This is literally throwing the baby out with the bath water. If we couldn't depend on other products to make our own product, then the computer industry is pretty much dead and we'll all have to go back to farming the land (and, if you're in SoCal like me, even then you'll have to depend on the mercy of our northern neighbors for water).
I think what you mean to say is "don't build a product that depends on LinkedIn", and to that, I absolutely agree. LinkedIn, with its chain email spamming and forced mass invites, is literally the post-child for internet dark patterns and unethical behavior. Furthermore, the sheer volume of people on there automatically force recruiting agencies to use bots (or at least copy-and-paste) to spam folks on there, and in general leads to bad returns for the recruiter and tons of spam for you the programmer.
No he did not mean just don’t depend on LinkedIn. He meant don’t place the fate of your software and company in the hands of any third party. The list of companies who have burned developers includes Twitter, Apple and Google just to name the three spectactular examples. Facebook has been somewhat better to their developers though there have been a few instances there too.
Unless you have an ironclad contract with whomever you are partnering with(whose API you are using) and know exactly what you get from them and they get from you and for how long, you should not be depending on them.
If you want to spend a few weekends writing to some API and don’t care if the rug gets pulled out from under it, and all your users then fine. If you want to support an API in a product that will survive without that integration that is also fine. Just don’t gamble your entire product and your future user base on API's that can disappear overnight when some dickhead MBA decides he isn’t making his numbers and the free loader third parties aren’t worth it any more.
Facebook cut their API heavy when they phased out v2 last month. No access to friend data and limited access to user profile. LinkedIn is following FB's lead.
But to your point, LinkedIn's practices can be a little pushy, but the site still provides decent value to me (it got me my current job). I can put up with ignoring mass invite requests, recruiter messages, and configuring my notification settings to maintain this professional network. It may get me my next job in 5 years, so for me it's totally worth it.
Comments
This is literally throwing the baby out with the bath water. If we couldn't depend on other products to make our own product, then the computer industry is pretty much dead and we'll all have to go back to farming the land (and, if you're in SoCal like me, even then you'll have to depend on the mercy of our northern neighbors for water).
I think what you mean to say is "don't build a product that depends on LinkedIn", and to that, I absolutely agree. LinkedIn, with its chain email spamming and forced mass invites, is literally the post-child for internet dark patterns and unethical behavior. Furthermore, the sheer volume of people on there automatically force recruiting agencies to use bots (or at least copy-and-paste) to spam folks on there, and in general leads to bad returns for the recruiter and tons of spam for you the programmer.
No he did not mean just don’t depend on LinkedIn. He meant don’t place the fate of your software and company in the hands of any third party. The list of companies who have burned developers includes Twitter, Apple and Google just to name the three spectactular examples. Facebook has been somewhat better to their developers though there have been a few instances there too.
Unless you have an ironclad contract with whomever you are partnering with(whose API you are using) and know exactly what you get from them and they get from you and for how long, you should not be depending on them.
If you want to spend a few weekends writing to some API and don’t care if the rug gets pulled out from under it, and all your users then fine. If you want to support an API in a product that will survive without that integration that is also fine. Just don’t gamble your entire product and your future user base on API's that can disappear overnight when some dickhead MBA decides he isn’t making his numbers and the free loader third parties aren’t worth it any more.
Facebook cut their API heavy when they phased out v2 last month. No access to friend data and limited access to user profile. LinkedIn is following FB's lead.
Figuratively, not literally.
But to your point, LinkedIn's practices can be a little pushy, but the site still provides decent value to me (it got me my current job). I can put up with ignoring mass invite requests, recruiter messages, and configuring my notification settings to maintain this professional network. It may get me my next job in 5 years, so for me it's totally worth it.
Figuratively, not literally.
Maddeningly, at least one dictionary disagrees: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally (2)