Respect for the principled approach! I went without LinkedIn for the first 15 years of my career and it was fine. It forces you to work harder on staying in touch in other ways, which can be very rewarding.
Discussion
Thanks, Matt, and nice to meet you. Glad to hear that you have succeeded for such a long time. And yes, totally agreed. I will need to take a less passive attitude toward both keeping in touch with my professional network and job seeking. But who knows? Going against the grain may end up bringing positive results if I can cultivate the right habits to replace the time I used to spend on LinkedIn. Any hints on how to do this?
My practice for some years has been to keep a list of old friends/coworkers I want to contact in my todo list, sorted intuitively. I add to it as people pop into my head. Then I reach out to one person each week and ask to have a call or a lunch to catch up. I also attend a quarterly developer meetup in my city and travel to one or two conferences a year.