Recruiters only know bad developers(medium.com)
medium.com
Recruiters only know bad developers
https://medium.com/p/7b8f4cb478a6
3 comments
First mkautzm , thanks for the comments on this. Honestly, I'm glad to see debate as it allows me to really challenge how I feel about this beyond a short blog post. Just want to feedback on a few points:
>It's considered normal and there is kind of an unspoken agreement between everyone that a .doc or .docx file is acceptable.
I disagree. Maybe in a corporate world, applying for the paper distribution business in town or the IT support department at the accountancy firm up the road. But in the startup community, don't hackers all kinda share a sense of "innovation"?
>If you ask 99% of employers to telnet into your CV, they are probably going to tell you to kindly fuck off, and so you don't.
Wouldn't you want to work for that 1% who didn't?
>'They’re going to complain about overtime'
Don't quote out of context. There's an unlimited vacation policy at Trak.io.... take all the time out you want and need. But yeah, when the AMS MongoDB goes down and Digital Ocean aren;t allowing new droplet provisioning in AMS, I expect all hands on deck while we spin up on AWS. Because we all care about the product, our customers uptime, their data
>In the real world, people do want jobs. People do want jobs they love, and they are willing to give up a lot for jobs they love, and you might be providing them with one, but you need to come down to earth and realize that this isn't the only job they will ever apply for and expecting to be super impressed by the way they apply for the job is unrealistic, unfair, and I dare say, 'out of touch'. These people also have lives outside of work. Hobbies, family, friends and such take time and if you are hiring people that are willing to give up all of that in the name of work, I'd be really concerned for them.
What can I say.... I've learnt that when you're building an early team, you need a small team of amazing people because the overhead of a few OK people doesn;t even come close to the output of one amazing, passionate person.
I'd happily piss off 99 applicants to find no.100 who's amazing and who actually put at least the same amount of time putting an application together as I'll spend researching him/her online :-)
>It's considered normal and there is kind of an unspoken agreement between everyone that a .doc or .docx file is acceptable.
I disagree. Maybe in a corporate world, applying for the paper distribution business in town or the IT support department at the accountancy firm up the road. But in the startup community, don't hackers all kinda share a sense of "innovation"?
>If you ask 99% of employers to telnet into your CV, they are probably going to tell you to kindly fuck off, and so you don't.
Wouldn't you want to work for that 1% who didn't?
>'They’re going to complain about overtime'
Don't quote out of context. There's an unlimited vacation policy at Trak.io.... take all the time out you want and need. But yeah, when the AMS MongoDB goes down and Digital Ocean aren;t allowing new droplet provisioning in AMS, I expect all hands on deck while we spin up on AWS. Because we all care about the product, our customers uptime, their data
>In the real world, people do want jobs. People do want jobs they love, and they are willing to give up a lot for jobs they love, and you might be providing them with one, but you need to come down to earth and realize that this isn't the only job they will ever apply for and expecting to be super impressed by the way they apply for the job is unrealistic, unfair, and I dare say, 'out of touch'. These people also have lives outside of work. Hobbies, family, friends and such take time and if you are hiring people that are willing to give up all of that in the name of work, I'd be really concerned for them.
What can I say.... I've learnt that when you're building an early team, you need a small team of amazing people because the overhead of a few OK people doesn;t even come close to the output of one amazing, passionate person.
I'd happily piss off 99 applicants to find no.100 who's amazing and who actually put at least the same amount of time putting an application together as I'll spend researching him/her online :-)
I stopped reading after `I Hate Word Docs`
If you have any plans to apply to any job besides your open position, they need to be in a word document for all of the shitty ATS. Don't be that guy who makes someone take an extra step just to apply to your open positions. I don't disagree with the premise at all, I'd rather send PDF docs over word but the geniuses in HRT decided against that.
If you have any plans to apply to any job besides your open position, they need to be in a word document for all of the shitty ATS. Don't be that guy who makes someone take an extra step just to apply to your open positions. I don't disagree with the premise at all, I'd rather send PDF docs over word but the geniuses in HRT decided against that.
First of all, if a developer is applying for a job with me and he sends me a Word Doc CV, I’m going to delete his email. Why? Because a word doc is an editable format. But I don’t need to edit his CV. If you really need to send a traditional CV, make it a PDF. It’s basic IT competence.
