
The Recruiter Honeypot - male_salmon
http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter-honeypot/
======
phillmv
>In addition to pings from too-familiar recruiters, there were two cases that
left me especially uneasy. In the first case, a former recruiting agency tried
to poach Pete London and then 15 minutes later, wrote to me offering
recruiting services! I was being pulled on both ends!

What did you expect them to do? It's not even that scummy. It's their business
model.

I also feel that no poaching agreements are also bullshit. You're just
attempting (rationally, I might add) to depress the market for your existing
talent.

First and for all, especially in the climate we're in, banning two or three
recruiting agencies isn't really going to hurt the chances of an employee who
could be persuaded to leave. Secondly, if your employee can be persuaded to
leave in the first place that's on you, not the recruiter!

I haven't had to make my life depend on employees as of yet, but when the time
comes I think I'll find it hard to hold it against them.

Edit: mandatory notice of: great article, would read again, A++!

~~~
emmett
No poaching agreements are not bullshit - you are giving them privileged
information (who your best people are) and in exchange you're expecting them
to use that information only for the purpose directed.

It's similar to an NDA. Nothing bullshit about it.

~~~
phillmv
> you are giving them privileged information (who your best people are)

Between linked in, google, your company's about page, github and twitter
accounts, you can already figure this out in ten minutes flat. You don't even
need to know that in order to recruit people.

\--

I feel that NDAs are kind of bullshit too, but they're typically not as
expressly oppressive. Unless they stretch into noncompetes, which are
incredible bullshit.

~~~
simonw
"Between linked in, google, your company's about page, github and twitter
accounts, you can already figure this out in ten minutes flat"

I don't think that's true at all. Some of the best engineers I've worked with
have had very small online footprints (they're too busy building awesome
things at their company to spend much time on Twitter etc). Now that I'm
responsible for hiring, I consider knowledge of that kind of person to be
incredibly important.

~~~
pawelwentpawel
I understand using github/twitter a lot if you're a developer. When you work
on something you might want to get some immediate feedback/testers on it.

Yet still, linkedin (even though useful) scares me away a little bit. Each
single time I get back, I see more and more people inventing longer and more
exotic job names and descriptions, pitching around with some void statements
and uploading their pictures in suits.

~~~
nathan_long
My problem with LinkedIn is other people. People want me to say I know them
when I don't (hey, networking!). People want me to recommend them when I have
only seen them in the hallway and don't even know what they do.

I am very conservative about these things. Does LinkedIn's own model disagree?
Does it push people towards larger networks, instead of smaller, higher-value
ones?

Am I doing it wrong, or is (seemingly) everyone else?

~~~
pawelwentpawel
There is quite a lot of recruiters/randoms just adding as many people as
possible. Without any introductory message, I would just consider that as
spam. However, if you know somebody in person but don't know him very well
then I don't see a huge problem. I get quite a lot of invites from my former
class mates that I had no real connection with. But hey, you never know where
your life takes you. Those connections might accidentally come in very useful
one day.

As for the recommendations - they've got nothing to loose really. In the worst
case they won't get one.

------
iuguy
This is really really good. For my sins a few years back I made a similar
profile on linkedin[1] but made it as obviously fake as possible while still
pretending to be real, it's an open secret in the UK infosec industry and
still gets emails from recruiters.

Incidentally the profile is entirely populated with content generated via
Markov chains using logs from an irc channel I'm on as the corpus.

[1] - uk.linkedin.com/pub/markov-bambam/15/643/a56

~~~
Kronopath
I want to read his dissertation.

"Dissertation on dissassociative media reconstruction in information security:
How hedgehogs and baby seals lead to infinite cybercrime opportunity
(Russian)."

~~~
nl
His other well known paper ( _Decoupling IPv7 from Replication in Link-Level
Acknowledgements_ ) is available from MIT[1]

[1]
[http://apps.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/scicache/867/scimakelatex.58686...](http://apps.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/scicache/867/scimakelatex.58686.Markov+Bambam.You+R.+Mom.html)

~~~
jonmrodriguez
Haha, figure 1 is just awesome.

~~~
nl
I liked "we deployed 00 Commodore 64s across the 10-node network, and tested
our kernels accordingly"

------
TamDenholm
This is really interesting. I'm a contractor so i deal with recruiters a hell
of a lot. I've never come across a good recruiter to work with, 90% of them
are an annoyance but harmless and 10% are outright scumbags.

