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If writing and film are your true interests, you probably need to find something that gets you from A (where you are now) to B (writing and film) and positions you for that transition down the road. If the programming is rusty, that limits your options there (at least in the short term). I certainly wouldn't start sweating about cognitive decline in your 40s and 50s - it's several years away, and I don't think it's as common as you're likely reading about recently.

I write resumes for a living and give career consultations. Maybe 5% of my clients come to me with similar issues - they have accomplishments and work history, but really struggle to identify direction for their next move. During the writing process, I ask questions about things they did, and I've typically found that the things people talk about the most (or in the most detail) tend to be the things they are best suited for.

Start writing about what you did at your startup - things you were ultimately responsible for, things you are comfortable 'taking credit' for, etc. When you've done that, look back and see if you can identify any themes in there.

Don't worry about the startup failing, there are literally millions of people with similar stories of being part of a failed startup or even several. Look ahead while also thinking about what you learned during the process - what would you do the same way, what would you do differently.

I ran a large Java Users Group for several years when Java was part of Sun Micro and a handful of years after the transition to Oracle. I used to get swag for my members and did giveaways at meetings. I can say that Sun sent me jackets, shirts, books, you name it - once it turned over to Oracle, I had a hard time getting much.

Nice piece. I write resumes and give career advice to a lot of tech professionals, and what you wrote about applying for jobs and "not being sure if a human ever read my resume" hit home for me.

I don't trust that the algorithms will identify qualified people, and I think job search is too important a thing to trust to algorithms. Getting discovered within the traditional application process (LinkedIn, Indeed, applying through company website) is difficult, because you have a large number of applications, and many of those are entirely unqualified. When I was recruiting, it wasn't unusual to get 50+% of applicants for a Senior Dev role that clearly had never written a line of code.

It's a needle in a haystack problem, and the bigger issue is that at some point is the recruiter going to keep investing time looking through the haystack to find a couple needles, or will the recruiter identify a better way to find a few needles?

Direct outreach to recruiters through LinkedIn is what I coach my clients to do, and I provide specific language for that messaging which is just as important. Recruiters like hearing from qualified candidates, and if the recruiter gets enough messages like this he/she doesn't have to wade through the resume pile. It's a clear win/win.

I don't think that is contradictory at all to what I wrote. I agree, many recruiters will try to send you out to every client and every job they have just to maximize their chances of a fee. Those recruiters should be avoided.

If you've gone on 30 interviews and never landed one job, that might be something you need to also consider and look inward. Going 0-for-30 is pretty unusual, unless you were accepting interviews for jobs you were clearly unqualified for.

They may not care about what languages and tools you are using when they hire you, but that's how they find you. They aren't on LinkedIn search for "Software Engineer" in most cases - at least I wasn't.

I said bad "hire", not bad "interview" - this was by design. If a company makes a bad hire, it's not (generally) because the candidate was presented, but rather a flaw in their interview and vetting process. The "how" of the candidate appearing is mostly irrelevant at that point.

I'd bet your LinkedIn isn't optimized at all for discovery. Populate a skills section with languages and tools you use, and you'll often see an immediate uptick.

A bad hire isn't on a recruiter unless they are basically lying to the employer about the hire's credentials or background, and even then it's the employer's job to vet what is being said.

The bigger ones, yes. Not boutique/niche firms, but large ones tend to churn.

All of my recruiting work was retained for the last 5-10 years I was in business, and I wasn't recruiting executives. I'm not saying that is the norm (it definitely isn't), and you are correct that senior developers will not be approached for executive roles.

Higher level candidates will probably attract higher level recruiters, because the amount of time to place someone making $100K is the same amount of time to place someone at $500K, with the only difference being a $25K fee for the first person and a $100K fee for the second.

The article's methods are actually quite good. You should ignore most of the recruiter contacts - if the recruiter approaches you for a job that is clearly not a fit for your background, I'd dismiss that person as either not respectful of your time or incompetent, and both are good reasons to ignore that person down the road.

If you're getting a fair amount of incoming traffic, you're already optimized for discovery, so that is working. Telling recruiters "I'm only looking for jobs that fit these parameters" and then paying attention to the ones that are respectful of that will work to start a relationship. I had some relationships for the entire 20 years I was in the business, and some of those people I didn't make a dime off for maybe 15 of those years.

Tenure is a good one, but can be misleading. There are a few ways to make money in recruiting. Being really good at it and ethical is one way, but there are also people who are unethical and it hasn't caught up with them.

I would always suggest looking at their tenure. A new recruiter doesn't have the depth of client relationships to be all that helpful, but most new recruiters are 'sourcers' and not handling the client side (they are responsible for researching and bringing in candidates).

Good question. The bad ones don't go away immediately. They go away eventually, and are quickly replaced with another round of new hires. So you have maybe 10% of the industry that stays for the long haul, and 90% is a revolving door of college grads.

There are probably other industries that have similar models where most of the workforce is newbies at all times, but I don't have an example that won't be dissected.

