Tech recruiters at cold-call end of the Talent Acquisition Funnel aren't offering you a comfortable job, though.

They're searching on LinkedIn and offering you to throw at a company with Similarly Aligned Keywords to see if you stick.

I want to believe that there are higher-quality recruiters out there, ones who understand employee fit from both sides, but I haven't had the privilege of meeting one.

If there where, they would understand the underlying tech and would be drafted to run some department or code/architect on some system. The good recruiters get there time wasted by the bad recruiters, just like everyone else.

> I want to believe that there are higher-quality recruiters out there, ones who understand employee fit from both sides, but I haven't had the privilege of meeting one.

There are the internal recruiters from companies spamming on LinkedIn too.

And the recruiters who have good roles and state the companies and salaries upfront.

Any job with a paycheck on a regular basis is a high quality job, for me at least.

With the tech job market right now, most tech workers can find jobs that pay the bills easily, so they'll tend to raise their level of discrimination a little. So they look for the one that pays a little more, is working with some neat technology, and basically works with their schedule (Or whichever other list of nice-to-haves).

When you can afford to be picky, "high quality" takes on a different meaning.

Exactly. But the point is that is a luxury for most people. Having recruiters chase you and being irritated by it lacks some awareness of how hard it is for some people to earn a living. It is hard to sympathize with people for having to ignore a few emails every day.

That part of it isn't lost on me. Although, I think being irritated by people (recruiters) harassing you is natural, but complaining about it to someone vying in a less-lively job market is insensitive, and I wouldn't expect that person to sympathize in the least.

I think the point the parent was trying to make is that responding to a recruiter isn't likely to get you ANY job, because they don't understand the job reqs they're recruiting for nor the people they're trying to place.

There are, but they're virtually reserved for ex-military.

Though that can actually be an interesting problem for all three parties.

There are. They are called headhunters. They'll meet with you and give first.

It's not very helpful when they're trying to give you a job you aren't qualified for; it's just a waste of everyone's time: mine, the recruiter's, and if I were to actually work with the recruiter, the hiring manager's. The problem is most recruiters have no idea what they're doing.

Just because some 3rd-party recruiter wants to "give you a comfortable job" doesn't mean he's actually capable of it.

IME, most 3rd-party recruiters are barely competent if that, and are trying to get me to apply for jobs I either am not qualified for, have zero interest in (some dead-end technology that'll mean I won't have a career before long if I go that route), or is some short-term contract in the middle of nowhere (meaning I'd be losing money to take the job, unless I want to live in my car).

The short-term contracts are the ones that really make my head spin, because those requisitions are coming directly from companies and the recruiters are just looking for heads for those positions. Do these companies in places like Erie, PA really think they're going to find someone with highly specialized skills who's willing to come work for them for only 6 months at an unremarkable pay rate? The cost to relocate there would be substantial, not many places will let you have a 6-month lease, and then there's the cost to relocate somewhere else after 6 months because there's no other similar jobs there. What are these companies thinking?

The ideal is that people genuinely are knocking on your door with a nice job for you.

The reality is that most are just in it for commissions - which in some cases comes out of the salary you're promised - and you get thrown into a job where the company cared too little to actually look for quality candidates.

The secret ia that 90% of them are garbage. When someone boasts how they are getting courted left and right I have a chuckle and put them in my "very impressionable" bin.

Ok, I'll bite.

How can I find you online? Do you have a blog with even a modicum of activity? Do you have a linkedin that says "I'm good with X"? Some github activity? At least a twitter account where you post sometimes?

Software engineers have a NEGATIVE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE. Negative. If you're not getting recruiterspam, you're not findable. And that's totally on you, not on anyone else. It's 2017, it has never been easier to be findable. Do something, anything, and put it out there.

If recruiters can find you with "Software engineer with a pulse", you will get emails. Maybe not every day, but at least once in a while.

This advice [probably] does not work for many other professions.

Do you even read this forum? "Negative unemployment rate" couldn't be further from the truth. There are tons of qualified programmers who get rejected left and right. I'm experiencing this at the moment myself. If there were really negative unemployment rate, then I should get 10 offers for sending out 10 resumes. In reality I'm getting 0 offers for every 10 resumes sent out.

Have you considered that you might not be a fit for companies where you are applying? For example, I would bomb at any enterprisey company, and I do really well in small early stage startups.

I could apply to hundreds of corporate jobs and I'm pretty sure I'd get none of them. Whereas for small startups I have historically rejected more offers than I've taken.

In fact, I have never gotten an offer from any company bigger than 30 or so employees. And yet my inbox gets at least 1 recruiter spam per week.

But that's besides the point. If there are very many engineers out there who aren't getting jobs within, say, 1 year of actively starting to look. And if there are very many companies out there that can't hire engineers within, say, 1 year of actively starting to look. Then there's something wrong with market fluidity in one way or another.

That said, I don't think I've ever heard of a competent engineer who can't land a job within a year of actively seeking.

Then again, I've heard that if you aren't doing anything useful for over a year, your prospects start to dwindle because people wonder what's your deal and see it as a red flag.

> Software engineers have a NEGATIVE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE.

> land a job within a year of actively seeking

A year lead time is what a negative rate looks like?

If you keep applying for jobs you're not a fit for? Yes.

I'd say 1 year is a high upper bound though. Specifics really depend.

But here's some general stats: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-biggest-predictor-o...

That link says that with a bachelor's degree or more, 17% are unemployed for 6 months or less, and 19% for a year or more. That gives a really big percent for people between 6 months and a year.

The reason I brought up the 1 year number was more to point out that there's a big difference between "I can't get a job [at all]" and "I can't get a job I really love as quickly as I want".

I mean, it doesn't matter what the unemployment rate for software engineers is, if you want a job as an AI expert at Google and all you've ever done is building simple Wordpress sites for your buddies.

Well that's not necessarily true. From one of your other submissions, you stated "...I am very bad at interviewing..."

So the problem seems more of, "Hiring Mangers think I'm unqualified" rather than "There aren't enough jobs for qualified developers"

Hiring an unqualified developer is MUCH worse than not hiring a developer at all. It's wasted time and money for the company. I've been on both sides of the table so if you want some feedback on your resume/interviewing skills feel free to shoot me an email.

Shoot you an email where exactly?

You should check your HN profile visibility from a browser where you're not logged in. You don't have email in your profile.

The email address field in your profile is only shown to mods so they can contact you if there's a problem.

HN users who want to be contacted should put their email address in the "about" box.

If you're looking for work, you should put contact info in your profile here. If you're in Seattle, email me.

> If you're not getting recruiterspam, you're not findable. And that's totally on you, not on anyone else.

Which is, to say the least, awesome? Nothing better in the world than not being found, in this day and age.