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Comment by edem | Hacker News Reader

It is rather arrogant I think.

Why? He's being honest about his expectations. If a recruiter thinks they're unreasonable, the recruiter is free not to contact him. Sure, he may not be worth that much so nobody will contact him, but he's not really looking anyway, so he doesn't waste time deleting useless emails. Recruiters don't waste their time contacting him. Seems like a win-win in my book.

How's so? Is it arrogant to set ground rules for a response to a voice mail? to physical mail?

It's not like he's out there promoting himself. This is for the blast-everything style recruiters that bug me as well.

And yet, an order of magnitude less arrogant than the recruiting attitude that led to its authorship.

How is it arrogant to state your minimum requirements up front? To me it shows respect for everyone's time and attention.

The wording is arrogant not the minimum requirement.

I don't see anywhere that he is displaying an exaggerated sense of his abilities. He says look at my history and judge my capability from that.

What exactly strikes you as arrogant? Is it the fact that he says to recruiters "go read this before we talk further"? The fact that he calls out bad behavior?

I agree, especially the deal breakers section. No Microsoft Windows? At all? I use whatever gets the job done, as any good technologist would.

Technically, any technology CAN get the job done, but the author clearly feels that Windows is never the best choice. Personally, I completely agree with him. Developing on Windows offers no advantage over OS X or Linux.

I think it's a matter of enjoying what you do and he seems to not enjoy Windows.

Sure, we all do, but there's a difference between using something because it is the best tool for the job, and using it because "we use hammers for everything around here."

I don't think it's arrogant - it's direct. I would think a recruiter would want to know about these kinds of preferences, if only to save them the time spent contacting someone who wouldn't be a fit for an opening.

Yes especially the dealbreakers section. I don't know why a lot of developers are so compelled to only work with a specific programming language (i.e ruby/python). Does it really matter that much what the underlying codebase is when you know the fundamentals of computer science. I pick up new languages if the job requires it but I wouldn't toss out a job offer for 200K because the company uses a certain stack that I had a bad experience with in the past.

It does come off as a little condescending, but hopefully we can take that to mean that he is really really in love with his current job!

If you don't want to get approached by recruiters then don't be on LinkedIn in the first place. This is just my opinion though.

LinkedIn is for more then just getting job offers. I don't use Facebook, so this is my way of keeping in touch with people I have worked with in the past.

Also, I don't mind getting emails telling me about jobs I might like, but as long as they are targeted and relevant to me. Most of the people sending these emails don't even read my profile.

There's more to linkedin than recruiting.

Issues with that:

1) I started on LinkedIn 5 years ago. I have a few recommendations from former managers/coworkers on there. So even though I don't wish to be contacted by recruiters today, deleting it would be cutting off my nose to spite my face.

2) If I did delete it, then when I did decide I want to start job-searching again, and start a new LinkedIn account, it would be a big red flag to my current employer, assuming I wanted to keep my job search quiet.

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