
Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation - mocko
https://mocko.org.uk/b/2015/10/14/dont-feed-the-beast-the-great-tech-recruiter-infestation/
======
mbroshi
I will admit I did not make it through this entire article, but it really did
not ring true to me at all--just sounded like an unsupported, hostile, angry
rant.

>> “Fucked if we care” think the recruiters, “now grovel and be exploited”.
... >> You’re meat to them, a resource to be packaged and sold and exploited.

Who's being exploited here? I think he's implying the programmers, but as
someone who left academia for industry, I do not at all share that sentiment.
When I think "exploited" I think of diamond miners in Africa or sex workers in
Southeast Asia. I got my first job at a start-up through a recruiter, gained a
ton of skills, later left, and now I have a very well-paying job at a place I
love. People with technical skills are highly sought-after, and do quite well
in my experience, whether or not they go through recruiters.

If a comment as irate, mean-spirited, and unsubstantiated as this blog post
appeared in HN, it would get down-voted into oblivion.

~~~
ryguytilidie
Honestly it seems like the author has some serious problems. I know hundreds
of recruiters having been at Google and Facebook and not a single one of them
thinks like this at all.

To say "now grovel and be exploited" about a process where the person will
almost certainly end up with a fantastic offer for an engineering job in a
comfortable office with great pay and great working conditions may actually be
the least self aware thing I've ever seen a human being write.

The author is a bad writer, is unable to support their points and shows the
self awareness of a 5 year old. Why did this post get a single upvote? Is the
whole "lets work ourselves in a furor over things we made up about strangers"
not getting old to you people...?

~~~
joeyspn
You clearly don't have a clue about how things are here in the EU. Few weeks
ago one of these charitable souls deceived a co-worker offering him an
_incredible_ opportunity to move to London and the result was:

\- £15k ($23k) less salary than advertised in the offer

\- No benefits (healthcare, dental, etc)

\- No free food/snacks/bevare at the company

\- No perks (equipment, etc)

When questioned about this, the recruiter said: _hey! impossible to get this,
this is were I make my money you know!_. How is this a "fantastic offer for an
engineering job in a comfortable office with great pay and great working
conditions"?

~~~
nordic_nomad
Holy god, that's a job in technology? Sounds like your typical retail wage
slave situation here in the US. Even entry level tech jobs are in the $40-$50k
range generally.

~~~
gambiting
Lol, I'm a C++ games programmer and make $30k/year. North East of England +
games industry.

~~~
logfromblammo
I certainly hope you meant to type £30k/year (~$45k/year).

If you're only getting $30k (~£20k/year) as a software programmer of any kind,
anywhere in the world, you should seriously consider finding a new employer,
even if it requires emigrating. And remote jobs still exist.

Canada has the 3rd largest video games industry in the world--after the US and
Japan--and its growth has strained the available talent pool. So you might
consider Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, or Montreal. I have heard that UK-to-
Canada emigration is more easily done than UK-to-US, though I had never had
any particular motive to investigate the claim.

The "games" jobs earn less on average than the less-specific category of
"software" jobs, and "programmer" earns less on average than "developer" and
"engineer". So if you don't move, maybe you could pad out your resume to be a
"software developer" instead.

I am biased somewhat by working in the US, where software writers are legion,
and paid more than elsewhere, but if you have any skill at all, you can
probably be paid more for work similar to what you do now.

~~~
gambiting
£20k/year is exactly what I'm on. My problem at the moment is that I've been
working just a bit more than 2 years now, and I absolutely love what I'm
doing. I'm part of the engine team on a game that will be one of the biggest
releases of 2016, and learning a tonne every day. I got very flexible hours,
private health insurance and 30 days of paid vacation days a year. It's just
the pay that's abysmal. I've got two computer science degrees and everyone I
know in IT makes almost twice as much as I do. But at the same time, everyone
I know works for a bank or a financial institution of some kind and they hate
their jobs, their bosses, and everything that I on the other hand really like.
So yeah, I could quit tomorrow and probably make 2x as much straight away. Do
I want to? I'm not sure, and that's my problem at the moment.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Will you at least get a portion of the sales on the game? If the game really
will be one of the biggest releases next year, a 20k salary is likely nothing
compared to residuals/bonuses that might accrue to you.

~~~
gambiting
There's very likely going to be a profitability bonus, but at the most it's
going to be half of my salary. Pretty good for a bonus,but it's not making up
for the low salary over all.

~~~
jbishop156
If you have 2 years experience in programming, you should be looking elsewhere
in the game industry. The first couple of years are rough, but after "paying
your dues" for a couple years, you'll find you can jump into another game dev
job without much difficulty. This is a bit more problematic if you're not
willing to relocate, since UK is one of the lower-paying game dev markets.
However 30k usd is far too low even for the UK for a fresh-out-of-college
junior programmer.

------
mattzito
At least in the US, the whole recruiting industry hit its nadir during the
dot-com bubble of 2000. I remember getting a cold-call from a recruiter, "Hey,
got a great gig at a soon-to-IPO startup for a Solaris and Linux guru", "No
thanks", hang up, the phone next to me rings, same dude, literally just
dialing up the extension tree.

My boss at the time had a strategy where whenever a recruiter called offering
"top notch" development talent, he would demand that he only wanted people
with >15 years of java experience (remember, this was in 2000, and we also
weren't a java shop). If they said, "Absolutely, no problem", they went on the
banned list. Most recruiters failed this test.

The whole market was so frothy, I remember people who went from being
bartenders to high-end tech recruiters making crazy money and doing coke with
their clients in the bars they used to work at...and then back to bartending
when the bubble burst.

Today, I feel like it's settled into an annoying-but-manageable background
noise. I still get random recruiter reachouts, "Hey, I have an immediate
opportunity for a contract Oracle DBA in illinois at $20/hour, interested?"
(no, of course), but at least it's easy enough to hang up on them.

~~~
crucialfelix
In NY during that time period one company got a cold call from a head hunter
asking to speak to "Mitch" or some name like that. That was the dog's name.
They had gotten some list of names and it included the office dog.

~~~
anotherevan
Oh, I so want to make a LinkedIn profile for my cat now!

Major duties: Licking the spot where my balls use to be.

------
RogerL
One fairly recently cold emailed me 4 times in one day, the last email quite
put out and angry that I hadn't responded yet; this was followed by numerous
cajoling to censorious emails in the following days, and then a letter mailed
to my home castigating me for not responding. And then more emails. He finally
went away.

