My LinkedIn Goodbye Went Viral

Last week, I posted on LinkedIn that I’m deactivating my account and called the platform a cesspool of grifters.

LinkedIn’s algorithm loved it so much that it showed the post to over 111,000 people.

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

The post was supposed to be a quiet goodbye to friends and coworkers. What I got instead were hundreds of messages from complete strangers.

I’ve never gotten anything real out of LinkedIn. It’s performative. Somewhere along the way, I started believing that getting rid of LinkedIn would be the ultimate professional milestone. If you don’t need it, you’ve already won.

You see countless posts about people deleting other social media. But when’s the last time you saw someone delete their LinkedIn?

Nobody deletes LinkedIn because we’ve made it mandatory for professional credibility. A few weeks ago, I signed up for an AI event in Bangkok. The form required a LinkedIn profile. Manual approval. If my profile had already been gone, would they have rejected me? Probably.

We’ve outsourced credibility to a website we all secretly hate.

The post went viral because people related to it. The “grifter platform” proved its power one last time by making my farewell post blow up. But the hundreds of messages weren’t about LinkedIn. They were about my journey.

Quitting Amazon without a plan. Moving to SE Asia. Buying a business. Building a life that doesn’t require a LinkedIn profile to validate it.

People wanted to know how I made the leap. The truth is, I’m still figuring it out. But it’s off to a great start and I’m having fun.

Judging by the response, this resonated with way more people than I expected.

So I’m going to share more. How I left Amazon and San Diego. How I bought the business. Why SE Asia. What’s working and what isn’t.

If you’re curious, stick around. Sign up at the form below to get my updates.