Networking: Does LinkedIn work?

[Joerg]

Hello Folks,

Got an invite to LinkedIn from a friend. He's new to it as well so let
me ask those of you who have tried it for a while: Does a service like
LinkedIn work for engineering type people, mainly those who are
self-employed?

I might just jump in and try it out. But last time I joined a more
"official" forum the number of spam mails increased quite a bit and I
don't want to use Jim's trick of using 200+ email addresses just to weed
stuff out.

 

[PeteS]

Hello Folks,

Got an invite to LinkedIn from a friend. He's new to it as well so let
me ask those of you who have tried it for a while: Does a service like
LinkedIn work for engineering type people, mainly those who are
self-employed?

I might just jump in and try it out. But last time I joined a more
"official" forum the number of spam mails increased quite a bit and I
don't want to use Jim's trick of using 200+ email addresses just to weed
stuff out.

I'm a member of LinkedIn, and I get virtually no spam, if spam it can
be called. In terms of actual 'spam', I get none.
Some people are 'premium' members, which means they can search the
entire network for specific skills, tasks, jobs, whatever and directly
attempt a contact.

You can, however, refuse a contact. They don't use those contacts much
as they cost money each time.

Ordinary members have their own contacts, but to contact beyond there,
must be 'introduced' by someone who is in their direct contact group.
If you don't want to entertain a contact (and you get the email from
LinkedIn clearly marked as such, incidentally, regardless of who, why
and how someone is trying to connect), you simply decline. The point in
the chain (for instance if it was a friend of a friend of a friend) is
not identifed to the requestor.

I do find it very useful professionally - a lot of headhunters use the
network to find suitable people, but I find they don't overload my
inbox. I've had 3 consulting RFQs in the last 2 months, so you may find
it particularly useful for that, but as always, YMMV.

Just my experience

Cheers

PeteS

 

[Joerg]

Hello Pete,

I'm a member of LinkedIn, and I get virtually no spam, if spam it can
be called. In terms of actual 'spam', I get none.
Some people are 'premium' members, which means they can search the
entire network for specific skills, tasks, jobs, whatever and directly
attempt a contact.

Looks very encouraging, thanks. Guess I'll give it a shot then.

You can, however, refuse a contact. They don't use those contacts much
as they cost money each time.

It's probably the same as with doctors or contractors where referral
sites want you to file a request form through them (except that the
recipient pays). When that gets to be cumbersome people just google them
directly.

Ordinary members have their own contacts, but to contact beyond there,
must be 'introduced' by someone who is in their direct contact group.
If you don't want to entertain a contact (and you get the email from
LinkedIn clearly marked as such, incidentally, regardless of who, why
and how someone is trying to connect), you simply decline. The point in
the chain (for instance if it was a friend of a friend of a friend) is
not identifed to the requestor.

I do find it very useful professionally - a lot of headhunters use the
network to find suitable people, but I find they don't overload my
inbox. I've had 3 consulting RFQs in the last 2 months, so you may find
it particularly useful for that, but as always, YMMV.

Just my experience

If these three RFQ's were serious stuff then that's pretty good for a
peer-to-peer site.

IEEE tried to set up a network called virtual communities. I don't use
it anymore as they totally over-sophisticated it to the point where the
user interface is IMHO no longer useful.

 

[Joerg]

Hello Pete,

Ok, did it. Let's see. I wonder how one finds people with common names
in there (there are 225 Peter Smiths...). Anyhow, my name is the other
way around, unique (Schulze-Clewing) but prone to contain typos. Nice
thing is they let you pick a kind of "internal domain name" so if you
key "analog" into the little search window only three guys come up. I am
number three.

 

[Jim Thompson]

Hello Pete,



Looks very encouraging, thanks. Guess I'll give it a shot then.

[snip]

Potentially useful, but who knows. I signed up, creating a new E-mail
address for them. If it turns out bad I'll simply delete the address
;-)

...Jim Thompson

 

[Tim Wescott]

Hello Folks,

Got an invite to LinkedIn from a friend. He's new to it as well so let
me ask those of you who have tried it for a while: Does a service like
LinkedIn work for engineering type people, mainly those who are
self-employed?

I might just jump in and try it out. But last time I joined a more
"official" forum the number of spam mails increased quite a bit and I
don't want to use Jim's trick of using 200+ email addresses just to weed
stuff out.

I don't think I've gotten any leads from it (I've done much better by
politely answering questions here and on some other groups), but once I
made it clear that I was _only_ interested in consulting I haven't
gotten any spam, either.

I suspect that what I'm _really_ good at is specialized enough that
people have a better chance at finding me through web searches on topics
that find my posts, rather than any kind of a keyword search.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Posting from Google? See http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/

"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" came out in April.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

 

[Joerg]

Hello Jim,

Potentially useful, but who knows. I signed up, creating a new E-mail
address for them. If it turns out bad I'll simply delete the address
;-)

So far I just don't see it as being an easy way to get in contact with
others. You have to loop through all the intermediate contact stages.
The search engine, well, whatever I did it found over 200 Peter Smiths
and 145 Jim Thompsons :-(

OTOH I did see my former boss there because he has an unusual name. Of
course it doesn't let me see his email contact but I have that anyway.

I'll wait and see if it gets any good leads since I want to slowly
migrate away from medical. Can't buy any PLI in the US anymore. Unless
you know a nice tropical paradise I could relocate to and where there
are no leftists ;-)

 

[Joerg]

Hello Tim,

I don't think I've gotten any leads from it (I've done much better by
politely answering questions here and on some other groups), but once I
made it clear that I was _only_ interested in consulting I haven't
gotten any spam, either.