Its really interesting to see this honeypot information. I think recruiting is
an industry thats ripe for disruption, especially for tech contractors and
i've got a theory on how to do it, one day i'll write a blog post on it but
the basic premise is, instead of a sales strategy, i'd like to see a talent
agent strategy.

~~~
bartonfink
I mentioned the exact same thing to someone a couple of weeks ago - I think
her name was Stella, and she's been posting for a startup recently. I'm not a
professional contractor like many, but I do like doing freelance gigs to
supplement my day-job income. However, finding suitable gigs, dealing with
negotiations and chasing down deadbeat clients make it really unpleasant given
what I really want to do is make some extra cash after hours. I don't want to
deal with all the overhead of running my own business atop managing my own
career and family.

I would happily give up a percentage of my rate to someone who could get me
~15 hours a week worth of work at a market rate and insulate me from a lot of
the overhead that I simply don't have time to deal with. Just like Hollywood
stars focus on being Hollywood stars and leave the business of Hollywood to
agents, I'd like to focus on my strengths and leave the business to someone
else.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
But Hollywood stars sit on set 12 hours a day, for a 16 week shoot, as does
the rest of the crew.

If they only did 15 hours a week the film would not get made.

I would be interested In knowing what gigs you do take on and how the code
integrates with the work being done elsewhere

if you are doing maintenace and bug fixes on a codebase you know I can see how
it would work.

My apologies if this seems overly aggressive I am just interested in how this
could work - we could alll fit in 10 hours a week for beer tokens

~~~
greghinch
I'm a full time freelancer. I work on several projects at a time, from large
companies to startups, and most of them I only give 10-15 hours a week to. You
can get a lot done in 15 hours a week if you put your mind to it. The trick in
this case would really be the scheduling, 15 hours a week all done after a
normal job schedule (say after 6pm) would likely not jive as well, and your
productivity would not be nearly as good.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
My question and same to @bartonfink is still what is the work? If I am say
design and build a rest backend for a company, and its say two months work at
45 hrs a week, doing 15 hrs a week telling them it will take six months cos I
have other clients is a sure way not to get the gig

So I amwondering what the actual meat of the work you do is? How did you land
the work - is it maintenance from past fulltime gigs, is it real consulting
where you are training g the in house teams,

I am honestly interested because I am at a bit of a loss as to how to get such
gigs myself

thank you

~~~
greghinch
the work is designing and building web applications. almost all coding, a
small amount of training/consulting. generally i come into projects that were
already built at least part way by someone else and need to be fixed up and
have features added. though i am also doing one right now from the ground up
with a small team. most of my projects involve small remote teams as well.

right now i work with 2 startups and 1 large company, as well as do occasional
consulting with another large company (this is usually less than 5 hours every
month). i'm all about simplicity and breaking things down into small pieces,
so on all projects i am able to deliver and launch features regularly with
10-20 hrs of work a week on each. my total billable hours for the week usually
are in the 40ish range.

i've found all the work through referrals pretty much, so i can't say exactly
how to find it for others. i will say put as much as you can out in open
source, that is the best "sales" technique i've had (often "referrals" have
come from someone i've only interacted with in the open source community).
also, be consistent with your deliveries, and open and honest about
scheduling, as well as when something is going to take longer than you
estimated. surprisingly few contractors are good at communication it seems.
often i come into projects for people who were abandoned by a developer and
even when they were working together only got spotty communication from that
dev.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Thank you

good points on the communications side - something I can easily let slide

------
forrestthewoods
What is the contractual result for breaking a no-poach clause? Should
companies inform their employees of no-poach agreements and request to be told
when anyone is contacted by a recruiter from Company X? There is an on-going
anti-trust lawsuit about no poach policies involving Google, Apple, Intel,
Pixar, and more. How does that play into things?

