this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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Possible to get away from LinkedIn and Github? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 9 months ago by z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml to c/cs_career_questions@programming.dev
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I'm a career transitioner looking to get a higher paying job working as a Web Developer. I've been self teaching for a bit over 3.5 years now and am currently working part time at a very small start up while still working on my own personal projects and slowly researching and studying CS topics.

I have been networking, mainly online and some locally. I also have been trying desperately to get away from mainstream social media platforms (left instagram, left reddit). But I find myself being highly encouraged by those within my network to keep my LinkedIn profile maintained and regularly post as a part of appealing to recruiters. I dislike the LinkedIn platform and what I perceive to be toxic positivity that proliferates on there. I also have reservations on hosting all my code on Github, but that seems to be what everyone defaults to for showcasing their portfolio.

I generally want to use alternatives to FAANG products whenever possible, and even though it's not in the acronym, I include Microsoft in this list. I'd like to move away from using Microsoft products (LinkedIn) and their acquired platforms (Github) without nuking my potential career prospects.

This is more asking about long term advice as I believe as a new developer, this may not be possible (?).

Nevertheless, I'm seeking any advice on how to still advance my career in tech while staying off of these major platforms.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

TLDR; New web developer wants advice on how to continue to advance career without use of major media platforms, specifically LinkedIn, but also Github.

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[–] z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml 3 points 9 months ago

Honestly LinkedIn is a necessary evil. That is where people and businesses are, so that is where people and businesses go.

Yeah. I've heard certain parts of the world it's nigh impossible to get a job without LinkedIn (I believe I heard somewhere that Australia more or less requires a presence on LinkedIn in their tech industry).

While I'm aware of other platforms here in the US where you can apply for jobs online (indeed), the facebook like aspect of linkedin seems to be what makes it so appealing to recruiters and "corpos."

GitHub however does have functioning alternatives like GitLab, BitBucket and Gitea for hosting your code/projects.

Yes. The problem seems to be that recruiters associate Github with a sort of standardized representation of a programmer's portfolio projects, which is not the case. From what ive gathered, they don't necessarily even look at your projects, they just value you having a Github Profile with repos and activity? This is all anecdotal from other new devs in my network who are currently more active in the job search than I am, so I can't speak directly to how accurate this assesment is.

I do appreciate your honesty and recommendations, thanks!