I suspect that what I'm _really_ good at is specialized enough that
people have a better chance at finding me through web searches on topics
that find my posts, rather than any kind of a keyword search.

Similar here, most leads come through my web site (not so much from usenet).

 

[Jim Thompson]

Hello Jim,



So far I just don't see it as being an easy way to get in contact with
others. You have to loop through all the intermediate contact stages.
The search engine, well, whatever I did it found over 200 Peter Smiths
and 145 Jim Thompsons :-(

OTOH I did see my former boss there because he has an unusual name. Of
course it doesn't let me see his email contact but I have that anyway.

I'll wait and see if it gets any good leads since I want to slowly
migrate away from medical. Can't buy any PLI in the US anymore. Unless
you know a nice tropical paradise I could relocate to and where there
are no leftists ;-)

We have a very dry tropical paradise here, except it rained
horizontally last night ;-)

...Jim Thompson

 

[Joerg]

Hello Jim,

We have a very dry tropical paradise here, except it rained
horizontally last night ;-)

I have spent a lot of time east of Phoenix and from what I remember the
climate is more Sahara-like than tropical. That would be ok though but
then you guys (well, not you personally, of course) elected a liberal
governor and that got me concerned.

 

[Jim Thompson]

Hello Jim,


I have spent a lot of time east of Phoenix and from what I remember the
climate is more Sahara-like than tropical. That would be ok though but
then you guys (well, not you personally, of course) elected a liberal
governor and that got me concerned.

But she's impotent ;-)

...Jim Thompson

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

I'll wait and see if it gets any good leads since I want to slowly
migrate away from medical. Can't buy any PLI in the US anymore. Unless
you know a nice tropical paradise I could relocate to and where there
are no leftists ;-)

Gilligan tried that, and you know how it turned out, don't you?


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[PeteS]

Gilligan tried that, and you know how it turned out, don't you?


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

Just a note:

Two of the RFQs I had were because the companies in question could not
buy a critical component any more (RoHS) because the mfr decided the
cost of converting was not worth it in both cases, and the RFQs asked
for a conversion using the same PCBs. They gasped when I told them they
either had to change the PCB or piggyback a converter plus available
components (pin mapping, basically). Haven't heard back yet - we'll
see.

When there's not something like that going on, I don't get a more than
1 lead every few months, but then I don't get spam either, so I can
live with it.

Cheers

PeteS

 

[Joel Kolstad]

I don't think I've gotten any leads from it (I've done much better by
politely answering questions here and on some other groups)

You play it smart, Tim, and never seem to get dragged into political
discussions! ;-)

 

[Joerg]

Hello Pete,

My wife always scolded me that this ain't the stuff intelligent people
should watch but I have to confess that I used to like watching it a lot

Just a note:

Two of the RFQs I had were because the companies in question could not
buy a critical component any more (RoHS) because the mfr decided the
cost of converting was not worth it in both cases, and the RFQs asked
for a conversion using the same PCBs. They gasped when I told them they
either had to change the PCB or piggyback a converter plus available
components (pin mapping, basically). Haven't heard back yet - we'll
see.

We are going to see a lot more of that. Plus some serious reliability
issues. The cases I got were mostly related to circuitry where someone
had designed in a panacea chip that had become unobtanium. This always
resulted in a totally new design but after that the clients had almost
total peace of mind about it.

When there's not something like that going on, I don't get a more than
1 lead every few months, but then I don't get spam either, so I can
live with it.

That's ok, considering that some trade association databases where you
have to pay seem to produce no meaningful leads at all.

 

[PeteS]

Hello Pete,


My wife always scolded me that this ain't the stuff intelligent people
should watch but I have to confess that I used to like watching it a lot


We are going to see a lot more of that. Plus some serious reliability
issues. The cases I got were mostly related to circuitry where someone
had designed in a panacea chip that had become unobtanium. This always
resulted in a totally new design but after that the clients had almost
total peace of mind about it.



That's ok, considering that some trade association databases where you
have to pay seem to produce no meaningful leads at all.

Hi Joerg

As a practical matter, make sure your profile is broad enough to
attract search results - some keywords such as Analog, digital, design,
consulting seem to work, but there are no doubt others.

On the RoHS debacle, I concur fully with your assessment. There are
going to be a lot of issues that will take a lot of work and studies
yet to be done to solve. I am not aware of any definitive studies on
the long term reliability of leadfree solders; how could there be? It
hasn't been around long enough

I look at the 'components can not longer be found' as helping me to
make some money on the side, apart from interesting experience.

Cheers

PeteS

 

[Joerg]

Hello Pete,

As a practical matter, make sure your profile is broad enough to
attract search results - some keywords such as Analog, digital, design,
consulting seem to work, but there are no doubt others.

Thanks for the hint. I did make pretty detailed entries, actually banged
against the 1000 letter per box limit a few times.

On the RoHS debacle, I concur fully with your assessment. There are
going to be a lot of issues that will take a lot of work and studies
yet to be done to solve. I am not aware of any definitive studies on
the long term reliability of leadfree solders; how could there be? It
hasn't been around long enough

I look at the 'components can not longer be found' as helping me to
make some money on the side, apart from interesting experience.

I can already smell the EBay bids for tha "pre-RoHS cell phone".

 

[Tim Wescott]

You play it smart, Tim, and never seem to get dragged into political
discussions! ;-)

Yes, but no one sees the flames that I write then delete.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Posting from Google? See http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/

"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" came out in April.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html