Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation | Hacker News Reader

Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

mocko.org.uk

362 pointsmocko313 comments

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.

I was about to say the same until I saw that it got very funny about half of the way through.

Are you in the UK? If so, I'm seriously surprised this doesn't ring true. To me it exactly matches my experience both as a contractor and as an employer. As to who is being exploited here, it's the whole IT industry. They are rent-seekers, pure and simple, and they leech off our industry. They may not be sending children down mines, but that doesn't diminish the fact they are terrible companies and terrible people.

Really? Terrible companies and terrible people?

Do you know how agencies work? You do understand that employers contact them and ask them to find people, to organise their payroll, do relevant checks e.g. confirm right to work, security, skills etc. And these companies know they will be paying a % to the agency and this is because they dont want to do that work themselves they just want a competent worker in place asap.

Those same employers could spend their time searching job boards for suitable candidates but they don't want to so they outsource.

As for the OP saying they are taking 15% of his money. That's not the case. In most cases the Employer will agree a rate with the agency, so they will be a maximum of e.g £250 a day for the contractor and a 15% fee to the agency. So they are paying out around £290 per day to the agency. If the contractor was located directly do you think they would pay him/her £290 per day? No they would pay £250 as they know that is the going rate. they pay the agency fee so they dont have to go through the recruitment process e.g. post adverts, interview people (phone), interview (in person) skill check, right to work check etc.

It's funny to read complaints about rent-seeking and someone taking a percentage off the top on a tech forum, where that is the business model of a large portion of tech companies themselves. When authors complain about Amazon being rent-seekers "stealing" a percentage of authors' income, they don't tend to get a lot of sympathy here.

Rent seeking means taking a percentage without bringing any value. I'm on board with many of the complaints about Amazon, but it's clearly not the case to say they don't add value.

Of course many/most recruiters will also bring value, but it's a question of degree. If someone is recruiting for a technical position and they don't have the technical understanding to make any meaningful judgment of the candidate, it's reasonable to ask whether they are worth their fee. Obviously the extent to which that applies depends on the individual, the company, and the local business culture.

Value is subjective. The contractor doesn't see the value but the company using the agency does.

"Do you know how agencies work?"

Pretty much how the article was written.

  They are rent-seekers, pure and simple, and they
  leech off our industry.

I'm no fan of recruiters, but nothing stops you applying to the company directly, and nothing stops the company posting their own job ads.

Actually your CV can be hijacked by a recruiter, effectively keeping you out of a job.

Imagine this scenario: You get a call from a recruiter. They seem to have an interesting position/client/network so you send over your CV. A couple of months later you are actively looking for a job, so you make a list of cool startups in your area and send your CV and a customized cover letter. They all answer that they got your CV from the recruiter and that they can't afford the recruiter's fee. They can't hire you for 6 months/2 years/indefinitely, depending on the recruiters terms.

Oops.

Maybe I'm exaggerating?

Sounds like a good lawsuit against the recruiter.

Try proving it...the evidence is stuck in some corporate recruiter system.

The firm that said they had already received the CV and couldn't contract has all the evidence that is needed. Surely a firm would unite with a potential candidate to bring down scum recruiters?

I think that's an exaggeration.

That scenario could easily play out. However, if the employer genuinely has no connection to the candidate (other than having received their CV a couple of times, in different incarnations) then I don't see why they wouldn't pursue the candidate without the recruiter being in the loop.

I can tell you why...at my Last firm, the "first submitting agency" was tied to your name on FieldGlass. You could not get around it. It was the only system you could hire thru firmwide.

How about you provide the recruiter with a fake name, and use your real name with a more accurate CV to contact the clients directly?

Every place I've ever worked where I had any visibility into hiring, at the start of the search the company makes a decision as to who they want to deal with: hire an inside recruiter, retain a single outside recruiter (or several), or accept referrals from all outside recruiters. Once they've made that decision, when a recruiter sends them a resume, either the recruiter they're willing to work with and whose fee they've already decided they're willing to pay, or it isn't. In the latter case, they respond saying "we've got our own recruiting arrangements, thanks" and toss the resume. In that case, if the same resume comes in through a different channel later, they're under no obligation to the recruiter, and they'd be perfectly happy to hire you.

I suppose if they were working with a recruiter, and later ended the relationship, that could cause the problem you describe, but I haven't seen it happen (as a job seeker, a member of many interview panels, and as a hiring manager a couple times).

In theory, the recruiter isn't supposed to send resumes without the job seeker's approval, which means that when they do so, they've probably broken any agreement they have with the hiring company, so the company probably isn't bound by that agreement any longer. Whether you'd be able to convince the hiring company to take the risk of a lawsuit (that they'd presumably win) is another question, of course.

No, I've seen this happen where someone's resume was spammed by unscrupulous recruiters and made them effectively persona-non-grata.

> They all answer that they got your CV from the recruiter

I've never known recruiter scum to send out a CV without my name, contact details, and references stripped out.

Why would the company agree to a rate they can't afford?

And how can this possibly be enforceable when you haven't given that recruiter any exclusivity?

The same nothing that does not stop the companies actually seeking their own employees also does not stop 300 recruiters from copying their posted text, stripping out the original company-identifying information, and re-posting.

The noise added to the signal does make it significantly more difficult.

So rather than searching a central repository of job ads for opportunities specifically relevant to you, you have to visit individual company websites, find the "careers" or "jobs" section, and look for leads in a thousand different places.

