Yesterday, I had a back & forth on Twitter with Sam SM (a developer) and Jeff Pierce (a recruiter) about the recruitment industry, and I wasn't shy about my thoughts that most recruiters are going to burn in hell along with lawyers and most people in marketing and advertising. While we can roast those industries later, here are my thoughts on why recruiters are an annoying, intrusive, disruptive, and ultimately necessary bunch.

I get emails from recruiters more and more frequently these days, and I can only imagine its a nightmare for my peers with real talent. Generally, they are quite pleasant and fall along the lines of some feigned interest in my life and some excuse for stumbling across my profile on LinkedIn or something, and then a request to talk further. Other times, they're more direct & proposition a job opening directly, sometimes even listing salary and benefits in the first email.

I don't mind those too much, although, when I don't reply, I now feel like I've been made into the asshole, and when I do reply, my "no" is often mistaken for a "not yet", and they promise to keep in touch. It's like a bad joke about workplace harassment.

A breed of recruiter exists, however, who's sole job is to put asses in seats. These guys prowl User Groups and Meetup.com forums, blasting D-lists and sending dozens, sometimes hundreds of unsolicited emails a day. My friends at eHire, Hunter, and SolTech would probably say that these guys aren't representative of the industry at large, but I think perhaps they are, and my friends just try to stand out from the crowd. To be fair, most recruiters I know in Atlanta are pretty decent, but I think there is still an onus upon them to better define the rules of ettiquette their profession is bound by, and demonstrate how they live up to them.

One of the refreshing things about working in technology is that, with rare exception, you are either good at what you do, or you aren't. Even though we love arguing about Ruby vs. PHP vs. Whatever; at the end of the day, we all know that almost anything can be done in one of a seemingly infinite number of ways. That is one of the luxuries of our trade. If your stuff works, it works. If it doesn't, it's your fault. I, for example, am not a good developer, and anyone who reads my code knows that. This is my motivation to keep learning... and why I love my developer friends, because they're the one crowd that I can't sneak anything past by being charming or smooth talk (I'm looking at you, Social Media experts). In recruiting, there's not really a gold standard that I've found yet.

Recruiters are also a challenge facing Startups. A young company might attend an event, possibly looking to attract talent, but now they have to compete against recruiters, who, ironically, are going to try to sell the talent they find... back to the startup. It's like being in a drug war with your own dealer. This of course, is a temporary problem, mostly caused by the ridiculous amounts of money injected into the Startup world right now, and once the bubble bursts, recruiters will go back to chasing the IBMs of yesteryear (whoever they may be tomorrow), and startups will be forced back into hiring through relationships.

So, recruiters... we need you. We actually want you, because you do a good thing, but get your act together. It's not up to us to call out your peers when they overstep the bounds of privacy and courtesy. Apply pressure on your coworkers and competitors to not just be headhunters and sharks. Educate your junior recruiters (especially the pretty girls you drag around to all the conferences). Please, have some in-house training on what life is really like in IT, software development, product management, and sales. Understand what makes us tick, so when you come looking for us, you're not just another shotgun in our inbox. And, above all, obey Wheaton's Law.

And, hey, if you are a recruiter, take a moment to help out some of my friends: Justin Gorski, Cassie Syfrett

If you'd like to buy me a beer, or think I'm talking out of my ass and want to stab me, I'm on Twitter.

I'm in a room full of laptops, Coke cans, wires, and plates with half-eaten sandwiches. We're building a company in 3 days.

We probably won't make much money, and might not even get everything done this weekend that we wanted to, but we're all learning a lot and having a great time building something cool with other entrepreneurs. I've already been doing some API research, marketing materials, legal stuff, design, roadmapping, and some basic project management stuff. I'm the least skilled in the room as far as actual development, but I'm managing to stay busy helping out with little things.

Okay, back to work.