[chunsaker]

I agree with the direction of the industry, and your abbreviated rant, except I think they are trying to get attention with... anything at their disposal.

For me what is interesting is how magnetically opposed developers can be to a perceived outsider. And how that works against the recruiter, etc. in question. E.g. We're really lucky with our outside recruiter and she has a lot of credibility, but when she hung out at our booth at OSCON with her lovely female assistant, they clearly stood out and attendees cut a wide swath. Same thing at a different con with one of our investors: extremely technical guy, but you can spot his BD/VC uniform from across the room. I shuffle their conversations away from my booth.

Conversely, I had an interesting conversation in a booth at a different con, where after 20 minutes of talking to me (messy ponytail, company tshirt, jeans, tigers) about our stack, a guy said to me, "Wait a sec, you smell like marketing." By which he meant that I was coming across as non-technical as we got deeper into the technical details (totally fair - I am not a professional developer). I think he felt bamboozled by my lack of shininess.

The shiny girl probably like being shiny, and don't care for the tshirt/jeans/ponytail uniform. There's actually a lot of cool ways technical women subvert the uniform without freaking anyone out (I have hot pink lipstick). I would venture they feel uncomfortable about standing out more than they are plotting to lure you.

[fecak]

Half the recruiter's battle is getting inside that force field that technologists put up regarding recruiters. In another HN thread, I offered to have a discussion about career to a fairly well-known tech community member, and was immediately accused of trying to recruit the guy (although I do no work in his geography, which I even alluded to in the post). People assume recruiters are always recruiting, so it's impossible to have a conversation. I've run a Java Users Group for 13 years and they are comfortable because they know me, but if I go to meet a client company onsite, they seem to think I'm casing the place to start poaching.

It's a strange business with lots of dynamics, and the issue I mention isn't discussed much in my experience. I've seen BD/sales types at my UG meetings, both male and female, that scared people away due to their look, or even by a harmless "Hi" from them (people at UGs hate sales pitches).