Because there are developers like him that were beating on the door to get in, the function of recruiters is a joke at widely known companies. The needed function would have been called secretarial work a few decades ago but grifters have flocked into most companies and built empires completely outside the line of business and common sense. He needed to talk to hiring managers and find a good team fit and be placed at a level that reflected his capabilities on that team. Only hiring managers can do that unless recruiters start putting in a decade of building software and managing development teams and somehow intimately know a manager's personality. A hiring manager might occasionally need a search firm to find people outside their own network, but that is a completely different function and the manager should start the interviewing after receiving lightly screened resumes. Bottom line if you want to be a leader you need to step up and do your job, and that means recruiting and building your team.