~~~
radley
Actually "no poach" aka "non-compete" clauses are void in California:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
compete_clause#Exceptions_-...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
compete_clause#Exceptions_-_valid_non-compete_agreements_in_California)

So she really had no grounds to demand and expect it.

~~~
forrestthewoods
Wait, it doesn't seem like a no poach contract with a recruiter would fall
under the same laws. In California an employee is almost always free to quit
and work for a direct competitor if that's what they want. However, if a
recruiter signs a no poach contract stating they won't contact employees with
other job opportunities for 18 months that's an entirely separate issue and
doesn't seem like it would be covered by the same law.

------
Peroni
There is a significant flaw in the logic here.

Create a fictitious individual where, prior to linkedin, the only place Pete
London existed was his own personal website.

I used to be a recruiter and egotistical as it may sound, I considered myself
one of the better ones. My previous history on HN should back that up. I
never, ever used linkedin when searching for decent people yet even I wouldn't
have found Pete London. The best developers I encountered over the years were
people who came recommended by other developers or people I met face to face
at meet-ups.

If no-one but the creator knew Pete London existed then the only thing this
experiment proves is that most recruiters aren't very good at using search
engines. That's all.

The one point I agreed with significantly is hiring internal recruitment
specialists. I've given a talk on that exact issue in the past and I am in the
process of writing a blog post on my updated perspective of that approach.

------
jdcryans
I was intrigued reading this to see what my inbox would say about Meebo's
recruiting.

In May 2010 a recruiter spammed the Hadoop mailing lists with a "Data Engineer
(Analytics)" in MV. A month later I was blessed with an email from the same
recruiter for the same job sent to my @apache address. Another month later he
posted the job on LI's Hadoop group.

Fast-forward one year, a new recruiter spammed the mahout user mailing list
saying he was looking for "Engineers with Machine Learning expertise".

Finally 2 months later I got an email sent to my @apache address from the
second recruiter for a "Data Engineering Lead" position.

So it seems that they haven't used LI a lot and mostly rely on those "other
channels" and direct emails. I personally find it disrespectful to send
recruiting emails to user mailing lists but I guess recruiters don't know/care
about it.

------
starship
"Though I averaged two interviews a day, we had only grown the team by three-
four engineers each year."

Wait a second, he was interviewing 100X more people than he was hiring??? Does
that seem a little extreme to anyone, or is it just me?

~~~
ghshephard
What he was doing was phone screening two people a day. Actual interviews were
probably 1/20th that - so, approximately 400 Resumes = 100 Screens = 20 in
person Interviews = 4 Hires. Which is a reasonable average over a year.

[edit] My strategy has always been for posted positions that I'm actually
acting as the recruiter for, is to do the initial resume screen myself (I can
triage a resume in 1 minute for a position that I know about), and then hand
over the screening to a reasonably competent (but unemployed) person in that
area, ideally with a set of standard questions that the two of us have come up
with together.

I.E. Hire a Unix Sysadmin to screen systems administrators, and give them a
list of questions like, "what is an inode, what is the difference between a
process and thread, how would you sum up the total size of files in a
directory, what's your favor unix based operating system and why, tell me
about the unix systems you've worked on?" - This usually takes 30
minutes/person.

The interviews with around 5 people takes about 45 minutes per interviewer (30
minutes to 1 hour) - so, about 4 hours per candidates.

So - 400 Resumes (6 1/2 hours) = 100 Screens (50 Hours) = 20 interviews (80
hours) = 4 Hires.

Total investment per hire is about 136.5/4 = 35 hours. Only 7 hours/hire
needing to be done by the hiring manager. The screening is the easiest stuff
to be outsourced.

Of course, you can dodge 90% of this if you just get great internal references
(removing the need for screening, filtering) - which is why internal
references are so highly valued by companies. (That, and they don't have to
pay $20K-$30K to an external recruiter)

------
dspillett
_> In addition to pings from too-familiar recruiters, there were two cases
that left me especially uneasy. In the first case, a former recruiting agency
tried to poach Pete London and then 15 minutes later, wrote to me offering
recruiting services! I was being pulled on both ends!_

That is not at all unusual.

When we got rid of a useless lummox a year or two ago, he gave his recruiter
(the same agency we got him from) all out contact details (if you are out
there, thanks for that...). Within a week of him leaving that agency called
three of us claiming to be looking for a reference but immediately asking if
we could be called out of work ours to reduce disruption. One of us let that
happen and it turns out they were trying to get us on their books (err, no
thanks, we don't want to be associated with the other "quality" peopel on your
books!). Similarly the company got several calls from them most of which
involved lies ("I was talking to <person x> earlier today" when <person x> had
been on holiday all week).