He sounds like a horribly picky (for no good reason) boss to work for. Only Rockstars need apply.
He sounds like a horribly picky (for no good reason) boss to work for. Only Rockstars need apply.
If he can't edit a pdf with a binary editor, or log into a dial-up connection by screeching into his telephone (no modem) then no true hacker will work for him. Other than that, he has a point.
"He has a point."
Granted. But is it isn't a useful point. Some companies insist on text CVs only, which is much easier to edit than a MS Word or PDF document. They state this requirement along with the position information. (For example, http://www.psteam.com/general/about/jobs.asp says " Plain ASCII text CV's only please.")
Rather than rant, this company should state its requirements for, say, "unusual and/or puzzle-based CVs only", and then feel free to toss out any non-conforming submissions.
In general that rant is very company specific, and provides little generally useful advice. Consider this line: "so out of touch with the development community, that they’ve gone to a suit-and-tie recruiter."
I used to be in touch with the Python developer community, back around 2000, with core commit rights and everything. But knowing other developers in the Python community isn't at all the same as knowing people who would hire Python programmers, especially since I didn't want to move from Santa Fe, NM. While a local recruiter is much more likely to know who is hiring in my area.
Also, the posting suggests that they are looking for people willing to work long hours for low wages, and who likely won't be pressuring management for raises to match their market worth. It also suggests that hosting a London hackathon for £9K GBP hackathon isn't a good way to find job leads, otherwise they would have done so by now.
Granted. But is it isn't a useful point. Some companies insist on text CVs only, which is much easier to edit than a MS Word or PDF document. They state this requirement along with the position information. (For example, http://www.psteam.com/general/about/jobs.asp says " Plain ASCII text CV's only please.")
Rather than rant, this company should state its requirements for, say, "unusual and/or puzzle-based CVs only", and then feel free to toss out any non-conforming submissions.
In general that rant is very company specific, and provides little generally useful advice. Consider this line: "so out of touch with the development community, that they’ve gone to a suit-and-tie recruiter."
I used to be in touch with the Python developer community, back around 2000, with core commit rights and everything. But knowing other developers in the Python community isn't at all the same as knowing people who would hire Python programmers, especially since I didn't want to move from Santa Fe, NM. While a local recruiter is much more likely to know who is hiring in my area.
Also, the posting suggests that they are looking for people willing to work long hours for low wages, and who likely won't be pressuring management for raises to match their market worth. It also suggests that hosting a London hackathon for £9K GBP hackathon isn't a good way to find job leads, otherwise they would have done so by now.
Hey Dalke, firstly thanks for the long comments and feedback.
You make an amazing point and on future job openings we are going to be far more specific in order to be fair to developers who want to apply directly.
However, from experience no mater HOW MUCH detail I give, recruiters will still spin me the same shit:
"A company just when bust in your area and I have some amazing developers looking for work, here's some word docs attached"
Also, that's a really good exception RE someone moving to a new geographic location and might not have any contacts or referrals... I think we can work on this by expanding our own digital footprint internationally over time, but it's a special circumstance I guess recruiters might come in...
However, then I think how hard is it to google? If I lost my job and decided to move to spain, building a database of tech companies in Madrid would take an evening. Sending personal emails to the CEO (assuming small teams) in each case would only take a few days.
So no, other than knowing the local salary market (google that too) I still think I'd find better people by circumventing recruiters
>Also, the posting suggests that they are looking for people willing to work long hours for low wages, and who likely won't be pressuring management for raises to match their market worth.
No it doesn't. Yeah, like all startups we offer a touch below market rate in exchange for options but nowhere do I imply "long hours for low wages"? Maybe the unlimited vacation time was overlooked????
You make an amazing point and on future job openings we are going to be far more specific in order to be fair to developers who want to apply directly.
However, from experience no mater HOW MUCH detail I give, recruiters will still spin me the same shit:
"A company just when bust in your area and I have some amazing developers looking for work, here's some word docs attached"
Also, that's a really good exception RE someone moving to a new geographic location and might not have any contacts or referrals... I think we can work on this by expanding our own digital footprint internationally over time, but it's a special circumstance I guess recruiters might come in...
