Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
alexchesser.medium.com
alexchesser.medium.com
"Hey ____. Before we move forward, can you provide me with the company name, a job description, and the expected compensation. Regards"
"Hi, thanks for the message. I would appreciate as much detail as you can via message. Interested in location, compensation, and what specific problems they need help solving. Thanks!"
I don't take a call unless the work description is specific enough. I don't want to work on your "backend". If asked, I tell them my comp expectation is min +50k over what I currently make. And I sure as hell am not moving to the bay area.
But more practically: if I decline after the first, I don’t get the other 4 emails they have queued up for me
If you have an existing relationship with them, then it could be considered rude, but it would depend on your relationship.
For me: Linkedin inmail->email->cold text within 3 minutes.
When I told the guy that was pretty unprofessional. His response "it's just text mate".
Escalated to jeff at amazon. That got his attention pretty quickly.
I still get recruiters trying to recruit me to amazon.
My LinkedIn profile clearly shows I work at AWS…
A number of recruiters are also just bad at their job. I worked as a .Net developer 12 years ago, but most recruiters apparently aren’t smart enough to figure out that not only is my knowledge horrible out of date, it might also not interest me anymore.
Works most of the time for me.
I've found that this makes 80-90% of recruiters go completely silent. For some reason, asking for this basic information scares off the vast majority of recruiters.
I'm genuinely unsure what I - or they - get out of dragging this out into a screenful of blah blah blah.
If they do name a number and you reply it's too low, they again go into a canned response of "we're willing to reach (++x) for the right candidate", which is just as much bullshit as before. You'll complete an interview cycle and get the lowball offer of (original x).
TLDR they'll lie about comp and never completely answer you.
On the other hand, because of commission, it is in the recruiter's interest to get you as much money as possible so you might get a better offer via them than you would if you went direct.
It's never anonymized and simply pasting it into Google will almost always get you a lead on the hiring company.
Another lead is if they give you the company location. There is only one company on the planet, for example, that has R&D offices in both Mossvile and Aurora, Illinois.
I want them to understand that I need to know up-front if the position is interesting enough to be worth investing my time in at all. I could sacrifice my time and energy to assuage their fears, but every time I've done that in the past ten years there has been zero return on investment.
A reader might, at this point, optimistically point out that the next recruiter could be different. This reader would be correct. That could indeed be the case! Yet every time I wind up deciding to try the optimistic approach I wind up on a phonecall in which I learn that the company isn't someone I want to work for, the JD isn't one I actually want to work on, the comp isn't nearly enough, or some combination thereof. Generally the comp is so far off it has no change to even be negotiated to something I would consider. Often they try to sell me on a 40%-60% pay cut, because a slice of that is worth a lot to them (it's happened twice this month).
At this point I'm quite tired of paying optimism's price to assuage the fears of recruiters. The kindness is not returned. I understand others might choose differently.
This isn't my experience at all, having worked with recruiters both as a hirer and hiree. Recruiters typically are looking to close as many positions as possible, making money on volume. Their incentives are to spend as little time as they can getting candidates just enough so they say yes.
They typically are paid a percentage of a candidates first year salary. At first glance this might seem to mean they're motivated to get you as much as possible. In reality it means that the effort to get an extra $20k, which might make a big difference for the candidate, only results in an extra e.g. $2000 for them. They're not going to spend time on that that could be spent on closing another candidate, and getting another full commission, if they think the candidate will accept either way.
The money a recruiter is paid also often comes from the same budget a potential signing bonus would. The fact that they take 10% of the first year salary makes companies less forthcoming with extra money for the candidate.
Up to a point. They get a fraction of the marginal increase in salary, and they’d much sooner “close the sale” than risking having someone else fill the job to try and get an extra 500$ commission.
It’s the same story with real estate agents: selling your house for an extra 20k might be a lot to you but to the agent it’s an extra 400$ in commission (exact percentage varies). In other words, it’s hardly worth risking the seller losing interest or working an extra 2–3 weeks for so little.
In non rush times though where tables didn’t get filled when people left, it made a lot more sense to play up dessert.
> Real estate agent-owned homes are on the market longer and sell for more (2005)
As someone who has been trying to buy a house on and off for a few years now, thank you for caring about this.
Unlikely. Its way better for the recruiter to focus on the quantity of hires rather than trying to increase the salaries of a smaller number of them. It takes way more work and makes them less money to help increase your salary by 20% than just finding another role and hire.
It's in the recruiters best interest to maximize their throughput in placing candidates, and they're commission is skimming money off the top of the salary you could have collected if you'd gone direct.
No, the company would pay you your salary and keep the commission itself, it would not have given you that commission simply because you went directly with them.
https://freakonomics.com/2008/02/real-estate-agents-revisite...
It's in their interest, yes - but it's not worth more than closing a deal quickly.
They generally make more money by seating 3 hires at new companies for 100k than they do seating 1 hire for 300k.
Because of the downside risk of possibly losing a deal, and further - because they're paid over time as an employee remains with a company, it's much more beneficial to place many people quickly than it is to place a few people for more money.
To my eyes, thirty minutes is a pretty expensive way to find out if a position is in line with my comp and the company one I want to work for. It could just as easily be handled in thirty seconds.
Last month I had a quick 20-minute call with a recruiter who couldn't tell me anything about the company or the position that I hadn't found in thirty seconds of searching. This is not an unusual experience, unfortunately. The only explanation for that call I can find is that the recruiter sincerely expected to impress me with a phone sales approach.
Well, that's not a problem - the whole point of this reply template is to filter out the useless cold-calling spam without wasting time in interviews, so that 80-90% of recruiters going silent is exactly what you want. The only reason why you respond at all is to give a chance to the 10-20% of serious offers.
I'm on a subreddit that talks about my profession and basically all interview processes are now broken in my industry. A lot of just nonsense, waste of time stuff. You hire the professional prep companies so you know the right buzzwords to say and how to show you follow the "framework", but almost nothing from the interview actually really determines how well you'll do day to day.
Instead of going to an interview, they should just call my dev team and scrum master and ask how things run with me and use their feedback as the evaluation.
Protip: If you want senior people to respond, you should probably include that information up front.
I've done several interviews at places only to get to the stage we're talking money and suddenly it becomes clear they were expecting to pay about a third to half of what I currently make for someone in a senior position. Each time I think it could genuinely save a lot of time and effort (and thus money) by just being up front about that stuff.
I've "doubled" my salary plenty of times through this policy.
But the real secret sauce is referrals. Companies always prioritize a strong referral, ignoring mediocre interview performance, and will even skip the reference checks so I don't have to bug my network.
Or share your data.
I made a throwaway, but not obnoxious email on my domain just for recruiters a few years ago, so I could try tracking who I was talking to.
Via three consecutive third-party recruiters I started getting cold calls and e-mails from recruiters I’d never contacted, never met, or never before engaged with from agencies that weren’t the ones I spoke to or sent a CV to. Soon I started getting other completely irrelevant email. Then the robocalls came. I later found that email address among five different data leak sources.
Just so happened to be a different popular recruiting company that has “Cyber” in the name.
I keep all my interviewing data isolated from my private data.
That was the reason: to understand where my data was leaking from, not to duck recruiter calls.
It made me wonder whether reverse 911[1] calls, which are used to warn about hazmat situations, fire evacuations, and other public safety issues, show up similarly.
I also wonder EU countries, including Sweden, would actually allow telecom providers to share that information with other parties such as emergency services or whether that would be against data protection laws.
Besides, prior to the pandemic, there was also a high likelihood that I wouldn't be at home, if you called me on a random day at a random time, so even if my phone were tied to my address, it wouldn't be a good idea for emergency services to rely on that.
If they leave a voicemail, I'll get a transcript.
There are too many nuisance calls, there are too many people (and businesses) falling for scams, and there seems to be nothing telcos or governments are willing to do about it.
It's pretty much the same thing that's happened to Usenet and Email (and is now happening to the Web as well). John Gilmore's lament about crackdowns on open email relays is heartfelt, but ultimately naive. If I'm remembering correctly (and I'm probably not), it ran something like: We created a way for anyone anywhere in the world to talk to anyone else, and it wasn't an accident. The problem is of course, bad actors, and lowering costs means enabling vastly more bad actors.
Figuring out how to impose highly asymmetric costs --- and not necessarily financial ones --- on unwanted communication attempts, will win this.
The technical problem is reasonably straightforward. Generating widespread adoption is the real challenge, IMO.
Monetary or social costs were both asymmetrically in favor of the receiver because a long-distance call was expensive and a local spam call would eventually incur a high social cost (either in the innocent case of teenage prank calls being figured out by parents or the less innocent cases where the police or phone company might need to trace the source).
I have, in fact, gotten periodic spam calls, though only once or twice an SMS - usually trying to solicit me about my car's insurance policy having issues (I do not own a car).
I sort of wish I could convince my Android phone to treat all calls to my direct number from anyone but GV as spam, because I have never given that number to anyone.
- The US remains relatively high income / high wealth. Especially among the more vulnerable senior population.
- The regulatory environment in the US hasn't been successful, or much interested from appearances, in taking on spam.
- Uniform language. Virtually the entire country speaks a single language, English. That's roughly 300 million targets (minor children generally wouldn't count). The largest single European nationality would be Germany, with a total population of 84 million. It's not even possible to necessarily presume an entire country speaks one language, as with Switzerland. And though computer-generated calls are increasing in prevalence, most still use human speakers.
Effectively, it's opportunity, mechanism, and logistics.
But as costs fall and voice-processing (both comprehension and realtime generation) improve, I'd suggest increasing your vigilence around telephone hygiene.
This is a US mobile number that I've ported from carrier to carrier since the mid-00s. Haven't been particularly careful about where I use the number, which is probably how it got this bad.
Even when you consider most calls now for SIP/VoIP platforms (which is where a lot of these scammers get their DID/phone numbers from) are charging fractions of a cent for outbound calls, enumerating and then dialing entire NPA spaces gets prohibitively expensive after even five minutes of dialing waiting for someone to pick up, even for the most dedicated of scam call centers.
Doesn't mean they aren't dialing randomly to see who picks up, just I doubt they're dialing entire phone number spaces wholesale.
What can be observed going on is these scammers quite literally trade lists of leaked phone numbers and email addresses and they actively keep track of who responds, and who falls for their scam before sharing the list with others.
Jim Browning (a popular youtube scambaiter and infosec pro) has videos where you can watch it happening with your own eyes.
It seems like an old flea market where most people don't buy anything but the vendors all buy and sell old stuff from each other to supplement.
One time the guy told me that the person who referred me "preferred to remain anonymous".
I asked him if he realised that this is a violation of GDPR and that a typical candidate would recognize it as such?
No coherent answer.
Kinda makes me regret the few years my LinkedIn profile had my phone number public, but I do wonder how successful these questionable personal data marketplaces are. I certainly haven't had a conversation get beyond "this is spam".
Interesting resource nonetheless that supplements my day-to-day line of Devsecops.
This site and a few other OSINT tools was how I discovered who 'sold out' my CV to some of the questionable 'recruiting agencies'.
This basic script is designed to remove or greatly reduce that time-waste from the early process.
I'd argue that it makes early ghosting a non issue, by reducing the cost of the initial and clear response it cuts through multiple layers of that dance that the spam-cruiters go through.
You're also right about referrals and I don't think this is mutually exclusive with them, instead it is a complimentary passive search protocol.
Industry sanctioned nepotism doesn't feel like a good look for the SWE industry, especially given our diversity problems.
I don't think it's any less bad to hire someone you don't know all that well because you share friends than it is to hire people because they're you're close friend or a family member.
The point is that it's exclusionary to outsiders, and outsiders tend to be the exact people tech needs more of.
Actually it is; it's how the term is defined.
> nep·o·tism - /ˈnepəˌtizəm/ - noun - the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs. [0]
> Nepotism is a form of favoritism which is granted to relatives and friends in various fields, including business, politics, entertainment, sports, fitness, religion, and other activities. [1]
That's precisely the point - "close" relations. When we talk about business referrals, it by no means implied that the person being referred is a "friend" in the usual sense of the term (let alone relative). Usually it's just someone you vaguely know (by their work, and/or a chance encounter at a meetup or conference), but don't know too well personally.
