[afarrell]

I can give a correlation (not really causation) example:

An external recruiter talks to an engineer who graduated uni last year and has been a one-man show at a nonprofit. The engineer is looking for a place with mentorship and code review. Recruiter says he can get $120k total comp.

He goes to the company and tells them about a dev whom he’s known for years that a brilliant senior-level engineer who’s led the technical team of a nonprofit startup accelerator. Company interviews the engineer. Gives him an offer for $95k.

Recruiter negotiates for $25k of bonus opportunity and the contract is signed. Engineer joins and spends his first month trying to figure out what team he should be on. He bounces around a few different projects with a mix of success, package management bugs, and utter confusion. Gets some of the bonus. After a year, he learns of how the recruiter sold him in the final conversation with HR.