I consider a no-recruiters policy to be absolutely essential for a job advertisements boards now. Everywhere else, you have to filter out key phrases like "recruiting", "our client", or "resume in Word format" just to find anything useful.

> "resume in Word format"

FYI, this will filter out a few companies as well. Qualcomm, for instance, insists on all resumes being Word or RTF for some reason.

From my perspective, that is Qualcomm's problem.

Actually if the company hired a recruiter there may indeed be reasons you can't apply directly and they can't post job ads themselves. I've seen companies make the mistake of accepting absurd NCAs giving recruiting agencies a quasi-exclusive right to applicants. It's not universally common but depending on the kind of contract you enter (and for some of them it's possible to do so informally just by giving them the go-ahead via e-mail) you can tie your hands.

The problem is in my experience is that:

1. Job advertised doesn't have the name of the company

2. Recruiter is CV harvesting with fake job ads - experienced that

3. Recruiter bait and switches - job is real but is an excuse to get you for something else

4. Recruiter gets wind of big company or gov organisation recruiting via competition, posts the same job spec then uses it to try and undercut while passing themselves off as the "official" recruiter. Had this with a NHS development role where the job I responded to turns out they had no business advertising for.

5. If the company is named then it's usually because said company only wants to use a recruiter. I've had this a couple of times where I've contacted a company directly but been asked to file my application with their official outsourced recruitment service.

6. Recruiter threatens "you'll never work in this town again" if you do somehow get to know who the company is simply because you ask.

Ninety nine percent of all recruiters I have dealt with have been the scum of the earth, even the so called reputable ones.

I truly hope Stackoverflow Careers destroys these businesses.

None of that excuses their behavior.

As a London based developer (VR these days), I have to say that I immediately recognise the hammed up picture this guy paints of IT recruiters in the UK.

I only ever found one recruitment company that I liked who I felt was consistently top notch when I was freelancing. They didn't ever call me unless I signaled I was looking for work and always negotiated better rates than I felt I was able to when I was first starting out. They were called Recruit Media, but they were later swallowed up by a larger company that I cannot vouch for.

Some former employees set up a new agency that continued in the same vein as Recruit Media - http://www.wearefutureheads.co.uk/. They focus on web and digital content creation specialists. They know what the acronyms mean as well as how to spell them properly. If you're looking for a no-bullshit web/digital recruiter in this in the UK then you could do a lot worse.

Disclaimer: I have never worked as a recruiter and I have no links with Futureheads beyond being placed by some of their staff and also using them to recruit freelancers for projects I have led.

Obviously it goes without saying that you're much better off developing your professional network, negotiating a good rate and going direct if you can.

Just felt compelled to write this to illustrate that not all of them are bad. Sadly I'd estimate that at least 99% of the firms here in the UK are complete time wasters.

they also did a great Hounds of Love cover

Top marks.

I think that might be the main difference.

I worked in Germany and in the US. The only time that recruiters got a tad annoying was when I was working in Germany and got 2-3 UK agencies. By far not as bad as the post makes it seem, but some slightly annoying things such as calling me on a Sunday evening, trying to give me prep speeches and overusing my name, script reading, trying to not tell me the client name, mispronouncing the skills they were looking for, ...

In the US, the recruiter eMails are more frequent, but usually pretty civilized. Especially the bigger companies (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google) that have their own in-house recruiters tend to be pleasant to work with.

When I was a freelancer in Germany (i.e. up to last year) most "recruiters" were scum. I can't speak about the ones that focus on permanent positions but nearly all of the "Projektvermittler" (i.e. glorified temp agencies) were trying to guilt me into lowering my rates for them (because they'd charge the client 2-3x on top of that), tried to get me to sign NCAs far beyond the scope of the project (which is legally unenforceable but backed up with serious threats that would make anyone think twice) and were about as dishonest and intransparent about the entire process as humanly possible.

Oh, and of course they would keep bombarding me with Java/XML projects just because my CV (which they doctored and redacted before sending it to the client) mentioned that I had once worked on a Java project (but specialised in something entirely different since).

The one project I actually followed through on turned out to be a total disaster. Other than that, all my work had been directly for clients without a third party -- and that worked out far better.

If you're an inexperienced solo freelancer and want to work for big corporations, sure, recruiters are the way to go. Other than that, IMO you're nearly always better off skipping the middle man and taking the entrepreneurial risk (which is fairly manageable if you don't allow the client to build up several months worth of outstanding payments).

> they'd charge the client 2-3x on top of that

They charged 3 times your rate? I hope that's hyperbole, because that's pretty insane. I get disgusted when a recruiter charges more than 15%. (The best stay below 5% for doing an excellent job, the worst piece of shit I've ever wasted time on turned out to charge over 30% for not doing his job.)

Generally speaking, I've never had an issue with in-house recruiters.

But I've experienced many of the things this guy is complaining about from 3rd party tech recruiters (I'm in the US), including being lied to (and not coming clean until it came up a few months into the contract), aggressively being contacted, dodging questions about company details, not providing job descriptions, lying about what the company needed so I was unprepared for interviews, not telling me anything about interviews, scheduling an interview for me for THE NEXT DAY at 7 pm that was a 3 hour drive away so I had no choice but to take a sudden personal day to go to the interview (I normally wouldn't do that, but I had two friends working there, and really wanted to check it out), etc.

