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.
Honestly LinkedIn is a necessary evil. That is where people and businesses are, so that is where people and businesses go.
GitHub however does have functioning alternatives like GitLab, BitBucket and Gitea for hosting your code/projects.
I’ve never landed an interview or gotten a job based on LinkedIn. I think anybody who places an emphasis on that garbage is toxic and you don’t want to work for them.
I got a few jobs through LinkedIn, they were decent places. I wouldn’t automatically categorize a company placing their job positions there as toxic.
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!
Replace github with https://codeberg.org/
I can always get behind a more open platform, but what is the appeal of codeburg over github?
EDIT: gitlab is also an option. Many companies use it internally and you can also have external accounts
“Decentralised control: Unlike GitHub, Codeberg is not owned by a single company, which means that the platform is not subject to centralised control. Instead, it is run by a non-profit organisation that is dedicated to providing a community-driven approach to software development.”
“GitHub Inc (GitHub), a subsidiary of Microsoft Corp, is a software development platform.”
Decentralised control: Unlike GitHub, Codeberg is not owned by a single company, which means that the platform is not subject to centralised control
This makes no sense to me. It’s owned by the non-profit company. It’s just as if not more centralized as GitHub as Microsoft is a publicly traded company with millions of owners and GitHub’s infrastructure is deployed globally. I like codeberg but decentralized it is not.
I don’t use LinkedIn at all. I have a neat and concise resume and make the most of all of my personal connections. Every job I’ve landed in the last ten years has been meeting someone and getting personally referred.
This is encouraging. While I am employed at my first web development job, I was only able to secure a position there thanks to the tech lead also being my mentor. After a certain amount of time, he determined I was ready to try my hand at some actual developer work. All my work was done remotely as I moved far away from him prior to starting work.
The MVP we produced is more or less at an end, and while I’ve been networking as much as I can, the local developer community where I am is an hour’s drive away and due to family obligations, is oftentimes hard for me to consistently coordinate.
And while I’ve made some connections online, they are scattered throughout the US and new to the industry as well, so our collective network is fine for sharing knowledge, it has not, as of yet, proven effective for finding those who can actually help me secure future employment or find opportunities.
As I pointed out in my original post, this is more me just trying to get advice on how to go about cultivating a career and network that doesn’t rely on LinkedIn for landing opportunities. I know there isn’t a one size fits all solution, but I am just reaching out to see what others recommend or to hear their experiences on how they go about landing new jobs with or without LinkedIn (obviously, if I can avoid using LinkedIn in the long term, I’d prefer that).
Thanks again for your insights thus far!
Honestly the market is really tough right now so it may not be indicative of what a personal network would usually perform like for finding new opportunities. I don’t think it will be too long until all this A.I. investment revamps the market and tech workers find themselves back in negotiating power.
Plus there’s always an advantage for competent skill vs code Bootcamp needs.
But generally speaking I don’t think it would be difficult for me to reach out and find a gig.
In Germany, XING is a viable alternative to LinkedIn, though many people have both accounts. You might check if businesses in your area also have XING accounts.
Thanks for the tip! Typing in my nearest metropolitan city yields no results, sadly, but I really appreciate you bringing them up as an alternative!
Linkdin is effectively a personal website generator with social features. Your profile page is the important part, but only if you’re optimizing for “searchability” / random discovery. If you’re doing that, then you’re competing with everyone else who is also doing that.
A personal website is fine; better even. It’s a project all on its own, and you can do cool stuff with it. Show off your projects on it. You can host your code on any platform that supports git, but you’ll get bonus points for using a self-hosted instance.
I have a linkdin account only to reserve my name and link to my website.
A personal website is fine; better even. It’s a project all on its own, and you can do cool stuff with it. Show off your projects on it.
Ah, this is very encouraging. I’ve put a good effort into making a minimal, but aesthetically pleasing website that showcases links to the startup’s website, a nonprofit Coding role I briefly held, as well as my portfolio projects. I’ve also put the effort into writing extensive (sometimes quite lengthy) blog posts directly on my site covering various beginner developer topics.
You can host your code on any platform that supports git, but you’ll get bonus points for using a self-hosted instance.
This is quite interesting. I’ve been investigating hosting my own Gitea instance on a Digital Ocean or Linode VPS for a while now, but wondered if it would be worthwhile from a career perspective.
What gives me pause is that self hosting my projects like this may make my projects less discoverable on search engines. Could you elaborate on why you (and potential employers) would assign “bonus points” for this?
Absolutely - self-hosting something like that is in and of itself a project!
I wouldn’t worry about discoverability - you want to hunt for the job you want, not necessarily wait to be discovered. Once you have a position in your sights, you get to point at your site / projects / git host via everything - your cover letter, resume, business cards, etc.
Having a blog is fantastic. You get to showcase your interests and skills in whatever areas you want, and a good combination of technical capability and enthusiasm will get you in most doors easily.
I post essential details only on LinkedIn, and all my cool stuff on my personal website.
I started a personal website around when MySpace went away, and I realized I would have to migrate my posts every decade if I wanted to use someone else’s solution.
I could post links to my blog articles to LinkedIn, but I don’t bother. I probably would if my professional network was not already where I want it to be.
I do automatically post my Blog RSS to Mastodon. I considered doing the same for Lemmy, but I don’t honestly want more blog readers, or to talk to anyone who reads my blog. I like how, on Mastodon, a few people might see my blog article, but it otherwise passes by in the noise.
I’ve been contemplating replacing my personal GitHub with self hosted (probably ForgeJo). Git is so easy to mirror, I’ll probably still mirror a few portfolio projects into GitHub.
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Everyone has a license here. Many use it, I use it to help me Google, I never get working code from it.
New hires use it a lot and it sends them off on huge tangents instead of asking for hell which is a huge net loss IMO
