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impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. My friend, this

impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged. I sense you've never been in a position where you have $3,000 in the bank, your wife is depending on you to get through college, and you have to get a job or you lose your apartment. Out here dropping stories about Evan Spiegel; gimme a break. Most people don't know any CEOs, PMs, or hiring managers. The funny part is, I agree with your premise. You are indeed presenting the best way of opening doors. It's worked for me, and has opened many doors. But only when I was in a better position. Till then, it was one of the worst things I could have done. Focusing on playing the hiring game would have put me in a much stronger position. The comment you made is slightly out of touch. There's nothing wrong with that, but I think you'll maybe look back on it in 10 years or so with a wince. In the situation I described above, where you absolutely need that job, all the people you mention have a good chance of forgetting about you due to day-to-day politics. Guess who won't? That recruiter. Because they get a cut of your salary.

dvt 6y ago
> My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged. Oh man, only if you truly knew how off-base this is :) My parents moved to the US with $2000, two kids (I was 11), and two carry-ons. But I'm not here to compete in the Victim Olympics. > Most people don't know any CEOs, PMs, or hiring managers. Good thing attending a hackathon is free. Good thing you can interact with literal SV royalty here on HN for free. Good thing you can contribute to famous OSS projects with minimal investment... > In the situation I described above, where you absolutely need that job, all the people you mention have a good chance of forgetting about you due to day-to-day politics. Guess who won't? That recruiter. Because they get a cut of your salary. Yeah, I disagree with this. I've been "forgotten about" and "ghosted" by more recruiters than I can remember. Not to mention that half the time my area of expertise wasn't even lined up with what they were looking for, and as soon as they hear about a potential pivot (front end to back end, engineering to product management, etc.) they jump ship. But people I've impressed (old bosses, old PMs, people I met through hackathons, obviously old founding partners) are always willing to come up to bat.
- tylerhou 6y ago
  > My parents moved to the US with $2000 My parents also say this, except they say $40. But US immigration policies generally require immigrants to have some way of supporting themselves. While my parents didn't have much cash, they did have college educations and my father had been accepted to a PhD program — which is privilege. I'm not trying to assume your parents' particular situations — just that there are things we unconsciously take for granted.
  - brailsafe 6y ago
    It's an aspect of someone's life that may mean better odds of making more money or pursuing some intellectual path. Your parents' degree does not prevent them from being shitty parents.
  - NoOneNew 6y ago
    Not OP, but my parents came with little too. It depends on the situations. "Choosing" to come to the US for shits and giggles, you are absolutely correct on meeting substantial requirements. Refugees/Asylum-Seekers don't follow the same requirements. It's super hard to nail down as there are different types and most (that I've been aware of) are case-by-case situations. You have war, religious, political, stateless, there's many types and yea... I wouldn't discount what your parents told you. There might be more to the story they don't want to share.
- orange8 6y ago
  Kudos on making something of yourself from humble beginnings. You are now privileged.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    I am inclined to agree with the top comment, partly from my own experience. In college, I was a sub-3 GPA student with not-so-great internship experience, although I did cofound a startup. Yet I was able to reach out to some of the "privileged" you mention at the top of the totem pole - firm partners, founders, etc. Heck, I literally connected with MBB partners simply by shooting an email to them to meet and chatting with them. I don't even know what one guy even saw in me, but he even persuaded me to apply and referred me for an interview (which I was able to crack thankfully), which is a big deal considering they have to give clear reasons as to why they are referring you. And this was not in a backwater with a few guys but a major global financial center. I got my first good internship and subsequently my first job in private equity because I was an idiot who decided it would be a good idea to wait outside an office building an entire day so that I could show an MD the financial models I had built (after shooting an email obviously). And this was in white shoe finance, so I'm sure the barriers are much lower in tech. Edit:- Apologies if I sound like I'm using a lot of anecdotal evidence/ grand-standing, but I had to disagree with that comment, and the best evidence I had was my own, although there are a lot of similar stories in the Street. Edit 2:- I should add this too, since it is highly relevant to the linked topic. The people who referred/hired me later mentioned that a key reason for them taking me on was my startup experience, which was what the original link's author would call a "side project".