One agency has been sending me emails and calling me multiple times and LinkedIn connection requests from four people in the company these past couple of weeks. They've attempted to contact me at least 12 times in two weeks, and the most they'll tell me in the messages is "an iOS Developer opportunity". With no information you are not going to make me want to get in touch with you, especially when I'm not looking for a new job.

BUUUUT.... I have had a couple good experiences with external recruiters, in fact my most recent experience was very positive and they negotiated better than I would have for the first salary in my career that I've been satisfied with.

I think it sticks out because, in the UK, we're not used to people just lying directly to our faces. And in the recruitment business it seems to happen a lot.

(Omission, elision and euphemism is the British way!)

As an aside, is it not fraudulent to lie in this way? For instance, altering resumes without permission, or promising a perk and a salary which the recruiter does not know exist or apply.

It probably is and there's all sorts of Data Protection rules being broken (that's even if they've registered with the Data Protection Registrar). But it's a mammoth and futile task to report possible violations and by the time it's looked into said recruiter has folded and started some other scam. I've tried this and failed miserably.

Fortunately I've not had to look for a job since 2003, happy where I am mostly, so my old CV's are probably long gone in disk crashes, failed backups or other purges. I've not been contacted by a recruiter for ~6 years now.

> in the UK, we're not used to people just lying directly to our faces

Ahem, speak for yourself. Go check out your local newsagent's daily national press shelves. Pages upon pages of lies and spin.

Hell, the Scottish versions of The Times, Express, Mail and Mirror group papers print contradicting headlines, one version for Scotland and one for England and Wales.

I hate to do the "we're less gullible in Scotland now" thing, but since the referendum we can spot bullshit from a mile off now.

As a ""cybernat"" and Wings reader, I very much agree - but that's more a sort of impersonal bulk lying, not someone calling you up personally by name and lying about job opportunities or the qualifications of candidates.

> As a ""cybernat"" and Wings reader

Heh...me too :)

Newspapers aren't people lying to your faces though.

In the UK in ~2000, the last time I was looking for a job without a reliable network, I had an awful experience due to recruiters.

I'd synched up with a recruiter, they scheduled me for a job interview at a swanky gentlemans club (not a strip bar, literally a club for men), in London. I don my old school uniform, for aged 18 I had not yet bought a suit, and printed some resumes at my Mums office and headed over to St James Place in a cab. I check in for the interview and get led into a room filled with desks, some occupied and others not. I take a seat and wait patiently for whatever comes next... ... ...

... The seats are all pretty much full now, and a man stands at the front of the room and gives a 3 slide presentation along the lines of: we can't tell you who our client is, you'll take a test, the top 10 will be offered a job with the client.

Being 18, I was great at tests! Everyone around me was in their mid 20-30's -- I'd been hacking for 3 years at this point, Linux user for ~18mo - I was ready. The test papers are laid in front of us, the presenter orders us to start, I'm done in the first 18 minutes, and sit patiently for the next 12 when the presenter says: "for those of you who have finished please walk your paper up here, for the rest you've 15 more minutes. Myself and two others rise, take our papers to the front and leave through the door and are directed to a lounge (let me tell you, gentle mans clubs are really fancy -- I don't take the gin and tonic offered to me).

Eventually the room is filled with the other test takers, probably 50 of us in total, and we mill around. I was too insecure to talk to anyone, everyone else was probably a little weirded out by the boy in the school uniform!

Some 20 minutes later the presenter enters the room and announces 11 names to stay behind, I was one of them! (What kind of story would this be were I not;)) it was explained to us that we'd be given a short interview. These were conducted three at a time, the presenter and his two associates would take an interview each.

I was in the second three and I had observed that the first three had short conversations, signed some papers, shook hands with their interviewer and then left the room. My interviewer was the presenter. I can't recall the questions, they were about my test paper, but after a couple of them he laid the paper down and looked at me and asked: "did you cheat?", I answered: "no", and he went on to explain that I got a perfect score, the next highest had received about 80% (if memory serves there were ~50 multiple choice questions and ~5 questions where we had to write out commands: how to compile Linux kernels, etc). He shook my hand and led me out, no papers were signed.

And that was it.

I went back to the legal office my mum worked at, recounted the story, and she became so furious -- she believed I'd been subjected to ageism.

I certainly do not mean to suggest all recruiters are this short sighted, and I'm very proud of where my life has taken me thus far (early yc alum, early leader at twitch, amongst other things), but this experience was so negative that I reasoned to avoid recruiters at all costs. Now, I know the way you find a job is to watch the companies you think are doing a great job, working on tech you care about, and reach out directly to them to find out how you can help.

We can kill the predatory recruiters by starving them!

> she believed I'd been subjected to ageism

I would suspect more "we don't want to hire someone who thinks it's appropriate to show up in a literal school uniform to a professional interview" more than ageism, per se.

If his skills were that good they should be able to afford to sponsor him with a new suit.

It's easier to train a professional and prepared candidate in some fraction of job skills than is it to train a very skilled candidate in business proprieties, especially for an interview that starts with a multiple-choice test.

I live in Netherland, but I'm surprised how often I'm contacted by UK recruiters for Dutch jobs. Apparently they've been expanding their market. I don't have any terrible experiences with them as far as I recall, but I never remember their names and haven't gotten any jobs through them.

I have had some pretty awful experiences with Dutch recruiters, but also some pretty good ones.

