I’m Not on LinkedIn

Breakdown of Why I am Not on LinkedIn

LinkedIn discriminates against workers that live in multiple countries	The world we live in is no longer compatible with LinkedIn’s assumptions. LinkedIn assumes that we all wish to live in a stationary fishbowl where our entire lives are on display and contained within a single country. Due to its many failures to protect its users from hackers, LinkedIn’s security model designates those who access its site from multiple countries as a security threat to its internal infrastructure. This is because a Russian hacker went undetected for an extended period of time despite logging in from IP addressed around the world. Just as LinkedIn’s stupidity led to the breach of its security by this hacker, LinkedIn’s response to the event has, once again, demonstrated LinkedIn’s stupidity. I have three homes: one in the USA and two in Europe. The European homes are in different countries. LinkedIn appears to have interpreted accessing their site from multiple countries as a security threat. LinkedIn requested that I prove my identity. I complied, by providing them with a picture of my passport. LinkedIn continued, without a rational basis, to classify my identity as fraudulent. They also complained that I had used my nickname, “Steve” instead of my formal name “Stephen”. Everyone I have worked with and everyone that knows me refers to me by the name “Steve”, not “Stephen”. LinkedIn, in response to my refutations of their pathetic challenges, dug in deeper, finding other extraneous reasons to doubt me without giving me the opportunity to refute them. I decided to end my challenge because, honestly, I don’t really wish to be on LinkedIn anyway, for the reason listed below. I had only joined LinkedIn to make it easier for employers to hire me, despite my desire to not be on LinkedIn. In our last communication, LinkedIn admitted that many of their responses to me had been in error. They claimed they had previously “warned” me, but they had not. There had been zero warnings from LinkedIn before this one and only action, initiated by them. What appears to have triggered their reaction was that I simply logged into their site from a different country (something I do all the time, since I am in a different country). I had a similar problem with Facebook, in the distant past, but they verified my identity and then allowed me to log in worldwide without problems. LinkedIn, however, filled with hubris and power, stomped on me like an insect. My apparent crime is that I live in multiple places.
LinkedIn is vulnerable to stalkers	In the late 1990s, I became involved in opposing US intervention in El Salvador. While a member of an organization providing support to El Salvador’s opposition, I met a woman that pretended to be sympathetic to the cause. She later turned out to be a stalker. She has stalked me online for as long as the World Wide Web has existed. Due to her stalking, I am very protective of my personal information, my connections, and my location. LinkedIn forces users to lay bare all of the details that a stalker can use to harass. This is the reason I had always been loath to create an account on LinkedIn. Due to the unreasonable demand by many employers that employment candidates have a LinkedIn profile, I acquiesced. Within days, I not old had the problem described in the previous row, but I immediately found myself subject to a floor of emails, laden with a virus, and classified as “extortion scam”. Fortunately, I have good anti-virus software on my machine, I am savvy about internet scams, and I possess deep knowledge of how hackers can penetrate my network. As a consequence, I was able to deflect the emails (which came in at a rate of one per every five minutes, for a period of 24 hours. While I cannot prove it, I believe that exposing myself, even for three days on LinkedIn, led to this attack. I am certain that LinkedIn would attempt to defend itself by showing that they have added pages to support their stalking victims. This is analogous to invite vulnerable people into a club where rape is common and then providing advice to victims. The club doesn’t get closed because it is profitable. It is more profitable to allow the club’s customers to be raped and then handle the consequences, than it is to change the nature of the club to prevent rape. LinkedIn makes it money by selling its marks (users) to employers. It exists to profit from serving employers; job seekers and employees be damned! Job seekers and employees are just human traffic. LinkedIn doesn’t actually care of some of the “goods” get damaged along the way. As a corporation, LinkedIn doesn’t “feel” anything. It is not flesh and blood, it is a legal construction that does business. Avoid it!
LinkedIn does not work in the best interest of employees, job seekers, and employers	LinkedIn exists to cash in on the process of workers seeking employment and employers seeking workers. The primary source of that income stream is the employer. This aligns LinkedIn only with the interest of employers. In order to serve potential employers, LinkedIn applies a very templated structure for classifying workers, verifying their skills, and compactly presenting matching candidates to narrow criteria. This may work well for job seekers whose talents and careers are easily boxed and labels, but it does not work well for multitalented workers that do not fit into LinkedIn’s one-size-fits-all box. As they toss such workers into boxes, most of what is best about their skills and talents overflows the box and is spilled into the void. One might object and say, “Well, those things in the box are the only things an employer is looking for!” Sure, an ignorant employer that thinks in the box would agree. However, several positions I have attained were attained exactly because of my background and talents that do not fit in the box. For example, in addition to a degree in computer science, I hold a degree in philosophy. This enables me to do ontology. An ontologist that is a programmer is highly useful in creating knowledge bases and writing rules of inference. I also have a very strong background in linguistics. While I have never worked as a linguist, this strong background makes me very good at Natural Language Processing. Examples of skills that LinkedIn would miss are those skills gained from self-employment as a tutor, a writer, or simply being a creative person with programming skills. Let me give you some examples. I have been a programming tutor since I was a university student in the 1980s. I have continued to tutor students, privately, on a one-to-one bases, not as an employee, but as a side-occupation. At one point, many years ago, I had been teaching Java programming at a college. One of my students came to me and asked me for tutoring in Flash and ActionScript. She could not find anyone to tutor her on these subjects. I told her that I did not know Flash and had never programmed in ActionScript. She continued to beg for my help, so I bought a book on Flash and ActionScript. I taught myself both and found that I was quite good at them. I tutored her, she succeeded in class, and then I included “Flash and ActionScript” on my resume. Quickly, I was hired by a company to be their Flash and ActionScript guy. For the next eight years, my primary software development was done in Flash and ActionScript. Had I used LinkedIn, they would have claimed that I had had no Flash or ActionScript experience, despite the fact that I did have that experience, and I would have been denied the opportunity to work using Flash and ActionScript, at the start of that eight-year interval. Employers seeking a Flash/ActionScript developer would never have found me using LinkedIn. I learned Python the very same way that I learned Flash/ActionScript, by meeting the needs of a student (my client). Anyone with forty years of experience which includes C, C++, C#, Lisp, Pascal, Delphi, JavaScript, Ruby, and so on, can learn Python in two weeks. Why is there no way to convey that fact on LinkedIn? I have a very high IQ, deep understanding of programming, a knack for languages (not just formal languages, but natural languages as well), a very strong background in logic (through earning a degree in philosophy and also acing courses in mathematical logic), a deep understanding of how interpreters and compilers work, and I learn quickly. Why should I need to list an employer to justify the fact that I am an expert Python programmer? Why should employers not know that I am an expert Python programmer? LinkedIn won’t let me tell employers that I have this skill. LinkedIn is denying employers candidates by denying that job seekers have the skills they have. By using its algorithms to rank matches between candidates and opportunities, based on false premises, LinkedIn does a disservice to both job seekers and employers.
LinkedIn is a gold mine for scammers, hackers, and others with ill intent	As I began to speak out against LinkedIn on social media, many responses to my posts were from others that felt that LinkedIn had made them a target of scammers. Scammers target those seeking jobs with false promises and they use LinkedIn to harvest data for spear fishing attacks, identity theft, extortion, and other such criminal activities. Employers requiring job seekers to submit to LinkedIn are forcing innocent people to become prey for those with ill will. LinkedIn itself fell victim to its own stupidity. The Russian hacker that penetrated their systems, compromised the data of users, and brought havoc to the lives of many, gained insight on how to hack into LinkedIn by viewing the LinkedIn profiles of LinkedIn’s employees. Listen to this podcast to find out how this was done: The LinkedIn Incident. If this could happen to LinkedIn, for reason of its own employees have profiles on LinkedIn, imagine how many other companies have been penetrated exactly because their employees have LinkedIn profiles? Since each profile has the work history and skills of the profile owner, the same information can be used to hack into the systems of former employers as well. I am sure that Russian, Chinese, and North Korean hackers are getting fat off of the information that LinkedIn provides them.
LinkedIn elevates extraverts at the expense of introverts	Not all of us thrive off of bragging about ourselves. There exist people that derive pleasure from their work and do not wish to be in the spotlight or wish to compete with others for the spotlight. LinkedIn’s methodology and culture promotes self-aggrandizing cock-a-hoops and narcissists It also promotes the most servile and obsequious of workers, who brag about how much they love to be a doormat. For those of us who are neither blowhards nor doormats, LinkedIn is a very uncomfortable environment.

