I’d Pay You $500,000 a Year, but You Can’t Do the Work
23rd April 2017
I am personally amazed by the number of recruiters who have sent us “vetted” professional coders who can’t actually code. This is such a serious problem that if a recruiter sends us three candidates who cannot pass our coding test, we fire the recruiter. We can’t afford to waste the time.
Tech recruiters charge 18 to 25 percent of the first year’s salary, but even the best recruiters we’ve worked with cannot truly vet the types of engineers we need. As far as I can tell, recruiters are not under pressure to learn, because high-end tech talent is so rare, hiring managers will take practically anyone who can fog a mirror. We won’t. And you shouldn’t.
In practice, we could train these workers, but not at market prices with added recruiter vigorish. We just can’t get enough value out of B-team players while they are in training, and by the time we help them become A-team players, their GitHub accounts and contributions will reflect their learning. At that point, they will be firmly on the radar of top-tier tech. And we would have played the role of pre-school for Facebook, Google, or Apple. Great for Zuck, Larry, or Tim, but not so great for us.