achillesheels 6y ago
Don’t take offense, sir, but how did you wind up in your unfortunate position? “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Your implication is precisely that recruiters are useful as a last resort. Wisdom beseeches to avoid decisions where that becomes necessary. Where, clearly, the recruiter is just using you and you are using them as a stop-gap measure. Yet wisdom is considered privilege now?
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  No offense taken! I have narcolepsy, which means attending a 9-5 job is difficult. I woke up at 2pm today, for example. It’s an advantage to conceal that fact, and the one company I did disclose it to, fired me about a month later. For completely unrelated reasons that totally didn’t violate any disabilities laws, of course /s. It was also partly my own fault, but in hindsight I wasn’t able to recover until I even understood what was happening. I wrote a bit about it several years ago, shortly after being diagnosed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10984478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10984478 So my career progression has been more of a stochastic random walk. And I’m fine with that. :) Ended up being able to contribute one or two things to the ML scene, which is all I really wanted anyway. Just a scientist at heart, I suppose. There’s nothing wrong with being used, and using someone, by the way, if it’s mutually beneficial. Aligned incentives are how society comes together.
  - achillesheels 6y ago
    I’m sorry to hear that. This speaks to the generally lower moral behavior of our society today. It develops gross incompetency in ability to deal with unique human physiologies. Ideally people are able to work with each other’s upmost abilities rather than view people as a threat to their own job security and career progression. :(
    - presentation 6y ago
      > This speaks to the generally lower moral behavior of our society today. Lol of course disadvantaged minorities were treated far better in the olden days. /s
scythe 6y ago
>I sense you've never been in a position where you have $3,000 in the bank, your wife is depending on you to get through college, and you have to get a job or you lose your apartment. When I was at my lowest point I was delivering sushi rather than waiting for a job that would look good on a resume. Most of the people in desperate situations like that aren't (don't have time to be) padding their resume with side-projects, and therefore aren't the topic of the original argument.
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  Perhaps. But one rich person once gave me a tip: don’t show weakness. It bugged me at the time, but I’ve come to accept he was probably correct. It’s not a good idea to bring attention to matters that might work against you. Focus on selling yourself, and treat your business associates as customers (in the sense that you work hard to please them, in exchange for getting what you want). http://www.paulgraham.com/judgement.html http://www.paulgraham.com/judgement.html It’s important to know how people in better situations open doors. Because you can play that same game, with crafty use of time and words. And you might have more time than it seems, even in the position you mentioned (though I would not ever say it’s a guarantee): between Uber shifts, I’d park in a random store parking lots and build things, partly to keep sharp, but partly to get a job at a certain place, since the work was related. I didn’t get that job, but I gained so much knowledge that turned out to be much less obscure than it seemed; I still use it to this day. You’re right in general though. People on a strong upwards trajectory have different concerns.
- seer 6y ago
  Funny enough, most competent hiring managers I’ve had the chance to speak to on the matter, agreed that if you’ve worked in the service sector, especially by necessity, you end up a much better hire _because_ you are usually more humble and happy with what you’ve got. Sanitary worker turned software engineer is a very powerful story that can help you get a job, since if you’ve shoveled shit, fixing a nasty bug or doing a menial task wouldn’t be beneath you, and you’d make sure you do a good job. Managers seem to like that.
winrid 6y ago
Impressing recruiters is easy. Doing that doesn't make you privileged. I drove from PA to CA when I was 18, working along the way on my own business, and got a job in SV on my third interview as a "software engineer" making 65k. Bottom of the barrel coding job. I'm somehow privileged now? Because I worked literally every day from the time I was 17 in high school until I got a full time job. Right.
- alex_anglin 6y ago
  If you earned your privilege, how does that not make you privileged nonetheless?
  - dx87 6y ago
    If you earned it, then it isn't privilege, by defintion. Unless you consider being born a hard worker as being privileged, in which case the word is meaningless.
    - boyobo 6y ago