And just because they come in via a referral does not mean, ipso facto, that "favoritism" is happening and all objectivity is thrown out the window in the evaluation process.
Our industry is uniquely, as in above-replacement-industry, plagued by a diversity problem, and I'm asserting the practice among those in power of favoring relatives, friends, or even friends of friends over other, more qualified candidates is a contributing factor to that diversity problem.
It is not guaranteed that this always happens, but I am asserting it often is (as evinced by the "lack of interview" or "going by reputation only" as reputation is rife with bias), and that is a bad thing.
Violence is completely counter to my way of being - so No.
What is bad is the idea that someone can get a job because they know someone else, over a more qualified candidate who doesn't know that person already. We agree this is bad, yes?
We keep going in circles - with this idea that person that someone in the company already "knows" (or who came in via a referral anyway) gets the job at the expense not just of a comparably qualified (but not known to the company) candidate, a hypothetical more qualified candidate. You just keep assuming that this what happens when companies act on referrals (and implicitly, that it happens a lot).
That's now that I see happening, when referrals are made. But if it's what you want to believe, then it's what you want to believe - and there probably isn't anything I'll be able to say to dissuade you from this belief.
And I'm confused about where I said anything about certainty. I'm not talking about how all companies operate all of the time, I'm talking about how some companies operate an unfortunate number of times.
> Holding everything else constant, from job title to industry to location, female and minority applicants were much less likely to report receiving an employee referral than their white male counterparts. More specifically, white women were 12% less likely to receive a referral, men of color were 26% less likely and women of color were 35% less likely. [1]
This is not good. Can we agree on that?
[0] https://wiki.c2.com/?ViolentAgreement
[1] https://hbr.org/2018/03/how-to-use-employee-referrals-withou...
In between these opposite extremes -- your language clearly indicates that you think this level of what we might call "aggravated bias" (hiring not just someone in your network; but hiring them over a more qualified candidate, presumed to exist and be interested in your opportunity) is commonplace, or something close to it.
Such that in your mind, "including referrals in your hiring funnel" == aggravated bias (in the sense above), basically.
As to the bias stats you liked to: the findings interesting, to say the least -- if they can be validated. Unfortunately the link to the original Payscale "study" seems to be broken (if we can call it that -- since remember, this is the work of a private company, with products to push).
Can you show where I said anything approaching this? I do not believe this, nor do I believe I said or even suggested this to be the case.
You are quoting definitions which disagree with your assertion. You used the word incorrectly, and now you're doubling down on that rather than leave the word behind.
Better hope good recruiters aren't seeing this! ;)
But in this context, you used "nepotism" to mean "people one knows" and then leaned even further into saying it didn't mean "close relationships" but any relationships. That's just not what that word means, not how it's commonly used either. So that assertion is wrong.
I'm not sure a) why you think you have authority here, or b) why it's such a sticking point to the point that you've continued this conversation for over an entire day.
I think at this point the only real option you have is to admit the word must have either evolved since you learned it, or you may have learned it wrong/incompletely.
My use of the word "nepotism" was correct here, but more importantly, what the fuuuuuuck does it have to do with my larger point? This is, literally, the definition of pedantry.
It's so weird that you're unwilling to see this, or how it's undermining your primary point, but you do you.
Do you often abandon ideas because of a volume of people disagreeing with you? How do you differentiate that from falling victim to an ad populum logical fallacy?
> You've been antagonistic and personal to me
Apologies! Can you cite, specifically, where I was unambiguously this way towards you? I'd like to understand whether this is just you reading too much into something I said, or if I've genuinely made a mistake here. I suspect the former, but it could be the latter!
> rather than admit that nepotism means family and close friends, not "everyone I know,"
What's interesting here is that you think I ever said, "everyone I know". I certainly didn't mean that, and as far as I can tell, I never said that either. I look forward to seeing the specific language I used that caused your confusion!
> and it has hurt your core thesis
How would this hurt my core thesis, since it's not important to that thesis if the people being favored are close to the person in power?
> multiple people read your posted definitions and noted that they did not support your use of the word.
Noted incorrectly. There's nothing to be done if people write factually false statements on HN, but that's what they are; factually incorrect.
Further they're not "my* definitions, but definitions from prestigious institutions trusted to define English words.
> It's so weird that you're unwilling to see this
That implies there's something to see, when in fact there is not. What's actually weird is how you keep replying, yet with no new information or analysis.
> or how it's undermining your primary point
It cannot be undermining my primary point, as it's not related to my primary point.
> but you do you.
Oh I will, I do not need permission from you to do that. Again, I'm curious about why you take this position of authority, as if you have any control over my behavior at all.
So at least some people use the word that way.
If a hiring manager knows someone, the kind of worker and individual they are, they are in a great position to know if they should hire them.
People have always gone through their in-network to seek advice and find others to work with, since the beginning of time. It's how nearly anything really great or interesting gets done, actually.
Maybe we should shoot for doing better than how it's been done in the past? I think we can as an industry do a lot better than where we are currently.
I'm interested in hearing how you think the search for the most qualified candidates can be improved. Interviewing is, necessarily, a messy process and full of uncertainty.
Is it nepotism though? Your friends are not your family. Unless I'm missing some fine details of what nepotism means as a non native English speaker.
Besides, if you are a reliable employee, I doubt any reasonable company would miss out on an opportunity to consider a strong referral. Regardless of industry.
Referrals are welcome. Filling the managers roles with these type of relationships makes the workers below feel they have no opportunity at those top jobs.
Here's where I disagree. You haven't doubled your salary BECAUSE of your policy of not working with recruiters, but rather DESPITE this policy.
Deciding to disregard any recruiter opportunity is just shutting out quite a few things that you probably won't hear about otherwise, especially at the higher levels. Exec roles are often handled by retained recruiting firms and aren't as well publicized as entry level and junior roles. So just saying "I will never work with a third party recruiter" can certainly be your policy, and you may save yourself a fair amount of time by sticking with it, but that policy is doing nothing to advance your position (career, earnings, etc.)
The reasons that there are so many incompetent recruiters are many, but a few are:
- low cost: companies hire entry level recruiters and pay them next to nothing in guaranteed compensation (mostly commission-based). The good ones will make the company a lot of money, and the bad ones can't afford to stay in the industry because they aren't making enough in commission - so they 'go away'.
- low skill: the skills required to be a good recruiter aren't typically taught in school, so they aren't coming out of college with a strong foundation. They need to learn and be successful quickly (because it's commission-based)
and
that policy is doing nothing to advance your position (career, earnings, etc.)
Are readers supposed to read this as a suggestion that missing out is synonymous with losing out? I kind of take exception to these phrases because it strips a lot of agency out of otherwise exceptional people who are more than capable of navigating their careers to where they want them to be, maybe not necessarily where you as a recruiter think they should be.
Seems to me the market is very strong for employees and those with in demand skills and experience to back them up are probably missing out on job x but probably aren’t losing out by any equal measure-all other considerations being equal. One of the most common refrains I've been hearing right here on HackerNews in response to the 'Great Resignation' isn't that people are leaving the workforce, they're just finally leaving jobs they've been wanting to anyway and taking their labor elsewhere.
So
That said, what does it really matter if someone decides they want more autonomy in who they decide to interview with? Shouldn’t we be encouraging more of this?
Especially given some of the fees that come with hiring through a recruiter?
If I took every recruiter call I receive, I'd be spending half my week talking to recruiters. All for a tiny, small, infinitesimal chance that they might find me a job that A) is in a field I want, B) at a company I want, and C) at a decent salary.
I've been unemployed with next to no professional network before. And I took those recruiter calls. And they were a waste of time. I'd end up in companies doing slimy stuff, I'd get low-balled on salary, I'd get bait-and-switched on my role.
In the end, the only way I've ever gotten good jobs is through the professional network. It was faster to build a professional network from 0 by working on open source projects and going out to meetups than to go through a 3rd party recruiter.
It's somehow correlate, since one of the most potential client for recruiters are companies that hard to find employees. Though there are also companies that lack channel / networks to specific fields, it cannot be dismissed that the previous point still stand.
For example, if you don't have a LinkedIn profile, you will probably get far less incoming inquiries from hiring entities (external/internal recruiters, hiring managers, etc.). That's a decision many people make.
Everyone has autonomy in who they interview with - I'm not sure where that comment is coming from.
This isn't about autonomy or interviews. It's about the ability to say "yes" or "no" to additional information about opportunities. Nothing more.
EDIT: To address the Great Resignation thing, agreed there as well. I'm a resume writer/career advisor now and my business has been brisk. Lots of clients are changing industries to find more impactful work, better working conditions, etc. Obviously if someone IS leaving the workforce they aren't calling me to write their resume, but I'm seeing a lot of activity from people looking to find work they "feel better" about in one way or another.
It was meant as a statement of fact. To oversimplify, if you limit the information you are willing to receive, you won't have all the information you could have.
My main issue with the original post was that OP was crediting a policy of reduced information with doubling their salary. That just isn't the case.
But, if the company hires a few people they're unhappy with through a recruiter (which is bound to happen from random chance no matter how they hire), they have someone to blame. They can switch to another recruiter, and assure their further-ups that the problem has been addressed.
There are many corporate roles that are mostly about providing blame-shifting opportunities, but outsourced recruiting is an unusually pure one. Along with "networking"-logrolling, it's one of the things which I really can't stand about working in software development, and on darker days they makes me wonder if I shouldn't go be a hermit in a cabin in the woods or something instead.
What is that?
Why does everybody assume that the goal is to advance to an exec role?
I'm sure that you were a competent recruiter, but the reality is that I don't have the time or the energy to waste on you to figure out if you are or not.
I don't assume everyone is looking to advance to an exec role - in my experience, most actually are not looking for that at all. I tend to assume people aren't looking for exec roles.
"Advance your position" could refer to improved work/life balance, more time off, remote, whatever you value. I was referring to overall position (life quality), not on an org chart. I can see how that wasn't made explicitly clear.
I do ignore the vast majority of contacts due to the sheer overload of them, I don't have the energy or time to parse through each message and see if it's worth pursuing the recruiter in the future or not.
My CV is no unicorn, I have a lot of experience in different roles and company sizes but I'm not a deep specialist or a very sought after technologist, just a decent engineer. Even then I get dozens of contacts per month, it's impossible for me to actively engage with that...
If I decided to keep some recruiters in the loop when I look for new jobs, how should I do it? I can't just answer all these contacts and filter out, are there good places to match decent professional recruiters and job-seekers? I'd love to have an ongoing relationship with a good recruiter who could match me to openings offering things like a 4-day work week, etc., but usually I'd have to go searching for these openings and then contacting the recruiters for them, how can I invert this relationship?
I feel like tech recruiting became a new gold rush, noticed it got progressively worse the past 15 years with recruiters just blasting me with spam. The increasingly higher bonuses for hiring attracted a crowd that I'm not very fond of.
If you're getting a fair amount of incoming traffic, you're already optimized for discovery, so that is working. Telling recruiters "I'm only looking for jobs that fit these parameters" and then paying attention to the ones that are respectful of that will work to start a relationship. I had some relationships for the entire 20 years I was in the business, and some of those people I didn't make a dime off for maybe 15 of those years.
If you've gone on 30 interviews and never landed one job, that might be something you need to also consider and look inward. Going 0-for-30 is pretty unusual, unless you were accepting interviews for jobs you were clearly unqualified for.
Wouldn't that be an explanation for why there shouldn't be so many incompetent recruiters? Why don't the incompetent ones all "go away"?
There are probably other industries that have similar models where most of the workforce is newbies at all times, but I don't have an example that won't be dissected.
I would always suggest looking at their tenure. A new recruiter doesn't have the depth of client relationships to be all that helpful, but most new recruiters are 'sourcers' and not handling the client side (they are responsible for researching and bringing in candidates).
What I've started doing is only dealing with the ones who both show a little evidence of having seen my profile on LinkedIn (since this is generally the ultimate source of these contacts), and mention a specific opportunity (not just "full time Python role with my direct client").
That brings me to the second problem, which is that most of these third party recruiters are working for companies that are still series C and earlier. I've done the startup game twice now, and figured out that working for a company that's going to pay me partially in lottery tickets that won't pay out for 7-10 years isn't that great of an opportunity. There are the odd exceptions out there, but they are few and far between.
