Why would I skip the recruiter and apply directly unless the recruiter is a non-helpful middleman? I’d love to have a direct contact to negotiate the whole process.

I've toyed with the idea of finding a for-fee recruiter on my own to spam these companies and their listings and pre-negotiate out something really interesting for myself. But that's more like a sports agent. Anyone know a tech sports agency to Jerry Maguire myself with? :D

(I know, first world diva problems, sigh... it's still grating though)

Sure, he's getting like $30k from my employer in a month, but whatever. That $30k has almost no impact on my compensation.

He mainly does Dallas, but my position is fully remote.

Email is my username with one less 0, at gmail

The fact that there seem to be more recruiters than competent developers sometimes tells me a diva status is deserved.

The thing is, a recruiter's pay can easily be 10K per placed candidate. Looking at my current pay, that means they only need to place a handful of people a year to earn as much as I do.

tldr - they do exist, but in very short supply (like many skilled/talented people in most industries)

Not exactly an agent, but you can hire a negotiation consultant at levels.fyi. When you get to the nosebleed levels of comp, it makes sense to have a specialist in your corner.

I've heard this a few times as well over my career, I wonder what-beyond missing out on that sweet contingency fee-recruiters have to lose by, as the article suggest: just being freaking transparent with candidates

Asking for a friend. Does anybody know what this commission is?

Think of all the engineers that hate recruiters. A recruiter has to talk to those folks every day.