      I think people are using the word in different ways. The person you are responding to is using it as a description of the current state.
      - rimliu 6y ago
        So the person is misusing it.
        boyobo 6y ago
        It's certainly different from what seems like the standard usage in the past few years, but I woudn't say it's a misuse. Here's is google's dictionary definition "a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group." In this case, the "advatange" would be 'able to find job without going through recruiter' and the 'particular person or group' would be 'the group of people who (through their hard work or otherwise) are sufficiently talented/and or secure enough in their career' Anyway it's sad this this word has such a negative smell attached to it now, thanks to people using it to shame people on the opposing side of internet arguments.
Quarrelsome 6y ago
It doesn't matter if someone is privileged or not, recruiters _are_ bottom feeders. Its a shit job that nobody wants and anyone with a modicum of ability seems to get out of asap in my experience. They don't seem to know who their client is, what technology is or who you need to be but they can just about play snap (although they may struggle with java and javascript) and get someone to a job interview. The whole point is that impressing these people is _pointless_ because they'd be impressed by a snow globe and mostly know nothing about tech. They're just a roadblock between you and the other technical people that you have to go round.
- jrott 6y ago
  > It doesn't matter if someone is privileged or not, recruiters _are_ bottom feeders. Its a shit job that nobody wants and anyone with a modicum of ability seems to get out of asap in my experience. It's totally a shit job in a ton of ways but the best recruiters absolutely make a killing. It's a sales job though so what makes a recruiter good from an engineers prospective is orthogonal to what actually makes them good.
- swader999 6y ago
  I've met a lot of recruiters and I really think most of them don't have technical chops to be worthy of trying to impress. Its way more critical to worry about what your colleagues think of you. Focus on impressing them. Because three, five, ten years out when you have all spidered out to other companies it is these people who will get you your next great job.
galfarragem 6y ago
I have a few friends, really smart ones, that would do anything to have recruiters "annoying" them. And all of this just because they made an unfortunate choice somewhere in their past: they didn't choose STEM. Everytime I ear people here bashing recruiters I feel the urge to shout: It's not about you it's STEM. Enjoy your prized ticket but be humble.
- whatsmyusername 6y ago
  For every decent recruiter I've ever dealt with I got a thousand low effort spams from India or Pakistan from guys all named John trying to get me to take some crappy call center or tech support position 2 moves back. It might actually be 10000 to 1. I HAVE worked with tech recruiters (I can think of a specific local company) that were good, but it's incredibly rare outside maybe a major metro.
  - zymhan 6y ago
    I'm so sick of this trope, I have so very many recruiters with "american-sounding" names sending endless irrelevant or poorly explained job posts.
- Siira 6y ago
  Anyone not choosing STEM has done a major mistake. It wasn't by luck that I (and I assume I am representative) chose STEM.
bawolff 6y ago
Recruiters are playing a numbers game. They aren't going to be evaluating your side project, they don't care about you as a person. They are there to do a job - find candidates. Yes you should try and be impressive enough they are interested, but if you're doing things primarily to impress recruiters that is probably going to work out poorly, as they don't make the final decision. And that is true regardless of how privleged you are.
richardARPANET 6y ago
Funding someone else's education is never a good idea (with the exception of your own children).
nicoburns 6y ago
> Most people don't know any CEOs, PMs, or hiring managers. You don't need to know them personally. Most companies (small companies at least) post job advertisements on their website and you can apply via email or a simple application form that goes directly to the hiring manager. I managed to get my first dev job with zero professional experience (and I mean zero, I'd literally never worked any job before), zero "networking" activity, and only high school qualifications using this method, and it's only gotten easier since then.
- user5994461 6y ago
  What year was it? I don't imagine a CV fresh out of high school passing a first HR filter in the current decade.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    2012. I had been coding for ~5 years at that point, so I had a fair bit of coding experience. Just none of it was professional experience. I made a CV that went over my actual coding experience and skills in details, then I applied to small companies (<40 people). Many of those don't have much in the way of HR and have hiring managers dealing with CVs directly.
nswest23 6y ago
Can we please stop assuming we know someone's life story based on one comment they write on HN?
SuoDuanDao 6y ago
Calling people privileged reminds me a lot of a different social strata saying 'I'm not racist but...'

