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?
Discussion
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.