In summary:

1\. Recruiters _will_ hit you from both ends. They make money out of both ends
so it suits their business model.

2\. Recruiters lie. Repeatedly. Constantly.

------
l3amm
Being a good external recruiter in Silicon Valley is a tricky balancing act.
Everyone in the Valley wants the superstars, so competition is ridiculous.
Additionally, cultural fit in small startups is of utmost importance, so you
have to learn the culture of the company your engaged with. The culture is
also highly insular and revolves around being a jedi master of code, so if
you're a recruiter you're expected to have a deep understanding of the
technical needs of the company in addition to the cultural ones. Plus most
startups want people who have an active understanding of new
languages/frameworks/methodologies, so you also have to have thorough
knowledge of the bleeding edge of tech. Lastly, this person needs to have good
in-person skills, network, and ability to sell a position against whatever the
competition is offering.

Since each company is different, every time you get a new client you need to
recalibrate and get up to speed on what they need. This is why it's rare to
find a truly good external recruiter (and impossible to find a good
contingency recruiter for a short term engagement). In my opinion the best
arrangements are long-term engagements, giving the recruiting firm time to
understand exactly what you're looking for and calibrate their searches
against that. Of course these engagements are expensive and time-consuming, so
it's also why I'm a big fan of internal recruiters since they a) absorb and
presumably live your culture and b) can have a much deeper understanding of
your technology and team dynamics.

------
bobbles
I wish there was a job search website where to actually advertise a position
there were mandatory requirements like the company name and salary being
displayed as part of the ad.

Whats the reasoning behind posting completely vague job descriptions
(sometimes the location isn't even provided!).

I Would say 90% of the job postings I see online don't even give me enough
information to want to contact them.

~~~
dspillett
_> Whats the reasoning behind posting completely vague job descriptions
(sometimes the location isn't even provided!)._

Usually that is because there is no job. The recruitment agency is trying to
farm candidate details for two purposes: firstly so they can make claims to
employers about how many people they have on their books with given skillsets
and secondly so they have people to present to companies when they register a
position as available.

~~~
flyinRyan
It can also be political. Companies want to hire cheap foreign labor but are
forbidden to if they can find native workers (various EU countries have this)
so they'll advertise a job with bad conditions and low pay and then after not
being able to fill it for some time they show it as evidence of skill
shortage.

------
dennisgorelik
\---

 _<http://www.meebo.com/jobs/>

Meebo.com will be shutting down on July 11, 2012.

Meebo has been acquired by Google!_

\---

So Meebo was a recruiting operation for Google.

It puts that article in a new light.

~~~
JamesLeonis
It used to be a cool web based IM client. I used it on the fly when I wasn't
at my computer but still wanted to talk online with friends.

~~~
dennisgorelik
Building IM client is an interesting approach to attract developers and train
development team.

------
koide
This only emphazises how different the world for programmers is in the USA
(especially in the SF area) compared to the rest of the world. I only get
three or four emails a year on linkedin, of them one's from Facebook, the
other from Google, and the others are from local companies.

This kind of make me envious and wanting to be there for a while., to
experience how's it like to be valued and sought after.

~~~
angelbob
If you envy our level of spam, change the address on your LinkedIn profile
and/or make a new honeypot one. Like the original article, you can actually
find out empirically!

Then write a blog post about it.

~~~
koide
Only in how it shows the level of opportunities. But it's a good idea to
experience it for myself.

------
Rodeoclash
We're attempting to fix the way freelancers are recruited at agencies /
startups by changing the pricing model. At the moment with recruiters, the
incentive is to place as many people as quickly as possible as you get a
commission for each placement.

By changing the model to a subscription you can then open the market place up
and make it very transparent. No more hiding peoples contact details from the
employee, no more hiding the employers name from the job seeker.

We're only in Melbourne, Australia at the moment but if we get interest, we'll
try and increase our reach. If you are in Melbourne and you're a freelancer /
agency / startup, we'd love to talk: <http://www.dragonflylist.com>

~~~
bartonfink
Rodeo -

I'm currently planning a move down under (my wife just spooked me by wanting
to push the timeframe up to next year instead of 2015). Mind if I reach out to
you sometime to chat about the market there and whether what you're doing
would make sense for someone in my position? I'd be much obliged.