Then there is the current one - scheduling an interview without my say so, I
demanded she cancel it immediately, yet I subsequently get a call from the
company "Roger, where are you". She didn't cancel it. I told her to she was
not to represent me in any way, to not contact me again. Yesterday, what shows
up in my inbox? Demands to respond to her email with regards to a client with
clear evidence that she is still shopping/talking about me. All this against a
backdrop of me telling them my dog is diagnosed with a brain tumor, my life is
occupied with dealing with it, and just leave me alone (true story, not made
up to make them go away). Holy fuck.

I had an absolutely great recruiter once, he spent hours talking to me,
working to find a good fit (something I found myself ended up working), but
don't ask me how to find someone like that. Unfortunately his specialty is in
an area (HFT) that I decided that I don't want to participate in.

~~~
eckza
That's insane.

I've had a few exciting ones happen to me as well... including offers to
interview for the COMPANY I AM ALREADY WORKING AT. That was a fun one. My boss
was pissed.

Lately, I've been replying to recruiter emails with a short and sweet
"$%INSANEAMOUNT% plus or I'm not interested". Haven't heard back yet.

~~~
cookiecaper
Been doing the same. "Sure, ask them if they'll be able to give [1.8x-2.3x my
current salary] and relocation." I haven't gotten any replies yet either.

------
cafard
About 10 weeks ago, I got an email from such a company, the payload being

"Our database consists of over 2 million resumes of qualified consultants that
we rigorously screen and are ready to be deployed. Our footprint is
Nationwide.

 __ __* is a company that specializes in providing Project /Program Manager,
Architect, QA/Code Testing, Business Analyst, DBA, ETL, Virtualization,
Disaster Recovery, Storage/Backup, Cyber Security, Analytics, Cloud,
Financials, HRMS, ERP/MRP, Business Intelligence, Business Objects, Data
Warehousing, Front end/Web/Mobile Development/Design, Middleware, Supply
Chain, Logistics, Warehouse Management, Inventory Management, E-Commerce,
SDLC, Networking, etc. specified contractors/consultants for contract/contract
to hire projects."

I had to like the use of "specialize".

------
manishsharan
Spammy tech recruiters are bad but corrupt recruiters and hiring practices are
much worse"

I live in Canada and I am amazed at the amount of corruption/nepotism I see in
IT hiring for government IT jobs. They will put out job requirements for
senior java dev or web developer and you are supposed to fill out a matrix of
required skill. In those supposedly mandatory skills/experiences, they will
put in some weird shit --stuff no one outside the hiring manager's inner
circle would know; this supposedly mandatory skill is used to weed out
outsiders, allowing the hiring manager to hire their chosen people. In the 15
years I have been consulting as a Java developer, I have not received one
interview call for any open position with any level government despite having
all the other requirements. Considering the fact that so many IT initiatives
of the government are plagued with controversies and their implementation is
rife with incompetence, I feel the the recruiters and the hiring managers have
kickback system in place.

~~~
flogic
I work for a large mega corp and we do this all the time. It's because we have
a contractor who we want to convert into a real employee. You can't just say
"This person has been working with us for a couple of years. Can we make them
a real employee so we can keep them and they get benefits?". There is a whole
process advertising the position internally and externally even though you
already have someone.

------
lukasm
Had really bad experience with recruiters in London

\- Lies. From "They have a free gym pass" to complete bs like salary and
position.

\- Screwed up formatting of CV that I've sent (they wanted .doc) I've written
that I have basic perl skills, recruiter changed it to good and destroyed the
layout of CV making it unreadable. Good luck with perl question during the
interview.

\- Constant phone calls with no new information.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Screwed up formatting of CV that I've sent (they wanted .doc) I've written
> that I have basic perl skills

Isn't unreadable a plus in Perl? :-p

~~~
chappers
Haha! Nice! A bit like if you have an infinite number of chimps on an infinite
number of typewriters you'll eventualy get the works of Shakespeare - the rest
is Perl.

------
aerovistae
Alright, here's another of my tech recruiter exchanges. This one got him to
stop responding immediately.

\-------------

Hello,

My name is Seth and I am a recruiter here at [redacted]. I came across your
profile in our database and wanted to touch base. Are you still in the market
for potential opportunities? If so, I would enjoy speaking with you soon.

Please let me know if you or anyone else you know is interested.

Thanks, Seth

\--------------

Hi Seth. I am definitely available for "potential opportunities" to "touch
base" with discreet clients. I am very interested. Please give me more
information about these "opportunities."

------
bitwize
_phone rings_

"Hello?"

"Hello, is this Cloud Strife?"

(pausing a moment to consider whether even to continue) "...Yeah."

"Hey, Cloud, how's your afternoon going? My name is Michael Gravitz and I'm a
recruiter for Warmbody Technical Services. I came across your résumé on Dice,
and I noticed you have a lot of Buster Sword experience. We've got a great
opportunity for a Bodyguard role with an established, profitable company in
the electric power industry that I think you'd be a great fit for--"

"It's Shinra, isn't it."

"Bingo! It _is_ Shinra! Out of curiosity, how did you know--"

"Not interested."

"Oh. Okay. Well, do you know anyone who's looking and might be interested in
this role?"

"No."

"Oh! Well! I'm _so_ glad to hear that _all_ your friends have jobs, Cloud! You
have a great day!"

"Bye."

 _click_

~~~
LoSboccacc
> "Oh. Okay. Well, do you know anyone who's looking and might be interested in
> this role?"

this is the part I actually hate most. I'm not gonna do the recruiter job,
especially not for free.

they have to get over themselves and stop thinking they are giving out
'opportunities' like they are modern messiah

~~~
bitwize
What's worse is how snotty some of them get when you tell them no.

~~~
mgkimsal
Guess I've been lucky. I can't recall anyone ever being snotty or rude with me
when I say 'no'. I usually just ask them to email me details. Usually they
don't, but sometimes they do.

~~~
bitwize
I've had recruiters cop a very passive-aggressive tone when I told them I
didn't know anyone interested in their position. It was weird.

------
SandB0x
I recently moved jobs. Since I work in a fairly niche field, made plenty of
good friends at my old workplace, and the company was looking to add to my old
team while I was still there, I've had the pleasure of seeing several sides of
a hugely inefficient job search.

