Finally out!
Finally out!
It took longer than expected and a few extra steps. I've deleted my LinkedIn account. For a network so ubiquitous, it was surprisingly difficult.
When I decided to leave LinkedIn, I wrote my leaving post in a few minutes and didn’t expect it to get much traction. I’d spent years trying to orchestrate high engagement posts and interactions on LinkedIn. I managed a few likes, some reposts and lots of SPAM. By far, this post was my highest traction message of my time on LinkedIn.
And I didn’t even know it was happening. A while after I posted it, a friend of mine messaged me on Whatsapp. He wasn’t alone. I’m grateful and humbled by all the people who have reached out to me about this post, our past interactions and their own conflicted feelings about LinkedIn and social networks. You all are amazing.
Once I reached the March 31st deadline, I tried to login and delete my account. This turned out to be much more complicated than I’d thought. I was part of my company Enterprise LinkedIn account and the admin needed to remove me from that first. My company also has a LinkedIn Learning subscription which I needed to be removed from. That took another three days and a LinkedIn support ticket. While I don’t want to use LinkedIn if I can avoid it, I do have to say their support was prompt and efficient. I got updates daily as the ticket moved around LinkedIn support.
Tips for Others
A lot of people messaged me saying something along the lines of “I’d love to do this, but I cannot bring myself to leave LinkedIn”. I understand this view and I’m not sure I would be making the same decision if it was earlier in my career or if I had a position that required me to be active daily on social media.
I would encourage anyone who is interested to try. LinkedIn now offers a way to unlist and onhold your profile for a while. That could be a way to explore what it’s like without LinkedIn. I also think that if you are using LinkedIn for lead sourcing, job hunting or candidate sourcing, its a better idea to have a clean / simple profile and subscribe to the premium licenses designed for that purpose.
More than anything else, the contrarian in me is driving me to take this step. When LinkedIn becomes mainstream and the ‘default’, the more I want to leave and do something else. Life is nothing if it isn’t an exploration of change.
For reference, this was the substack post accompanying this leaving LinkedIn post.