dvt 6y ago

> My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged. Oh man, only if you truly knew how off-base this is :) My parents moved to the US with $2000, two kids (I was 11), and two carry-ons. But I'm not here to compete in the Victim Olympics. > Most people don't know any CEOs, PMs, or hiring managers. Good thing attending a hackathon is free. Good thing you can interact with literal SV royalty here on HN for free. Good thing you can contribute to famous OSS projects with minimal investment... > In the situation I described above, where you absolutely need that job, all the people you mention have a good chance of forgetting about you due to day-to-day politics. Guess who won't? That recruiter. Because they get a cut of your salary. Yeah, I disagree with this. I've been "forgotten about" and "ghosted" by more recruiters than I can remember. Not to mention that half the time my area of expertise wasn't even lined up with what they were looking for, and as soon as they hear about a potential pivot (front end to back end, engineering to product management, etc.) they jump ship. But people I've impressed (old bosses, old PMs, people I met through hackathons, obviously old founding partners) are always willing to come up to bat.

tylerhou 6y ago
> My parents moved to the US with $2000 My parents also say this, except they say $40. But US immigration policies generally require immigrants to have some way of supporting themselves. While my parents didn't have much cash, they did have college educations and my father had been accepted to a PhD program — which is privilege. I'm not trying to assume your parents' particular situations — just that there are things we unconsciously take for granted.
- brailsafe 6y ago
  It's an aspect of someone's life that may mean better odds of making more money or pursuing some intellectual path. Your parents' degree does not prevent them from being shitty parents.
- NoOneNew 6y ago
  Not OP, but my parents came with little too. It depends on the situations. "Choosing" to come to the US for shits and giggles, you are absolutely correct on meeting substantial requirements. Refugees/Asylum-Seekers don't follow the same requirements. It's super hard to nail down as there are different types and most (that I've been aware of) are case-by-case situations. You have war, religious, political, stateless, there's many types and yea... I wouldn't discount what your parents told you. There might be more to the story they don't want to share.
orange8 6y ago
Kudos on making something of yourself from humble beginnings. You are now privileged.
- fakedang 6y ago
  I am inclined to agree with the top comment, partly from my own experience. In college, I was a sub-3 GPA student with not-so-great internship experience, although I did cofound a startup. Yet I was able to reach out to some of the "privileged" you mention at the top of the totem pole - firm partners, founders, etc. Heck, I literally connected with MBB partners simply by shooting an email to them to meet and chatting with them. I don't even know what one guy even saw in me, but he even persuaded me to apply and referred me for an interview (which I was able to crack thankfully), which is a big deal considering they have to give clear reasons as to why they are referring you. And this was not in a backwater with a few guys but a major global financial center. I got my first good internship and subsequently my first job in private equity because I was an idiot who decided it would be a good idea to wait outside an office building an entire day so that I could show an MD the financial models I had built (after shooting an email obviously). And this was in white shoe finance, so I'm sure the barriers are much lower in tech. Edit:- Apologies if I sound like I'm using a lot of anecdotal evidence/ grand-standing, but I had to disagree with that comment, and the best evidence I had was my own, although there are a lot of similar stories in the Street. Edit 2:- I should add this too, since it is highly relevant to the linked topic. The people who referred/hired me later mentioned that a key reason for them taking me on was my startup experience, which was what the original link's author would call a "side project".

achillesheels 6y ago

Don’t take offense, sir, but how did you wind up in your unfortunate position? “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Your implication is precisely that recruiters are useful as a last resort. Wisdom beseeches to avoid decisions where that becomes necessary. Where, clearly, the recruiter is just using you and you are using them as a stop-gap measure. Yet wisdom is considered privilege now?

