They wanted to be a professional network. But now all I have is spam all the way to apply for jobs or very salesy interactions

Ten years ago it was pretty great. I used it to keep track of ex-coworkers who were worth knowing, and it was easy to see where they currently were in their careers.

I always thought that if I ever wanted to start another startup, it would be easy to look through my list of contacts and find amazingly talented people who might be interested.

The dearth of viable "family" health insurance plans put the kibbosh on that idea. Right now if you want good health care in America, you have to work for a company large enough that insurance companies will make their high-end health plans available to them. Startups don't get access to those.

And now LinkedIn has degenerated into a toxic morass of clueless, desperate recruiters and spam. Ah well.

Recruiters do use it. If you are looking, definitely put your resume on LinkedIn. If you are looking for a real job a recruiter is your best option.

You think emailing your resume in works? You know what happens with every job posting on the internet??? The company gets 10,000 emails a day for that one position and 99.99% of them are from completely unqualified idiots. So unless you have the exact right set of key words in your resume that computer filter is looking for, you get auto-deleted.

Recruiters find you on LinkedIn, they screen you; meet with you in person first to make sure you are not a smelly scum bag who smells like pickles or something. Make sure you do know what you say you know And then they by pass all that shit from the internet and sit you in front of the hiring company.

Since the recruiter goes looking for you, they don't get overwhelmed with BS candidates. Recruiters look for people who live in the area they are in or in the area the job is in, so you are not lost in a sea of applicants half of who live in Africa and Asia or the other side of the country.