As part of the market research for a previous startup, I talked with plenty of recruiters who would <i>love</i> for their to be a market for software talent agents.  If you&#x27;re curious why such a market doesn&#x27;t exist, read Aline Lerner&#x27;s article &quot;Why talent agents for engineers don&#x27;t exist&quot;:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.alinelerner.com&#x2F;why-talent-agents-for-engineers-dont-exist&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.alinelerner.com&#x2F;why-talent-agents-for-engineers-...</a><p>tl;dr: Agents exist when it&#x27;s hard to get a job.  It is not hard to get a job in software right now.  If your company mistreats you, you figure that out pretty quickly and move on to a company that <i>doesn&#x27;t</i> mistreat you.  There&#x27;s no need to pay anyone to make that happen; in fact, you can get paid a significant amount more just by asking around.<p>You hear about stories of startup employees getting screwed because the software engineering labor market (particularly for startups) is expanding rapidly now, and so there are a large number of employees who have no experience in the industry.  These people are easy prey for a good salesman who wants to make their sham company <i>seem</i> like one of the winning startups.  But it takes only a couple months for most smart employees to catch on, and move to another job.<p>My first couple tech jobs were at startups where I was paid below market rate.  The first one had some serious shenanigans going on when it went down in flames; the second had no shenanigans, it just wasn&#x27;t going anywhere.  But I left, and my compensation very quickly caught up with and then surpassed what I thought possible.  I probably ended up significantly better off, financially, by taking the hard knocks early and learning the lessons myself rather than paying an agent 10% to handle everything for me.<p>As they say, &quot;when someone with no experience does business with someone with lots of experience, the person with no experience gains some experience.&quot;