First, there is the Chinese whispers from within the company. They don't seem
keen on finding candidates directly, which in this field is as easy as it
gets, so off they go to the recruitment agency. My (now former) boss writes a
job spec, this goes to HR (who aren't familiar with any of the technical
details) and HR add some company blurb and send it on to a recruiter, but not
before crippling the job spec by slapping on a below-market salary that nobody
competent will accept to try and save some cash.

The recruiters think they have plenty of candidates who will take the salary,
but the candidates simply aren't good enough or don't have the right
experience. The recruiters have no way of telling this, so they keep telling
the company that there are plenty of great candidates and to keep
interviewing.

From the applicant side, several friends of mine who are generally looking to
move to a new job had this role aggressively pitched to them by a recruiter.
Most of them would be brilliant for this job. What my friends really need is a
ten minute phone call with my old boss to see if it's a potential fit before
starting any formal interview process. I'd have been happy to put them in
touch directly at an earlier stage, but there has now been contact through a
recruiter and I don't want to meddle behind the scenes.

None of my friends ended up going for the job since the recruiters were
telling them confusing things, and all got better offers than the advertised
range elsewhere. The company have unsuccessfully interviewed a few candidates
that the recruiters have pushed on them, the team has been desperate for
someone new for months (and they're crucial to the company's success) and
people like my old boss have no idea and little way of knowing how close they
are to finding the right people.

And yes, the stereotype of the shiny-suited young "failed salesman" recruiter
is unfortunately true in my experience.

------
euphemize
At the end:

    
    
      To employers – ask your staff to help find new hires.  Offer a bounty – enough to get their attention, say a fortnight’s     salary.  It’s a lot less than Shithead would cost.  And their incentives are all positive: no-one will hire an idiot if they have to   work alongside them and new staff with social ties to your team are far more likely to stay.  You’ll be amazed how effective   this can be.
    

There are limits to this, and having someone from your team refer someone they
know does not guarantee they will be an excellent worker, but I would tend to
agreed that the overall quality of your team will be much higher this way.

~~~
vkjv
Agreed. You need to be careful with exactly how much the bounty is. Too low
and people won't bother. Too high and people will recommend anyone they know.

I find recommendations for peers are almost always high quality simply because
people want to work with good people.

~~~
acveilleux
Bounty payout can also be phased. My current employer does half upfront and
half once the hire has been with us for 6 months (i.e.: trial period). The
bonus are small but not inconsequential (think a nice vacation or down payment
on a Camry...) This has been pretty successful.

------
dates
This is mostly an angry rant, pretty amusing to me how upset the author
actually becomes at times, I think its quite harsh.

I did like this idea towards the end of it: "To employers – ask your staff to
help find new hires. Offer a bounty – enough to get their attention, say a
fortnight’s salary. It’s a lot less than [a recruiter] would cost. And their
incentives are all positive: no-one will hire an idiot if they have to work
alongside them and new staff with social ties to your team are far more likely
to stay. You’ll be amazed how effective this can be."

~~~
hoorayimhelping
This is completely common in America. Is the London job market scene just
messed up?

~~~
ckozlowski
I took a job abroad after coming from the U.S., and updated my LinkedIn
accordingly. Soon after, the spam shot up through the roof. All of the same,
non-descript, no-details contacts the author describes. It's been striking.

~~~
robotkilla
I torched my linkedin account a while back after recruiters wouldn't stop
hounding me. I also despise social networks of all sorts so that contributed
to my decision.

Before I torched it though I tried a little experiment. I left my tech skills
in place, but also added things like "Blacksmithing" and "Former POTUS" as my
skill set. I also said "Do not contact me" and "I hate recruiters" and
something along the lines of "if you contact me, you clearly didn't read my
profile" \- the spam seemed to increase for a while before I finally deleted
the profile completely.

~~~
vonmoltke
Meanwhile, I consider two LinkedIn hits in the same month to be a lot. :/

~~~
robotkilla
I never made a dime or had any positive experience with Linkedin. Just
recruiter spam and "friends" begging for endorsements... so I don't think
you're missing out on anything.

------
jameshart
US recruitment (at least around tech hubs) does seem a lot more civilized than
the UK situation - most opportunities I see are directly advertised. I left
the UK five years ago, and I still get most of my recruitment spam from UK
agents. Someone clearly needs to educate those guys about aging their
databases - someone who was in the market for opening level PHP gigs in 2001
is probably _not_ still looking for opening level PHP gigs in 2015.

~~~
moron4hire
I think it depends on where you are. I've seen this sort of behavior a lot.
Less so now that I'm in DC, but it was really bad back in Philly.

------
Paul_S
I'm looking for work right now (need an embedded engineer in the UK?) and some
job boards have a tickbox "[]agency" or "[]direct employer" and most of the
direct employer ones are also recruiters. That is a small thing but it's pure
evil. And the sad thing is I'm sure that if I asked a recruiter "how can you
sleep at night doing this" he'd just shrug and laugh because to him it's
normal.

~~~
pc86
A recruitment agency that's hired on contract, or an internal recruiter at the
company hiring?

~~~
Paul_S
No. Anyway, if that was the case why would they hide the name of the company?

~~~
pc86
I don't think "No" is an appropriate response to the question "A or B?"

~~~
Paul_S
Sorry, that comma changed the meaning of the sentence from "A or B" to "A?
B?". You don't put a comma before "or". The answer to that question would be
neither. It's just normal recruiter ads that tick the box direct employer
despite not being such to get through the filter. If a company is using an
external recruiter the recruiter will list the company name. I only ever saw
this once in my life when a company used a recruiter exclusively.

------
meddlepal
This is an angry angry rant... and I'm not sure I agree. Some recruiters are
pretty good. I was placed by one and I consider another an excellent giver of
advice; he actually advised me to take a competing offer from another
recruiter (of which I did not mention the name or deal, just the parameters).
Generally my experience has been positive.

~~~
dommer
Yes this is a rant. However, the first point is a good one.

95% of the author's [limited sample] where recruiters earning a large amount
of money for doing very little technically.

~~~
genericresponse
You know, I like how there is this view out there that anyone who's doing
classically "business" or "sales" work is not actually working that hard. I
know some recruiters. They aren't the world's smartest people, but the
successful ones work really damn hard. They don't make more than minimum wage
unless they place people.

