Alternatives to LinkedIn for developers?
Keeping this short. For last 3-4 years have seen developers complain about LinkedIn not adding any value. Neither profiles nor content. What are the alternatives?
I am researching on building one (actually started building but keeping it low to not influence either way the discussion here).
Would love to hear the expectations and if something cool is already out there that I missed.
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I am huuge Dev.to fan. Is amazing for developers and so on...
Since you mentioned it. I got the impression that the majority of content there is at the beginner-level. Am I completely mistaken here?
many things are for beginners there (not all). that is why it is so popular.
btw, GitHub / Gitlab can also be used for networking.
Oh, how would you use GitHub for networking?
you can often help at known projects. this way you get in contact with others.
there are some possibilities. but often it is a combination of different channels. like github + twitter, github + mail ... and so on.
Some stuff yes, some stuff not.
I'm actually sort of trying to take on this problem with joinhelm.com. At this point, it's fairly minimal, but it's a place where you can share your technical projects in a nontechnical way.
I think it depends on what platform you are looking for, Linkedin the job platform or Linkedin the "community" with the news feed and status updates of fellow developers.
I don't think I've ever seen a developer post on Linkedin as it's mostly either recruiters doing employer branding or salespeople peddling their new product. Personally I find that part pretty useless. There's probably room for improvement but I'm also not sure if that's something people even want. There's Twitter for that which has the advantage that most people already use it.
As for the job part it's the defacto standard and usually you only have to use it for a brief moment when you are looking for a new job. 99% of the time it's just a passive profile where recruiters send you messages. The job part of Linkedin works very well I think.
Developers complain about a lot of things, most of the time because they think they can build something better on a weekend and most of the time this should be taken with a grain of salt.
Very true. What would say about the networking part? The core or the dna. Does it help there? Is there even a need for such professional networking?
I think it's a bit hard to narrow down what networking means to me. It's definitely not happening on Linkedin (because clicking "Connect" on someone's profile and saying "Let's keep in touch" is not networking for me).
Networking for me are mostly in-person events like Meetups, knowing who's out there in the community in your city / scene is mostly Twitter.
If by networking you mean finding customers as a freelancer / contractor that's something else but I don't know anything about that. I doubt yet another website is needed for that though as there are established ones for each of these use cases already.
The discussion thread so far splits the expectations around a)Jobs b) Content. Interestingly not professional networking. This trend is very helpful as a perspective on what is important.
So let's take the first one JOBs.
Pros: Excellent reach
Cons: Spam. Counter intuitive but the mode to indicate you are open to jobs is where recruiters ignore you mostly. Taken as a sign of desperation and everyone takes pride in looking for passive seekers.
So, one of the problems to fix.
Related to Jobs is your Profile page. Anything specific that would be useful for developers? Beyond the usual github, stackoverflow, etc. Are these better threads to make connections? Also will it make sense to have a consolidated view of these profiles from different places? You get the drift here probably.
Now to content. Feed as well as publish and audience building.
Pros: Hardly anything on LinkedIn. There are lots of alternatives but discovery is a huge issue here with others. So, still counting it as pros for LinkedIn as discovery channel exists. There isn't much published. Medium showed improvement but again lacking developer focus.
Cons: Plenty but connection building should have been easier but it is not. Connection building is hard wired to organizations you associated with and not to profession - hmm! professional network we call it.
Would love to hear more.. We are getting somewhere. Will definitely share what we are building but lets not jump the gun. Assure you would be the first ones to hear about it and skin it ;-)
That was actually an inspiration for building gitconnected.com - a way to connect developers professionally and remove the parts of Linkedin that developers dislike.
This looks pretty nice. How are you getting traffic (read recruiters) which LinkedIn does pretty well.
LinkedIn is a great place for Developers who want to connect with anyone. Honestly, to me LinkedIn is more of a job forum than a community.
I mean, I never posted on LinkedIn. I do , however , comment on some post and talk to recruiters (a lot)
There are places like dev.to I made many meaningful connections there.
Agreed, mostly tutorials and such.
"Keeping this short. For last 3-4 years have seen developers complain about LinkedIn not adding any value" - the Mom Test need detected. 😃
Yes, they complained (people do), but what did they actually do with LinkedIn? Maybe, it's not that big of a problem after all.
So, you wanna be another LinkedIn?
What exactly you want to solve?
Before we build or slap a solution, started looking at the problems and white spaces. LinkedIn started in circa 2003. 2020 how much has changed, especially for a new post COVID world.
Specific to developers, what would add value? Jobs, content to learn or share with the motivation to grow or build a following. May be collaboration on projects? IH does some part of it already, I think.
One way we are challenging the thought process is what would it look like for doctors? Specialists sub networks to quickly exchange notes, share case specifics, get opinion etc perhaps.. Now applying that to developers where users see value everyday because it makes their job easier, not just finding jobs once in a while. Thoughts?
Great!
Also it should be good to focus on something like Remote Work.
Maybe... github.com or stackoverflow.com?
They are not exacty a "Linkedin" type of site but they work for me...
Agree, they are not LinkedIn type but add value. So, the question is what is LinkedIn type? Exploring what people have in their mind that LinkedIn should do but does not.
For example way back around I think 2013 LinkedIn had a way to link github.com directly on the profile page. Couple of years later dropped it. I didn't get a chance to try it but got to read about such a feature being there. Wondering why would they drop it?
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