But that is level where normal developers are not finding themselves. I am senior developer but I don't imagine being approached for exec level role.
There are different worlds of recruiting - world where I am is low level spamming that I get every day and most of it is just predation on unhappy people that would be open to switch job.
World where there is super specialized recruiting like exec level or really niche skills might work as described but that is super specialized and most people are nowhere near that world.
Higher level candidates will probably attract higher level recruiters, because the amount of time to place someone making $100K is the same amount of time to place someone at $500K, with the only difference being a $25K fee for the first person and a $100K fee for the second.
Or I can place myself and have room to negotiate an additional $100k in my signing bonus.
I don’t network with recruiters. I network with people in my industry that can directly drive hiring decisions.
Over the next three years, I did build out my network of local external recruiters who had relationships with the hiring managers.
I hopped around between various corp dev job - one generic corp dev CRUD job looks about like any other - by leveraging recruiters. By the beginning of 2020, I was making $150K and hearing opportunities of $165K locally. Then Covid hit and external recruiters had absolutely nothing to offer me paying more than I what I was making.
I hopped on the FAANG bandwagon because of an internal recruiter in mid 2020. Almost two years later, I still haven’t had an external recruiter ping me about anything mildly interesting.
The same recruiters see I work for BigTech and they are still sending me “exciting opportunities for .Net leads paying up to $150K”.
Solution Architects are pre sales.
Consultants are post sale doing billable implementations. There is some overlap though. I do some SA type work and depending on the day of the week, I’m lumped in with the SA organization.
Out of curiosity, why did you (correctly) suspect I didn’t “grind leetCode”?
Since 2020, I’ve been working as a “cloud consultant” at BigTech. That’s all it says on my LinkedIn profile. Yet the recruiters from Facebook and Google are emailing me about senior software engineering and even engineering manager positions. I have never been (nor desire to be) a manager. Even internal recruiters aren’t really that good.
Another anecdote, I’ve had internal recruiters reach out to me at my current company on LinkedIn even though it shows I already work here.
On the other hand, my development background from 2008-2018 is doing C# CRUD “full stack development” the salary ceiling for that isn’t high. No matter what tools I say I’ve used - C#, Node, Python - they aren’t going to say “let’s pay him $200K+ to write a CRUD app!”. My one saving grace that let me overcome that without “grinding leetCode” is that all of the major cloud providers have internal cloud consulting divisions.
There’s some useful information in there, that the distribution of roles behind recruiters change as the jobs become higher level. I didn’t know that. And he hedged his statements all over. And then people still reply like he’s saying if you don’t pick up a cold FaceTime call from a recruiter while you’re in the middle of coding you’re going straight to hell.
I see this pattern so often. I only hope there’s this silent readership thinking “oh, interesting. Thanks.”
Once someone thinks "I hate recruiters; they are useless" it becomes very difficult to change that mindset.
FWIW, I've been in industry for 30 years and all but my first job out of college came through recruiters. I tell the bad ones to quit bugging me and I work cooperatively with the good ones to find positions that I might actually like.
I have always either had — or gone out of my way to establish — the contacts necessary to line up a job at the next company I wanted to work for.
I hardly need a recruiter to find interesting companies where I can do interesting work, and the kinds of companies I want to work for avoid (or outright prohibit) using external recruiters.
And software salaries get shared publicly on things like levels.fyi these days, so you need third party recruiters even less.
With that said, I don't have a hard line policy of never responding to them, but I pretty much never get contacted by a third party recruiter with something that looks even remotely good or interesting.
I think if the company is using a third party recruiter, the gig probably isn't very good. Obviously there are exceptions, but no great role is getting sourced through Cyber Coders.
I decided to apply to the company directly. They were happy to talk to me because my experience was a really good fit for them. I come to find out that the recruiter emailed them saying that I was a poor candidate and that he suggest they don’t talk to me. Luckily they didn’t listen to him.
I am also done with 3rd party recruiters.
It is a bit petty that they told the company that you were a poor candidate, but you seem to not understand what was happening. And it could have been they had already mentioned your name to them, and then had to explain why they suddenly were not representing you. I don't know, but that is a reasonable explanation.
I personally have had a mixed bag with recruiters: many I have dealt with are worthless in that they don't understand the jobs they are recruiting for (so give very bad matches to both sides), but I have been lucky twice and had recruiters give me great jobs and handle the pay negotiations so well that I probably got $20-40K/year more than I would have by myself (if I had somehow found those positions).
WA state law makes it very clear as a candidate I don’t need to share salary information, and by some readings of the statute it’s illegal for them to even ask.
My most recent job is at a very large public company where the salaries are well published (levels.fyi) - there was no need for me to give a detailed salary history of all my recent jobs.
If the value-add of a recruiter is getting a better negotiated salary, what is the value-minus of putting another point of failure between me and a job I want. Surely it’s possible that over time the minuses are greater than the pluses.
This is not quite true. They're optimizing for throughput, not max dollar value. If they optimized for the maximum amount of money they could get you that would come at the cost of their time which would lower their throughput of placing candidates and hence the maximum amount of money that they can personally earn in aggregate.
They'll still try to spin you that line though.
Recruiters comment on that: "They keep passing on everyone I refer"
Ended up getting a job elsewhere, and the recruiter still hit me up on "do you have any referrals?"
I don't have a professional network per se, just a bunch of friends I clicked with at various companies. I know if they're enjoying somewhere, I probably will too, since we value similar things in the work.
What you've described from your own experience is the substance of what a professional network is, and has always been. LinkedIn connection requests are trying to create a digital product in the form of the real-world phenomenon that you've experienced and described. If we're going to call one of them a professional network, everyone in this subthread is saying, let's give the real thing the name professional network, and the imitation a different name.
(None of this is intended to disparage LinkedIn. It is what it is, but if it's trying to be a substitute for real relationships between humans, it will always be the shadow, not the substance.)
I don't think the type of network I've just described is imitating anything. They are mutually beneficial but purely professional relationships. The fact that the internet has enabled people to have a much larger number of superficial relationships doesn't mean that what the poster was describing is the only way to have a "real professional network". Yeah it's a professional network, but it's not the only kind.
It's a tough one, because while I can see that it is also a professional network, said network would be pretty offended if I called them that. So I don't necessarily disagree with you, or even with the other commenters, but there is at least some room for subjectivity about what to call your own personal relationships.
You might not want to label it as such, but that is exactly what a professional network is. People can genuinely be your friends and still be part of your network.
Edit to add: I have initiated contact before and been well received. Nobody contacts me. It's tiring to have to do 100% of the work to maintain these relationships.
Try messaging someone you used to work with to check in - you may enjoy catching up or even stumble into being able to give or receive help.
The times when I have contacted people, it's been about as well received as I'd expect a contact from a former coworker to be. It's just that nobody ever initiates. I'm not getting anything out of trying to maintain these relationships except stress, so, why bother?
And, now, someone (actually 3 someones, because I was at +3, now at 0) has gone and downvoted my original comment for whatever reason. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Maintaining contact happens rarely. And no, a linkedin add doesn't count at maintaining contact if the last private message was exchanged on the last day of work.
I suspect there's a sort of introvert / extrovert miss match.
The "networking" was also very time consuming. It was also fun but if i had a wife and kids I wouldnt have had the time for it.
The good recruiters seemed to have a knack for finding the companies that were the right combination of rich and desperate whereas companies I found through my network were generally from companies that were always keen on talking to a decent technologist but werent exactly craving somebody with my precise skillset to start next week.
I wish this were true for me. I do have people I click with but I have a personal value not to work for anywhere whose main revenue source boils down to "more eyeballs / clicks" and this rules out pretty much everywhere my past coworkers/friends have gone to work.
I agree. Personally I'd include recruiters in that group of people as well.
I don't work with keyword monkeys...the ones that send you job opportunities for jr. sysadmin roles 20 years into your career, because a 10-year-old resume they dug up from somewhere mentioned bash shell scripting in there somewhere.
I work with a handful of recruiters I've developed a good relationship with and who know what I'm looking for.
I do have an exception, however, and it’s not recruiters that are affiliated with a particular company, it’s high quality recruiters that my friends refer me to and who will work on my behalf. I had one spend a TON of time really getting to know what I was looking for, what my skills were, and what made me happy, and he looked at companies with an eye toward making both me and the company happy long term, because he knew that’s where the big payoff was.
My recruiter started his career as a software engineer.
Not everyone is a superstar networker but be kind, supportive, and professional to your coworkers. People talk.
As the article said, most of the time, you're not actively job searching, but you generally do care about salary data points and what sort of roles are available. For unicorns, you can find salary info through levels.fyi, but for those not making those 300k+/yr, the pool of better paying jobs is much larger and recruiters still remain a useful source of data. Sniffing for roles is an underused technique. Recruiters have like 3 paragraphs to catch your attention, so they optimize for bang-for-the-buck. Which means they aren't going to offer EM roles if you don't already hold that title, even if the company has an opening. A lot of times, if your next career ladder rung is a title upgrade or a role pivot, you need to ask explicitly.
As for your policy, I feel like it's attributing all your chips into one thing while ignoring everything else you've done. Like many here, I've had my share of salary bumps over the course of my career, and each time it was through different methods (diagonal internal move, OSS lead, unicorn recruitment, promotions). It'd be naive to not have more than one tool in the arsenal.
Anymore I just ignore them all.
Meanwhile, I doubled my salary by responding to a recruiter.
Though FWIW, I was actively looking for new work at the time.
In my case, I doubled from $100K to $200K. I would not expect to double it again. I'd be lucky to even see 50%.
This is a massive privilege. A lot of companies interview in a way that I couldn't pass years ago, so I depended on external recruiters to get me jobs. This was basically how I made a living in the South without a CS or CE degree.
The universal truth I see throughout every career advice thread is always take this advice with a grain of salt.
It's certainly a privilege to be in a position where you'd still have an excess of inbound job opportunities even without 3rd party recruiters. But if that's the position you're in, it's one of the more effective strategies I've seen to increase signal:noise.
Cyber Coders, I think that is the actual name, is pretty bad. They use a lot of automation to build funnels and send out messages automatically. There are several thousand other recruiting firms that do the same thing with more or less technology.
That being said their goal isnt to waste your time. They are just playing a numbers game. They are trying to hit the postgre DBA who just got told their contract is ending with an email about a postgre DBA contract that starts ASAP. If you are that person and you get that email you might have good results.
I think people get angry when recruiters don't personalize messages or make sure that they are actually qualified for a job or that they actually are helpful during the interview process. But they sold for 105 million in 2013. Their model works despite having one of the worst reputations in the business. They generate a shit load of revenue by spamming massive amounts of people and getting enough emails to the right person at the right time.
If you view third party recruiters as someone who is going to be your job agent and work for you, you're going to have a bad time. If you think of them as street vendors who are slinging wares of questionable quality and price and who offering no refund no return one supply items... You might have a better experience and save yourself a lot of grief.
TLDR: Recruiting companies print money by getting the right email to the right person at the right time. They don't work for you. Don't expect their service to be tailered for you.
[1] https://www.cybercoders.com/insights/press-release-cybercode...
- If I am interested in the company I will reply right away.
- Somewhat/not really interested ignore first email they send out and if they followup a reply I then email them stating I am not looking for work now but could change my mind in the future.
- Not interested in company at all just ignore the unsolicited response.
I have also completely given up on startups as the comp they have been getting back to me with is 50-70% lower than my TC and its a waste of my time. Your time is the most important resource you have, don't waste it on unsolicited responses from recruiters in positions that are not right or companies you have no desire to work for.
1. Internal company recruiters. They couldn't care less about contacting you directly unless things have changed in today's market (My last interaction with in house recruiter was circa 2010).
2. Scummy recruiting farms where they hire a bunch of people on commissions and they spam anyone and everyone
3. Recruiters who actually have relationships with a customer, prospect good candidates like a salesperson, keep their pipeline full and understand the hiring needs. They work diligently to find good candidates who fit the job description. They do exist but are rare unfortunately.
I have no problem with #3 above and I have worked with some great ones in the past and right now as a hiring manager, working with one who is trying to find a senior level candidate for a while now (lot of work there).