These guys are cold calling, searching LinkedIn, crawling phone trees, and
sending requests all day. When they can they're touching up resumes and doing
screening/placement interviews.

Moreover, their technical is different than your technical. It's social
hacking and networking. It's learning how to find better opportunities and
better people faster.

You might not like that they're Ronin, and work socially. However, they're
pulling 12-15 hour days to make their sale.

~~~
dommer
I never said they didn't work hard.

~~~
logfromblammo
As I don't subscribe to the labor theory of value, I don't care how much
effort they put in. I care about the value of the results they produce.

To a lesser extent, I also care if any of the manure that they shovel will
stick to my heel.

In theory, you should be able to come out ahead by delegating job search to
someone who is better at recruiting than anything else, when you are better at
software than job-searching, _even if you are still better in absolute terms
at recruiting than the recruiter_. In practice... well, let's just say that
specialization only works if the single best thing you can do offers positive
value to the market. If your top skill is wasting other people's time, no one
is going to hire you for that.

------
protonfish
And yet they are our only weapon against business owners who are just as
clueless but lack the incentive to pay a competitive wage. When it comes to
salary negotiation, it's nice to have Shithead in your corner.

~~~
pricechild
Could you expand on that? If you can't negotiate with the owner, how does
shithead help?

~~~
nordic_nomad
If you have a good recruiter (the last one I worked with was such) they'll
negotiate for you. This one asked me what I was looking for, said I could get
more than that, and then got even more than that for me. Just because they
have industry data and like jobs to back up the negotiation.

I've had bad ones of course, I think everyone has. But the good ones can do a
lot more leg work than you have time for and find you a much better situation
than you could find on your own, plus play both sides to make their comission
as big as possible which benefits you.

The best are agents, the worst are pimps.

------
ryandrake
I don't get all the annoyance at recruiters. I don't mind recruiters reaching
out to me at all. If you don't want their help, ignore their E-mails. If the
opportunity looks interesting you reply, if not, don't. Here's an entire
profession that exists to help get you a job (and to help employers find
talent). Like every profession in the world, there are going to be a few jerks
--just ignore them.

When times are good and everyone has their dream job, we all seem so annoyed
with recruiters. When times are not so good, and you're 2 months away from
being broke, they are a potential lifeline.

~~~
cookiecaper
The problem is that in recruiting, it's not "a few jerks". It's 99.99% utterly
incompetent recent business grads. The 00.01% of recruiters that are labeled
"competent" are actually still pretty bad, but they at least know that you
won't find 15 years of Go experience and can at least half-tell when someone
is BSing (perhaps because they actually spent a small amount of time coding
themselves).

Out of the dozens of recruiters I've dealt with over my career, there was only
one who was semi-competent. The article makes it sound like it's even worse
across the pond; instead of incompetent doofuses, the tech recruitment
industry populated by out-and-out fraudsters. I've met a few of those here in
the US, but they're by no means the majority. Though I have noticed a trend
among tech recruiters in the US that has really exploded in the last few
years: hire traditionally attractive young women and call them "tech
recruiters". The more recently they've departed their cheerleading squad, the
better. This seems to be the primary qualification at a lot of US tech
recruiting firms recently.

Probably the reason the competence of recruiters is so low is because almost
anyone with the skills necessary to discern a good coder from a bad one can
probably at least kinda code himself, and would rather do that than sales.

~~~
charrisku
I agree on the pretty female observation. Just about every tech recruiter
that's contacted me recently looks like someone I'd want to date. My father is
a doctor in the US and the drug reps he deals with are also from this mold, so
I guess that says something about what really works in male-centered
professions.

------
laxatives
The tech recruiter role/economy seems like a tremendous conflict of interest,
especially when they are outsourced. They are compensated primarily as a
percentage of the salary for each hire they make. Like real estate agents,
they get very little benefit from hiring well and primarily from hiring a lot.
If those folks don't pan out, more roles to fill and more bonuses to be had.
It seems like an extremely short-sighted solution, which leads to short
relationships that don't sufficiently penalize nefarious behavior.

------
Nursie
>> Contract tech workers sometimes believe agencies insulate them from a
defaulting client.

This is true.

In one of my last contracts I was working alongside a guy who was contracting
for them directly. He eventually walked out when they failed to pay (again!)

Agents are scum, but as someone that doesn't have a vast network (most of the
people I've worked with are still in the same perm position years or even
decades later), and who doesn't live in London, I'm afraid I don't see that
I'm going to be able to live without them any time soon.

Instead I'm actually trying to build relationships with the agents I have
worked with that have found me appropriate work and who haven't f*cked up in
any way. They are few and far between, but they do exist.

------
onion2k
I'm not suggesting the author is necessarily wrong, but I've been in the IT
industry long enough to notice that there are more "Recruiters are terrible
people!" articles whenever there's a boom in tech jobs and people can find
their own role. As soon as the market contracts and jobs become hard to find,
all the articles stop.

I think people's view of tech recruiters is a function of the market rather
than a de facto truth - recruiters are perceived as bad as the market gets
better because people don't need them in order to find a new job. That doesn't
automatically mean recruiters are bad. Come the next downturn they'll be
useful again. We just need to recognise that.

~~~
xixixao
Or as someone described above, the recruiters go back to bartending when the
market sinks. The issue is not getting too many nice, well-though-out
proposals from credible recruiters who can spell and use grammar properly.

------
osullivj
Flash Harry was played by the recently deceased George Cole, gawd bless 'im.
I've had first hand experience of the London recruitment scene, as permie and
contractor, for many years now, and much of it is just as described in this
funny & truthful article. However, one malpractice the author misses is
Shitheads bunging brown envelopes to HR staff at large corps to manipulate the
PSL. Also, there are some good recruiters out there who know and understand
the skill sets they trade in. I've been lucky enough to use a couple of them
as a hiring manager when I was permie at a bank. But they are very much in a
minority...

------
sqldba
I totally agree on asking the actual company what they're paying the recruiter
before you sign on; they will always be expecting an amount of work equal to
full amount paid to the recruiter rather than the meagre sum that will end up
in your pocket (which is exactly how hard you're planning to work).

I have been told of people learning they were on long-term $50/hour
assignments where the recruiter is making $200/hour over the top; no lie.

But the sickness doesn't just come from normal people accepting jobs; these
agencies are also held up by fucking Enterprise businesses. We recently needed
to hire some additional staff and only received 3 resumes; 2 of which we'd
seen before and were unsuitable.

I told management that the recruiter wasn't doing their job and that maybe we
could just put something on Seek, get a reply, then refer them to the
recruiter. "We can't do that! The entire corporation has a contract;
everything has to go through the recruitment agency and there's no way around
it!"

How the fuck they knowingly got themselves into such a farcical situation (and
for what benefit?) I'll never understand... except that they're fucking
idiots.

------
edem
The same stands for the real estate industry. Or worse. Most real estate
agents add nothing just take money away from both tenants and landlords.