I'm having very mixed feelings about the recruiter that got me my current gig: on the one hand, she was way too pushy and I'm pretty sure she lied to me, and their rate is higher than what the client allows (they're got some cumbersome way to work around that), but on the other hand, what I get is significantly higher than what I got the previous time I worked for the same client (though one of the best and most professional recruiters I've met), so she pushed them even harder than she pushed me, and that's paying off for me too. And it is a really nice gig. The one getting screwed here is not me, and the client is a major bank, so I'm not feeling terribly sorry for them (though I do wonder if I should inform them of the recruiter's overly high rate; is that honest or vindictive?).

Still, it'd be nice if we could do without them. Shouldn't the internet help us cut out all those middlemen?

Maybe things are different in the UK, but in Canada I've never had to rely on a recruiter to find good work. I've interacted with them a few times and yes, it wasn't pleasant, but they hardly had the market cornered. My impression has been that those who rely on recruiters are unable to navigate the job market well themselves. It's not a forced reliance.

In London these days you don't have to depend on third-party recruiters, but they will contact you anyway. Wayyyyy more than I saw in either Toronto or Vancouver.

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

Yet this article instead of getting flagged into oblivion got upvoted to #1 as of now. Could that be that HN readers' experience with recruiters mirrors the author's experience?

i think some people read only the title and voted it up assuming it's about aggressive recruiting spam on services like linkedin.

> assuming it's about aggressive recruiting spam on services like linkedin.

... and they were right. That is mentioned, if you read right through.

I think the complaint is that the author could have instead made this argument in a rational, not irate, not mean spirited and substantiated way. What would have been so bad about that?

It wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable to read, for one.

Would have probably been, say, actually correct though...

chin up - it was funny, and behind the humour is some truth, irrespective of whether you find its delivery in poor taste

I think you've completely missed the humour in this post. It describes in a funny, sarcastic and sardonic article just about every experience I and my dev/IT pals have had with IT recruitment agencies.

It's not about in-house recruiters like you have at FB/Google, it's about the scumbags that hold potential employees to ransom and act as self appointed gatekeepers to jobs that might or might not exist. As an experiment why not hit up jobserve and try applying for some of these agency advertised jobs (under a fake persona), I don't think you've ever experienced the humiliation and frustration of dealing with these wankers.

It's Friday, go have a beer, relax and rediscover your sense of humour.

"It's Friday, go have a beer, relax and rediscover your sense of humour."

Oh good, the "you didn't think this was funny therefore your sense of humor sucks" logic.

I guess its much more "fun and interesting" to work yourself into a rage over things you made up versus just not thinking those things are funny...?

> Oh good, the "you didn't think this was funny therefore your sense of humor sucks" logic.

That's taking it quite personally. We can agree that Mocko's sardonic style isn't everyone's cup of tea. If you don't like it, accept that others do and that he's really not going to change it for you. He makes it abundantly clear that he is in a position to ignore (at best) or belittle (at worst) people who disagree with him. So move on.

"rediscover your sense of humour"

"Oh good, the "you didn't think this was funny therefore your sense of humor sucks" logic."

"That's taking it quite personally."

What do you even say to someone in this situation...?

But, just as the OP is entitled to an opinion, I'm entitled to say that his opinion is a bunch of horseshit. Sorry that this is so offensive to you?

Are you in the UK and have you dealt with a large number of recruiters? I would be super surprised to meet someone who has a good sample size of working with UK recruiters who doesn't have similar thoughts on the subject.

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...?

I think the author being deliberately hyperbolic for humour's sake, playing up lots of British stereotypes etc for laughs or a bit of catharsis. It's a Friday afternoon "I've had a shit week" blog post and it wasn't to my tastes, but I wouldn't necessarily assume the author has some problems.

Exactly. His post is rather long to be only an outburst of angriness. I think he is pretty pissed off by the recruitement process and decided to take it up a notch in order to make it grotesque.

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"?

This is why I dislike them - I get sent jobs from recruiters and it irks me to not know the cut they are taking (and I can only guess it is above their actual value). If they were completely open about it, maybe it would improve the state of the industry?

Recruiters sometimes lie or exaggerate. That's nothing new. Actually, they have to do it, to show their bosses that they're getting warm bodies into interviews.

Did your co-worker actually take this job, without doing the due diligence of reading the contract and the offer letter?

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.

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

If you are able to produce anything or contribute at all you are getting rolled. Find a new job.

There is no reason you should be that badly paid up here. Look around for a new place.

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.

£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.

Absolutely none of that makes up for the abysmal pay, though. You can easily get a software development job making much, much more than that, with most, if not all of the same benefits.

I disagree. A job you love is a lot better than a job you hate. I agree $30k is ridiculously low, but if it pays enough to live the life you want, why should you get more if that would make you hate your life? There's no bigger blessing in life than to get paid for doing something you love.

The most important thing though is that he's learning: that means he will still be able to get better opportunities later. Once the learning stops, it's time to get out.

A job you love quickly can turn into a job you hate if you're scraping by.

Further, I seriously question that a different job would be one that they hate.

You can always leave once you start hating your job. Why leave now just because there's a chance you might hate it in the future?

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.

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.

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.

So... Pitbull Studio (Epic UK) for something using Unreal Engine 4?

We don't have an international union, so I don't exactly have any leverage here, but I want you to be paid more. Do you seriously think that you are so far below the median level of skill for a C++ programmer with a degree and two years of experience, that you should be paid so little?

