During my last job search (this past summer), I was contacted by several recruiters. I had phone interviews with several, and an in-person interview with one. I found them to be unhelpful and a waste of time at best, and demeaning and condescending at worst. They treated me like fodder, and were obsessed with keyword and "years of experience with X" matching.

In my entire programming career so far, I have always been hired by principals who valued my intelligence and problem-solving ability over my experience with particular languages or frameworks (e.g. I always get hired to do something I've never exactly done before -- though not intentionally).

I plan to never work with a recruiter again, since their approach is completely orthogonal to mine. I suppose the author's point about higher-level/management positions might be worth considering, so I might reconsider my position on recruiters if/when I cross that career bridge.

I've been a programmer for over 30 years and only one of my jobs was found via a recruiter. All others were via connections..