~~~
GFischer
I'm still amazed they continue to thrive in the Internet age.

They do add some value to sellers (showing the house), but their commisions
are WAY beyond the value they add.

And they're a huge annoyance to buyers, intentionally hiding information
whenever possible.

~~~
edem
I'm still thinking on a good strategy how to get rid of them completely.

------
pweissbrod
Oh I'm not finished yet, but this is a hilarious read! Lots of moments I was
belly laughing out loud at the author's wonderful use of metaphors.

Yeah in the USA, 2015 recruiting industry is far better than the author's
depictions. I have no idea what its like in the UK.

The indian recruiting market is not unlike this.

Its still a funny read either way

------
calgoo
Yea, I just got one for managing plastic fabrication machines in some factory
in the UK. When looking at why I got the offer, its because I had the words
"Tooling Engineer" (title at current job) in my LinkedIn profile.

------
moron4hire
I've started using more of Gmail's features to help control this.

First, there is the actual email address itself: Gmail ignores periods and
anything after a + (plus sign). So every new site I sign up for gets a
different email address, usually my normal email plus a postfix named after
that particular site. This way, when I get emails from recruiters saying they
found me through LinkedIn, but are actually using a form of my email address
I've only used on Github, I know immediately what is going on.

And second, I just mark them as spam. Because they are.

------
Menge
I don't know much about the English market, though I occasionally get their
spam overflow. Still, I have to question how you regularly get into those
kinds of relationships with anyone without being needlessly mean and
disrespectful in initial interactions.

With recruiters here, I generally decline the job they were thinking of and
tell them what I am interested given that it has to significantly beat my
current work. After a few times back and forth, that eventually brings the
conversation to an end. The nicer ones tell give me some local companies that
wont pay third party recruiters but might be a closer match.

Really, I think recruiters naturally tend to over represent employers who are
incredibly bad deals since the better the job the less often it is empty and
the easier it is to fill for free through networking (I.e. you have employees
who wouldn't see guilt/risk in recommending it to friends.)

Given that recruiters are sitting in that skewed perspective of the market,
they should naturally get bitter and irritated with people who turn down their
"best" positions while being rude throughout the process. Probably they also
feel all the more helpless in their role since I can only imagine the bizarre
feedback they get from their most rewarding/difficult/longstanding customers
on what were "good" matches.

If recruiters were replaced by neural networks, it may kick off the first AI
rights campaign to protect AI from poor input abuse.

------
mavdi
Some valid points which could be made with a clear head too. I believe in
market dynamics, the reason the recruiters aren't gone by now is that market
still needs them.

The author's moral high ground is also funny. At the end of the day these guys
are here to make a living, and making a living is indeed really hard. Somehow
suggesting these guys are just born evil isn't right, given the same
circumstances most of us would behave the same way. Lucky we are engineers in
demand. So far.

------
znt
Coderstack (which is dead now) used to only accept direct job posts.

I wonder if a similar service would gain traction again. Because all of the
job boards for UK have 90% recruiter spam really.

------
karlkatzke
I think of recruiters more as a "realtor for my skills."

It's totally OK to not use a realtor to sell your house to your coworker's son
and his new wife in rural BFE for 20k $USD.

When you go to sell your mcmansion in a small town suburb for $80k USD, you
might have a lawyer look over the sales contract, but you might not use an
agent. There just isn't that much at risk and you probably know the person
you're selling to.

When you sell your house for $120k USD in a bigger city, you almost definitely
use a seller's agent and might use a lawyer. There's more risk because it's a
bigger city and you're playing for more money. There's probably some
negotiation involved and you don't sell a house every day so you need to know
what's normal, what's legal, and where hidden traps are.

When you sell a house for $500k USD, you sure as hell use a a seller's agent
and a title company and a lawyer and everyone reviews the contract. That's a
lot of money to not have many eyeballs on the deal and rounds of negotiation.

Selling your skills is like selling a house. When it's not that much money and
you trust the people you're dealing with, you don't need a recruiter. When
you're negotiating salary and benefits at higher tiers, you need to know
what's normal and what's acceptable, and that's another service a recruiter
provides. They also represent you to many buyers and help you with the
negotiation and feedback process. Like a real estate agent, they are a
critical impersonal cutout that helps everyone maintain face during a
negotiation.

------
codeisawesome
I never liked overly broad brushes, I understand the author is angry but
calling _all_ recruiters names is, I think, not cool.

But, I really enjoyed the funny writing!

------
awjr
Graduated in 1993, started contracting in 1995, and pretty much been at it
ever since then. I have no issue with agents. They make my life easier.

The only and ONLY rule I have is that the employer knows exactly the rate I am
getting and is happy with the rate they are paying the agent. I've seen
contractors walk out on jobs once they find out the margin the agent is
getting. An honest relationship is key.

------
kelkes
I was thinking off writing almost the same blog post today. Its the same
shitty situation here in Austria... Recruiters should burn in hell.

------
raygull
I've been on the job market the last few weeks, going mostly through New York
recruiters. The quality of the experience has varied wildly, with some
obviously doing the minimum work necessary, and just as obviously not knowing
or caring about the "acronyms" on my resume. Others seem pretty professional,
have apparently done research, and the clients they recruit for would indicate
they have a reputation to maintain.

In the end, the gross factor doesn't really matter to me -- the recruiters
find me on LinkedIn, and I just say "sure, I'll talk to XYZ Co." unless it's
obviously sleazy or a bad fit.

It's a bit grueling to cast such a wide net, and it's obviously a hustle, but
for me it's mostly just a way to get an initial phone introduction/screen with
companies, and from there it's apparent whether it's worth the trouble to move
to the next step.

I might not go this route again, though, having seen how little most
recruiters add to the process.

