Not the OP but I'm a developer and I don't have LinkedIn. I never have any problems finding work. I have a personal site with my CV on it, and I spend a lot of time networking.

I spend zero time networking and get lots of opportunities on linked in.

Do you ever follow up on those and see if there's value to it? I get 2-3 messages a week on LinkedIn by recruiters that clearly haven't read my profile for jobs I'm not interested in. I wouldn't consider any of those opportunities.

I get 6-7 messages per week (~1/day on average) and I'd say about half of them are actually recruiting for my skills/location/needs, which is admittedly pretty good for not investing any time into the platform.

I've followed up with a few over the years and they've ultimately not been good fits for me at the time (stack, salary, or location), but I wouldn't say they were bad jobs. Also, for the others I usually just respond with a canned "I'm only looking for X, Y, Z right now, so feel free to reach out again if you find something along those lines!"

I think it's worth having a LinkedIn if you're looking or open to moving jobs, as it's a pretty common venue for recruiters to (easily) get in touch, IMO.

Yes, but having a LinkedIn can only help.

Some people have negative views of LinkedIn profiles so it can occasionally hurt. Especially when LinkedIn spams someone using your picture.

People, not businesses.

> I'm curious of how job hunting and networking goes for you without LinkedIn

Whilst I do have a LinkedIn profile, I have yet to use LinkedIn as an avenue to search for a job in any meaningful sense. Perhaps this will change, but at the moment I'm far more likely to integrate Google's job search into my process than jacking up LinkedIn to max.