Understand that I'm not singling you out here because I see similar kinds of comments on lots of recruitment related threads on HN, but this comment:
> My advice for engineers is: understand what manner of communication you most prefer, state this clearly whereever you have a profile and stick rigidly to this. There is really no reason why a recruiter should have your number, and if they do, no reason for you to answer it if the number is unrecognised
I understand what you're trying to convey to recruiters here but, and please understand that my intent isn't to be unkind (and certainly not to you specifically because I'm talking about a whole class of comments), what you may not understand is how this comes across and why it is not good advice for other engineers who may read your comment.
It comes across as entitled and demanding, and marks you out as somebody who possibly lacks flexibility, and might be difficult to work with.
You might like to think that you are very special and very talented, and maybe you are, but here's a dose of reality for you: I work for a company that nobody's ever heard of and, even here, we get far more applicants for our engineering roles than we have roles available. Inevitably that means we unfortunately turn down some very special and very talented people because there are simply too many of them in our pipeline to employ them all (much as I might like to).
This in turn means we get to be choosy about who we hire and who we don't. If you come off as maybe a bit difficult to work with, or a bit inflexible, or maybe nursing a sense of entitlement, you're probably not going to get the job. Why? Because we know there's somebody else in the pipeline with the same skills and who is going to be easier and more pleasant to work with. So, at every stage of our selection process we're selecting against those former traits, and for the latter traits.
And, let me state this again, I don't work for a famous company that loads of people want to work at. I've never really worked for a famous company, apart from one multinational retailer on a contract, yet this is the way it's worked at every single one of them and they've never really struggled to hire. (Of course companies moan that it's hard to hire engineers but what I've come to realise is that most of the time what they mean is that it's more effort than they expected or would like - a sort of reverse entitlement, if you like: "well, these people should obviously just fall into our laps.")
We all have our preferences, and I hate talking to recruiters and going through selection processes but, when all's said and done, if you want the job you've got to play the game. I know there are far too many recruiters who appear to have picked up their social skills from the local reptile sanctuary, but (and especially if you want the job) do not be a pain in the ass to the recruiter, whether they're external or in-house.
FOR ADDITIONAL CONTEXT ONLY: I am not a recruiter (I'm very much a programmer at heart), but I do recruit people for my own teams, and in fact I regard building a strong team as possibly my most important responsibility. This is because without that strong team I can't really discharge my other key responsibilities effectively.