~~~
gearoidoc
Unsolicited I know but a good friend of mine runs a recruitment firm in NYC.
He's a tech guy (I've worked with him for nearly 10 years) and the founder is
an ex-Google dev too (I've only Skyped with him but he seems to know his
stuff).

They mostly place for contract roles - but I could be wrong on that.

Happy to introduce you if you wish.

------
joe-mccann
[https://twitter.com/actualrecruiter](https://twitter.com/actualrecruiter)

~~~
jodrellblank
[https://twitter.com/erowidrecruiter](https://twitter.com/erowidrecruiter)

------
emergentcypher
I guess I'll chime in here as someone who's had a different experience.
Actually quite a pleasant experience. They weren't spamming me, they wrote to
me once but something about the way they wrote to me caused me to remember
this one particularly six months later. Probably because they weren't spamming
job postings, just saying "hi there, I'm a recruiter, if you ever find
yourself looking for a job I can help you find one." They had me four
different interviews the next week and weren't embellishing my qualifications.
One of the interviews quickly lead to a job offer in a position I actually
wanted to have. They're taking a cut but it's because they made my transition
process fast and easy, instead of spending what could have been a month or two
unemployed and starting to worry, and to me that's worth something.

------
arenaninja
Hm recruiters are fine mostly for entry-level jobs. As time goes on, dealing
with middlemen is increasingly irksome. Not only that, but then you need to
deal with an up-to-30% paycut because of the middleman.

It's a shame really. At my last job we would invite recruiters to send us
candidates for entry-level PHP/MySQL web devs, and largely they sent people
who had been working with Wordpress too long, or only knew how to function in
<insert framework>. The mismatch was worse than putting the ad out and
filtering through the resumes, but it was less effort. I also saw some of the
ads the recruiters posted, and I never would've applied because of a) wording
(rockstar/ninja crap), b) ridiculous skillset (10 years PHP experience...
really?).

So the author here is a little harsh, but largely on point. Way too much
slime, but sometimes necessary if you're entry level

------
celticninja
Just as an aside as the original article seems to think that the recruiter is
taking money from him, i.e.t he 15% is 15% he could be receving. It does not
work like that. Most employers know what the going day rate is for their
required skill set. If they got a contractor directly they would pay the day
rate, they would not bump it up 15% because they didn't go through an agency.
they pay the agency fee to undertake the work of locating the contractor. If
they do the work to locate the contractor themselves why would they pay the
contractor extra? They would not.

Its almost as if the article writer has so little knowledge of how recruitment
works that he is a target for shitty people in the industry, kind of like how
once you respond to a Nigerian prince loads of scammers come out of the
woodwork.

------
agentultra
I really dislike the lack of expertise _typical_ recruiters have with the
technical jargon and requirements of our industry. I've had many poor
recruitment experiences where the recruiter couldn't accurately explain the
role, requirements, or why they thought I was a good enough fit to contact me
in the first place. My github simply hits the right keywords and that's good
enough for them.

This has been made worse by not being able to explain the interview process. I
specifically asked, many times to various recruiters, what I would be quizzed
on or what I should prepare myself for. Few could tell me anything beyond,
"some technical questions about algorithms and data structures." Inadequate.
The interviewer proper would ask random questions about memory architecture,
optimizing the brute-force KNN algorithm, or simply how to reverse a string.
Meanwhile I was studying binomial coefficients, heaps, tries, and the standard
sorting algorithms. I have github projects that implement lattices for a
logically monotonic distributed programming language. For someone such as
myself this is unacceptable and leads to some dead-end interviews that are a
complete waste of time.

I blame the way we "funnel" the "dregs" of candidates and have little to offer
in terms of solutions. I agree with the author that companies seem reluctant
to do actual head-hunting. I always assumed that if you contacted me for a job
there would be a reason: you like some of the projects I host on my github or
have seen my contributions to various open source projects -- that you already
have an idea of my skillset and abilities and want to get to know me.
Recruiters are more inclined to match keywords and send me through the
process... they're not incentivized to get to know me at all. All I can
suggest is to not use a recruiter or at least choose one carefully: choose one
that knows your industry well and can tell a min-heap from a max-heap.

 _edit_ : fixed wording implying a specific github project was some sort of
library or system when it implements a single programming language, not
languages.

~~~
michael2l
I dislike this expertise as well, but lets get at what you are saying, that a
recruiter should have some sort of programming background to know how concepts
actually are used versus the sorts of mixed metaphors one comes up with in the
absence of that understanding, which are often quite comical.

This just isn't realistic. Most recruiters are doing this job in some sort of
entry-level commission-only type role, and if they had any sort of basic IT
skills/understanding are likely to have better offers to do something in that
arena. Some recruiters do learn a good bit and are more successful over time
and make a good living, but most people try it for a bit and don't do well
enough to keep at it. Combining the sales ability with technical ability is a
bit rare, but for people who have both you can do pretty well both in
recruiting and in other lines of work as well.

~~~
agentultra
I understand it is probably an unreal expectation. If you actually did know
your min/max heaps and could implement them you'd be better off being a
programmer. Never the less it is counter-productive to know nothing at all as
we agree.

That's why I don't have any _good_ solutions. It doesn't seem like there are
any. Unless we can find magical unicorns who know enough about programming and
software development to be competent enough to assess the abilities of
programmers themselves... or at the very least understand the process enough
to be able to answer their questions.

------
jpmthrow
It's the nature of the beast, other option...

Company hates recruiters.

Company builds an internal recruitment team.

Find out they can't perform.

They then start using external recruiters.

There has to be a solution to this, whoever solves it will become very, very,
very rich. At present, only internal hires or referrals seem to work best.

------
roblynch
Had a recruiter email me recently saying:

"JASON knowledge is an advantage..."

Yep. I still don't know jason

~~~
timrichard
I recall one phone call where the guy said "how much do you know about Ajax?"
(pronounced like the Dutch football team). There was no reason for the guy to
know any different, but it amused me at the time....

~~~
gearoidoc
Haha, I'm a dev and I pronounced it like this for a while (knowing it was
incorrect).

Someone like me probably set them down the wrong path!

~~~
GFischer
I live in Uruguay (South America), many developers don't speak English, and
most that do don't speak it well (they usually do read and write decently).

