gistfile1.txt

Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2013 17:16:51 -0700
From: Gary Bernhardt <gary.bernhardt@gmail.com>
To: info@wdsearch.com
Subject: Mailing practices

I suspect that you guys know this, but just in case: your emailing
practices have been resulting in... less than good impressions among the
people you aim to recruit. Here are some tweets, none of which were
written by me:

Ugh, Nicholas Meyler. Scummiest Scumbag Recruiter ever.
- https://twitter.com/ryanbigg/status/385918215559184384

that guy is the #1 spammer on http://recruiterspam.com 
- https://twitter.com/ekrubnivek/status/385918027830927360

"8 years experience" I started last March
- https://twitter.com/locks/status/385915034788196352

they got me as well. First and only recruiter spam I've ever seen.
Thorough.
- https://twitter.com/t_crayford/status/385918788212117504

I'm not even a member of the ruby community and I got the spam too.
- https://twitter.com/me1000/status/385918938363604994

I've had "Learn to code Ruby" and "Ruby CTO" in the same week from
Meyler!!
- https://twitter.com/iHiD/status/385920241491918848

These were all written within the first five minutes of your email
campaign. My charitable interpretation is that you don't understand the
etiquette of email, or the impact that this is having on your
reputation. Programming communities are tight-knit. We all know each
other and talk about things like this, as you can see. Hopefully, the
above tweets shows you the reputation you're building: a
bottom-of-the-barrel spammer who will email anyone, without regard for
whether they're qualified, to fill underpaid positions at third-rate
startups.

You are way nicer than me 👿

there's a decent chance you'll get an email back asking for your CV.

The above are really nasty, very stupid comments which reflect negatively mostly on those who made them. I was initially puzzled about this, but the following medical study of serious mental illness in software engineers helped to explain... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1974658

Ruby coders are actually paid quite a bit less than most other engineers (starting salaries for Chemical Engineers in the lowest cost-of-living city in the USA were $10K to $20K above average compensation for Rubyists in San Francisco). The perceived demand is mostly hype.

My firm is one of the leading retained search firms in all of Los Angeles, and has been for 30+ years. We also just won the prestigious USTCRI Award for Excellence in Business Ethics in Human Resources.

"I have said this before and will again: GitHub's workplace culture is toxic. It is crumbling from the inside, no amount of PR will save it." -- Julie Horvath, Founder of GitHub

Here's an article written by another recruiter who is less kind in his criticism of obnoxious candidates:
http://medievalrecruiter.com/2014/08/05/recruiting-reality-check-bulk-emailing/

I suspect that the main reason the authors above complained was because they realized that their skills weren't up to the level of the challenging positions and knew that they had no chance of success.