> No matter how we feel, the process still goes through recruiters.

That's right and they simply look for keywords on my various online profiles and send me the standard "I'm really impressed by your experience, I think you'll be a great fit" message, even though 50% of the time I'm clearly not a great fit. Why do they get this wrong? Because they are "are bottom-of-the-totem pole, lowest-common-denominator bottom-feeders" to quote the parent post...

PS - I wish it weren't so.

Is that a matter of competence, or a deliberate tradeoff regarding false positives and false negatives? Or are they just motivated to show high numbers?

Almost universally these types of behaviors emerge from self-interest. So it's pretty safe to assume that whatever approach recruiters tend to follow, they do so because it is the optimum for them. That means either that the incentives are a problem, or that the seemingly foolish recruiting techniques you've been exposed to are more effective than you might realize, not being a recruiter yourself. Probably a mix.

The problem is that sometimes what is "optimal to the recruiter" is not optimal for the applicant nor optimal to society. This is why applicants get frustrated or angry.

I heard a recruiter once (socially) tell me that they ignore all resumes with foreign names for sales positions because on average their yield on such calls is too low to bother.

Fair -- absolutely not.

Optimal to recruiter -- probably.

Good for the organization - no.

Good for society - no.

I'd love if there was something company owners and operators did to prevent things like this which are local maximums but globally inefficient (as well as unethical and unfair)

Your last para is my exact point. The recruiters are acting in self interest. Expecting that they do otherwise is a doomed hope. It is up to owners, and transitively up to society at large, to make and if need be enforce policies that encourage the desired behavior.

> I'd love if there was something company owners and operators did to prevent things like this which are local maximums but globally inefficient (as well as unethical and unfair)

Well, continuing your line of thinking: what's the incentive structure for company owners/stakeholders? And how does it stimulate them to seek global efficiency?

In vernacular, "theory" is completely different from the scientific jargon meaning of a "theory", which leads to people saying "Evolution is just a theory".

Similarly, the economic jargon term "efficiency" is not at all the same as the commonplace definition you used. The economic definition barely covers anything beyond profit maximisation and cost minimisation and is precisely the reason we see so many externalised costs. Companies are "efficient" only in monetary terms, but that doesn't preclude waste, missed opportunities, myopia and environmental or societal fallout.

I suspect, much like women on dating websites, people receive many more low-effort messages from recruiters, because the subset of recruiters sending out low-effort messages send out far more of them.

tbh I suspect it's at a fairly reasonable effort/reward point for them. There's so little you can factually learn from a short glance that confidence will always be low, and there are so many applicants (because applying is super low cost) that spending sufficient time to get a clearer answer is not worthwhile.

There probably are some high-quality-only recruiter groups out there, but they're not what most companies use. Which is probably why referrals are so valued in many places.

> the process still goes through recruiters

Does it? Idk, maybe it’s because I’m not a SV SWE, but I’ve found all my jobs through my network.

Yeah I would split the issue raised in this post along two axes. The first is junior vs senior positions. For a junior position a half-baked github project or a little meetup presentation does wonders for you. At the senior level unless you did something incredible or highly relevant in your side-projects no one cares, it can even be a negative.

The other is how are you getting the job. Are you sending in your resume through a jobs site or are you calling your old friend the startup CTO to see if you can help out? Side-projects, failed startups, and networking will make the latter strategy easier for you but won't help much with the former.

Looking for a senior role through an impersonal application process depends very heavily on your primary, full-time employment track record. Otherwise I think there is still real value in developing along other lines.

That is very interesting, and would account for what I considered a mysterious experience of having a very hard time finding work this past year (while that had not remotely been an issue for me in the past).

I've been doing freelance for a few years now, but when I was hired at two startups prior to that, in each case it was clear that my side projects were the driving factor. (The first time, it was an offer directly in response to a ShowHN I'd posted; the second is harder to explain since it comes down to a series of calls/emails with the guy who hired me, and the fact that my unimpressive formal schooling was in stark contrast to everyone I worked with.)

In any case, during that time I'd turned down many inquiries sent to me by people potentially interested in hiring me, and the only places I applied to I was hired at.

More recently when I've tried applying for positions it's like my portfolio is irrelevant. Where previously those projects were met even with astonishment at times, and frequently with what seemed like genuine curiosity, now it seems like people are more interested in 'gaps in my resume' (where I was in fact working on more research or entrepreneurial software projects).

What's strange to me is that I wasn't particularly young during the first phase I spoke of: I posted the ShowHN that landed me my first real startup position when I was 27 (I'm 34 now)—so it's not like people's reactions to my projects were about it being impressive 'for my age' or something.

It seems like more and more the work I've done on my own on is irrelevant or even seen as a negative, while more traditional resume items take the forefront.

Obviously you know a great deal about your own situation than any internet commenter but perhaps you’re taking the wrong lesson from this?

Reading your story I would not be surprised if the problem was that the side projects strategy has topped out for the current level of impressiveness and publicity. I bet increasing either would improve results. If you look at Greg Kogan’s website[1] since he’s a consultant too there’s nothing about any impressive educational background. It’s all research and case studies. Blowing your own trumpet more, whether by speaking at meetups and conferences or creating digital artifacts that anyone can find on your website and then telling ten people who might be interested and might share might help. Both of these help more as they are performed more consistently, obviously.

[1] https://www.gkogan.co/

The first rounds you were going for new graduate positions, they were looking at your side projects because juniors don't have anything to show, and they saw something in yourself, a cheap youngster willing to work hard probably like they were at your age. (You're right that 27s was not fresh out of university but it was 20s nonetheless and you were treated as a junior / new graduate)

The later rounds you are going for experienced positions, they have much higher expectations. They want to see successful experiences at previous companies, building things (preferably the same thing they are doing), working with coworkers, delivering in a more-or-less corporate environment. It's completely different expectations. A side project is out of touch at best.

Something I had some success with was grouping things together on the resume. Having lived through it it can feel like different chapters but often that isn't legible to others. So you had a lot of success freelancing for a year and then spent 3 years on product research and development that went nowhere or looks doomed in hindsight. Why did you give up a good business to dither around?

Really what happened was you spent 4 years on an entrepreneurial journey that involved products, services, and R&D. That the services side provided the revenue to support the other segments is exactly how that business is supposed to work. It's how IBM works.

I've found jobs through my network, but my most lucrative one to date was though a cold linkedin message from a recruiter. YMMV.

Never worked in SV, but I have found 0/5 jobs via my network, which is pitifully small (because I spent the bulk of my career in the defense industry).

1 was from a college recruiting visit.

1 was from a direct, blind application.

1 was from an in-house recruiter.

2 were from third-party recruiters.

And did that network care about side project all that much?