You'd probably be hard pressed to understand what they're talking about :) -
for example JSON is definitely JASON, and you'll be looked at funny if you
don't pronounce it that way :) , and Ajax is pronounced like the Dutch
football team.

If I don't hear it on a video or a talk, I'm probably pronouncing it wrong
(and not knowing I am). I hope to get corrected if I do.

~~~
gearoidoc
I guess its important to make allowances - especially for non-native English
speakers.

I worked on a portlet system a few years back (oh the horror!) with a Chinese
dude. Super developer. It wasn't until the last day that I figured out what he
meant when he said 'poorer led'. Should have figured it out sooner looking
back :D

------
lawlessone
In Dublin this is starting to ring true for me.

though i don't agree with classing them as reptilians. They're trying to
survive in a industry that forces them to things to survive.

I'm also skeptical this will last or will Tech bubble 2.0 burst soon?

------
gambiting
I work in IT and I have literally never received an email from a recruiter. My
secret? I don't have a linkedin profile. Yeah, despite what everyone says my
life and career have not collapsed without linkedin.

------
sjclemmy
Ha ha - that was a funny read. You've got a talent for words, forget this new
fangled DeVelOps thing you've been doing for 15 years and get into comedy
writing.

------
gearoidoc
A recruiter once lost it with me when I was job hunting about 5 years ago.
They has put me forward for a job which I'd already applied for (one of the
biggest consulting co's in the world) and was convinced that I'd cut them out
of the process completely (despite the fact I'd told them I'd applied).

Got offered the job in the end. Shitty salary (and not the most exciting of
jobs as I gathered too).

------
bakhy
disgusting text. could not finish reading it.

the author should try appreciating the fact that IT is an industry where one
can choose between jobs. many people do not have that luxury and must swallow
a lot of shit to earn a living. the author comes across as an entitled brat
that has absolutely no empathy or understanding for fellow human beings, all
the while dishing out horrible insults at their humanity. disgusting.

------
vasilipupkin
I don't understand. If recruiters are leeches, why do employers work with them
? perhaps, it's because they provide a service, no?

~~~
cookiecaper
Because _everyone_ is really bad at recruitment. Companies hire recruiters
because they think it'll help dampen the badness of their own recruiting
abilities, but really it just makes it harder, as recruiters scare away decent
candidates.

~~~
vasilipupkin
I don't get it. If a recruiter calls you, you are either interested or not.
So, what's the harm ?

~~~
jarek
The problem is Google doesn't yet have a spam filter for my phone like they do
for my email

(I mean, in practice I just don't answer any calls I am not expecting - but
not everyone can do that)

~~~
dllthomas
What I would really like is, when someone calls me, a voice menu saying
"You've reached David's phone. If this is an emergency or he's expecting your
call, press 1 to ring through. Otherwise, press 3 to set up a time to call, or
7 to leave a message."

------
markbnj
There have been times in my career when good recruiter was my best friend in
the world... at least for a couple of weeks. These days I get spammed or
called by five or six of them a day, most of whom haven't even read my resume,
and have no idea whether I am a fit for the latest position they are trying
desperately to fill. It resembles a boiler-room stock pumping operation.

------
kevinr
Given how common the experiences OP describes are among tech people of my
acquaintance in the US, I have a hard time believing that anyone here saying
"I know hundreds of recruiters and none of them think like this" isn't a
recruiter themself.

The thing I hate most is having a recruiter get in the middle of my salary
negotiations and try to talk me down.

------
anotherhostname
this post is truth. i removed myself from linkedin because of the amount of
recruiters spam / calls, the most annoying part was the constant incorrect
matching of my skills with proposed jobs. (i work with node.js but was getting
tons of requests for php and java jobs). the same recruiters didn't stop
contacting me even after i found a job (without their help) and stated clearly
on my accounts that i was not available anymore. this was super annoying.

at first i put a warning on my linkedin profile, but it didn't decrease the
amount of spam.

then i started to threat via email every one using my personal email without
any consent (seems like they sell cv database to each other).

i end up closing my linkedin account because i could not stop anymore all this
annoying crap from recruiters. i still receive some emails once in a while and
i threat them to remove my identity from their db, it seems to work for now.

------
vorg
These types of people don't just get themselves into recruiter roles lying
about vacancies and candidates to swindle clients and skim the takings, but
also into roles managing open source projects lying about download numbers and
faking popularity rankings, to flip companies and sell consulting services and
conference seats.

------
butler14
This was quite excellent. You could just as well find & replace "IT" with
"marketing", too.

------
chad_strategic
I got my LAMP stack certification and this all went way!

[https://github.com/thoughtbot/liftoff/pull/178#issuecomment-...](https://github.com/thoughtbot/liftoff/pull/178#issuecomment-57690259)

------
scottmwinters
While I agree with most of this article, its a bit extreme. I've never liked
spam, but is it really that hard to ignore them? I've had a recruiting firm
call me 4-5 times and send emails and I started getting a bit upset...but far
from that extreme

------
soyiuz
Possibly the most entertaining and well-written post I've ever encountered on
HN.

------
c-slice
I love this. The writing style reminded me of "A Clockwork Orange."

------
harrygold
Over the course of my career in Cali and Silicon Valley, I've been fortunate
to work for some top tech companies on exciting projects (all through
recruiters). I'm very thankful to recruiters.

------
devin
After reading through this thread, it would seem that many commenters from the
UK are able to relate, and that a number of people in the US market are
judging based on no experience.

------
dannymick
It sounds just as bad as New York City. I'm getting my UK settlement visa
within the next month and will be back on job market, definitely not looking
forward to this!

------
epage
Some here are listing good and bad experiences. I'm considering finding one to
help find jobs for my particular interests in another area.

Any tips for picking one?

------
squozzer
I had a total clockwork orange moment reading this. Unrelated note - you may
call me a pig, but I only take calls from female recruiters.

~~~
mariogintili
actually I've experienced that they're nicer, or at least try to (?)

------
binarymax
I think the plugin to block email doesn't go far enough. I think it should be
enhanced to autoreply with a markov bot.

------
intrasight
Best way to not 'feed the beast' is to write a quality resume/CV and post it
to your local tech careers site.

------
EdwardDiego
> Once I talked a client into advertising a position themselves. The signal-
> to-noise ratio was appalling and sorting through the flood of applicants
> took days. Some cover letters were tragic, begging in broken English “I fast
> learner, my family starving, England less shooty, pliz you help us move?”.