The reluctance to work with recruiters is mostly the "time suck" element. If you were to chase every opportunity sent by recruiters you'd waste a ton of time, but you'd also maximize your potential for getting offers that meet your criteria (whatever those criteria are).

It was meant as a statement of fact. To oversimplify, if you limit the information you are willing to receive, you won't have all the information you could have.

My main issue with the original post was that OP was crediting a policy of reduced information with doubling their salary. That just isn't the case.

I don't think missing out and losing out are synonymous. I'm simply stating that if you decide to ignore any subset of potential opportunities solely due to the source, you are limiting your exposure to possibilities.

For example, if you don't have a LinkedIn profile, you will probably get far less incoming inquiries from hiring entities (external/internal recruiters, hiring managers, etc.). That's a decision many people make.

Everyone has autonomy in who they interview with - I'm not sure where that comment is coming from.

This isn't about autonomy or interviews. It's about the ability to say "yes" or "no" to additional information about opportunities. Nothing more.

EDIT: To address the Great Resignation thing, agreed there as well. I'm a resume writer/career advisor now and my business has been brisk. Lots of clients are changing industries to find more impactful work, better working conditions, etc. Obviously if someone IS leaving the workforce they aren't calling me to write their resume, but I'm seeing a lot of activity from people looking to find work they "feel better" about in one way or another.

The OP mentioned doubling salary multiple times.

I don't assume everyone is looking to advance to an exec role - in my experience, most actually are not looking for that at all. I tend to assume people aren't looking for exec roles.

"Advance your position" could refer to improved work/life balance, more time off, remote, whatever you value. I was referring to overall position (life quality), not on an org chart. I can see how that wasn't made explicitly clear.

Former recruiter here. You are spot-on about referrals, and having an insider advocating for you or just their willingness to make the recommendation starts things off at a great spot.

Here's where I disagree. You haven't doubled your salary BECAUSE of your policy of not working with recruiters, but rather DESPITE this policy.

Deciding to disregard any recruiter opportunity is just shutting out quite a few things that you probably won't hear about otherwise, especially at the higher levels. Exec roles are often handled by retained recruiting firms and aren't as well publicized as entry level and junior roles. So just saying "I will never work with a third party recruiter" can certainly be your policy, and you may save yourself a fair amount of time by sticking with it, but that policy is doing nothing to advance your position (career, earnings, etc.)

The reasons that there are so many incompetent recruiters are many, but a few are:

- low cost: companies hire entry level recruiters and pay them next to nothing in guaranteed compensation (mostly commission-based). The good ones will make the company a lot of money, and the bad ones can't afford to stay in the industry because they aren't making enough in commission - so they 'go away'.

- low skill: the skills required to be a good recruiter aren't typically taught in school, so they aren't coming out of college with a strong foundation. They need to learn and be successful quickly (because it's commission-based)

Well you're in luck, young bibliophile. Teller has authored or co-authored five books, all published between your 12th and 28th birthdays.

I may be more familiar with his work than the average person because of his connection to my high school. But saying the title was "clickbait" (as if there is some large contingent of people that were hoping to hear the secrets of bank tellers) is a little much.

If you are genuinely "old", you'd be more likely to know who Teller is. Penn & Teller were pretty ubiquitous back in the 80s and 90s. Teller is 73. Fun fact - he taught Latin at the high school I went to (before my time) before making it as a magician.

It's corporate corruption and this type of behavior prevents companies from competing fairly. It's bigger than "corporate policy". That's like saying "theft" is against corporate policy, so when I embezzled $10K I should just get fired instead of jailed.

The recruiter argument against a fixed % is that they should be rewarded for their skill in negotiation.

In other words, let's say market rate for your programming skill is 150/hr. I'm your recruiter, and I make you an offer for 170/hr. You should be ecstatic. But what if you find out that I am billing the client for 1000/hr? Would you still be happy? Probably not - you'd feel you're being robbed, even though you are being paid above the market rate.

So should YOU be rewarded for my ability to negotiate the client's rate to 6x market rate?

I'm not saying this is fair or a good way to do business, but I'm just offering you the recruiter's mindset on this.

In my opinion, LinkedIn's most valuable assets are the ability to get discovered by recruiters/hiring managers and as a way to conduct outreach. I would not recommend posting resumes on Indeed, as that may cheapen your brand a bit.

Let the recruiters come to you. Optimize your LinkedIn profile so you get incoming traffic. Make sure keywords that a recruiter would search for are on the profile, in the body and skills section. As an example, a recruiter is less likely to search "software engineer" (too many hits), but rather might search "Python" to get a narrower result, or even something more narrow like "Numpy" to reduce the noise. Also be sure you have a fair amount of connections, which expands your ability to be found. There are additional settings.

Working with a couple recruiters can be useful if they are good at what they do and aren't just looking for a quick buck. You should be able to tell the difference (are they asking what YOU want, or are they just pitching every job to you and hoping you agree to be presented?).

