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Comment by peterangular | Hacker News Reader

Sure, but it's still not enough.

FB recruiters are super aggressive and I have zero qualms unloading on them for their BS behavior, every. time. I've asked five (5!) times to be taken off their list and added to a blacklist for candidates and I still get emails, calls, and LinkedIn messages. The first two "buzz-off" messages were polite, but now I'm just downright rude and respond with my actual opinion on their employer (and subsequently what I think about them working for that employer).

Facebook is a bad company that does bad things. If you work there, you're gross.

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I gave up telling them they were wasting their time, and now my spam filter takes care of FB headhunter spam for me, as it should.

FTR, I do think that's a bit unfair. Judging other peoples' circumstances is a perilous pursuit.

But I will say FB is parasitic on and dangerous to society and is run by amoral shitbags, I don't believe anyone with a sense of ethics or self-respect should work there.

I think it would be interesting to start an underground movement of engineers taking their inflated salaries and then doing a deliberately bad job while working there. I can do just about any job badly-- this could be my calling!

> I've asked five (5!) times to be taken off their list and added to a blacklist for candidates and I still get emails, calls, and LinkedIn messages.

This is like complaining to the person who called you about your vehicle warranty or any other spam auto-dialer. Recruiting is a numbers game so sending you an email with thousands of others requires no effort on their part.

Putting my # and email address on a blacklist in their CRM shouldn't be too difficult for a company with resources such as FB. If two-bit recruiting agencies can do it in the middle-of-nowhere Iowa then FB can do it.

Sorry, not changing my opinion here.

That depends whether the recruiters are in-house.

If the facts are as you said, that you've repeatedly told them to stop calling you, it may be worth talking to a TCPA Lawyer.

I'm not asking you to change your opinion. All I'm doing is explaining the rhyme and reason here. If you chose to continue getting mad at something so frivolous please carry on with your wasted efforts.

I’ve had the same issue with Google recruiters. I imagine they copy each other’s tactics. One time they asked why I turned them down; I was more than happy to respond. Haven’t heard back since.

The recruiters are the same people so of course they use the same tactics. The average tenure of a recruiter is 1-2 years.

Now I'm actually somewhat curious what the career of a recruiter looks like.

How do you even end up in a situation where recruiters are banging down your door with such offers? I know developers who have reverse engineered applications, fixed unbelievable bugs deep an application stacks, written top tier code that make them the go to people in teams for all the tough problems and yet they barely get any call backs much less for companies like Facebook. They have to grind leetcode for 1 year just to get interviews at no name companies in the mid-west(despite willing to relocate anywhere). Its like there is this "in" group of developers and if you are "in" you can act like how you do and if you are not, then you are in starvation mode with all the other starving fish in the sea.

Likewise it just seems so selfish to talk like this during a pandemic situation where so many people (including people in tech) are out of a job.

Live in a city with Facebook offices. Work for a similar company.

Recruiters offer phone calls not jobs. You still have to grind to pass the interviews.

So the strategy is basically to get into the FAANG club once and then you are golden as long as you keep up your grinding?

GAFAM if it has to be an acronym. Other big software companies work too. Basically yes otherwise.

Yep - 100% this. Once you get a household name on your resume you're golden if you can do a simple whiteboard interview.

> If you work there, you're gross.

I think that's a touch harsh. What if you just make sandwiches in a canteen?

Then you’re probably a contractor who is being mistreated.

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