Go. Look for another job, and find out just what they would be willing to pay you. With an offer in hand that you could accept on its own merits, go to your current employer and, without mentioning anything about your other offer, ask that your pay rate be reevaluated, to match your skills in the current market. If you don't get a significant payrise, then at that point, you can decide whether it is worth more to have extra cash in your hand, or to keep a job that you know you like, but pays peanuts--stale peanuts at that. Remember, you don't have to accept any offer you don't like.

For now, you seem to have decided that you like your current job £15-20k/year more than anything else you think you could possibly get.

You're getting fucked. Hard. But that's what the games industry is all about. Fucking developers over, and then replacing them with fresh faced new grads who think it'd be just spiffy to work in games.

Not in London it isnt. £15k is below average wage, way below for London. Unless this IT job was excel monkey or perhaps keyboard cleaner original commenter is full of shit.

I know trainee developers (no education but some skills) who have started off on £21k and that is low for IT in London. I find it hard to believe that any IT role in London was filled for £15k by anyone other than the most junior of people.

He didn't say that was the salary. He said the final salary was that much _less_ than what the recruiter said it would be.

That low, in London?! I was under the impression that London was a very expensive city, and I'd expect salaries to reflect that. £21k in a city like that sounds bizarre. Or is it after taxes, including tons of secondary benefits?

Even for entry level that seems way low. Unless of course you're referring to typical IT support and tech role, not SE.

I think you misunderstood the comment.

"£15k less salary than advertised in the offer"

Means the salary was X but he was paid (X - 15k).

I think the $23k was a pound to dollar conversion of the amount less than advertised.

To be fair your friend got fucked over but predominantly because he didn't read the contract. If he was offered £40k and then a contract came and he signed it without checking, his fuck up. If he didnt sign a contract and moved cities on the word of an individual he fucked up.

If he didnt attend and interview or discuss these perks prior to signing a contract he fucked up.

If he was genuinely misled then he can actually make a complaint and pursue it but it sounds like he didnt do much checking at all.

It sounds like he read the contract/offer and that it wasn't at all like he had previously discussed with the recruiter.

Ah now that is different, I interpreted it as he took the job and then found out after it was a done deal.

Healthcare is a benefit in the UK? I thought it was socialized?

The NHS provides mostly excellent free health care. (Some non-urgent but unplanned stuff can be frustrating).

But you can also pay privately for treatment. I'm not sure why you would chose to do so - you get a private room but not much else. (There's a possibility you get slightly worse outcomes)

Dental isn't free even on the NHS (although many people get exemptions) so paying gets you better dentists, with better wait times, and more cosmetic options.

He's obviously very hyperbolic, but when you leave the sphere of elite IT (Google/Facebook) and head into the folks who are in other geographic locations (and not willing to move to tech hotspots) suddenly the skills in demand and the positions available become overwhelmingly large enterprise type IT jobs.

The recruiters who are working for these companies are, to some extent, as the author describes. The real reason the industry is so slimy on that end is because enterprise companies are too old fashioned to view technology workers as people who deserve to be paid salaries on par or exceeding middle managers. Therefore, the salaries simply aren't high enough to attract talent beyond H1B indentures and fakers who are horribly unproductive. This creates an IT department that isn't very good or effective, and thus isn't thought of as deserving high pay. Never mind that the C-level management at large, established companies is, for the most part, hopelessly disconnected from what it takes to have an effective technology capability at a company. If you don't agree with me on this, then ask yourself why SAP and Oracle continue to make so much money selling huge software implementations that are known to never work and always go over budget.

> The real reason the industry is so slimy on that end is because enterprise companies are too old fashioned to view technology workers as people who deserve to be paid salaries on par or exceeding middle managers. Therefore, the salaries simply aren't high enough to attract talent beyond H1B indentures and fakers who are horribly unproductive. This creates an IT department that isn't very good or effective, and thus isn't thought of as deserving high pay.

Absolutely true.

Simplifying a little, there are companies here that everybody wants to leave and companies that everybody wants to join. It's difficult to leave the first category since the employee's skills have atrophied (see https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2015/09/how-to-be-awesome/).

This is absolutely on point. As I said in another comment, often, HR departments outsource the entire search to recruiters. Here in the US, the typical cut is 20 to 75%. For those recruiters who have negotiated higher cuts like 75%, it is usually due to an executive-level relationship...but they don't keep the full 75%, they then sub-source the talent from secondary or even tertiary recruiters.

So perhaps the worker is well off at 100/hr, but this is a huge loss to the company -- three extra parties have taken a cut just because the HR manager didnt want to vet their own people. If the skill-set is worth more than 100/hr, then the company cant recruit the right talent, and complains of "shortages" whereas in reality, the "shortage" is because too many third parties have their hand in the cookie-jar leaving too little to pay the actual market wage.

Since it wasn't stressed yet to you: The article talks about recruiters from outside of tech companies, not recruiters at FB or Google. I have to say I'm doubtful you "know" hundreds of recruiters (inside or outside the companies), unless you mean you got an email from hundreds of recruiters. If you just reject the emails, you probably won't get the experience described in the article.

I've been fine with recruiters until i came to berlin and somehow let my phone number slip to the uk recruiters. Now, I'm trying to figure out how to block all uk numbers, nothing I can say will make them stop cold calling me, and they're so aggressive it's hard to escape a call without being rude. I really don't get why uk recruiters in particular are so awful, the German ones are fine.