sillysaurusx 6y ago
No offense taken! I have narcolepsy, which means attending a 9-5 job is difficult. I woke up at 2pm today, for example. It’s an advantage to conceal that fact, and the one company I did disclose it to, fired me about a month later. For completely unrelated reasons that totally didn’t violate any disabilities laws, of course /s. It was also partly my own fault, but in hindsight I wasn’t able to recover until I even understood what was happening. I wrote a bit about it several years ago, shortly after being diagnosed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10984478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10984478 So my career progression has been more of a stochastic random walk. And I’m fine with that. :) Ended up being able to contribute one or two things to the ML scene, which is all I really wanted anyway. Just a scientist at heart, I suppose. There’s nothing wrong with being used, and using someone, by the way, if it’s mutually beneficial. Aligned incentives are how society comes together.
- achillesheels 6y ago
  I’m sorry to hear that. This speaks to the generally lower moral behavior of our society today. It develops gross incompetency in ability to deal with unique human physiologies. Ideally people are able to work with each other’s upmost abilities rather than view people as a threat to their own job security and career progression. :(
  - presentation 6y ago
    > This speaks to the generally lower moral behavior of our society today. Lol of course disadvantaged minorities were treated far better in the olden days. /s

scythe 6y ago

>I sense you've never been in a position where you have $3,000 in the bank, your wife is depending on you to get through college, and you have to get a job or you lose your apartment. When I was at my lowest point I was delivering sushi rather than waiting for a job that would look good on a resume. Most of the people in desperate situations like that aren't (don't have time to be) padding their resume with side-projects, and therefore aren't the topic of the original argument.

sillysaurusx 6y ago
Perhaps. But one rich person once gave me a tip: don’t show weakness. It bugged me at the time, but I’ve come to accept he was probably correct. It’s not a good idea to bring attention to matters that might work against you. Focus on selling yourself, and treat your business associates as customers (in the sense that you work hard to please them, in exchange for getting what you want). http://www.paulgraham.com/judgement.html http://www.paulgraham.com/judgement.html It’s important to know how people in better situations open doors. Because you can play that same game, with crafty use of time and words. And you might have more time than it seems, even in the position you mentioned (though I would not ever say it’s a guarantee): between Uber shifts, I’d park in a random store parking lots and build things, partly to keep sharp, but partly to get a job at a certain place, since the work was related. I didn’t get that job, but I gained so much knowledge that turned out to be much less obscure than it seemed; I still use it to this day. You’re right in general though. People on a strong upwards trajectory have different concerns.
seer 6y ago
Funny enough, most competent hiring managers I’ve had the chance to speak to on the matter, agreed that if you’ve worked in the service sector, especially by necessity, you end up a much better hire _because_ you are usually more humble and happy with what you’ve got. Sanitary worker turned software engineer is a very powerful story that can help you get a job, since if you’ve shoveled shit, fixing a nasty bug or doing a menial task wouldn’t be beneath you, and you’d make sure you do a good job. Managers seem to like that.

winrid 6y ago

Impressing recruiters is easy. Doing that doesn't make you privileged. I drove from PA to CA when I was 18, working along the way on my own business, and got a job in SV on my third interview as a "software engineer" making 65k. Bottom of the barrel coding job. I'm somehow privileged now? Because I worked literally every day from the time I was 17 in high school until I got a full time job. Right.

alex_anglin 6y ago
If you earned your privilege, how does that not make you privileged nonetheless?
- dx87 6y ago
  If you earned it, then it isn't privilege, by defintion. Unless you consider being born a hard worker as being privileged, in which case the word is meaningless.
  - boyobo 6y ago
    I think people are using the word in different ways. The person you are responding to is using it as a description of the current state.
    - rimliu 6y ago
      So the person is misusing it.
      - boyobo 6y ago
        It's certainly different from what seems like the standard usage in the past few years, but I woudn't say it's a misuse. Here's is google's dictionary definition "a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group." In this case, the "advatange" would be 'able to find job without going through recruiter' and the 'particular person or group' would be 'the group of people who (through their hard work or otherwise) are sufficiently talented/and or secure enough in their career' Anyway it's sad this this word has such a negative smell attached to it now, thanks to people using it to shame people on the opposing side of internet arguments.