~~~
RileyJames
You won't have any trouble getting a tech job here. Huge demand at the moment,
not enough talent. Email riley@dragonflylist.com if you want to chat more.

------
rdl
How many females were on the recruiting team? (i.e., how statistically
significant was all of them getting pregnant in the same month...)?

~~~
Tichy
Pregnancy is probably infectious.

Also having landed a job at a company that is doing well is a high risk factor
for pregnancy.

~~~
rdl
I remember Google advertising themselves as family friendly in the mid 2000s
as a recruiting strategy; I guess if people are coming back after even 6
months out, it could be a worthwhile strategy.

------
dennisgorelik
"No poaching" requirement is a mistake.

Small subset of recruiters that she was working with represents only minor
danger to her company anyway (considering how many recruiters are out there).

By dropping "no poaching" restriction Elaine would be able to hire better
recruiters.

Other than that - the article was an insightful read.

------
azakai
> We had standard 18-month no-poach restrictions with all of our contractors
> that specified that those recruiters were not allowed to contact Meebo
> employees within 18 months of our contract expiring

Whoa, wasn't there just a lawsuit where no-poach deals were determined highly
illegal?

~~~
salemh
Much different circumstance (more collusion) if you are thinking of the
Google/Apple/Intel lawsuit: "Apple, Google, Intel fail to dismiss staff-
poaching lawsuit | Reuters" [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/19/us-
apple-poaching-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/19/us-apple-
poaching-lawsuit-idUSBRE83I0VF20120419)

Or Google:
[https://www.google.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=1&source...](https://www.google.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=google+settlement+apple+employee+poach)

~~~
rprasad
Different circumstances, but still illegal in California because it restricts
the freedom of employment of Meebo's employees.

No-poaching clauses are illegal in California, _but_ poaching clauses can
contain "referral fees" under which the poaching company must pay the original
employer a substantial amount of money (usually, a year's salary of the
employee poached) if they hire one of its employees during or within a year
after the end of the contract period.

------
city41
One of the best things I did was take down my LinkedIn account. I've gone from
numerous recruiters contacting me to very few. But the ones who do contact me
find me through my github account, my stackoverflow account or my website.
These recruiters are of much higher quality, have much more compelling job
opportunities and job opportunities that match me much better. I also no
longer have to politely decline recruiters constantly.

------
robk
The Kernel (UK) had a nice expose on recruiter tactics recently as well.
[http://www.kernelmag.com/topic/the-kernel-recruitment-
report...](http://www.kernelmag.com/topic/the-kernel-recruitment-report/)

------
glimcat
This raises the question of A/B testing fake LinkedIn profiles to optimize for
the sort of leads you want.

------
monatron
I remember doing something similar to this after I graduated from college
('09) but a bit backwards.

I was totally frustrated by the lack of responses to resumes that were flying
from my outbox like cards from a blackjack shoe -- so I created a help-wanted
ad on craigslist for a job that I thought I would qualify for and might have a
chance of landing.

The resumes I got were from people with 3-5 years experience, masters degress,
laundry list of skillsets, etc. Needless to say, the whole experience was
disheartening -- but it taught me to be creative in my approach to the job
market and that generally the "resume" based approach to finding a "match"
(employer<->employee) is deeply flawed.

------
civilian
I friended Pete London on linkedin, because having connections with fictional
recruiter honeypots is awesome.

<http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=60565153>

~~~
dennisgorelik
Here's what I got here:

 _You and this LinkedIn user don’t know anyone in common You can only view the
profiles of users within your network._

~~~
civilian
Try doing an advanced search for firstname: Pete lastname: London region: San
Francisco Bay Area

------
peterwwillis
_"Lesson 1: Recruiters rely exclusively upon LinkedIn". You might be thinking,
“Really? This is obvious!”_

Uh... No, I wasn't thinking that, since there's a ton of places for recruiters
to find candidates and LinkedIn is only one of them. Is this some kind of
viral marketing piece for LinkedIn or something?

I have gotten maybe 6 recruiting messages on LinkedIn in my life. I finally
deleted my account after the password debacle, it was so useless. Like a
business contact sheet for people I already had contacts for. On the other
hand, Monster.com is where most of the recruiters seem to come at me from. I
get on average 8 positions sent to me a week when i'm not looking for work. My
google voice gets less recruiter spam, but I had to set a separate GV line up
just to catch all the recruitemarketer calls.

~~~
untog
Then you must be in a tiny minority. I get an LinkedIn message every other
day, pretty much. I closed my Monster account years ago after getting e-mails
of insanely inaccurate matches in cities thousands of miles away.

