me.

This seems like a silly post designed purely to preach to the "recruiters? Ha!" choir.<p>There's literally zero downside to having a LinkedIn account. The emails are too annoying? Auto-archive them and send them to a 'Recruiting Spam' folder which you browse every few weeks (or never).

I owe my livelihood to both LinkedIn and my personal blog. Without either, I wouldn't have the great job I have at the moment; 100% remote work.<p>I think deleting your LinkedIn account is a net loss, what's the downside of _having_ a LinkedIn account?

I wish more recruiters actually used LinkedIn.<p>I moved from NY almost two years ago, and I still get calls/emails for NY based positions. A quick glance at my LinkedIn profile will clearly show that I do not live in NY anymore.<p>There is no magic behind LinkedIn. You are discoverable based on the amount of information you enter. Do not list skills or job descriptions (w/ buzzwords) and your hit rate will go down. Forget what LinkedIn suggests, your profile does not need to be 100% completed.

I've never treated LinkedIn as anything but the modern corollary to a Rolodex. I happily deleted my Facebook account a couple years ago, but, at least once a month (if not more often) make good use of linked-in to track down the email address of a past coworker and/or see what they are up to these days.

I'm not on LinkedIn because of the recruiting. Most of the recruiting messages I've received have been either friendly (I tell them "No thanks, let's talk in a year or so") or so ham-handed and over the top that I've passed the howlers around.<p>(The only time in 35 years that I found a job through a recruiter, it was a train wreck. I doubt the recruiters on LinkedIn are much different).<p>I'm on LinkedIn because it's fun to find and talk to prior cow-orkers without involving the privacy catastrophe that is Facebook.

I don't have a LinkedIn account because I don't think that any social network's management can be trusted over the mid to long term on matters relating to privacy, etc. LinkedIn is better than others so far, but the incentives do not align.<p>Yet I still get a not insignificant amount of spam connection requests.

The "I tried to call you" e-mail brings me to my tangential pet peeve: <i>why can't more recruiters do more of their business by e-mail?</i><p>Seriously, if you want to chat with me on a matter that I'm going to need discretion in (like, say, leaving the company that owns the cubicles) we're going to have to arrange a time in advance.<p>That's a lot of effort to find out that my skills are a poor match for the position, or (as happens a lot) that I've already been talking to your client.

Funny. I simply put "I'm not interested in recruiters or open positions at this time. I will mark them as spam." at the top of my profile. The spam connection request have stopped completely.<p>I used to have this in my 'how to contact me" spot in the profile, but LinkedIn failed to surface that section correctly in the public profile. Half of this is their fault.

You will find you still get LinkedIn invites from recruiters. And LinkedIn will send you a "reminder" email about the invitation every couple of weeks. Still don't understand why LinkedIn feels it needs to be so slimy.

My presence on LinkedIn got me my last two jobs, and LinkedIn wasn't a thing when I started my first. This last job was through one of these cold-emails through a recruiter. As it has been said by other commenters, it's really what you make of it. I treat LinkedIn as a professional version of Facebook that I actually take care to prune, which really just makes it a glorified Rolodex.<p>It's also worth noting that you don't even have to be notified of all these bothersome emails, let alone reply to them, and can clearly indicate whether or not you wish to be contacted about work (granted, that can be ignored, but the good ones won't).

In an ideal world when it comes time to look for a new role you'd browse all the companies with positions open. It's frustrating though, that many, many companies don't advertise the positions because the effort of sorting through thousands of replies is too much, so they outsource that by going through a recruiter.<p>The recruiters though are typically inexperienced due to high churn rate, so it's almost random luck that you'd get a good fit for a job interview, particularly if they lie to both you and the employer before the interview to make it seem like there's a fit.<p>It's definitely inefficient, what's the solution here?

I deleted my LinkedIn account and I <i>still</i> get emails from them. LinkedIn, I beg of you, please leave me alone.

I honestly don't get spammed by these recruiters. What's the difference between my account and all these other people who are getting "spammed"?

We have a stupid amount in common, sent you an email with a question about something. I promise I'm not a recruiter.

+1 sir. Good devs need no stinking LinkedIn.<p>Good recruitments happen through good contacts anyway.

Curious: what sites are alternatives to LinkedIn? Who is LinkedIn's competition?