| Why are you giving more details to the recruiters? Based on what you wrote, shouldn't you say "we don't work through recruiters" and hang up? I gave the geographical one as an example that was easy to understand. I work in a specialized subfield of computational chemistry. I work for myself. There are three major classes of developers: 1) people working in software companies, 2) people working in academia, or 3) people working at pharmaceutical companies. I'm in group #1. The developers I know are in group #1 and #2, because those working in #3 are usually working on in-house software that typically remains private for several years before doing any publications. If I wanted a job, I would want to work in #3, because I like working directly with scientists. On the other hand, I don't have good contacts outside of the actual developers in various companies. While a good recruiter would. Even better, consider an in-house software developer at AstraZeneca near Boston (group #3) and who wanted to work for another pharma or biotech in the area, of which there are many. Odds are that person wouldn't have that many contacts, because most in-house developers can't talk about their jobs in public, or work on public projects related to their job. It seems that a good recruiter would be the way to go even there. "building a database of tech companies in Madrid would take an evening" Yes, that's a large city. Santa Fe has 65,000 people. People in those situations have to be a lot broader in the search, which takes time. There's lots of small companies that I could have worked for, ranging from chemistry or GIS to futures trading or human factors analysis, and there's no centralized listing for those. While in a large city you can search for "<specialization> Madrid", and odds are that someone at least has put a decent list together already. "No it doesn't." I was reacting to "They’re going to complain about overtime." I worked overtime. I worked a lot of overtime when I was starting off. I am convinced that overtime is generally an indication that the company wants its employees to work for free. Want to convince me otherwise? Pay your employees time and a half for working overtime. I worked overtime even in a company with two days per month vacation time. Which I like nearly everyone else never took, because we felt we needed to work hard in a startup. Many even came in to work on the weekends. And in the end, those stock options? Worthless. I was also reacting to the "bad-ass senior developers their extortionate hourly rates." I am a "bad-ass senior developer" in my field. There's a reason I charge "high hourly rates" - my time is worth it. That you think the rate is "extortionate" (and not simply "expensive") implies that you don't think bad-ass senior developers are worth market rates. Since you likely want bad-ass senior developers, this suggests you would rather pay people less than they are worth. |