Laid-Off California Tech Workers Are Sick To Death of LinkedIn

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGATE: Over the past few years, scores of California tech workers have ended up in the exact same position: laid-off, looking for work on LinkedIn and sick of it. LinkedIn, part job site and part social network, has become an all but necessary tool for the office-job-seeking masses in the Bay Area and beyond. As tech companies gut their workforces, people who would otherwise give the blue-and-white site a wide berth feel compelled to scroll for hours every day for job opportunities. LinkedIn is a dominant force in the professional world, with more than 1 billion users and 67 million weekly job searchers. That scale, plus the torrent of self-promotion and corporate platitudes fueling the platform, has long made it a symbol of modern capitalism. Now, in the age of tech's layoffs, it's also a symbol of dread.

The platform's specter looms so large because it does exactly what it needs to. Tech workers are stuck on Linkedin: In a competitive job market rife with spam listings, the free platform's networking-focused features set it a peg above competitors like Indeed, Dice and Levels.fyi in the search for full-time work. Since February, SFGATE has spoken with 10 recently laid-off tech workers; most of them see LinkedIn as painful but necessary and have locked up new jobs in part thanks to the platform. Tech worker Kyle Kohlheyer told SFGATE that returning to LinkedIn after losing his job at Cruise in December felt like 'salt in the wound' and called the job site a 'cesspool' of wannabe thought leaders and 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires.'

'I found success on their platform, but I f-king hate LinkedIn,' Kohlheyer said. 'It sucks. It is a terrible place to exist every day and depend on a job for. There's just such a capitalist-centric mindset on there that is so annoying as a worker who has been fundamentally screwed by companies,' he said. 'Wading' through LinkedIn, he said, it's hard to tell if people feel like an alternative to the top-heavy, precarious tech economy is even possible.

Another tech worker, Mark Harris, added: 'Is [LinkedIn] a terrible sign that we live in a capitalist hellscape? Hell yes! But we do live in a capitalist hellscape, and girl's gotta eat.'

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