> On one extreme, a very desirable dev has the luxury of ignoring all but the most thoughtful recruiter pings on LinkedIn.

You've set your sights too low. A very desirable dev doesn't need to interface with LinkedIn at all.

Even worst: a lot of the best devs out there are completely invisible.

They get offers long before they even decide to switch jobs. They simply never had a LinkedIn account to begin with. It's a friend that calls them to tell them about the new project they are about to hire for.

Companies can either spend more on recruiting fees, or more on better devs that will try to get their friends hired...

>Companies can either spend more on recruiting fees, or more on better devs that will try to get their friends hired...

Yup, half of the team I'm on is made up of people who have worked together in the past and are good. That's how I got the job and how I get all my gigs. I haven't had to really interview for a job since 2002. LinkedIn is entirely unnecessary when you have a large enough network of people who enjoy working with you. The jobs come to you.

This is not so much the case in my experience (Europe). People here do not start new companies that frequently (as is the culture in the US, I think). Many people switch companies and while they can refer you at their new company (and they do), you still have to go through the interviewing process. My own experience: My first job I was approached by one of my Uni professors that had a small company, to work for them. Second job (while still doing my masters at Uni) I had to go through an actual exam for a big company in my country. I found out about it at the Uni (they'd post everywhere they were looking). Third job found on Stack Overflow. Current job found on LinkedIn.

> This is not so much the case in my experience (Europe). People here do not start new companies that frequently (as is the culture in the US, I think).

In Europe? No. European founders? There are so many in the Bay Area. For some reasons they don't seem to stay in Europe.

I keep it up-to-date with at least my employers because there are enough FAANGs and well-known unicorns on the list that that alone gets me recruiters emails. A few of the FAANGs have a recruiter check in with me every year. Basically, I interact with it enough so recruiters know I'm out there and desirable.

I have responded to a few recruiters over time. But every job since the one I was recruited on-campus for in grad school came from reaching out to someone I knew at the company. (Not a developer but in tech.)

ADDED: I've been in a sufficiently specialized subset of the industry for a long time that random recruiter emails aren't likely to be interesting. And I know a lot of people at different companies. So I have pretty much a bare bones profile on LinkedIn as I'm not really looking for inbound pings.

I can see how that could be true although seems silly to limit your inbound opportunities that way (my last 2 roles came via a LI reach-out so I am biased)

What has been your path that landed you amazing highly paid roles and why do you think you're not missing out by not hearing from a broader set of companies?

Went to a small college in Milwaukee cause I knew someone going there on IRC and they had low admission standards.

Got my job at Yahoo Travel via Topcoder referal (before LinkedIn existed). Worked there for seven years. Got many many many spams from LinkedIn to my yahoo-inc address when people uploaded the corporate address book and LinkedIn wouldn't let you unsubscribe without making an account. Made enough to pay a mortgage on a bay area house with a single income.

Got recruited to WhatsApp by Brian Acton who was breifly my boss's boss at Yahoo. Worked there for not quite eight years. Made enough to retire comfortably.

Could I have been more highly paid? Probably when I was working for Yahoo, I got a bigger salary when I moved to a startup. I doubt I could have found anything better post 2014 though.

If I was looking now, I would probably look at selected company's hiring pages and/or through niche sites like HN's who's hiring etc.

Excellent story! My strategy is "the more inbound opportunity the better" so LI is my friend (with plenty of saying "no thank you") but it would be very hard to argue that your approach doesn't work well.

I purposely put very little info on LinkedIn to look like a desirable employee and to avoid clueless people from looking for career advice from me.

I don’t know if I’m desirable, but definitely selective. I targeted a few dozen roles I found, all of them at companies I was interested in. I got replies from a dozen or so, and ended up interviewing at 8. All them were very pleasant, even interesting in some cases. These were all places that are well-known here so maybe there is a correlation?

I don’t like the take-home assessment trend, but I do understand it from a hiring perspective.

Classic “rich get richer” effect, should be a law saying that it’s as common in society as the normal distribution is in nature

I am not even saying that. As technologists, we have a TON of impact into our own hire ability and incomes. More than people realize.

For example, I looked at the blog author's LinkedIn profile. Regardless of his level, it's not a good profile in terms of presenting his maturity as a technologist and ability to deliver outcomes. Which lowers his odds of being noticed by good recruiters even at his current caliber of dev. To at least some degree, this contributes to the negative experience he is having.

You're essentially arguing for a bimodal distribution which does, in fact, seem to exist to at least some degree in some professions, including law.

It's known as "The Matthew Effect".

I'm pretty selective although I'm fairly low caliber. I have alternative income so I'm never in a rush to get hired.

I'm sometimes surprised by weird hiring practices at a place I didn't expect. Even different positions at the same FAANG can be completely different experiences.

I’ve had a very bad recruiter experience with Google. It comes down to the organization, I think: if they care about which people they hire, the experience is good. G is so big they can’t possibly care too much.