~~~
vtry
Yeah, LinkedIn is awesome, it's the future of finding a job second only to
your "connections".

~~~
untog
I actually disagree. All I've ever gotten from LinkedIn is recruiter spam.

------
hirehand
Recruiting is difficult, especially for initial hires. Often time founders are
hiring for skilled positions that they themselves are not familiar with. Thus,
they turn to recruiters. However, with the good that recruiters bring, the bad
comes as well. That's why I am starting HireHand. We are different than
traditional recruiters and will assist by screening candidates for skilled
positions using screeners will matching skills. You get a filtered set of
candidates and can interview for "fit" rather than skill. We charge a small
fee based on the number of candidates you have us screen, and do not charge a
percentage of salary. Check us out: <http://www.hirehand.com>

------
canttestthis
>However, I also needed a recruiter who was smart enough not to poach a
founder.

Could someone elaborate?

~~~
angelbob
Anybody she was getting recruiting emails from was trying to poach her (a
founder).

Silicon Valley is small, incestuous and political. If all your competitors,
other portfolio companies, etc. are getting recruiting emails from you,
including their founders, you are going to seem either tone-deaf with bad
recruiters or like you're trying to offend people you shouldn't offend.

Also, founders basically never say "yes".

------
leeny
Very interesting read full of good data and some interesting takeaways
(especially about LinkedIn).

One thing I wonder about is given how boilerplate and sparse the honeypot's
blog was, how little information there was to go on, and how uninspired the
self-description was, I can't help but wonder if the good recruiters were the
ones who didn't bother contacting him.

As a side note, I'm also confused as to why the metric for a good recruiter
was figuring out that the profile was a fake (kind of in line with Peroni's
comment above). Or was it considered good that he/she chose to use the phone
as a recruiting tactic?

------
pacomerh
If recruiters actually gave job seekers asserted information about what
companies need, this recruiting business would be a desert.

------
trustfundbaby
And here I was thinking I was special because I was getting two (sometimes 3)
recruiting emails a day on Linkedin ... smh.

------
devsatish
the most idiotic move a recruiter does is sending emails to work email
address. That's a big no no. It's easy to guess a work email address, but
sending a job offer to it? that's stupid. Also same with calling the company
switchboard and asking for my name and leaving job offer info in voice mail.
crap!

------
normalized
I am a co-founder of a startup. My takeaways from this article are:

1) Get a recruiter in-house.

2) Treasure the recruiter as much as the tech talent.

3) External Recruiters will violate non-poaching agreements.

4) It is still useful to have a non-poaching agreement, as it helps as a mild
deterrent.

5) Dread thy fellow startup more than a large company.

------
vineet
Great article.

I was however confused by "I also needed a recruiter who was smart enough not
to poach a founder".

Was he saying this just because founders in SV are not a good fit to Meebo? Or
are they bad employees? Or that it is considered bad to poach to hire a
founder?

~~~
lizzard
She. Did you really read the article and not notice it was written by a woman?
On a blog titled "Elaine Wherry"?

~~~
vineet
Yes, I meant she. It really was a typo.

(I realized it not because of the name - I have seen very weird names before.
I realized it because of her picture on the about page.)

Regardless, my question above is still open.

------
nothacker
Awesome post, but I'd like to see the backing data.

------
andrewstuart
Is it only recruiters approaching people about work? I would have imagined
many employers are directly approaching people in much the same manner as
recruiters.

------
mindjiver
"JavaScript engineer", really?

~~~
simonw
[http://www.quora.com/Startups/Why-are-front-end-
developers-s...](http://www.quora.com/Startups/Why-are-front-end-developers-
so-high-in-demand-at-startups-if-front-end-development-is-relatively-easier-
than-other-fields-of-engineering/answer/Simon-Willison)

~~~
noarchy
The trend of calling someone an "engineer" for all sorts of things may puzzle
people who live in places where the title of "engineer" is regulated.

Depending on how far you want to take it, the term can really lose its
meaning. Is a supermarket stocker a "display engineer"? They do have to make
considerations for aesthetics, space, and so forth...