My theory is probably wrong, but it is possible that this article is a way for the author to signal his skills/worth/value. Someone with low skills and who's desperate to find a job is highly unlikely to publicly complain about the amount of attention he gets from recruiters, so by actually doing it, he signals that he has high value.

But I do believe the more likely explanation remains that this guy got angry after getting harassed repeatedly by recruiters and decided to do something about it.

He's not commenting on the in-house recruiting staffs at the major corporations, he's commenting on the third-party (usually contract) recruitment industry. They're not the same; the lack of knowledge and perverse incentives are much less an issue with direct recruitment.

It's my experience that the third-party recruiting business is almost as terrible in the US as the author describes in the UK, though sans the oddball Brit dialect. There also doesn't seem to be as much of the third-party contract scam going; if the recruiter is a contracting agency, they'll tell you that up front. But the incoherent and misspelled emails, the rampant spam, the lack of knowledge of the roles they're recruiting for, yes that all rings true in the US too.

"Recruiter" in UK context means an independent agency, not the actual hiring staff at companies who nearly always handle themselves professionally.

> I know hundreds of recruiters having been at Google and Facebook and not a single one of them thinks like this at all.

Congrats. That must be how the entire industry works then </sarcasm>

> 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

Yeah, bull-shit, if you think every engineering job is in a comfy office with great pay and great working conditions, you are seriously delusional. I've worked at places where this wasn't the case.

If everything was all sunshine and rainbows all the time, companies wouldn't have bad reputations, or have a hard time hiring new people. But plenty do have a bad reputation, and plenty do scare off new recruits. That's kind of the entire point of sites like GlassDoor.

> 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...?

First off, it's his opinion, and his blog, totally his right to have unsupported claims. But considering how many comments actually support his claims, it's my belief you are severely disillusioned as to the true state of your industry.

I'm impressed at your infinite snark and sarcasm to actual arguments ratio. When you START your post with a combination of intentionally misunderstanding my point with the sarcasm tag than it is literally impossible to take you seriously.

To end the post with saying "you are severely disillusioned as to the true state of your industry." is just like, jesus man, are you going for some sort of insufferability award? Go outside. Perhaps there is something more rewarding there than grasping at straws to get mad at a stranger on the internet...

"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."

It was at this point that you lost me. You've clearly been lucky enough to never had a crappy job.

"You've clearly been lucky enough to never had a crappy job."

I'm getting a lot of REALLY bizarre straw men responses to my posts but this one has to take the cake.

You managed to turn me saying that people should stop bitching about IT recruiters calling them for offices jobs that pay well and have great conditions ito a conclusion that I have CLEARLY never had a crappy job? I...what? How? How does a human brain take my input and produce your output? I'm blown away.

I'll give you a hint. No recruiter called me for my crappy jobs. I went and applied for them. Sorry this doesn't fit into your projection that you were clearly qualified to make from that single thing I said.

Once again, you've clearly never experienced a recruiter trying to get you for a crappy job. Consider yourself lucky.

And since you haven't, you really need to stop telling other people what they can and cannot complain about. Seriously, at what salary level are people not allowed to complain about work conditions any more? What exactly are the conditions that an office has to have before one can no longer complain? Free soda? A snack machine?

Firstly, Google tells me outright they do not source from outside recruiters, which the OP is speaking about. Perhaps it is different at executive levels or outside the US.

Secondly, Google is a world-class, forward-thinking company so they are probably not representative of the rest of the millions of companies out there. That is like saying..."of course 100% of companies provide free lunch, after all hundreds of departments at Google provide free lunch." It is just silly.

Finally, the OP is not upset about ending up with "a fantastic offer for an engineering job in a comfortable office." How many engineers even have offices these days? Which company do you even work for?

The OP is upset about rent-seeking behavior of outside recruiters. Often, HR departments outsource the entire search to recruiters. Here in the US, the typical cut is 20 to 75%. For those recruiters who have negotiated higher cuts like 75%, it is usually due to an executive-level relationship...but they don't keep the full 75%, they then sub-source the talent from secondary or even tertiary recruiters.

Lets take an example -- the worker makes 100/hr, the tertiary (recruiter who actually found the talent) gets 25/hr, the secondary (who vetted from multiple tertiaries) gets 25/hr, the primary (who plays golf with the CIO) gets 25/hr. OK, perhaps the worker is well off at 100/hr, but this is a huge loss to the company -- three extra parties have taken a cut just because the HR manager didnt want to vet their own people.

Its an over-the-top, funny rant in prototypical UK style on the state of outsourced recruiting - not in house recruiting (which has its own, different issues).

A lot of the behavior mentioned here is awfully familiar in the US.

> or sex workers in Southeast Asia

OT, but you don't have exploited sex workers where you live?

I'm in the US, actively looking for work, and this rang VERY true. These guys can be relentless, with ethics and tactics a professional spammer would admire.

Agreed, at first I thought they were trying to make a point, then it seems to lapse into some sort of cartoonish straw man just-for-entertainment depiction, but then it veers back to a serious conclusion along the lines "and this is why these companies shouldn't exist. The End". It's a bit confusing.

I don't think you should comment on articles you haven't read. Also, I suspect your knowledge of sex workers in Southeast Asia is entirely theoretical or, at best, as a client.