My Personal Reasons

For more than 20 years I avoided being on LinkedIn. The primary reason for avoiding LinkedIn is that I have a stalker. Her name is Bridget. She is from Rolling Hills Estates, Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Nevertheless, I recently decided that I should be on LinkedIn, but not to my surprise, within about three days I experienced problems with the platform. They even questioned my identity, despite providing them with a copy of my passport.

Fortunately, that experiment lasted only a few days. I am now back to where I had been and should have remained – not on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is among the worst of the worst in social media. It promotes conformity within the range of what American corporatism considers professional behavior. Professional behavior varies from country to country, culture to culture, and profession to profession. Why would anyone submit themselves to being governed by a corporate machine that exists only to sell its users to employers? If you believe that it is by our own free will that we create associations, whether in personal relationships or relationships with employers, then one can only say that we are free when the interactions, standards, and respect is mutual and balanced. LinkedIn promotes obsequiousness on the part of employees. It also opens employees up to potential harassment and stalking. It uses an algorithm to rate a worker’s worth by the standards that the LinkedIn corporation sets. That isn’t freedom. For these reasons, I am not on linked in. If you are an employer, you should not expect that every potential employee would choose to be on LinkedIn. Their lives, and your life, are not exclusively about the corporate world. Moreover, not all work is corporate. Some of us choose to work as freelancers because we do not wish to conform to the dictates of corporations like LinkedIn. We wish to contribute our labor and creativity on terms that we find mutual beneficial. If you believe in freedom, you should respect that.

Personal Profile for Steve Devoy

Breakdown of Why I am Not on LinkedIn

My Personal Reasons

Why You Shouldn’t be on LinkedIn or Use LinkedIN to Find Employees

Below is a list of links about victims of LinkedIn