I've spent most of my time as a back end developer, occasionally dabbling in some front end code in various MVC frameworks. I always hated it and found it to be tedious.

I recently took up react+redux for a new project and for the first time feel like I'm developing for the UI in a way that makes sense and feel like I'm able to accomplish things way faster than with other clunky frameworks.

Which Javascript MVC framework did you use? Some people who used Angular hated it and conclude that MVC is horrible. No, Angular is horrible, not MVC.

Yeah, I spent some time with Angular as well as Backbone/Marionette

This entire notion of a professional social network I believe is flawed in that it is built upon the notion that it would be better to hire someone who has a smaller degree of separation from you, which makes no sense. I do a fair amount of interviewing of programmers, and not a single person I work with could give a damn about anyone's linkedin profile; it's meaningless. I just find the whole idea to be very shallow, vein, and obtrusive.

Linkedin profiles are one way for you to get feedback from people that actually worked with someone.

You might find the guy who seemed awkward and nervous in the interview was always very helpful to the rest of his teammates. You might learn that the guy who seemed to know your entire tech stack is actually notoriously slow in delivering working code.

Should it instead be only a directory of people currently looking for opportunities. People who find work, take themselves off the directory, and people who want work add themselves in?

I think you'll end up with primarily new grads in the site with this policy.

If you're employed and discreetly looking for new work and you 'activate' your profile, now everyone in the office knows you're looking to switch jobs.

Yep, turn on your "I'm looking" flag, or even go and spruce up your profile and you're outed.

has anyone yet found a job on linkedin by flipping some flag? just curious. my experience is that linkedin is a source of spam targets for agencies, but i haven't heard of a single case when people were found/contacted by potential employer directly.

It took half a dozen or so emails to every possible email address I could find on linkedin's site, but I managed to finally have my personal email address added to some global do-not-contact list. I have since stopped receiving any invitations from friends to join. It's really disgusting that they have such functionality, but do not allow people to be added to such a list on their own.

"Yes, most people intend this in a gender-neutral way; no, it is not actually gender-neutral."

Wrong.

If words mean what people agree that they mean (and I don't really know how else it could be!) then if enough people say "guys" isn't necessarily male then it's like an election. You might not like who won, but it got enough votes to be a legitimate thing.

I suspect many average end-users will click 'whatever' in order to try to make things work again.

Have we learned nothing from the X-Files?

Awe, I was in the middle of writing a scraper for this and it seems they have now "fixed" it.

beering is clearly speaking within the context of the Swartz's legal troubles. Within that context, beering's comments are valid.