However, then I think how hard is it to google? If I lost my job and decided to move to spain, building a database of tech companies in Madrid would take an evening. Sending personal emails to the CEO (assuming small teams) in each case would only take a few days.
So no, other than knowing the local salary market (google that too) I still think I'd find better people by circumventing recruiters
>Also, the posting suggests that they are looking for people willing to work long hours for low wages, and who likely won't be pressuring management for raises to match their market worth.
No it doesn't. Yeah, like all startups we offer a touch below market rate in exchange for options but nowhere do I imply "long hours for low wages"? Maybe the unlimited vacation time was overlooked????
Why are you giving more details to the recruiters? Based on what you wrote, shouldn't you say "we don't work through recruiters" and hang up?
I gave the geographical one as an example that was easy to understand. I work in a specialized subfield of computational chemistry. I work for myself. There are three major classes of developers: 1) people working in software companies, 2) people working in academia, or 3) people working at pharmaceutical companies. I'm in group #1. The developers I know are in group #1 and #2, because those working in #3 are usually working on in-house software that typically remains private for several years before doing any publications.
If I wanted a job, I would want to work in #3, because I like working directly with scientists. On the other hand, I don't have good contacts outside of the actual developers in various companies. While a good recruiter would.
Even better, consider an in-house software developer at AstraZeneca near Boston (group #3) and who wanted to work for another pharma or biotech in the area, of which there are many. Odds are that person wouldn't have that many contacts, because most in-house developers can't talk about their jobs in public, or work on public projects related to their job. It seems that a good recruiter would be the way to go even there.
"building a database of tech companies in Madrid would take an evening"
Yes, that's a large city. Santa Fe has 65,000 people. People in those situations have to be a lot broader in the search, which takes time. There's lots of small companies that I could have worked for, ranging from chemistry or GIS to futures trading or human factors analysis, and there's no centralized listing for those.
While in a large city you can search for "<specialization> Madrid", and odds are that someone at least has put a decent list together already.
"No it doesn't."
I was reacting to "They’re going to complain about overtime." I worked overtime. I worked a lot of overtime when I was starting off. I am convinced that overtime is generally an indication that the company wants its employees to work for free. Want to convince me otherwise? Pay your employees time and a half for working overtime.
I worked overtime even in a company with two days per month vacation time. Which I like nearly everyone else never took, because we felt we needed to work hard in a startup. Many even came in to work on the weekends. And in the end, those stock options? Worthless.
I was also reacting to the "bad-ass senior developers their extortionate hourly rates." I am a "bad-ass senior developer" in my field. There's a reason I charge "high hourly rates" - my time is worth it. That you think the rate is "extortionate" (and not simply "expensive") implies that you don't think bad-ass senior developers are worth market rates. Since you likely want bad-ass senior developers, this suggests you would rather pay people less than they are worth.
I gave the geographical one as an example that was easy to understand. I work in a specialized subfield of computational chemistry. I work for myself. There are three major classes of developers: 1) people working in software companies, 2) people working in academia, or 3) people working at pharmaceutical companies. I'm in group #1. The developers I know are in group #1 and #2, because those working in #3 are usually working on in-house software that typically remains private for several years before doing any publications.
If I wanted a job, I would want to work in #3, because I like working directly with scientists. On the other hand, I don't have good contacts outside of the actual developers in various companies. While a good recruiter would.
Even better, consider an in-house software developer at AstraZeneca near Boston (group #3) and who wanted to work for another pharma or biotech in the area, of which there are many. Odds are that person wouldn't have that many contacts, because most in-house developers can't talk about their jobs in public, or work on public projects related to their job. It seems that a good recruiter would be the way to go even there.
"building a database of tech companies in Madrid would take an evening"
Yes, that's a large city. Santa Fe has 65,000 people. People in those situations have to be a lot broader in the search, which takes time. There's lots of small companies that I could have worked for, ranging from chemistry or GIS to futures trading or human factors analysis, and there's no centralized listing for those.
While in a large city you can search for "<specialization> Madrid", and odds are that someone at least has put a decent list together already.
"No it doesn't."
I was reacting to "They’re going to complain about overtime." I worked overtime. I worked a lot of overtime when I was starting off. I am convinced that overtime is generally an indication that the company wants its employees to work for free. Want to convince me otherwise? Pay your employees time and a half for working overtime.
