He means actually working with them, not the spam. They seem puzzlingly worthless. I actually asked a guy at an interview, years ago, "Why do you use recruiters?" and he said it saved time going through resumes. As if that's worth a fat commission: Using some lib-art knucklehead who can distinguish 5 years of .NET from 3 years of .NET.

Also, they sometimes call your office. If you don't have a good relationship with your receptionist, never ever use them.

Last time a recruiter cold-called me at the office I asked them if they really thought it was appropriate to 'phone my client in an effort to recruit me … and then hung up on them.

If only there were some kind of meta-recruiter you could use to identify and recruit the good recruiters.

I think there's a lot of humblebrag for sure, but for me the annoyance isn't that they are annoying but that they seem to provide a very useful service so poorly that they are a net negative. I don't want to humblebrag about unsolicited recruitment attempts, I want a quiet and fruitful partnership with somebody who does the job well.