I don't understand why people complain about being contacted by recruiters on LinkedIn. It's your public CV and professional contacts; recruiting is what LinkedIn was designed for!
Some skeevy recruiters use the "I already know this person" button when they don't, to avoid paying LinkedIn. Because they're breaking the rules of the site, I think it's correct to call them spammers.
The recruiters who contact without lying to do so aren't spammers, since that's indeed a large part of what the site is for, and you agree to such contact when you join. (And I believe you can turn off such contacts in the preferences, though I can't double-check since I just closed my account.)
I happen to agree, LinkedIn has a greater responsibility to its user base than maximizing conversion on its invite-a-friend feature.
Funny that more and more, email == gmail.
I guess there are a few of us around who still don't use it.
I've received many recruiter contacts where the position being pitched does seem to logically connect with the experience and skills on my CV.
And then you receive recruiter contacts where it's obvious they're just machine-gunning in the dark, where the jobs being pitched have zero relation to your skills and experience.
There's also some pretty bad recruiter behavior where, if you reply to the initial contact, you've automatically signed up for a massive increase in the volume of communications they send you. I've even had one recruitment firm sign me up for their goddamn company mailing list just for replying to their initial contact.
There's plenty to dislike about tech recruiting. Targeted, sensible contacts are really just the tip of the ice berg.
We expect quality ratings when interacting on Ebay... shouldn't we get them on LinkedIn, which is just another type of peer-to-peer marketplace? They've created something similar with endorsements (for job seekers) but is there anything similar in terms of recruiters?
Alas the core issue in this blog post has nothing to do with the abundance of recruiter contact. Anyone with a Linkedin has already managed to figure out how to manage the difference between spam recruiters and the good guys.
Are you confusing recruiting for a job with someone that does body-shop contracting?
Actually, it's in the recruiter's best interest to maximize the return he gets over all his candidates. If he can place candidates three times as fast by offering them at 50% off their market rate, he makes a bigger total commission.
Edit: I'd also add what tech talent is going to be so unaware of their market value that they'd take 50% of it?
However, the other 90+% of contact I've received I can't appreciate. I've been involved with the CPython project for a while, and I'm on the Python Software Foundation's board. Seeing that sends some of the shotgun recruiters through the roof, trying to "network" with me by sending me bullshit jobs and asking me to share my local contacts. I used to get plenty of messages like, "hey I have this great Django job that you're a perfect fit for." How is this possible when I've never done more than read the Django tutorial, and nowhere on my profile does it mention Django or any other web frameworks? This is a waste of time.
Recruiters have never once helped me out. In fact, one time a recruiter called me for a job I had quit the previous day! I regard recruiters lower than used car salesmen.