For the most part, I just say ignore recruiters entirely, unless the job is for a great company and there are no red flags, instead opting to network and send emails directly to people in charge of hiring.
He spent time explaining the role, the skills, and the goals, and offered feedback throughout the process.
I’ve accepted a job through a very good internal recruiter once in 2015.
I can distinguish between a 2 and a 3 in a 5 minute phone call.
I don’t understand all the hate about recruiters. I cut off the bad ones and the folks left are great. The overhead is quite low.
100% agree. I'd go a step further and say: don't bother applying for any job on Indeed where they say "we're looking to fill a contract position with <insert some info about another company (a top industry producer!)>" because they're just a front for those same recruiting farms.
I wish this were always true. When I worked as a recruiter, I saw referrals routinely get tossed onto the stack of resumes with no special preference. How candidates are treated completely depends on the preferences of the hiring manager & corporate red tape, even at smaller companies.
My success rate from my application being submitted by a recruiter to a phone screen with the client company is 100%. My non rejection rate was close to that.
That’s when I was hopping around in corp dev. I have a specialty now that’s slightly more niche. I am working for by far the largest company in that niche so I don’t really need the middlemen anymore. If I ever decide to leave my current employer, no one is going to ignore my resume.
Safe to say the quality of tech recruiters in New Zealand is even lower than those elsewhere.
Most recruiters in NZ start from labourer/contracting/HR firms and then move into tech because it's better paid. Whereas in Australia you get people who trained specifically to be a tech recruiter, or migrated to recruitment from tech (usually BA and QA type roles).
Can vouch for this. Made that mistake. Never again.
Let say you started at 50k (which is very low) and you doubled your salary 4 times (what is plenty ?). Then you make now 800k. Which is unlikely, so your main argument is probably wrong
Sometimes you get multiple contacts from different recruiters with the same company on the same day.
If they won't tell you what company is interested, they don't have a contract with that company.
Don't be open and honest with a recruiter if they aren't open and honest with you.
A. Fuck no. You aren't modifying my resume. I created it to be presented exactly as I have laid it out. I made it to stand out, not be standardized with a hundred other resumes
B. I don't use Microsoft stuff, like many other engineers
Usually if a third-party recruiter says Company XYZ is looking for people and I'm actually interested in that company, I'll just go shoot an e-mail to that company directly with my resume and not respond to the recruiter. I highly encourage everyone to do the same.
Now I only leave my email on my resume. And the only recruiters I'll ever talk to are ones who directly work for the company I'm applying to.
This is a given. Recruiters are there to help you get access to companies you don't have referrals in. They're good for those from other states or countries, or from a different social class.
But yes, I agree with you that most third party recruiters suck. I'd say there are some very small boutique firms out there that don't suck though. Generally, the larger the recruiting agency, the shittier they are.
As you said, using my network, be it tight or loose threads (colleagues to acquaintances or even the knowledge of an organization) helped me exclusively.
Even the affiliated ones are problematic many times. My latest experience is a recruiter hired by the organization advising me to improve the cosmetics of my CV (i.e. lie about my past, exclude an incomplete but important education), organised the interview and gave an interview preparation with stale and generic 'advise' you can find on internet word by word, which was useless as the topic of the interview was something else and with someone else than predicted. They seemed to operated based on a script that was prepared to give the impression of caring and making actual work, however the content of the work was mere scheduling.
If the job was good and you liked working there - and you had the right attitude - then it's your job. Recruiters and even companies make it harder for a resume to get to the hiring manager than it ever used to be.
I've never found this to be true.
Compensation is the first thing I bring up now. "I currently make X salary, Y annual bonus, and Z equity. This position will need to exceed all 3 by at least 20% before I even consider it. Does that sound doable? If not, let's not waste any more of each other's time."
Way too many lowballers out there.
20 years into your careers, you may be worth 10x or 1/10 of that same person.
Why waste people's time? It's a waste of time interviewing for a place if you know they aren't offering anything close to what you'll be asking. And if you're making 2-3x the median salary for that job title, you should probably get a comp range up front.
I've been burned by this a lot. Don't talk comp, go through hours of interviews, taking afternoons off for in person interviews (in the before times), all to find out that their maximum for for the position is a 25% pay cut.
Good Engineers are at the value of gold. Can save you a lot of money down the road.
I have like 8y of experience and salary requirement is the first thing I negotiate. Easy 30-50% jump each time in past few years.
I disagree: the first one who gives a number is able to anchor the negotiation around their preferred outcome; it's much harder to negotiate up from a lowball number than the other way around.
There is no situation where you will say a high number and they will move up to meet you if that number was greater than their max budget to begin with.
Yes, and since it's quite common to have companies where their max budget is not acceptable (probably because they are the ones who can't fill their vacancies and thus have recruiters spam everyone all the time), it's important to filter them out by saying the high number before you've wasted many hours on worthless interviews.
Or you can ask for their expected compensation range instead as well.
Interviewee: I want X.
Company: Sorry but that's above our max budget.
Interviewee: What can you offer me?
Company: Y, Y<X that's our max budget.
Interviewee: OK, I can consider it if you promise me a reasonable revision in a year.
2:
Interviewee: Whats your offer?
Company: Z, Z<Y
Interviewee: That's too low. I want X.
Company: You're asking for X when we offered Z. That's too much of a difference and it doesn't sound reasonable to us. We find it insulting. Let's end it here.
The hiring manager is a person representing a company, which is exactly why they would find their downplaying the offer (because they were hoping to increase it somewhat to meet the candidate in the middle, so they had to start low because they want to keep some gap there) embarassing and feel insulted.
They may not be spending out of their pocket but they are spending out of their budget.
But really you shouldn't start with giving a number. They already have a huge advantage because they negotiate salary all day and you do it once every few years. Just ask them for the range and make sure the minimum is above your X+20% number. If it's not, let them know that their range is too low, and if they won't tell you, say, "thank you, next".
If they don’t know what you’re making now, they will think the minimum might be too little and if they really like you they will go higher than the 1.2x.
That's the risk of going first.
a) "I make $100k today and I want at least 20% more which is $120k"
vs
b) "I want at least $120k"
The difference there is a lot less obvious. Of course, in the second you might have a minuscule chance of them offering way over $120k whereas in a you would not.
Startups are a bit more hit or miss though, and if they are small enough they probably won’t even have pay bands. You need to do more due diligence there
When starting out, you are usually not going to be low balled as you are cheap. Your time is not worth as much either and you are trying to climb the ladder.
Once you get to proper level of compensation, your time becomes much more valuable and the number of offers that meet that level of compensation become much lower. This means your best call is probably to move to talking money first.
Of course, you might miss out on some opportunities but you'll save a lot of time.
Sets expectations and avoid wasted time, which everyone prefers.
If you talk comp early, you'll potentially (almost certainly) lowball yourself. If you don't, you'll spend a full time job's worth of time with hopeless positions.
What if they are willing to offer 50% more, but you ask for 20% more and end up with it?
If they go first, and they lowball you, you can always ask for more. If you go first and say "I want $X", and they say "OK!" you probably left money on the table.
You have a lot of experience, so you probably know what you are worth. But a lot of people a few years into their careers would undervalue themselves in this kind of negotiation if they went first, especially if they are transitioning from startups to big tech.
Please do not contact me about cryptocurrency, blockchain, NFTs, or associated technologies.
If you're referencing the latter, maybe it's worth pointing out that all the blockchains using Rust (or the popular ones anyway) are proof of stake.
Everyone thinks I do Ruby on Rails though, because someone accidentally endorsed me for it once years ago. Somehow 50+% of the stuff I get is RoR.
Recruiters are the laziest humans on earth.
If they read it and contact me anyway? Then they’re disrespectful of my wishes and not worth my time. But I’ll concede that isn’t lazy!
I entertained a reference check call by a recruiting firm (not standard but he was a good coworker and it was a serious position with a serious company). The interview was normal and standard fare except the last question which I found off-putting and dishonest: "Are you looking to fill any positions?"
Although I was, it's not the kind of professionalism I expect from any company representing mine so I politely declined and ended it there. My friend got the job and all's well that ends well.
Fast forward 3 months and I get cold called by the same company asking me if I would consider a position at XYZ inc (new company, unrelated to the first).
I was blown away that a company would think this is acceptable, and that information given for reference checks by employees are somehow automatically made into leads owned by the recruiting company. I escalated to legal at serious company and explained in no unclear manner how serious of a matter this was, to which they terminated the hiring agreement over.
So just a reminder please vet your recruiting companies before you mandate them to represent your company.
Or if you think back to your earliest contacts with technology, whether someone gave you a book, told you the name of some tech to learn, helped you get access to a computer, etc., I think all of us who are working in tech have had the good fortune to have access to technology and resources that helped us train ourselves but I can imagine having had substantially less access earlier in my life and the deficit that could've left. So I think I've been overall very fortunate, and that's part of what's meant by the word "privilege."
I always say I am lucky and privileged because through random chance, I developed an interest in programming as a kid and it became my favorite hobby, long before I chose it as a career. I spent hour and hours at it because it was how I played, and I became good at it because it matched my way of thinking about the world and I spent all my free time doing it.
This was luck. I could easily have had gardening as my favorite hobby, or art, or playing music. I would have had a lot harder time turning those into a lucrative career, so in that sense I am lucky.
Now, many people came into the field in different ways, so not everyone in the industry is lucky in the same way, but that doesn’t chance the fact that I am personally lucky.
Luck? Sure
Privilege? Definitely not
Luck - success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.
Privilege - a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.
Hope this is helpful
I come from a poor family. Nothing was handed to me on a silver platter. My career is a function of passion, hard work and luck. Not privilege.
It makes my blod boil whenever I hear this privilege nonsense.
But sure, call it a privilege. Thanks to discourse like this the word already lost its meaning.
The only thing that I got dealt a good hand is that by accident my passion and hobby can bring me a tonne of money.
Where is my privilege here? Sadly as many people here you're confusing luck and privilege. No point in carrying on with the exchange if you're insisting on calling everything privilege.
Thanks for the discussion.
I can't speak for you, but I went to a school with a computer lab and had a computer at home from a young age. Learning programming was hard, but it would have been a lot harder without those things. That's privilege. I was an advanced reader because my parents had time to teach me and filled our house with books. That's privilege. I had hobbies in my teen years instead of having to work to help support my family (privilege).
There are lots of people who could be brilliant programmers or engineers had they had the same opportunities as me. Instead of resenting the term, I acknowledge and am grateful for whatever advantages I was provided, because without them getting to the same place would have required exponentially more work, or maybe even been impossible.
I don't see how that concept upsets you. No one is saying you did anything wrong, or that you haven't worked hard. We are just asking you need to accept that some of your success is due to luck, and your luck is a privilege.
Why is this important? Well, it is important to have an appreciation that not everyone had the same luck, and other people not doing as well in their careers is not necessarily because they haven't worked as hard as you.
Once you accept that, the next logical step is to realize that those of us who have been lucky (like me and you, who were lucky enough to have our skills be in high demand) should think about ways we can help those who haven't been so lucky.
A healthy society takes some from the lucky ones to help the unlucky ones. This doesn't mean that everyone should get the same reward, or that you don't deserve success or praise for your skills, just that there is some humbleness in not thinking you are better than someone else who is not as successful.
The fact that you get so angry when anyone points out that some of your success is based on chance and was not just because you worked harder is troubling. Why are you so defensive? Is it because you want to be able to think all of your success is based on your own hard work and therefore you don't need to share any of your success with the less fortunate?
I explicitly said my success is a function of passion, hard work and LUCK. I have no problem admitting that part of my success is luck.
However equalling luck with privilege makes absolutely no sense. In your dictionary if I play poker and get a lucky hand I am now privileged.
What an utter nonsense.
And for the record I have absolutely zero problem with paying high taxes. Again, if you read my comments you'd know I come from a poor family. Government support was sometimes all we had. I fully support offering safety net for the less fortunate but can see you already made unfair assumptions about me.
Of course it doesn't matter much if you have privilege for one hand, and that privilege will change relatively fairly between everyone during a session of poker.
This is different though. This is more like playing a game of poker where a single hand lasts your whole life, and you keep reaping the benefits of your lucky draw for your entire life. That is meaningful privilege.