I worked overtime even in a company with two days per month vacation time. Which I like nearly everyone else never took, because we felt we needed to work hard in a startup. Many even came in to work on the weekends. And in the end, those stock options? Worthless.
I was also reacting to the "bad-ass senior developers their extortionate hourly rates." I am a "bad-ass senior developer" in my field. There's a reason I charge "high hourly rates" - my time is worth it. That you think the rate is "extortionate" (and not simply "expensive") implies that you don't think bad-ass senior developers are worth market rates. Since you likely want bad-ass senior developers, this suggests you would rather pay people less than they are worth.
BTW sponsoring hackathons IS a good way to get awareness among developers for hiring, worked in the past and plan to do more in 2014 :-)
Experiment, experiment, experiment
Experiment, experiment, experiment
"get awareness among developers for hiring"
Certainly. So is giving everyone £25 for showing up to a meeting. Remember, your reference £9,000 is only paid out when you've actually hired someone. How many hackathons do you need to sponsor before you have an employee?
(While there may be a secondary marketing advantage if the attendees of your hackathon are also potential customers, most likely that's not the case. And of course, there are additional time overheads for any route.)
Certainly. So is giving everyone £25 for showing up to a meeting. Remember, your reference £9,000 is only paid out when you've actually hired someone. How many hackathons do you need to sponsor before you have an employee?
(While there may be a secondary marketing advantage if the attendees of your hackathon are also potential customers, most likely that's not the case. And of course, there are additional time overheads for any route.)
Exactly my point... I ONLY want those people who are willing to take an extra step :-)
I have worked with recruiters before and just wanted to say a few things about this:
1. The Word Doc is not the fault of the Developer.
Every time I send my CV out it is a PDF, but Recruiters usually ask me to send them a Doc instead. "How can I hire a developer who can’t even understand file formats?" This is a wrong conclusion I think, the Developer probably knows that a PDF would be better, but he has no choice if he wants to work with the recruiter.
2. how relevant is a traditional CV
I don't know how relevant a traditional CV is, but I know that there are great developers that simply can not pump everything they do onto GitHub because the type of Contract they have with their employers. This means that a CV would be the only way to show what they have done in those years without breaking their Contracts. Or do you think that someone that can do a little Play project on GitHub really does not even have to show what else he did?
3. "desperate, so driven by money"
Every time I work with a recruiter it works like this: The recruiter contacts me and tells me about a company that would be interested in working with me and I send him my CV. The reason I send him my CV is because it is no work at all and I want to find out if it is a interesting company. This doesn't mean that I am desperate and so far money didn't even come up once. And also I have not "gone to" a suit-and-tie recruiter the suit-and-tie recruiter came to me.
1. The Word Doc is not the fault of the Developer.
Every time I send my CV out it is a PDF, but Recruiters usually ask me to send them a Doc instead. "How can I hire a developer who can’t even understand file formats?" This is a wrong conclusion I think, the Developer probably knows that a PDF would be better, but he has no choice if he wants to work with the recruiter.
2. how relevant is a traditional CV
I don't know how relevant a traditional CV is, but I know that there are great developers that simply can not pump everything they do onto GitHub because the type of Contract they have with their employers. This means that a CV would be the only way to show what they have done in those years without breaking their Contracts. Or do you think that someone that can do a little Play project on GitHub really does not even have to show what else he did?
3. "desperate, so driven by money"
Every time I work with a recruiter it works like this: The recruiter contacts me and tells me about a company that would be interested in working with me and I send him my CV. The reason I send him my CV is because it is no work at all and I want to find out if it is a interesting company. This doesn't mean that I am desperate and so far money didn't even come up once. And also I have not "gone to" a suit-and-tie recruiter the suit-and-tie recruiter came to me.
Hey VonGallifrey, also thanks for giving this some decent feedback. While it's mostly criticism, been challenged like this is extremely valuable as it helps me address my own preconceptions and assumptions about the recruitment game!
>The recruiter contacts me and tells me about a company that would be interested in working with me
In over 1,000 recruiter emails I've received over the last few years (of which at least 500 have been in the last few months due to Trak.io spiking in awareness) not once have I ever, ever expressed an interest first. Which means the Word Doc's getting dumped in my inbox are from people who haven't had your experience at all.