There are a lot of people who are not happy with their informatics jobs, especially in the UK, and I think recruiters are a significant part of the reason. As you can probably guess from the slang, the particular situation the author is describing is much worse there.

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.

Reminds me of an ex-boss of mine, who got a visit by a couple shysters from an SEO company.

His first questions was: "What's your company's name again?"

clickety-click!

"Then, would you mind explaining why your company is not right on the top of a Google search?"

It was a mighty short visit.

Hah. We had something similar one day on a team I used to work with in London. The agent had obviously been given the task of poaching a developer from our team but was utterly failing at it.

One by one, all 16 of us got a phone call at our desks, with no more than a few seconds between each call. By the third call we all knew what was going on so we all just laughed and told the guy to sod off.

Such a bungled effort - even if someone had wanted to take up the offer it would have been impossible at that point to say anything other than "LOL, no thanks buddy"

Now we could say 5 years Go experience.

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.

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

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

In the fall of 2002 (after the dot-com bubble burst) I was laid off and looking for a job. One of the more memorable job postings had a requirement of 5 years .Net experience.

I'm way younger but this sounds about right. Every once in awhile I get a recruiter trying to add me on LinkedIn but nothing like the harassment and weirdness described in the article.

Then again I'm also in the US. Sounds like the UK could really use some help with these guys, assuming the source is good.

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.

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.

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.

How can he get that irate at being ignored? Isn't that the standard response to cold emails? I ignore a lot more than I respond to.

I had once a recruiter calling me on my workplace's number. He had sent me an email couple of hours before, that I hadn't noticed (it was during work hour), and for some reason he got super carried away about some opportunity and wanted to make sure I would apply through him or something.

Sorry to hear about your dog. Hope he/she gets better.

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".

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.

It should be noted, this is often how the US federal government works as well, to satisfy the requirement that they consider veterans for jobs.

Yeah, I get the feeling that many many government (and healthcare?) job advertisements are only posted to meet regulations and there's already someone lined up internally.

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.

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.

> 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

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.

I'd go in and give them my CV at the interview.

I once (early 2000s) discovered during the interview the recruiter had edited the CV I sent. I showed my own copy and the interviewer and I ended up putting them next to each other and identifying the differences.

It's better if you only hand out a pdf version.

pdf is still editable.

Yeah, but they're often too stupid to know how.

There was a time when I obeyed requests for a Word version of my CV, but that time is now gone.

> Lies

I've been in the Dublin market for a couple years and the amount of bait and switch they do it's unbelievable.

I had a recruiter here in Toronto create a CV for me despite the fact that I no longer keep one (I keep my LinkedIn profile up to date and can replicate a CV if I want to, but I don’t want to). I fired him the next day, saying he was not going to represent me because he didn’t listen to me.

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."

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

> "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

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

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.

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.

If I've got a friend I know is actively looking for work, and I think the recruiter is not a total shithead, then I will sometimes mention that friend.

Of course the friends looking for work tend to be either just starting out, or have been at the same company for so long that they forgot how job hunting works. Anyone else gets something good pretty soon.

As it happens, I know a beginning (but smart) PHP/javascript developer with a bit of C# experience in Amsterdam. Likes CSS.

>Oh! Well! I'm so glad to hear that all your friends have jobs, Cloud!

The funny part being that often it is the case that all of the tech worker's tech friends do already have jobs.

Yes, but that doesn't stop the recruiter from waxing passive-aggressive when you tell them that.

It'd be hilaribad if it weren't so irksome.

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.

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.

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.

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.

On top of this, make the work environment nice enough that your staff will recommend you.

My current job was very strongly recommended to me by a friend and former colleague (who also got a small referral bonus when I was hired), and I'm pleased to say he was not exaggerating.

I've been honest with friends about about the pros and cons of my workplaces. The cons have normally seemed quite easy to fix, but nobody responsible cared to fix it (unfortunately, this part is not easy to fix).

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."

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

This is completely common in America

Except for the use of the term "fortnight". :)

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.

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.

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

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.

Interesting. A similar thing happened when I moved to New York City, it might just be a new node appearing in a network.

In London no one has any friends to begin with.

It's common in the US, sure, but it rarely works. It's not that we don't all know a few people we'd be glad to work with again, it's that they're mostly happy and well-compensated where they are. Offering me an extra few grand isn't going to change that, and it isn't nearly enough to make splitting it with the candidate a game-changer either. Occasionally someone you want will be available during a bust (which often means during a hiring freeze, too) or under some unusual personal circumstances, but it doesn't happen often enough to make up for attrition much less grow a team.

Yes.

We ran some back-of-the-envelope numbers last week at the office. Wolfram provided us with a ballpark figure that there are about 70k "IT industry professionals" in London region. Of this, 10-15% (so maybe 12k) are the good ones, and absolutely everybody is fighting for them.

There are more than 10k tech industry companies in London alone. [0]

Competition for talent is fierce, to say the least - and every single startup I know of is hiring. Us included.

0: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-06/10/tech-city-uk-... (24% of 47k)

Actually the solution he suggested might not be helpful at all as this recruitment methodology may lead gradually over time to favoritism, cliquism, cronyism, tribalism you name it in the workplace as everyone is vouching their friends and acquaintances to key and select positions inside the organization to help them cement and consolidate their power and hinders the progress of the organization as a whole in the process.

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.

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.