Imagine if instead of getting lucky with having an aptitude for computers, you instead inherited a million dollars when you turned 18.
Would you consider that privilege? It is just luck in the same way as your skills... you just happened to be born into a rich family who gave you money. That is luck, in the same way.
I think that is clearly privilege, and your computer skills are likely to earn you more than a million dollars extra in salary than someone working equally hard in a less lucrative profession.
If you think that inheriting a million dollars isn't privilege, I am curious as to what you think is.
The same is happening to other words these days. For example some people modified the term racism so that according to their definition you can't possibly be racist towards white people. Which is obviously idiotic, but at least it allows these people to push their sick racist agendas.
Like I said, there is nothing to be achieved here when you're using your own definitions of words.
[0] https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-thesaur...
"the power and advantages that come with great wealth or high social class"
Well, your luck gets you a lot of wealth, which is having privilege
I'll take the bait. I can't tell if you're confusing things on purpose but here goes.
If you are Richard Pryor in Brewster's Millions, sure, it's just luck. Most people do not mysteriously inherit money, but get it from older relatives they are close with. If your parents die with a million bucks to leave to you, your life was already very different than someone whose parents die nothing, or worse a mountain of debt. People who can't afford to send their kids to college, for example, probably don't have a mil to leave them. I am not sure I've ever heard of someone just randomly lucking into that kind of inheritance. It probably happens sometimes.
But getting that million dollars suddenly enables you to live a very different life, and you get to take advantage of things that people who live paycheck to paycheck cannot. You cannot say that does not fit the definition you linked.
Reductio ad absurdum. A poker hand is dealt randomly, as are circumstances of birth and other factors, sure. But the next poker hand we are all on equal footing.
However the analogy is a good one if you extend it. If you win a big poker hand early in the game, gameplay changes once you're the chip lead. Your definition of what a good hand is changes. You are able to take chances and play hands that someone else couldn't. Once you have a stack of chips, you can win hands with those chips regardless of what cards are dealt. Sure, it's not a guarantee and you still have to play the rest of the game well.
This doesn't make the concept irrelevant. It is important to accept and understand that a lot of your success in life is due to things outside of your control. You don't have to apologize for it, but you also shouldn't think you are better than people who weren't lucky.
Understanding this is important, because if you think that your success is entirely based on choices you made, you might feel like people who aren't successful are that way entirely based on their choices, too. Realizing that luck plays a big role is the first step towards understanding that those of us who have been lucky should help those of us who haven't been as lucky, because they don't deserve to be miserable just because they had bad luck.
That's a generalization and takes away from people's agency. for luck to play a part in your life, you need to show up and work.
When my peers were partying and having a great time I was spending nights at the computer learning stuff.
I made this sacrifice willingly. Years later I'm reaping the benefits of that sacrifice which I think I earned and is fair but still some people who don't like others to be successfull will call me privileged like it was all magically bestowed upon me.
We all had the same start. I choose a different path that cost me a lot.
And you have the nerve to call me privileged. Wow.
(Not to mention that you also need the privilege of being born relatively smart.)
Doesn't make much sense to me.
I could make a full time job out of replying to recruiters, because I get probably 100 "opportunities" a day. Most of them have never actually read my resume, or they are working off of a 10 year old copy that was bought from a data broker. And probably 10k other people get that same exact email, so even if I did respond, the odds are bad.
If a founder of a company reaches out with a thoughtful message, there's a 100% chance I'll respond, even to decline. If an in-house recruiter for a copy reaches out, and shows that they understand why I'd be a good fit, there's a 100% chance I'll look, and a 50% chance I'll respond.
I did get my current role by doing roughly what the article states. A recruiter for a startup reached out to me, explaining what the role was and why I might be a good fit. I interviewed with an intent to only leave for a 50%+ salary bump, and they offered 80%+ and equity, so I left. That being said, I ignored 99.9% of the other recruiters who reached out.
When I was younger, recruiters would woo you, and would act as your advocate. They would sing your praises (sometimes, with a bit of “embellishment”) to the prospective employer.
They also made quite a bit of money.
I suspect that outfits like monster.com devastated the “concierge” type of recruiter.
Also, there were contractor specialists. They acted almost exactly like talent agents, getting a commission, whenever they successfully found a contract for their clients. I dealt with a number of them (as an employer) over the years.
I think the “agents” are a thing of the past. Not exactly sure what killed them.
These days, everybody, in every profession, is obsessed with scale. Lots of small numbers, as opposed to a few big ones.
I assume that “self-service” sites have accelerated that transition.
If anyone ever saw the movie Jerry Maguire, it sort of laments the same kind of metamorphosis, in the sports agent field.
I have been rather shocked at the uncouth behavior that has been directed my way, by recruiters. I’ve been told that it’s because I’m older. They haven’t done or said anything to dissuade me from that point of view.
Dealing with today’s recruiters was one of a number of reasons that I threw in the towel on looking for work, and just accepted that I’m in early retirement.
In any case, I am sad to see the change, but folks seem OK with the state of the industry, so I guess that it’s really just sour grapes, on my part.
* are a part of a large firm
* use multiple fonts, sizes, or any color in their emails
* send an email _and_ an InMail
* text or call you
* jokingly or seriously refer to themselves as a stalker
* automatically substitute in your skills or past company name
* ask for your resume when they can obviously download the LinkedIn pdf
* don’t disclose comp
* don’t disclose the company name
* use tracking pixels or redirect links
* send an automated sequence of follow-up emails (4 follow-ups = bot)
Write them back if they seem like a human! “Not interested at this time, but let’s keep in touch. Thanks for your time” should do.
<img src="https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bimages/email-icons/1pximgfortracking.jpg?email=status" />
- I'm not interested - They aren't at liberty to talk about the technical details
So I always respond with something like:
> Oh yeah, I'm pretty decent at {language}. But I want to keep growing, so I'm really not interested in writing {very old version of language}. Can you tell me what version they're using?
I figure it's a good balance between "screw off" and bothering with a phone call that won't be fruitful for either of us. It keeps me in their rolodex (in my experience, recruiters have a very high turnover rate--so who knows who they'll be recruiting for tomorrow). Also, I like to imagine that some poor engineer is trying to convince the machine to let him upgrade, and maybe I can help them out, whoever they are, by making the old version seem like a recruiting hazard.
Even the cold-calling, working-for-an-agency, just-wants-10%-of-your-salary recruiters. Most of them are simply nice people who are trying to make a living in a difficult and incredibly competitive business. Some are assholes, no doubt, but just being polite until they prove that they are cost you very little.
I had a recruiter reach out this morning to tell me about great opportunities in <city> with <company>. I don't want to work for that company, ever, for serious ethical reasons. I don't want to move to that city (though it's not a terrible place).
I simply said "Hi <name>, thanks so much for reaching out. I'm not really interested in any new opportunities right now. I'm also planning a fully remote career from now on, so moving to <city> doesn't really work for me. Thanks for reaching out though".
It took 30 seconds. It burned no bridges. It made no presumptions about them and didn't try to harm them back for wasting my time.
If they persist, I'll ask them to please take me off their list and not contact me again- as politely as I can manage.
So far this strategy has proven 100% effective at handling recruiters, but it also makes me feel better because there's no negative emotions involved.
I don't want to deal with that multiple times a day, though. They're not "nice people" when they disregard the only thing written in my Linkedin profile: "please no unsolicited calls". If they didn't even bother to read that single sentence, they probably know nothing about me and have nothing to offer. It's arrogant of them to waste my time.
Sure, some recruiters will waste your time, but a lot of them are quite good at their job. It's literally their job to matchmake workers and employers. You don't have to be an asshole to them for reaching out.
A recruiter sent me a detail post about a job. I wrote back and said I was interested. He never responded so I applied to the job online and got it.
4 months later he messages me and says sorry but it looks like the position has been removed.
I didn't write back.
In NYC, this is that dude: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkeenan/
I send all my friends to him when looking for jobs. He also doesn't lie to you and since he has a technical background, will rarely place anyone in a bad fit. He's literally sent 2nd tier candidates to other recruiters.
It's a rich get richer game and the super-connectors have way more candidates and companies to match, effectively creating their own market. I believe John makes mid 7 digits a year from placements, plus companies love him and candidates keep going back to him for their next job.
Once you have that reputation, it looks like art next to the other 99% of hustling recruiters that are trying to place poor fit candidates into the 3 roles they are "working on".
Why would I want to give a recruiter a large cut of my potential compensation for no real value? If someone is making seven figures doing that, there’s a problem.
If I want a job at a company, I can apply for it myself.
I don't know what to say other than there is significant value in (1) getting a direct connection to someone who is running hiring from a reputable source and (2) having your recruiter actually understand you well enough to directly recommend you to jobs that are a good fit (some of which aren't even publicly listed anywhere) and saving you a ton of time.
You are aware that pretty much no one looks at folks that are "applying on the website", right?
How can you state that without knowing the value they provide?
After the 3rd email, I informed him I was taking a sabbatical from the industry (as mentioned at the top of my LinkedIn profile at the time) and asked him to remove me from his list permanently. Instead of admitting to the obvious mistake and apologizing, he doubled down with a reply that I found pretty obnoxious.
There were some other red flags years before that, so I blocked him, one of the only times a recruiter has ever led me to do so.
One time I asked the company who they were recruiting for. They told me the company name and I replied with "I already work there."
This was on LinkedIn where my current employer is on my page and anyone can see it.
But occasionally I’ll get an email like:
“Hi! I saw from your LinkedIn that you used to do X, but now you’re doing Y. That’s an interesting progression! I’m working with a company who needs people with experience in X who’d rather be doing Y, because they’d like to be on Y. I also see that you’re interested in Z, and you’d be reporting to our CTO who wrote a book about Z. Want to hear more?”
I’m not looking, but I send them a nice reply and remember their names. If I were looking, that’s the kind of recruiter I’d want to talk to.
Just state clearly what kind of information you need in order to continue the conversation (or not). Even a simple "what's the pay like" would be more effective.
Anyone who has ever experienced third party recruiters in the UK will be nodding their head along after just the first few paragraphs...
[1]: https://gist.github.com/CumpsD/696599d1bd4cd472a056586967293...
I saw this posted by a recruiter about devs once:
https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C5622AQEZ5ZZUs6mSlw/f...
Not quite as blistering as that article, but not super professional to plaster all over your linkedin.
I don't have time ... the volume of messages is too high, and the amount of 'legitimate' inquiries are too low. And the odds of getting ghosted by the recruiter too high.
If they're a recruiter from a company that I know and they WORK FOR that company, I'll respond.
Having said that I think that is a good article and I really like that email.
I know there are two extremes: (a) recruiter is a regular employee of hiring company, vs. (z) recruiter works for an unaffiliated placement company.
But i.e. if a recruiter is a temporary contractor with the hiring company, they'd still have an email address from that company, right?
I see plenty of recruiters who just work for recruiting firms and don't hide that fact. Anyone who won't immediately tell me who they're recruiting for gets ignored. I'm sure I end up talking to the occasional contractor but you can easily filter out a lot of obvious low-hanging (and rotten) fruit).
To some extent a contractor who working for the company I know ... I'd still consider that a direct company reaching out to me type situation that I'd be more inclined to respond.
I don't find that it is hidden all that often, but that's just my experience.
Here's why: by having a template that he just copy-pastes. This is extremely low effort and will filter out a lot of recruiters. I also agree with working with company recruiters over third-party recruiters.
The first thing many recruiters will want to do is "hop on a call". Resist this urge. In fact, don't even give them your phone number. Force them to use email to contact you. A phone call is a good way of wasting your time. If you actually need to call them on the phone, call them.
There are lots of techniques recruiters will use to waste your time. One common one is if pressed on compensation range you'll get the answer that it's "competitive".
Use a template like this to simply filter out time-wasters. If they want to get on a call, resist giving concrete details or otherwise just give you bad vibes, just stop responding. They can't call you. They don't have your number. Move on.
Why is this? Why do they insist on wasting a candidate's time when answering some simple questions via email is much more efficient?
I've talked to HR people about this, and the answers I've received are not satisfying. A common response is that they want to get to know you, hear how you speak, determine if you might be a good fit. BUT, shouldn't they figure out if the candidate is even interested by verifying basic needs/requirements?
The responses come down to basically they don't value our time as much as we do.