Quarrelsome 6y ago

It doesn't matter if someone is privileged or not, recruiters _are_ bottom feeders. Its a shit job that nobody wants and anyone with a modicum of ability seems to get out of asap in my experience. They don't seem to know who their client is, what technology is or who you need to be but they can just about play snap (although they may struggle with java and javascript) and get someone to a job interview. The whole point is that impressing these people is _pointless_ because they'd be impressed by a snow globe and mostly know nothing about tech. They're just a roadblock between you and the other technical people that you have to go round.

jrott 6y ago
> It doesn't matter if someone is privileged or not, recruiters _are_ bottom feeders. Its a shit job that nobody wants and anyone with a modicum of ability seems to get out of asap in my experience. It's totally a shit job in a ton of ways but the best recruiters absolutely make a killing. It's a sales job though so what makes a recruiter good from an engineers prospective is orthogonal to what actually makes them good.
swader999 6y ago
I've met a lot of recruiters and I really think most of them don't have technical chops to be worthy of trying to impress. Its way more critical to worry about what your colleagues think of you. Focus on impressing them. Because three, five, ten years out when you have all spidered out to other companies it is these people who will get you your next great job.

galfarragem 6y ago

I have a few friends, really smart ones, that would do anything to have recruiters "annoying" them. And all of this just because they made an unfortunate choice somewhere in their past: they didn't choose STEM. Everytime I ear people here bashing recruiters I feel the urge to shout: It's not about you it's STEM. Enjoy your prized ticket but be humble.

whatsmyusername 6y ago
For every decent recruiter I've ever dealt with I got a thousand low effort spams from India or Pakistan from guys all named John trying to get me to take some crappy call center or tech support position 2 moves back. It might actually be 10000 to 1. I HAVE worked with tech recruiters (I can think of a specific local company) that were good, but it's incredibly rare outside maybe a major metro.
- zymhan 6y ago
  I'm so sick of this trope, I have so very many recruiters with "american-sounding" names sending endless irrelevant or poorly explained job posts.
Siira 6y ago
Anyone not choosing STEM has done a major mistake. It wasn't by luck that I (and I assume I am representative) chose STEM.

bawolff 6y ago

Recruiters are playing a numbers game. They aren't going to be evaluating your side project, they don't care about you as a person. They are there to do a job - find candidates. Yes you should try and be impressive enough they are interested, but if you're doing things primarily to impress recruiters that is probably going to work out poorly, as they don't make the final decision. And that is true regardless of how privleged you are.

richardARPANET 6y ago

Funding someone else's education is never a good idea (with the exception of your own children).

nicoburns 6y ago

> Most people don't know any CEOs, PMs, or hiring managers. You don't need to know them personally. Most companies (small companies at least) post job advertisements on their website and you can apply via email or a simple application form that goes directly to the hiring manager. I managed to get my first dev job with zero professional experience (and I mean zero, I'd literally never worked any job before), zero "networking" activity, and only high school qualifications using this method, and it's only gotten easier since then.

user5994461 6y ago
What year was it? I don't imagine a CV fresh out of high school passing a first HR filter in the current decade.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  2012. I had been coding for ~5 years at that point, so I had a fair bit of coding experience. Just none of it was professional experience. I made a CV that went over my actual coding experience and skills in details, then I applied to small companies (<40 people). Many of those don't have much in the way of HR and have hiring managers dealing with CVs directly.

nswest23 6y ago

Can we please stop assuming we know someone's life story based on one comment they write on HN?

SuoDuanDao 6y ago

Calling people privileged reminds me a lot of a different social strata saying 'I'm not racist but...'