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Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

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Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#151

Post by andrelaszlo »

michaelt wrote: post #119
ascorbic wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you in the UK? If so, I'm seriously surprised this doesn't ring true. To me it exactly matches my experience both as a contractor and as an employer. As to who is being exploited here, it's the whole IT industry. They are rent-seekers, pure and simple, and they leech off our industry. They may not be sending children down mines, but that doesn't diminish the fact they are terrible companies and terrible people.

They are rent-seekers, pure and simple, and they leech off our industry. I'm no fan of recruiters, but nothing stops you applying to the company directly, and nothing stops the company posting their own job ads.

Actually your CV can be hijacked by a recruiter, effectively keeping you out of a job.

Imagine this scenario: You get a call from a recruiter. They seem to have an interesting position/client/network so you send over your CV. A couple of months later you are actively looking for a job, so you make a list of cool startups in your area and send your CV and a customized cover letter. They all answer that they got your CV from the recruiter and that they can't afford the recruiter's fee. They can't hire you for 6 months/2 years/indefinitely, depending on the recruiters terms.

Oops.

Maybe I'm exaggerating?

Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#152

Post by afandian »

nordic_nomad wrote: post #112
joeyspn wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly don't have a clue about how things are here in the EU. Few weeks ago one of these charitable souls deceived a co-worker offering him an incredible opportunity to move to London and the result was: - £15k ($23k) less salary than advertised in the offer - No benefits (healthcare, dental, etc) - No free food/snacks/bevare at the company - No perks (equipment, etc) When questioned about this, the recruiter sa…

Holy god, that's a job in technology? Sounds like your typical retail wage slave situation here in the US. Even entry level tech jobs are in the $40-$50k range generally.

I think you misunderstood the comment.

"£15k less salary than advertised in the offer"

Means the salary was X but he was paid (X - 15k).

Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#154

Post by xixixao »

onion2k wrote: post #141

I'm not suggesting the author is necessarily wrong, but I've been in the IT industry long enough to notice that there are more "Recruiters are terrible people!" articles whenever there's a boom in tech jobs and people can find their own role. As soon as the market contracts and jobs become hard to find, all the articles stop. I think people's view of tech recruiters is a function of the market rather than a de facto…

Or as someone described above, the recruiters go back to bartending when the market sinks. The issue is not getting too many nice, well-though-out proposals from credible recruiters who can spell and use grammar properly.

Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#155

Post by randlet »

manishsharan wrote: post #109

Spammy tech recruiters are bad but corrupt recruiters and hiring practices are much worse" I live in Canada and I am amazed at the amount of corruption/nepotism I see in IT hiring for government IT jobs. They will put out job requirements for senior java dev or web developer and you are supposed to fill out a matrix of required skill. In those supposedly mandatory skills/experiences, they will put in some weird shit…

Yeah, I get the feeling that many many government (and healthcare?) job advertisements are only posted to meet regulations and there's already someone lined up internally.

Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#156

Post by Encosia »

nordic_nomad wrote: post #112
joeyspn wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly don't have a clue about how things are here in the EU. Few weeks ago one of these charitable souls deceived a co-worker offering him an incredible opportunity to move to London and the result was: - £15k ($23k) less salary than advertised in the offer - No benefits (healthcare, dental, etc) - No free food/snacks/bevare at the company - No perks (equipment, etc) When questioned about this, the recruiter sa…

Holy god, that's a job in technology? Sounds like your typical retail wage slave situation here in the US. Even entry level tech jobs are in the $40-$50k range generally.

I think the $23k was a pound to dollar conversion of the amount less than advertised.

Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#157

Post by m_fayer »

ryguytilidie wrote: post #70
mbroshi wrote: post #34

I 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 i…

Honestly it seems like the author has some serious problems. I know hundreds of recruiters having been at Google and Facebook and not a single one of them thinks like this at all. To say "now grovel and be exploited" about a process where the person will almost certainly end up with a fantastic offer for an engineering job in a comfortable office with great pay and great working conditions may actually be the least s…

I've been fine with recruiters until i came to berlin and somehow let my phone number slip to the uk recruiters. Now, I'm trying to figure out how to block all uk numbers, nothing I can say will make them stop cold calling me, and they're so aggressive it's hard to escape a call without being rude. I really don't get why uk recruiters in particular are so awful, the German ones are fine.

Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#158

Post by riffraff »

mbroshi wrote: post #34

I 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 i…

> or sex workers in Southeast Asia

OT, but you don't have exploited sex workers where you live?

Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#159

Post by mjn »

celticninja wrote: post #113
ascorbic wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you in the UK? If so, I'm seriously surprised this doesn't ring true. To me it exactly matches my experience both as a contractor and as an employer. As to who is being exploited here, it's the whole IT industry. They are rent-seekers, pure and simple, and they leech off our industry. They may not be sending children down mines, but that doesn't diminish the fact they are terrible companies and terrible people.

Really? Terrible companies and terrible people? Do you know how agencies work? You do understand that employers contact them and ask them to find people, to organise their payroll, do relevant checks e.g. confirm right to work, security, skills etc. And these companies know they will be paying a % to the agency and this is because they dont want to do that work themselves they just want a competent worker in place as…

It's funny to read complaints about rent-seeking and someone taking a percentage off the top on a tech forum, where that is the business model of a large portion of tech companies themselves. When authors complain about Amazon being rent-seekers "stealing" a percentage of authors' income, they don't tend to get a lot of sympathy here.

Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#160

Post by emergentcypher »

I guess I'll chime in here as someone who's had a different experience. Actually quite a pleasant experience. They weren't spamming me, they wrote to me once but something about the way they wrote to me caused me to remember this one particularly six months later. Probably because they weren't spamming job postings, just saying "hi there, I'm a recruiter, if you ever find yourself looking for a job I can help you find one." They had me four different interviews the next week and weren't embellishing my qualifications. One of the interviews quickly lead to a job offer in a position I actually wanted to have. They're taking a cut but it's because they made my transition process fast and easy, instead of spending what could have been a month or two unemployed and starting to worry, and to me that's worth something.
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