I'd note that all of the above also applied to travel agents and other middleman jobs. The job was time-consuming, companies couldn't afford to have their empl

I'd note that all of the above also applied to travel agents and other middleman jobs. The job was time-consuming, companies couldn't afford to have their employees spend a lot of time on it, the majority of cases wound up with no sale, etc. And technology largely supplanted it. Although you're not explicit, it seems that your post is suggesting that the primary value-added function of tech recruiters is as a filter for companies. But be honest, what useful filtering can possibly be done by a tech recruiter that doesn't know the tech? The vast majority of tech recruiters aren't capable of anything beyond keyword matching and basic "are you presentable" filtering (which can have important legal implications in the US, of course). Anyway, whenever this topic comes up, one of the top 2% recruiters who know their business well pops up and claims recruiters do all sorts of useful things. Well, yeah, maybe you're part of that top tier that does great work. But that's not the bulk of the industry, the bulk of the industry is the army of know-nothings at CyberCoders other large job mills. And they're very successful, but I honestly don't know why.