Had a recruiter email me recently saying:
"JASON knowledge is an advantage..."
Yep. I still don't know jason
Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
31–40 of 335 posts
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#32Possibly the most entertaining and well-written post I've ever encountered on HN.
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#33There have been times in my career when good recruiter was my best friend in the world... at least for a couple of weeks. These days I get spammed or called by five or six of them a day, most of whom haven't even read my resume, and have no idea whether I am a fit for the latest position they are trying desperately to fill. It resembles a boiler-room stock pumping operation.
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#34I will admit I did not make it through this entire article, but it really did not ring true to me at all--just sounded like an unsupported, hostile, angry rant.
>> “Fucked if we care” think the recruiters, “now grovel and be exploited”. ... >> You’re meat to them, a resource to be packaged and sold and exploited.
Who's being exploited here? I think he's implying the programmers, but as someone who left academia for industry, I do not at all share that sentiment. When I think "exploited" I think of diamond miners in Africa or sex workers in Southeast Asia. I got my first job at a start-up through a recruiter, gained a ton of skills, later left, and now I have a very well-paying job at a place I love. People with technical skills are highly sought-after, and do quite well in my experience, whether or not they go through recruiters.
If a comment as irate, mean-spirited, and unsubstantiated as this blog post appeared in HN, it would get down-voted into oblivion.
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#35Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#36> Once I talked a client into advertising a position themselves. The signal-to-noise ratio was appalling and sorting through the flood of applicants took days. Some cover letters were tragic, begging in broken English “I fast learner, my family starving, England less shooty, pliz you help us move?”.
Bah, you can rant without resorting to racist aping of ESOL speakers. Especially when the odds are good that the author only speaks one language.
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#37I love this. The writing style reminded me of "A Clockwork Orange."
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#38I had a total clockwork orange moment reading this.
Unrelated note - you may call me a pig, but I only take calls from female recruiters.
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#39This is an angry angry rant... and I'm not sure I agree. Some recruiters are pretty good. I was placed by one and I consider another an excellent giver of advice; he actually advised me to take a competing offer from another recruiter (of which I did not mention the name or deal, just the parameters). Generally my experience has been positive.
Yes this is a rant. However, the first point is a good one. 95% of the author's [limited sample] where recruiters earning a large amount of money for doing very little technically.
You know, I like how there is this view out there that anyone who's doing classically "business" or "sales" work is not actually working that hard. I know some recruiters. They aren't the world's smartest people, but the successful ones work really damn hard. They don't make more than minimum wage unless they place people.
These guys are cold calling, searching LinkedIn, crawling phone trees, and sending requests all day. When they can they're touching up resumes and doing screening/placement interviews.
Moreover, their technical is different than your technical. It's social hacking and networking. It's learning how to find better opportunities and better people faster.
You might not like that they're Ronin, and work socially. However, they're pulling 12-15 hour days to make their sale.
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#40This is mostly an angry rant, pretty amusing to me how upset the author actually becomes at times, I think its quite harsh. I did like this idea towards the end of it: "To employers – ask your staff to help find new hires. Offer a bounty – enough to get their attention, say a fortnight’s salary. It’s a lot less than [a recruiter] would cost. And their incentives are all positive: no-one will hire an idiot if they hav…
This is completely common in America. Is the London job market scene just messed up?
This is completely common in America
Except for the use of the term "fortnight". :)