In the US I've been approached by a lot of headhunters/recruiters from the finance industry, usually throwing salary numbers at me before even saying what it is I would be doing for the world. I agree that the tech industry is mostly directly advertised, as it should be.

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.

Thoughtful of him.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I never said they didn't work hard.

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.

I would have to add to what you've said, that turnover in recruiting agencies seems to be huge, if my LinkedIn feed is any indicator. They seem to move between jobs as much as many contract developers. And of course, some still will exit the business entirely.

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.

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

Sounds like a place I wouldn't want to be working at anyway.

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.

more if you as an individual are not good as negotiating (and in IT there can be a higher % of people with less than stellar social skills) then these people will negotiate on your behalf. Its their job to negotiate so if they want to place you you tell them you want $x per day and if they dont get it for you you don't do the job.

They are more likely to negotiate against you than for you. They will tell you the company is offering less than what they actually are, and they will tell the company that you are asking for more than you actually are. Then, if it's at all close, they don't have to actually negotiate, they can find the middle on their own and both of you are happy with the outcome because you didn't know the original set-point.

Yes - you might assume 'well, they get a percentage of what I get so our interests are aligned'. Sure, they do, but their downside if they don't place you is that they get a percentage of nothing, whereas their downside if they place you for less than your value is they get a percentage of a lot of money instead of a percentage of a load of money. Also, they are hoping to work with the hiring company again, whereas they will likely never have to speak to you after you're hired, so who are they going to do a favor for?

So no, your interests really aren't aligned, and they will screw candidates on salary negotiation, take the slight hit on commission, and then make it up in volume.

Better to place 2 people at 90% than 1 person at 100%, especially if you have a quota that will get you fired if you place less than 2 people.

Have you tried to negotiate without a recruiter?

Many companies are now sharing some of the recruiter costs with the employee if they go direct. In London [currently] it is an employee market, so this is a simple and effective incentive.

The workers are poorly pad because they accept the offers. The recruiters are there because companies like them, I don't know exactly why? Maybe the whole procedure results in lower salaries?

Angel list with open salary range policy, glassdoor, friends, BATNA

Open salary ranges tend towards the lower end, out of necessity.

Why not have a lawyer help negotiate on your behalf instead? Employment contracts can get complicated enough that you might want to consult with one regardless.

Eh. If you can't negotiate yourself then you're still going to end up in trouble down the road when Shithead isn't there to negotiate for you in your job.

You simply find another shithead. ie: another job.

The recruiter's percentage of what you get is small enough that an extra couple thousand or whatever is much smaller to him than to you and, anyway, closing three deals a little lower than he'd like is better than closing one on the high end.

Have you ever met a recruiter who actually does this? In my experience, recruiters are about matching companies and people for interviews, and the handoff occurs there. I've never heard of someone having the recruiter negotiate on their behalf.

This argument doesn't scan at all. Employer's compensation maximum being equal, you'd be able to negotiate a 25-30% higher salary without the recruiter's cut being a part of total compensation.

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.

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.

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.

s/their E-mails/when they call three days in a row and don't take not picking up and not responding to voicemail or e-mail for a hint/

London, this week

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.

>> 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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

https://twitter.com/actualrecruiter

https://twitter.com/erowidrecruiter

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Had a recruiter email me recently saying:

"JASON knowledge is an advantage..."

Yep. I still don't know jason

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....

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!

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.

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

Are there different ways to pronounce it? Or did he pronounce it in Dutch?

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?

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

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.

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

If your API receives 1 spam request a day its no biggie.

If it receives a few million (eg. via LOIC or whatever), its disabling.

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)

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

https://github.com/thoughtbot/liftoff/pull/178#issuecomment-...

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

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

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

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.

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.

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!

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?

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.

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

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

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

> 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.

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

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

Does that stop the ones that spam you on Github?

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

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

I turned off my voicemail because of this.

I just left my old number (that I don't use anymore) in linkedin

That's still not good enough. I've had recruiters look at who my current employer is then call the public phone number of the company (the reception) and ask for my name. I'm not joking. Happened more than once.

Recruiters would call the office switchboard and ask to be transferred to my extension while I sat on a trading desk next to a managing director (read: dude who brings in major $$$ for the firm).

Seriously awkward conversations afterwards.

I have UK recruiters calling the number listed on our website and try to get patched through to my employees. And when I tell them that they just called the boss, they're not even embarrassed and just try again the next day. Only stopped when I called their boss.

I don't usually object to recruiters and haven't had any major issues with them (one saying "I notice you have Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP experience... what about LAMP, do you have any experience with that?" did make me laugh though!) but one did go too far and when they couldn't get hold of me, Googled my name, found my name on an info page for a club night I DJed at, called the promoter's number (who was a friend of mine) and told him he urgently needed to get hold of me regarding work. Needless to say both I and my friend were pretty p*ed off (he used the line "come on, I know the best people are hard to track down" as if that made it okay) and he didn't get the time of day from me!

This is common practice in London. I stopped answering calls with the reception ID as they are normally just recruiters doing what you mention. The problem is that somehow they get my mobile number and stealing contacts as they themselves move between recruitment agencies is also common practice.

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.

I'm fond of the Intercept tone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IC_SIT.ogg

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. :)

time to finally implement my non profit side-project

bad-recruiters.com

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!"

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

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

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10399372 and marked it off-topic.

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.

> 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.

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."?

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

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.

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

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?

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...).

>> 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.

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

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