So the recruiters who are coming to you (kudos BTW), probably spinning you different shit as they send to employers but equally just as BS.
Think about it - a recruiter earns a commission on your base salary. Not options. Not employment perks. Not company culture. Not product vision. Which opportunities do you think they're going to put in front of you??
Their only job is literally to get the highest salary possible for the developer. They hope you'll pull that salary for 3 months, so that their manager will unlock their full commission.
>This means that a CV would be the only way to show what they have done in those years without breaking their Contracts.
I totally get your point about NDA work, and perhaps finding no time for any out-of-work-projects, but I fail to accept that truly interesting people have NOTHING outside of their job to talk about.
Or maybe there are some people... not seen enough people to truly call definitive judgement on this yet.
A word doc feels so "copy-paste". A personal intro email with a few relevant points, with a follow up Skype call, is going to tell me so much more. Receiving a "pump and dump" CV through a recruiter leaves absolutely no room for this. And I want people who KNOW this.
I want people who know full well that having that first impression of a "pump and dump" kinda developer is not how they want to be perceived.
So I guess my point shouldn't be specifically that they need a Github profile full of fun projects instead of a CV, more that I don't want to get a CV of them via a recruiter as it sending all the wrong signals.
>The recruiter contacts me and tells me about a company that would be interested in working with me
In over 1,000 recruiter emails I've received over the last few years (of which at least 500 have been in the last few months due to Trak.io spiking in awareness) not once have I ever, ever expressed an interest first. Which means the Word Doc's getting dumped in my inbox are from people who haven't had your experience at all.
So the recruiters who are coming to you (kudos BTW), probably spinning you different shit as they send to employers but equally just as BS.
Think about it - a recruiter earns a commission on your base salary. Not options. Not employment perks. Not company culture. Not product vision. Which opportunities do you think they're going to put in front of you??
Their only job is literally to get the highest salary possible for the developer. They hope you'll pull that salary for 3 months, so that their manager will unlock their full commission.
>This means that a CV would be the only way to show what they have done in those years without breaking their Contracts.
I totally get your point about NDA work, and perhaps finding no time for any out-of-work-projects, but I fail to accept that truly interesting people have NOTHING outside of their job to talk about.
Or maybe there are some people... not seen enough people to truly call definitive judgement on this yet.
A word doc feels so "copy-paste". A personal intro email with a few relevant points, with a follow up Skype call, is going to tell me so much more. Receiving a "pump and dump" CV through a recruiter leaves absolutely no room for this. And I want people who KNOW this.
I want people who know full well that having that first impression of a "pump and dump" kinda developer is not how they want to be perceived.
So I guess my point shouldn't be specifically that they need a Github profile full of fun projects instead of a CV, more that I don't want to get a CV of them via a recruiter as it sending all the wrong signals.
'Ask me to telnet into your CV or solve an algorithm that prints your CV...'
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If everyone had the ability to read minds and know how a given employer wants to see their resume/CV, then a 'standard format' wouldn't be necessary. But because the powers of long-range telepathy have evaded us so far, we end up agreeing as a society that certain formats are acceptable. It's not that we personally like them, but it's 'safe'. It's considered normal and there is kind of an unspoken agreement between everyone that a .doc or .docx file is acceptable.
If you ask 99% of employers to telnet into your CV, they are probably going to tell you to kindly fuck off, and so you don't.
--
'They’re going to complain about overtime'
The idea that you don't want to hire people who are motivated strictly by a paycheck is fine, but this attitude right here breeds the shitty culture in software development we have today, where 60, 70, 80+ work weeks are considered normal and 'if you don't like it, leave'. It's poisonous to an entire industry. People have lives -- I like to volunteer at my local zoo and write music in my free time. If I had a job that just expected dozens of overtime hours every week because 'reasons', then I'm not taking it.
--
In the real world, people do want jobs. People do want jobs they love, and they are willing to give up a lot for jobs they love, and you might be providing them with one, but you need to come down to earth and realize that this isn't the only job they will ever apply for and expecting to be super impressed by the way they apply for the job is unrealistic, unfair, and I dare say, 'out of touch'. These people also have lives outside of work. Hobbies, family, friends and such take time and if you are hiring people that are willing to give up all of that in the name of work, I'd be really concerned for them.