That's easy: they want you invested. The sunk cost fallacy works.
Think about it another way: being a recruiter is being in sales. Sales people love pipelines (funnels) so if you think about the recruitment stages a simplified view might be:
1. Email candidate
2. Candidate responds to email
3. Discuss on phone
4. Candidate submits resume
5. Organize phone screen
6. Conduct interviews
7. Negotiate offer
8. Accept offer
Each of these steps has a conversion rate. Imagine you get paid $20,000 for placing a candidate. Work backwards through this pipeline and you might figure out you have to send 5,000 emails to place one candidate. That means each email you send, you've "earned" $4. Imagine if the response rate is 20%. Well, getting a candidate to respond by changing up the content or presentation of the email means you've now "earned" $20. If only 1 in 3 talk on the phone then each phone introduction you make "earns" you $60. And so on.
it's a numbers game. They're just trying to get you to the next stage in the pipeline.
i've had lots of recruiters that really thought their value was to harass me me by phone. even though I've emphasized repeatedly that there isn't anything more that they can do personally to help me...the insist on calling me nearly ever day to 'see where my head is at'
i'm pretty sure i've lost out on some decent positions in the past because i got so sick of spending 30 minutes here and there talking to the same idiot that said 'dont _ever_ call me back you asshole'
Recently, I've been solicited for jobs where it was clear that the recruiter never looked at my resume. (I'm a software engineer, and the roles had nothing to do with software engineering.) I flagged these as SPAM.
Reading resumes is work. Reading job openings is work. When a recruiter spams a job opening without screening the recipients, they're just trying to push their work onto strangers.
I just put a greek character on my name or add an emoticon, so I got a lot of messages starting with:
"Dear name ..
So, it's safe to ignore the message. Even when probably I'm not interested I used to reply with a template message, but I won't waste 30 seconds with a bot.
I also have found through experimentation that posting one liners like "how much?" just results in the recruiter reverting to their own script of "objection handlers"
The size and clarity of the message really does say "this isn't a conversation", "no bullshit" and "let's not fuck around here"
This is my own experience though. I've been running with it and refining for about 6 months to a year. Maybe It could be better. :)
If I saw this text in a response, personally (and I'm not a recruiter), I'd move on since the person seems hard to handle.
But yeah my approach is different in the first place. I only respond to recruiters who seem to put good thought and background research into their conversation starter.
You're probably right that a different response would work well for you.
Though if a recruiter wasn't willing to read through that for the ~$30k payday I'd represent if they are successful, maybe that's one that I don't want to work with either.
But we all gravitate towards people who we think we'd fit with. Maybe someone skips over me for coming across as a stuffy and a lot of work and maybe someone else says "finally a type-a jackass like me! we're gonna crush this thing"
ha ha ha
"Thanks for reaching out, could you send along the company name, a job description and total compensation details for the role?"
Get to the core of what you're asking. The rest of the response is needlessly long-winded. You don't want them to waste your time, and that is a fair ask in our industry, but you also don't need to waste theirs.
I'm going to agree that the "if you want me, do some work first" thing seems a bit overkill. For me, usually just a single sentence asking for salary range and job description gives me more than enough to figure out whereabouts in the spectrum they are.
This is the way I think about it:
1) there are different types of recruiters. At least in the city where you are, I can tell you that there are actually some good recruiting firms that consistently send appealing opportunities while avoid wasting your time with emails about lowballers, if you just spend the 30 mins upfront to chat with them about your expected salary range and specialization. These recruiters understand that there's an entire subsection of the workforce that is very capable but has zero online presence, and they build their own moat by connecting w/ professionals directly, to build a long term, high quality, proprietary network. Being part of such networks and having the recruiter sift and prescreen jobs for you can be valuable. For one-off linkedin cold mailers, the signal to noise ratio is generally pretty low IME because they optimize for volume. While they can give me data points about what lowballers offer, I personally haven't gained anything from this info, so I'd optimize elsewhere. YMMV.
2) you can often infer salary range from the company name and job title alone. As a rule of thumb, if it's an no-name company, they're almost always going to lowball if you're at senior level. If your goal is to raise your salary quickly, then rather than looking at sideways increments, you'll want to target "obvious" upgrades (e.g. if one is junior, look for "senior" roles; if you're senior at a local non-US company, look for US-based multinationals; or just go for broke and try for unicorns exclusively)
There's ALWAYS the option of trying to go from "No Name" -> "Big Name" but I also feel like that can be a harder path to take. When the person reaching out is a "Meta" or a "Netflix" I know that I don't need to ask how much.
I'm pretty sure the number I got there would be a 4x or 5x... in Meta's case though, it's the leetcode stopping me (2 mediums in 45 minutes? Maybe if I wasn't dad to a toddlerI could study enough to get there, though my other problem is I keep getting bored of the grind and wind up building cool shit for fun instead), in the Netflix case it's because they keep saying "NO" (hahahahaha)
The optimal path here for the bulk of the developers in the middle of the pack is to make a move when the person reaching out has a role at a different no-name shop that is 50% higher than their current.
Remember there are a few vectors for that big salary bump. One where you were grossly underpaid from the moment you were hired, but another one that pops up might be that you've been in the role for a couple years and you have been so busy and engaged that you didn't even NOTICE that the market popped in the meantime, your no-name-company doesn't really pay attention to keeping up with the market and the persona reaching out is ALSO picking you for a spot that has a significant increase in responsibility.
I do think that the "reply to everyone" model starts to fall down once you're at an Uber, or some other big logo.
The best part about advice is once you've heard it you can choose to ignore it on a case by case basis.
:D
I've PERSONALLY only ever heard the "I ignore recruiters" jokes so the idea that they're this tremendous fountain of untapped knowledge was pretty wild to me.
OOOH!! One more thing about the leetcode grind. I'd ALSO argue that if you're in the middle of your grind and a 50% raise comes along, it's probably a clever move to pause the grind for long enough to take the raise and then get back to work on the grind while you're making way more.
I think it's worth noting that 50% bumps were historically nowhere as realistic as they are today with the current job market. At least from my convos w/ recruiters over the years, large bumps would normally imply some very tangible upgrade, like a corresponding job title change. A 30-50k bump back in ~2015 typically meant moving from a dev role to a role w/ significant leadership/managerial responsibilities.
Being able to command 50% bumps without a significant change in levels of responsibilities in today's market is definitely an anomaly from a historical perspective, but under these circumstances it definitely makes sense to consider lateral job changes to get in on those juicy market dynamics.
There are two types of recruiters. Relationship based recruiters and “numbers game” recruiters.
As a recruiter that works primarily with programmers I can usually tell within moments of meeting another recruiter which type they are.
Relationship based recruiters can be a huge asset to your career.
Here are a couple tips
1. A relationship based recruiter is almost never a general recruiter, they specialize in a specific industry. 2. The best type of recruiter is one that has intimate knowledge of your field. So ask probing questions. If they know the jargon and that’s it, pass.
We do not conduct fake interviews
We will not ask you for references unless you are being considered for a job
We will give you feedback the moment we get it from our customer
etc.
Do I really have to "not ignore" this recruiter?
I never work with external recruiters (staffing agencies)I have made the exception three times, and all of them ended with a poor experience, basically repeating the same information over and over again between them and the people from the actual company.
In some cases going through a recruiter is a guarantee that you won't get a position, because a third-party recruiter tries to sell you to a company that has its own recruiters and is unwilling to pay the third-party recruiter's fee.
However...
> Can you send along the company name, a job description and, total compensation details for the role you’re reaching out in reference to?
Should be table stakes. I've started having to walk away from any recruiter that insists on a 15 minute call without providing these details up front. I wish there was some collective awareness around the fact that if someone took a 15 min call with every recruiter ping they got, they'd be on the phone 5-8 hours a day.
My skills are in demand. When I want a new job I'll reach out for it. It'll be there.
Thanks for reaching out. I'm okay to travel to spend a week to work together every now and then but I'm working remote only and permanently from X1-Country and I'd only be interested in opportunities with compensations around X2 plus benefits and if I like their tech stack. Let me know when you have something that sounds like a match for that. Thanks again.
I've seen so many shady tricks pulled by recruiters. I'm sure it goes both ways, but never forget the recruiter isn't in the business of helping you, they're in the business of helping the people who pay them.
Seen recruiters low-ball staff, or tell the person that they weren't as good as other candidates... "but if you lower your day rate to be more aligned with your junior-level skills..." So when the person shows up, they feel deflated since they think we thought they were junior... but in fact, we loved them and just didn't have enough budget to hire them at the right rate -- and the recruiter helped us get their rates down because at the end of the day the recruiter only cared about putting seats in chairs for us.
Seen recruiters spam over candidates without so much as doing a basic screening interview. "Oh yeah, he's great... he knows JavaScript and English..." and they're literally just looking at the poor guy's LinkedIn and they haven't ever spoken with him past a few copy-paste emails. It's a numbers game to them. They don't want you, as the person paying them, to ever feel like their shelves are empty.
Seen recruiters promise people visas along with the offer letter... then for whatever reason, if the job shifts, the recruiters just cancel the contract and the person would get deported. Saw this in Sydney A LOT. The recruiters and staffing agencies don't care at all what happens to the person, as long as they get a commission. They lie and over-promise, and sell-sell-sell... and even if they only have a 3-month contract they'll promise someone a year, then just switch it last minute or have a cancellation clause.
As someone who worked for a Digital Agency where we hired a lot of people through recruiters... the number of times some poor bloke would come up to me and be like, "So... 3 months probation then I'm full time? That's what the recruiter said... now you can get me a visa and I'll be able to bring my wife over here too?" and I'd have to be like, "Yeah sorry, Johnny... this was just a 3-month gig." Had one guy, "But I gave up my family's visa for this... the recruiter promised me higher pay and that you'd take over my visa..." Felt awful. And the poor guy almost certainly had to leave Sydney when the job was done.
Worse... my GM wouldn't let me fire that recruiter. "They give us the best rates..." Was all so shady. Left me with the solid impression that these people were all just bottom feeders. Willing to do anything to make a buck that day.
You do have to stick to that, but it's IMO pretty clear but also concise enough that you don't well on it.
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!
myactualemail+company123@gmail.com
When I start getting emails about completely unrelated things to +company123, I know exactly which company shared my email address.
There's 3 types/market for recruiters and they almost never overlap. The first are "body shop style" recruiters. It's basically a numbers game where they try to cold-call as much people with githubs/linkedin or blogs that reference programming. They don't know programming (not even what's the difference between languages or front-end/back-end) and are looking for a list of buzzwords. They'll send copy-pasted messages (you can tell because it references tech you never used or never even claimed to have used). If you respond (and really you shouldn't) you won't be able to get any relevant information about the position because... they don't have it. These recruiters are often contracted by external firms in "best value countries" and are given canned response to message you. That's probably what the author encountered.
Second type are professional recruiters. Their salary is by commissions will often be a percentage of your salary. They are knowledgeable about programming and tech (often former engineers who wanted a break from coding!). They typically are looking to match specific profiles to specific jobs at client companies. This goes all the way to recruiters specialized in C-Suite executives (and you can picture the commission finding a CEO will bring in). Their messages will be personalized and you shouldn't hesitate to reply back even if you aren't looking for a job. They know that most great software engineers are almost never openly looking for a job so their goal is to be on good terms with a large number of talented developers so that the minute they start looking for a job they can match them with positions. You'll know when you encounter one.
Third type is basically referrals. A players attract A players, smart companies know it. Make sure your referral bonus is a percentage of total comp. It's probably the most effective way of recruiting (it has an insane signal to noise ratio). But you only get access to that type of network by... bringing value and being part of it in the first place!
P.S. I would like to give credit to one recruiter though: Markus Edmunds. He'd been recruiting for a particular technical specialty a year or two ago. He really got to know my preferences and strengths, and never ghosted me when individual companies passed on my resume. I know that's indistinguishable from him acting in enlightened self-interest, but it was still a productive relationship.
He responded, seemingly offended, that I "have a Gmail account, a very public account" that his "team of Search Engineers" found.
In addition I made small control question, for example: "Whats the first letter on my LinkedIn description?".
That way I know I don't talk with a bot and they really read my profile.
