Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

Ah this fun gatekeeping meme rears it's head again.

So how do you define "tech" people? Do you have a scorecard?

How do they meet your assessment for "real"? Cohesive organization of atomic matter generally constitutes "real" in a lot of physics definitions.

I'd argue trying to label someone a "real tech person" is a laughably subjective exercise that's so corrupted by personal bias and toxicity as to be utterly useless in evaluating someone's capability to participate in organized software engineering.

Case in point: I have worked with several folks, in FAANG, who by all technical standards were "real" tech people. Polyglot programmers, could tackle any sticky logic problem.

Ask them to communicate their solution to other engineers? To communicate with others with empathy? Be able to navigate conversations with directors and VPs about broadly implementing their solutions? Absolutely, 100% fell on their face. Couldn't do it. They couldn't form a cohesive, understandable, actionable statement about their work to save their lives. They'd go off on some completely pointless technical tangent that had little to do with the problem at hand.

Code reviews they participated in ground to a complete fucking halt. Not because they actually addressed meaningful technical issues. No, they wanted to pontificate and show off how much smarter they were.

In my not totally hard-data experience, people that maybe didn't have quite the "real tech people" skills but were expressive, capable communicators often actually shipped more meaningful work, more often, and built organizational equity not just for themselves, but for their teammates and managers too.

Software development at any scale, like it or not, involves working with other people. In my experience people that go around gatekeeping and using some hilariously subjective ruler to grade "realness" aren't very effective at all.

Cyber Coders, I think that is the actual name, is pretty bad. They use a lot of automation to build funnels and send out messages automatically. There are several thousand other recruiting firms that do the same thing with more or less technology.

That being said their goal isnt to waste your time. They are just playing a numbers game. They are trying to hit the postgre DBA who just got told their contract is ending with an email about a postgre DBA contract that starts ASAP. If you are that person and you get that email you might have good results.

I think people get angry when recruiters don't personalize messages or make sure that they are actually qualified for a job or that they actually are helpful during the interview process. But they sold for 105 million in 2013. Their model works despite having one of the worst reputations in the business. They generate a shit load of revenue by spamming massive amounts of people and getting enough emails to the right person at the right time.

If you view third party recruiters as someone who is going to be your job agent and work for you, you're going to have a bad time. If you think of them as street vendors who are slinging wares of questionable quality and price and who offering no refund no return one supply items... You might have a better experience and save yourself a lot of grief.

TLDR: Recruiting companies print money by getting the right email to the right person at the right time. They don't work for you. Don't expect their service to be tailered for you.

[1] https://www.cybercoders.com/insights/press-release-cybercode...

I could make a full time job out of replying to recruiters, because I get probably 100 "opportunities" a day. Most of them have never actually read my resume, or they are working off of a 10 year old copy that was bought from a data broker. And probably 10k other people get that same exact email, so even if I did respond, the odds are bad.

If a founder of a company reaches out with a thoughtful message, there's a 100% chance I'll respond, even to decline. If an in-house recruiter for a copy reaches out, and shows that they understand why I'd be a good fit, there's a 100% chance I'll look, and a 50% chance I'll respond.

I did get my current role by doing roughly what the article states. A recruiter for a startup reached out to me, explaining what the role was and why I might be a good fit. I interviewed with an intent to only leave for a 50%+ salary bump, and they offered 80%+ and equity, so I left. That being said, I ignored 99.9% of the other recruiters who reached out.