Oh typical petty crime. BRING ON THE POLICE! "Oakland could be an incredible town". It already is. If you don't appreciate it, then go elsewhere? Berkeley may be more of your taste (lots of granola for ya).
No need to fear. The plebeians who worship HN will downvote me into oblivion to stick up for their fellow transient brother from flyover state Nowhere, USA.
Great. Another one of those dismissal comments as the first in the thread. Let's see:
"Linkedin is a Facebook for recruiter spam. The article raises some valid points, you can't advertise you're looking for a new job because your boss will see or if not, one of your colleagues will and they'll most likely report you to get brownie points with the boss or even take your job."
- You don't need to advertise that you are looking for a new job on LinkedIn. You can always passively look. Are your employers reading your inbox too? If that's the case, maybe you should look elsewhere.
"Half of my connections are recruiters, I get daily emails offering me Wordpress development and SEO services (even though I am a front-end developer and can do that stuff myself), people add me I've never met before who don't even live in the same country as me. Linkedin is a giant mess, it's kind of like the professional equivalent of Myspace circa 2007 when that scantily clad girl wanting to add you was some low-life in a basement trying to spam affiliate links at you, only that scantily clad girl is a guy in a suit trying to get a recruiting commission from spamming your inbox."
- People don't add you. People request to add you. There is a difference. I don't accept requests from people who I either A) don't know B) don't care to network with. I don't see how this is different than any other social network.
"Don't get me started on the skill endorsements feature. I get tonnes of emails everyday saying "Joe X has endorsed you for Java" even though Joe knows nothing about Java nor do I. People are endorsing me for skills that I don't even posses or have, what a joke."
- Joke or not I'll know the difference between someone's actual skills if I was a recruiter/hiring manager after asking them about said skill. I interview many candidates who I see write lots of languages on their resume. I'm not going to go through the list and ask about each one, but the skills endorsements are useful in that I know what I should focus on when I interview them to see if they actually know it. Anyone can lie about anything on any social network.
"Want to network? Get someone's business card and their phone number, store it into your phone and don't rely on a website comprised of spam to build up a network."
- Please. Especially for people in the technical industry. Waste of trees for the person receiving the card and waste of money for the person buying the card. I don't think I've ever called someone after meeting them for the first time at some sort of event, then again I'm not in sales; I prefer more passive introductions.
Can you please elaborate how specifically the "design" encourages impersonal spams? Wouldn't it be in the Recruiter's best interest not to do that? That seems like the difference between a good recruiter and a bad one.