No thanks. Tell me about the position first. Then I'll tell you if I'm interested.
If it sounds remotely interesting, I might send them an email back. The exception is AWS/Azure/Google which is heavily recruiting for TAMs and they're having a heck of a time filling the seats and keeping them filled. If they're $MAJOR_CLOUD_PROVIDER I always ask them if its for a TAM or similar role up front.
I have a small blacklist of companies too - folks I know who are going to go through the entire interview process and it doesn't matter whats said because they're going to lowball the crap out of people. I don't want to work for bottom-feeders.
The "good offers" I get typically come from someone who has seen an open source contribution from me, or someone I know from consulting. If you find yourself jammed up in your career and you can't find that next lillypad, try consulting to build up your connections. It's a good way to get the inside story at companies, and also if you find a company you really like, it's very possible to arrange something so that they hire you on some split between your consulting rate and your pay rate so you and them win. Check your employment contract first, local laws, etc. Check my profile for an email to send your resume to if you want to chat.
> ask them if its for a TAM
I could of course easily search the Internet for the meaning of that acronym, but where's the fun in that? I'll stick with the first thing that popped into my head: Tits & Ass Manager.
So, serious question: why do you have a LinkedIn account? I know there is theoretical benefit in maintaining connections to professional acquaintances, but in sticking to email and a few alumni Slack channels, I have never felt limited in that department. What is the benefit of your LinkedIn account and why do you keep it?
I left computers to move to investments, make 500k+/year but I envy the stability and choices that developers have. If I lost my job tomorrow it is not clear I could find another similar job. You have lots of options.
It looks like the situation will remain this way during our lifetimes (you never know), but you should at least appreciate it.
Few other jobs offer pay and stability similar to a Dr. or Lawyer without the working hours and with geo-flexibilty. Few other jobs offer a shot at a massive personal liquidity event without the direct exposure to a recession like in finance. Few other jobs offer this pay for what's basically a trade without a tough physical lifestyle like working in O&G.
If more "normal" people went into engineering, as in the normal white collar types who are smart but go into MBAs/MDs instead, I think we'd see interesting social impacts as more people discover that you can do flavors of digital nomad work without being the stereotypical tech bro. I think this is just starting to happen with MBAs who go into TPM roles.
Eng paths re-enanble lifestyles that I feel were lost post-1970 for much of the general working population. Now, you can live and work nearly anywhere. No requirements to suck it up in Cleveland, NYC, whatever for the kids because of good schools and a good local white collar job. If you want to pack up and go to Europe, you can grab a visa from big US tech there, or small startups. Just meet the right recruiter. Wild stuff.
I really don't understand why we're expected to trust the largest transactions in our lives (house/job) to individuals with no real qualifications to execute those transactions. It feels kinda dumb.
That way you can throw away any message that doesn't start with the answer because you know it was a bulk mail and they didn't actually read your profile.
it may surprise some of the folks on HN - which as a tech / engineering audience, are usually those candidates - that a lot of recruiters actually care a great deal about 'candidate experience', as they have a similar calculus - low effort to create a positive experience, bank it as possible gain later down the line.
Unfortunately those recruiters are let down by significant minority of noisy bad actors who are outside their control. Anyone can 'become' a recruiter - you can do it right away, right now - and therefore there is no QA on who gets to do that job or how that job gets done.
Let me just start with agency vs. in-house recruiter types. In-house isn't always practical for employers so agency has traditionally been the fall back when flexibly is needed. Not anymore!
Freelance recruiters are the solution because they have authorization to represent the employers' brand and are being paid for the service they provide.
Agency recruiters are not authorized to represent brand (except retained) and only get paid if they make the placement so they don't disclose the brand until they've got their "fish on a hook".
My theory is the gig-economy can fix this while providing more value to the employer, recruiter and the candidate (transparency goes a long way). For any hiring managers reading out there, when a flexible option is needed, freelance recruiters offer a much better option.
I agree that it's a good practice to build relationships with recruiters. I also think it's important to do business with the companies where you agree with their practices, methods and principles.
Why support a bad practice so go ahead and ghost agencies.....Cyber and many others like them were built for hiring practices in the 70's or 80's (think kelly secretaries/ temporaries). Today's talent market is much more sophisticated.
Check-out the HireScale Recruiter Marketplace. Follow our community to interact with in-house and freelance recruiters only(branded to the employer 100% of the time)
Website: https://www.hirescale.io/ LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hirescaletalent
Gannyn
None of that applies to an in-house recruiter. Someone who works in HR for the hiring company, directly, may have years of experience, good training, and have a good idea of what the hiring manager is looking for. You shouldn't ignore them, although if you're entirely happy you should have a short message prepared -- "Thanks for thinking of me. I'm happy with my current position, but you never know what the future holds. Feel free to check in with me again in six months or so."
TL;DR: reputation counts.
Companies that are known to pay top of market... Like you're not going to hammer Facebook or Netflix by saying "how much sucker?" if you're in a bottom of the market bracket.
I also ignore the script when it is a company that I'm really interested in and excited by.
I should clean that up. Thanks for the comments.
An easy tell-tale sign is that they withhold the name of the company until they get you on the phone. They have a contract saying once you're in direct contact with the recruiter, you are in their pipeline and they get rights to bill a portion of your contract.
3rd party agencies are incentivized to get you the most amount of money they can, so they can skim off the top. They are highly motivated to move you through and get you signed as quickly as possible, qualified or not.
In house recruiting doesn't have this constant need to move candidates, and will be fast or slow depending on the needs within the company.
In house recruiters on the other hand have not been more knowledgeable about the team they are trying to fill for. Also, I have a theory that companies that are willing to pay a huge commission check to 3rd party recruiters are more likely to pay more for talent.
I'm in the UK and I just looked at my latest linkedin recruiter message. They told me the company type, the role, the skills they were looking for. An accurate enough description to make me think it was a real role. They didn't include the rate, but that would have been my next question if I had been interested.
If I'm not interested in the role, I normally reply with "Thank you for thinking of me but it's not right for me because [reason]. Good luck in your search." I might even refer them on to a friend if I know one that fits the requirement and may be looking.
I was coming back from the south of the country to my city, a long drive, and I received a whatsapp message from a recruiter telling me about an opportunity, since I was fresh out of college looking for a job, I stopped the car to talk to them, only to find out they won't respond you right away. I only got a answer from this person like 3 days later.
If they send the ball back after your initial response THEN you know you can open a conversation up until that point, just assume it is spam and you're spamming them back.
Occasionally I'll tell them that I'm not working on a different level of the software stack than their position requires, and try to point them in the right direction. No idea if that's helpful to them, but it's nice to feel like I've been kind to a stranger.
Most programmers find talking to nontechnical people like recruiters beneath them. They just want to crush the coding challenge, and be hired on the spot. The idea that there could be more to a job than writing lines of code is hard to fathom. Once you open up that world though, it's very interesting, and pays dividends.
Separately, if you're not reading their canned email, what makes you think they're going to read your canned response?
I actually spend a little bit of effort to filter out (block) incompetent recruiters, but that's all.
However, I sometimes help out my client's HR departments and the recruitment experience for other jobs is vastly different. Like searching for expert welders or other specific skillsets, not unlike the ones that exists in software development (+10 years java, +15 years embedded C, etc.). They almost always use external recruiters for the first filtering, and they deliver quality candidates. Expensive fees, but worth it.
Why is this such a problem with recruitment for software development? Are there recruitment shops that DO understand the differences in software development?
The lone full-time contract I took on came about from recruiter contact, but he wasn't one of those keyword carpet bombing mooks. I've only ever landed one full-time job without a referral in 20 years in the industry. Referrals and niche market sites (e.g. AngelList) are the way to go.
The time required to work with the 99 who can’t double your salary isn’t nothing, that’s a part time or even full time job spent courting people who are just spamming everybody on linkedin with a pulse
During that time I was relying on recruiters to hunt down leads for me.
Nothing was coming up! They kept trying to feed me full-stack and front-end roles, and I kept saying no thank you.
Then, I just started sending out my own resumes. And I instantly got more callbacks in the MONTHS I spent with recruiters.
I have a few suspicions:
1. The recruiters present themselves as having a "relationship" with companies, but they actually don't, they are just bullshitting you.
2. The jobs people actually want end up getting filled, so if you end up with a recruiter, you are going to be ending up with bottom-tier opportunities.
The incentives for recruiters are clear; to get you hired. They cannot however force a hire and there's a threshold for submitting duds -- their clients will stop working with them.
I look at recruiters as a helping hand in the hiring process. That said I've had a couple that have wasted my time, so there's that.
Typically, unless you're getting flooded, it takes almost nothing to engage with them temporarily. I like the approach the author recommends. Recruiters are folks that are trying to make a living too, there's no need to be nasty.
Truth is, many first contacts are just to add you to their database. In some cases, there aren't any immediate openings either.
I haven't had issues with finding good paying work - history, references, and a good bit of research in the places where I apply has served me well /shrug
> you don’t want to be a jerk to the one in 100 who have taken the time to carefully craft a high quality message to you alone.
I agree with this. If I get the sense the recruiter put effort into the email, then I will usually respond. I'm sure I still fall for automated messages with this. But some recruiters really do their homework, really research you, have interesting and fitting opportunities, and can be valuable.
The 99.99% of recruiters who are just spamming? Totally ignore them.
I will also say that most recruiter outreach, even in this hot market, is absolutely lousy, and the compensation on offer is below what I am currently earning at a company I am exceptionally happy with doing work I love, and I don't consider myself to be overly compensated.
Most recruiters that do any outreach immediately ghost me when I ask about compensation range, and if compensation range is mentioned, it has yet to be more than what I currently make. Once or twice in the past three months I've had an "upto $X for the right candidate" where $X is only 10% more than what I am currently making, so it is highly unlikely I will get that upper bound.
If I responded to every recruiter that reached out to me via email and LinkedIn I'd spend many more hours per day wasting my time than I would care to think about. And most recruiters that reach out to me these days are of the exceptionally low quality churn'n'burn variety.
I currently have three recruiter messages open on LinkedIn, one for an animator with 2+ years of experience, another for someone wanting a mid-level front-end web developer for an AR application, and another for a "senior" Java programmer. I don't do any of those things, didn't even look at my profile or C.V. Just a scattershot approach, which you would think on LinkedIn, with its targetted InMails, it wouldn't be the case. But here we are.
Of the one recruiter out of the three who didn't immediately ghost when asked about compensation (always my first question), the upper bound is $80K below what I currently make, and again, I don't consider myself well compensated.
My recommendation is never waste your time with any recruiter, but if you must, expend it on those that actually work for the company they are hiring for.
1. It's not like they give up. I've been receiving the same emails from the same firms for years and years.
2. You can't just respond. The few times I've responded years ago meant that they follow up at an even more frequent pace, even when I made it clear I wasn't interested. Sometimes calling me after I said no!
3. It's clear very few of them actually read my profile.
4. Very few are upfront with compensation.
Personally, I rearly had good experience with recruiters, one they had difference goal compare you or the company you want join. Most efficient way to get into a company is by referral, e.g next time when you do some shitty work think twice, as it got long term impact.
1. did they name someone/some company that I know
2. Does it look like a form letter
3. Do they have a "give me all these details" section of the email on the 1st email. Instant trash can on that one.
4. Does it fall under the regime of things I do.
5. What email address alias/phone number did they have access to.
I work with a couple recruiters who: 1) actually respond to emails, 2) actually look at my CV to see if a role is a good match, 3) have some long term commitment to clients.
When I get an email about a role that matches well from a job I had a decade ago, straight to spam folder.
I didn't have time to take on the overhead of setting up a cool site / form to go with the response, but I could have the response.
The form version of this works as an even bigger filter. Fewer leads will come though, more leads will be higher quality.
I usually ignore the others.
The ones that spam me with positions that are clearly absolutely nothing to do with my career, I sometimes respond to asking why they think I'm suitable. And that's just for the childish pleasure of wasting a bit of their time.
The truest statement is the one the author makes up front: >Recruiters are just cold calling
More accurately, they're contacting a lot of people who's profile contains their search keywords. No recruiter is contacting only you for a req they're trying to fill.
It's a high bar for them to cross; I've only seen two or three in the past few years, and those I think were sold my data by Triplebyte instead.