Bah, you can rant without resorting to racist aping of ESOL speakers.
Especially when the odds are good that the author only speaks one language.

------
rbadaro
In London, recruiters and real estate agents appear to be interchangeable. The
bullshitter ratio is off the scales.

------
ommunist
For the UK the picture is so very true. I admire the proper English of this
article. Well worth reading.

------
mtw
I don't give my email or contact info to recruiters or random job sites!

~~~
jrockway
Does that stop the ones that spam you on Github?

~~~
mtw
Github has an option "Don't show my email address"

------
adrianb
I stopped answering the phone to unknown numbers because of this.

~~~
Flenser
I turned off my voicemail because of this.

~~~
dheera
My voicemail recording is just several minutes of classical music with the
occasional "All of our representatives are currently busy at this time. Please
stay on the line and we'll be with you shortly." at regular intervals.

~~~
kps
I'm fond of the Intercept tone.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IC_SIT.ogg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IC_SIT.ogg)

~~~
dheera
That's a nice idea too, but in reality it creates trouble (I tried it once).
For example, my bank's fraud department often likes calling me several times a
day asking me to "verify" transactions. I told them _several_ times to NEVER
call me, and that _I_ will monitor my transactions via the online interface
and call in the event of suspected fraud. However, they continued calling me,
often at the most inconvenient times. Like when I have a bag slung across my
shoulder, a grocery bag in one hand, a hot drink in the other, and standing on
crowded public transit, they expect me to answer my phone, spill my drink,
fall over on a moving train, and yell my social security number in front of
everyone on the train? To top that, don't they realize that I need to login to
my AWS account and check my instance usage before I can "verify" any
transactions? Sorry bank, just DO NOT CALL. Ever. Period. E-mail me. This is
the 21st century.

So back when I had one of those error message tones, they once decided that my
contact information was "out of date" and just disabled my credit card while I
was eating lunch, leaving me stranded at a restaurant like a fool, ATM and
credit cards all disabled, without any way to pay. (Like seriously, are you
trying to stop fraud, or stop your own customers?)

With the hold message this doesn't happen. :)

------
paulus_magnus2
time to finally implement my non profit side-project

bad-recruiters.com

------
snowwrestler
Complaining about recruiters has to be one of the all-time great humblebrags.

"Oh woe is me--all these people keep calling me to offer well-paying
professional jobs!"

------
engineer442
You lost me at suggesting "IT" = "engineer" when speaking to your grandpa.

------
mizchief2
As a manager I've had a recruiter basically say "That's a nice development
department you have there, shame if something were to happen to it." As he
described that by signing a contract with him and keeping "active" by hiring
his candidates a couple of times a year, he would not solicit the developers
at my company.

~~~
celticninja
I have seen that done, basically a company I worked for had a contractual
agreement to use a certain agency for their contractors. The agency finds out
contractors are being hired and they are not being offered the opportunity to
out forward candidates. The recruiter came to a meeting with my manager and
was very cordial and asked why they were not being used, the manager said he
didnt like them (or something similar, basically making it a personal issue
with them). The recruiter simply said they had a contractual agreement and
whilst they probably would not pursue it legally they would quite happily use
his company as a resource to select contractors from.

After 2 staff members were offered new positions the manager decided he didnt
hate the agency that much. Whilst I liked the manager it was refreshing to see
someone combat this situation whilst expressing clearly they would not pursue
it legally.

------
supercanuck
You do realize that there is an entire IT Industry outside of Facebook and
Google?

~~~
dang
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10399372](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10399372)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
ryguytilidie
I'm confused. Writing a long, mean spirited rant about millions of faceless
strangers is totally okay, but saying "I know lots of these strangers and I
think the opposite is true" in the comments section is off topic? Soooo are we
at a spot where its 100% ok to rip millions of strangers, but the second
someone disagrees a mod gets upset and starts editing the discussion? This is
bizarre.

~~~
dang
> _the second someone disagrees a mod gets upset_

That's quite the understatement. You posted close to two dozen indignant
comments in a single thread, crossing repeatedly into incivility. That's an
abuse of HN by any standard, regardless of how flawed the article and the
other comments were.

~~~
ryguytilidie
So, to be clear, since you never had a single problem with ANYONE shitting on
an entire profession. "Crossing repeatedly into incivility" is something youre
offended by only when its not being done toward an engineer. Just trying to
figure out the logic behind being okay with the literal hundreds of negative
comments about an entire profession in this thread but being super duper upset
for me being not that polite in response. Is there logic here or was this just
a bit of a tantrum on your part? Perhaps we should have some disclaimer like
"feel free to shit on other professions, but if you DARE respond to those
posts, fuck you."?

------
paulojreis
IT people talking about being exploited, particularly by unskilled laborers,
well... I understand how "boring" it might be to be _harassed_ in this way,
just as telemarketing is, but - come on - a little perspective, please. Surely
you'll understand that your _boring_ doesn't trump someone's need to make
money.

P.S. The author talks about "us social inepts in tech". I hope he understands
his article is a great banner to said ineptness.

~~~
kps
Your ‘need to make money’ does not entitle you to any of my time or
forbearance, both of which are finite.

~~~
paulojreis
Sure. That's roughly what I tell telemarketing operators. But a) talking about
exploitation is still ridiculous; and b) what do you suggest? Do you propose
passing a law forbidding unsolicited contacts? Via which channels?

------
geff82
It always depends on how you react, if you are passive (like the author of the
article) or active. While I too get many mails/calls that are unnecessary, I
like to keep active contact with some recruiters I came to like and call
them/meet them on a regular basis, even when I have absolutely no need for a
new contract. If you are a contractor, you are essentially owning a business
and if you have a business, you should value potential customers. Crying like
a baby about too much interest in your person is a loser attitude. As long as
there are not too many middle men, I also do not care about them getting their
cut, as the better ones use that money to get the right contacts for me in
case I want to change the position. My current recruitment agency also uses
some of the money for great parties and events, which helped me to get to know
many others (clients/colleagues...).

~~~
moron4hire
>> Crying like a baby about too much interest in your person is a loser
attitude.

I wonder why you thought this would be appropriate to post.

~~~
UK-AL
His saying when you're a contracter. The recruiters are your outsourced sales
people