Also use LinkedIn for outreach. Did you see a job posted somewhere that interests you? Write a short message to a recruiter at the company on Linkedin (instead of applying) to find out how to get some dialogue going.

Source: Former tech recruiter that now writes resumes and gives job search advice with a focus on tech.

I am a former recruiter and wrote an article about this years ago. One of the main issues with third-party recruiting and the recruiter/candidate relationship is that their interests aren't aligned.

In perm hire recruiting, the recruiter is typically paid a percentage of the candidate's starting salary. That means the recruiter and candidate are aligned in negotiation - if the recruiter can negotiate a higher salary, both the recruiter and the candidate are beneficiaries.

Therefore, the more the candidate makes, the more the recruiter makes. Win/win.

For contracting roles, a recruiter is a middleman and trying to maximize their margin, defined as the difference between bill rate (what the client pays the recruiter) and pay rate (what the recruiter pays the candidate).

There are only a few ways the recruiter can maximize margin.

The most obvious is to negotiate the bill rate UP and/or the pay rate DOWN. A less obvious way is to simply try to make sure the candidate with the lowest pay rate gets the job. So if I have two candidates and one is asking for 100/hr and the other is asking 120/hr, if I can get the 100/hr candidate into the job, that means an extra 40K in the recruiter's pocket for a year (based on 2000 hour work year).

I'm admittedly oversimplifying a lot of things here, but the typical recruiting model is not aligned with candidates for contract hiring.

I'm a resume writer (I actually made the first comment on this post and recommending a resume didn't seem appropriate since I hadn't seen what he has). If you click on my profile you'll see details.

Understood. I wouldn't generalize this as "the real world" though. If you've been in the same place for 13 years, you probably don't have a ton of experience in "the real world", and because of that, you think where you work is the norm.

There are tons of non-tech companies that don't have rigid pay scales. Almost any small company (under 100 employees maybe) might have targets, but they don't have defined 'pay bands'.

I read in another comment that you're doing data entry (that wasn't what I expected you did). Data entry is probably considered a bit of a commodity, as companies are probably confident they can typically find someone to quickly learn how to do it and be effective. So there wouldn't be much room to negotiate a higher salary when they know they can easily replace you. But if they truly need the work done, and they are losing people and unable to replace them, eventually you'll see salaries go up. It's simple economics at work.

That's a big difference. That doesn't mean you shouldn't leave your job, but if you're getting paid overtime the 60 hour weeks are a lot different than if you were straight salary with no overtime. You are working too much perhaps, but you are not "giving" any of your time to your employer for free.

When people start quitting, the simple economics of it may lead to an increase for you. Your value has increased as others quit, especially since you've been there for so long and probably know the job better than others. Your replacement cost is high right now, so now would probably be a good time to ask for a raise (even if you are looking to leave).

60 hour weeks at 39K amounts to under $15/hr (depending on the value of any benefits package), so you have to keep that in perspective when weighing your options. If you haven't had a raise in a long time, are working holidays, putting in the kinds of hours you're putting in, and having it impact your personal life, it's obviously time to move on.

One immediate idea would be if you could potentially freelance for a few different companies that maybe weren't busy enough to justify hiring someone full-time to do what you do. I don't know enough about what you actually do to provide concrete advice on this, but I would expect there are smaller companies that don't do the same level of international freight, and those companies probably would rather hire a freelancer / contractor to work n hours per week instead of having you on full time.

Contractors are typically paid at a premium, so if you could find a handful of companies to pay you maybe $30/hr for what you're doing, you could work half as much and make quite a bit more than what you're making now. Again, the wildcard here is the value of your benefits package, and what it would cost for you to buy benefits in the open market.

I think you find out what makes them happy in their job, and then try to provide that as best as you can. Saying you are "happy doing what I'm doing" is based on the present state.

You could ask "what do you like about what you are currently doing?", or "is there anything you think that could make you happier?" (this question can have unintended consequences, as "more money" is a likely answer).

It really depends what you use LinkedIn for.

Discovery: You say you had lots of incoming messages from recruiters but few of any use, so it sounds like you may have interest in discovery (being found by recruiters for opportunities). Unfortunately, LinkedIn is pretty much the standard and there aren't many other places recruiter can go to find candidates en masse. Angel.co is perhaps the closest thing I've seen there.

Resume - If you want to post a resume somewhere that you can quickly send a link to someone looking for it, you could of course use GitHub or any number of other options like a personal website on any platform like Angel.

Contact storage (Rolodex) - You said you had 6K connections, which is a huge number compared to most. It doesn't necessarily matter how many of them you actually knew - what matters more (it seems anyway) is how many of the 6K would be useful to you depending on what you wanted to do. If you want to find a job, or if you wanted to hire someone (which is another reason people use LinkedIn), putting out a message that has the potential to reach 6K people is pretty powerful.

Brand building - Some people use LinkedIn as a publishing method to build some kind of brand or reputation, and either publish material direct to LinkedIn or link material off the site. The competitors for that would probably be social media sites or blogging.