I don&#x27;t complain about recruiters because I don&#x27;t want to be recruited or because I don&#x27;t want to be in demand.<p>I complain about recruiters because, like many software developers who think in terms of efficiency, I see them as unnecessary (and exploitative) middlemen. Not all of them, but some of them take advantage of companies and workers who don&#x27;t know better.<p>For example, I&#x27;ve worked at companies where recruiters were so technologically uninformed that every resume they passed us was ludicrously inappropriate for the work we needed done.<p>As another example, I recently caught a recruiting company that was simply finding job postings, finding recruits, matching them together, and then demanding a 20% cut of the recruit&#x27;s first-year salary. I&#x27;m told that that&#x27;s not an uncommon business model.<p>So I will never complain about being recruited, but I will continue to complain about recruiters who claim to have an understanding of our industry and then demonstrate that they don&#x27;t even know the basics.