I've been lucky to work in Australia, east & west coast USA and the UK. In that time I have witnessed the similarities and differences between hiring practices and to be honest I feel that a lot of what we experience is deserved. We as problem solvers have just not bothered with solving the one problem we as an industry ubiquitously hate the most: IT recruitment agents.

We continue to buy into an antiquated paradigm of job descriptions and CV's. In my opinion these artefacts hurt our industry more than help us. We are so much better than this (and I don't think that answer is portfolio work as not all programmers work with public facing products - which is a cohort i think HN can sometimes overrepresent).

I've been working on a startup to hopefully change the way all this works. Modelling how to address how different types of developers seek opportunities, whether we are in work or out and tying that into how different types of hiring manager (and their teams) meet us. If we do it right it won't be too long before the era of 15-30% 'placement fees' are back to being a much more manageable cost.

Sorry for ranting; I don't speak on HN much.