Do a good turn daily.
I've learned a lot from just talking with recruiters, I got a lot of good advice on how to improve my CV, etc.
I landed my current job thanks to a recruiter that was persistent and didn't forget about me :)
Is it a thing? Am I Sir Worker of Devs I?
There is a time and place for in-house recruiters and third party recruiters. This article does not identify them and obsessively takes the contrarian view with no supporting rationale for doing so.
Can you explain what you mean by "There is a time and place for in-house recruiters and third party recruiters." what is that time and place?
I honestly tried to be really nuanced (but clearly failed a little, thanks for that data point).
I think it does speak to the fact that I have seen 20 years of the prevailing narrative that there is zero value to recruiters and this realization was, to me, pretty mind-blowing.
I appreciate that "never" is a word that lacks nuance, maybe that was a little too clickbait of me.
Sorry for that.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Personally, I've found that high quality messages from recruiters are usually painfully obvious. They lead with the name of the company and show evidence that the recruiter read my profile. These are so rare that I completely skip any kind of bot-ish response to handle them.
Most of the responses I can expect to the kind, compassionate, empathetic script you've so helpfully provided will not contain all three data points requested. At best, we can expect to get a JD and maybe a company name. Comp is usually withheld and the cycle goes around again.
Treating the recruiter-spammers as humans, unfortunately, does not really seem to produce the results we would all love it to. It mostly seems to be treated as proof that the spammer has hooked a fish and just has to reel them in.
We knew to ignore each other for 15 months. It was a good symbiotic relationship. Sometimes they knew I wanted side gigs and would hook me up with the companies that "needed something yesterday!" while they knew I was employed at one of their client companies. sometimes the recruiter hired me on their payroll directly instead of letting me be a contractor with their clients. it was a fun time for some time.
This has almost nothing to do with random outreach from them on linkedin. It is barely the same topic. But thats what I used them for.
In-house recruiters are distinctly different animals with a couple of overlapping daily tasks and the same name, but the way to use them is very different. A company with one of those wouldn't be using third party recruiters and thats fine, in house recruiters can somewhat bat for you in a unique and more holistic way but they are still just gatekeepers you want to get passed so you can talk technical stuff with hiring managers.
The problem is that far too many of those companies are using an external recruiter to fill the job as the job is low paid garbage.
My simple rules of engagement
I used to respond to recruiters, "here's how much I make - if you can match that then I'd be happy to listen". Most of the time they didn't respond.
The one guy who did has found me a lot of business since. (I now own a consultancy.)
Your union?
Also remember that in some countries you income is public record that can be looked up by anyone.
Below this, I usually don't respond.
4. Recruiters that ask if I can "get on a call" to get me details. 5. Recruiters from big name firms. (Robert Half et. al) 6. Low quality recruiters that have no connection to what I do.
Of course — the offer would need to be actually palatable.
That's what a recruiter is.
Still didn’t contacted or replied any of them. Sometimes, I am asking myself if I am missing any good opportunities because of not replying.
[1] rumor: Munich region
I spoke to recruiters but they were pretty useless for getting a job.
Insta-delete if I'm doing hiring... ? I've found folks who actually deliver seem to have less of this type of long winded stuff.
Yeah, I know, that's not "hard data". It's a pretty consistent pattern, though. Tech people have to be able to communicate with precision; they usually don't do "blowing smoke".
Ah this fun gatekeeping meme rears it's head again.
So how do you define "tech" people? Do you have a scorecard?
How do they meet your assessment for "real"? Cohesive organization of atomic matter generally constitutes "real" in a lot of physics definitions.
I'd argue trying to label someone a "real tech person" is a laughably subjective exercise that's so corrupted by personal bias and toxicity as to be utterly useless in evaluating someone's capability to participate in organized software engineering.
Case in point: I have worked with several folks, in FAANG, who by all technical standards were "real" tech people. Polyglot programmers, could tackle any sticky logic problem.
Ask them to communicate their solution to other engineers? To communicate with others with empathy? Be able to navigate conversations with directors and VPs about broadly implementing their solutions? Absolutely, 100% fell on their face. Couldn't do it. They couldn't form a cohesive, understandable, actionable statement about their work to save their lives. They'd go off on some completely pointless technical tangent that had little to do with the problem at hand.
Code reviews they participated in ground to a complete fucking halt. Not because they actually addressed meaningful technical issues. No, they wanted to pontificate and show off how much smarter they were.
In my not totally hard-data experience, people that maybe didn't have quite the "real tech people" skills but were expressive, capable communicators often actually shipped more meaningful work, more often, and built organizational equity not just for themselves, but for their teammates and managers too.
Software development at any scale, like it or not, involves working with other people. In my experience people that go around gatekeeping and using some hilariously subjective ruler to grade "realness" aren't very effective at all.
Sure, it's a confrontational response, because I've seen too many solid, empathetic, capable individuals run out of tech by toxic gatekeeping bullshit just like this.
Then all I'm left to manage and work with are toxic, self-aggrandizing, "um akshually" engineers who rate appearing smarter than others over working well with others and getting things done.
edit: Have a great day, I'm going to let this one go. Things to do, code to write :)
It really comes down to this: You can't blather at the computer. You have to make very precise statements to the computer. If you can't be precise in your communications, you can't program.
That usually spills over into human communications, too. People who can talk to computers can usually talk to humans who can talk to computers, because they can use at least some of the same terms with the same meanings.
And they can talk with the same mindset. You can't show off to the computer. You can't get the code to compile or to run by using more flowery wording. Tech people tend to carry that mindset into their communication with each other.
You like the posters approach? Fine. I don't find their style (or yours) to be either healthy or productive and it just can stress teams out to have to work with someone super high need.
It's the same recycled logic of people who want to return to the times of being able to say whatever they want, and people who are offended just "need to move on".
This kind of thinking is why homophobia/misogyny/racism is still so prevalent in tech. Dog whistles like "real tech people" or "super high need" or "people that just can't move on".
It's a lot more convenient and dismissive to associate it with some kind of lack of performance. "Oh they should just focus on the code, thank god for all the coders who never want to attend meetings and just code..."
I know you don't like my "style", but I'm afraid most organized software development is starting to become more aware of the need to be empathetic and accepting of the human element, not less, and just "getting over it and coding" isn't an acceptable answer anymore.
Maybe mixed in with all the microaggression / toxic work environment type stuff?
The folks who code are usually like, hey, let me show you this, or do you have time to look at this.
THe managers, sales etc folks never say this. They will schedule you for long long boring meetings on any topic they can think of.
Is this unusual?
The issue is that some people confuse being polite with blathering.
This is actually a perfect example of this! Let's take a minute here to look at your response.
"Do you have hard data to back that up"
I literally said "I've found". Folks who go on long winded discussions about privilege do exactly this - redirect, misunderstand, demand impossible things.
I didn't say I had hard data, I said this was just my personal experience. I don't need hard data to back up my own experience - it's simply my experience.
The "hard data" that you seem interested in is often horrendously weak in this social studies type area. This may be offensive or triggering, but measuring job performance is extremely hard, and measuring it relative to communication styles is harder. This raises a question in my mind, are you unable to evaluate the likelihood that hard data would exist so that it makes sense to demand it and you would believe what I presented if I found some? There may be some poor critical reasoning skills here.
"just anecdotal personal bristling whenever someone says "privilege""
Dismissing others experience rather than engaging on the comment. Is your experience positive with folks who communicate like this? Mine is not. The writer is using this over the top over formal language. Their language choice is all a bad sign of ego ego ego. Tech folks are in high demand, they are not gods.
"While I very much appreciate the fact that exceptionally talented and engaged recruiters reach out consistently"... "I will be unavailable for further discussion."
I believe your original comment was:
> Insta-delete if I'm doing hiring...
Now who's being dismissive again? ;-)
> Folks who go on long winded discussions about privilege do exactly this - redirect, misunderstand, demand impossible things.
And I've found folks who respond defensively as you have tend to not reflect on their own privilege, and generally do not respond well to criticism or questioning.
Of course... feel free to "dismiss" what I'm saying.
The ones who send me jobs I am way overqualified for, or simply don't pay enough, I tell them my current compensation package with the advice to send relevant offers in the future.
Realistically though, every external recruiter I have talked to since I got into my current big tech company has been a waste of time. They can't usually touch my comp package, and only the other big tech companies are likely to be able to (or internal recruiters).
There are some 3rd party groups that are solid. Most are a waste of time.
Best jobs I got when I picked the company and applied.
Whoa!! Is this for early career folks (less than 6 years)? In the 15-20 years experience range none of my friends and ex-colleagues who moved jobs got a 50% raise on moving.
1. Your bog standard run of the mill corp dev jobs. They all look alike and they all pay around the same. In most major cities that’s around $80K - $150K. This is where most developers work. A local recruiter can usually help you find a job as long as you have some experience and are looking for average wages. Yes I know “average” for software engineers even in this category puts you in the upper middle income.
2. The Big Tech, unicorn, let’s waste VC money tech companies - with compensation levels you see on levels.fyi. External recruiters are useless once you are looking in that range. But again, there are only a few dozen companies that pay in this range, they are always hiring and we all know how to find them if they don’t find us first.
Most experienced people in HCOL areas still earning 150k-200k max. When I talk to a recruited and ask for 300k often they'll say its possible but dont say if you have to be a superstar to get that. Meta seems paying 500k+ often and random big tech cos are all over the place.
- everything is signal, even/especially noise in aggregate - engineers are particularly subject to blind spots - know yourself - ymmv
I also suspect asking for company name will scare off most recruiters because if you go around them, they dont get paid.
They do say keep interviewing to keep the skill sharp. So perhaps there is something to be said here.
Here's the one I got today, when I try to reply it just says 'you're replying to a mailing list' so really I'm nobody to this one.
>I am reaching out to see if you would be interested in exploring Executive Level opportunities. >I have reviewed your LinkedIn profile and found your skills and experience to be impressive and relevant to the job position.
>If you are interested in learning more about our company and the position, we would love to set up a quick phone call. We would be pleased to answer any questions you may have and give you all the details about the job.
>Please reply to this email with an updated copy of your resume.
There's no way he 'reviewed my linkedin' while also just mailing list form. In fact if I look at it. The mailing form only really has $FIRSTNAME and that's about as much effort as they put in.
Yet they want me to produce an updated resume and join a quick call? Oh man that's asking.
Makes it easier on all of us
Just because you guys don't like them doesn't mean many other people love those areas, please stop unnecessarily dumping on cities you don't like.
If you're married with kids, NYC doesn't make sense. If you're single with passions outside work - it's great.
NYC makes me feel more human and connected, even if that means higher taxes, smaller apartment, and generally more discomfort on a daily basis.
But I guess NYC can grow on you in time?
The west coast felt judgmental and divisive. I couldn't always express myself for fear of alienation. I do not have strong views and I (used to?) consider myself liberal (I'm not American).
I really enjoy how conversationally adept the average New Yorker is. It's simply more fun to be with people. And the diversity is refreshing. I'm a software dev more by circumstance, not temperament. I used to only talk to ~30 y/o tech men/women. Now my day includes a sweet 75 year old lady, academics, health workers, and plenty of ~30 y/o folks who are living interesting lives without a mold.
I kept my job and moved here, taking a 10% haircut thanks to taxes. Oh well. All the big tech firms have a physical presence in NYC (FB, GOOG, AMZN..). There's less kool-aid drinking startups, but I'm ok with that. It's a big city, you can have your pick. I think as a tech worker, you have the breathing room to give up the top 10% opportunities in the field and still be a top 1% earner in the larger society (with more job satisfaction).
Hm, and here I was, thinking that different people like living in different places for different reasons!
The coffee and pastries nearby aren't as fun as Brooklyn though.
You should always respond to recruiters at your OWN discretion. Use 3 digital condoms (throwaway numbers, etc.), and don't continue the Convo if they won't disclose details such as salary. Ain't nobody got time for dat.
For increasing your salary, and potentially finding a role you'd take. I'd not categorize this as "career resources" -- there's so much more important stuff like figuring out what you want out of your career and keeping on track with it.
Why do people focus on money so much when making career changes? Sure, you'll get more in your next job because the current salary is a piece of leverage to use. But if it's only about money, why did you accept your current job?