I'm going to agree that the "if you want me, do some work first" thing seems a bit overkill. For me, usually just a single sentence asking for salary range and job description gives me more than enough to figure out whereabouts in the spectrum they are.
This is the way I think about it:
1) there are different types of recruiters. At least in the city where you are, I can tell you that there are actually some good recruiting firms that consistently send appealing opportunities while avoid wasting your time with emails about lowballers, if you just spend the 30 mins upfront to chat with them about your expected salary range and specialization. These recruiters understand that there's an entire subsection of the workforce that is very capable but has zero online presence, and they build their own moat by connecting w/ professionals directly, to build a long term, high quality, proprietary network. Being part of such networks and having the recruiter sift and prescreen jobs for you can be valuable. For one-off linkedin cold mailers, the signal to noise ratio is generally pretty low IME because they optimize for volume. While they can give me data points about what lowballers offer, I personally haven't gained anything from this info, so I'd optimize elsewhere. YMMV.
2) you can often infer salary range from the company name and job title alone. As a rule of thumb, if it's an no-name company, they're almost always going to lowball if you're at senior level. If your goal is to raise your salary quickly, then rather than looking at sideways increments, you'll want to target "obvious" upgrades (e.g. if one is junior, look for "senior" roles; if you're senior at a local non-US company, look for US-based multinationals; or just go for broke and try for unicorns exclusively)
Those are incredibly good points. If you look at the levels.fyi data I think this pattern applies really well to the people within the bottom half of the graph.
There's ALWAYS the option of trying to go from "No Name" -> "Big Name" but I also feel like that can be a harder path to take. When the person reaching out is a "Meta" or a "Netflix" I know that I don't need to ask how much.
I'm pretty sure the number I got there would be a 4x or 5x... in Meta's case though, it's the leetcode stopping me (2 mediums in 45 minutes? Maybe if I wasn't dad to a toddlerI could study enough to get there, though my other problem is I keep getting bored of the grind and wind up building cool shit for fun instead), in the Netflix case it's because they keep saying "NO" (hahahahaha)
The optimal path here for the bulk of the developers in the middle of the pack is to make a move when the person reaching out has a role at a different no-name shop that is 50% higher than their current.
Remember there are a few vectors for that big salary bump. One where you were grossly underpaid from the moment you were hired, but another one that pops up might be that you've been in the role for a couple years and you have been so busy and engaged that you didn't even NOTICE that the market popped in the meantime, your no-name-company doesn't really pay attention to keeping up with the market and the persona reaching out is ALSO picking you for a spot that has a significant increase in responsibility.
I do think that the "reply to everyone" model starts to fall down once you're at an Uber, or some other big logo.
The best part about advice is once you've heard it you can choose to ignore it on a case by case basis.
:D
I've PERSONALLY only ever heard the "I ignore recruiters" jokes so the idea that they're this tremendous fountain of untapped knowledge was pretty wild to me.
OOOH!! One more thing about the leetcode grind. I'd ALSO argue that if you're in the middle of your grind and a 50% raise comes along, it's probably a clever move to pause the grind for long enough to take the raise and then get back to work on the grind while you're making way more.
> The optimal path here for the bulk of the developers in the middle of the pack is to make a move when the person reaching out has a role at a different no-name shop that is 50% higher than their current
I think it's worth noting that 50% bumps were historically nowhere as realistic as they are today with the current job market. At least from my convos w/ recruiters over the years, large bumps would normally imply some very tangible upgrade, like a corresponding job title change. A 30-50k bump back in ~2015 typically meant moving from a dev role to a role w/ significant leadership/managerial responsibilities.
Being able to command 50% bumps without a significant change in levels of responsibilities in today's market is definitely an anomaly from a historical perspective, but under these circumstances it definitely makes sense to consider lateral job changes to get in on those juicy market dynamics.
I'm going to agree that the "if you want me, do some work first" thing seems a bit overkill. For me, usually just a single sentence asking for salary range and job description gives me more than enough to figure out whereabouts in the spectrum they are.
This is the way I think about it:
1) there are different types of recruiters. At least in the city where you are, I can tell you that there are actually some good recruiting firms that consistently send appealing opportunities while avoid wasting your time with emails about lowballers, if you just spend the 30 mins upfront to chat with them about your expected salary range and specialization. These recruiters understand that there's an entire subsection of the workforce that is very capable but has zero online presence, and they build their own moat by connecting w/ professionals directly, to build a long term, high quality, proprietary network. Being part of such networks and having the recruiter sift and prescreen jobs for you can be valuable. For one-off linkedin cold mailers, the signal to noise ratio is generally pretty low IME because they optimize for volume. While they can give me data points about what lowballers offer, I personally haven't gained anything from this info, so I'd optimize elsewhere. YMMV.
2) you can often infer salary range from the company name and job title alone. As a rule of thumb, if it's an no-name company, they're almost always going to lowball if you're at senior level. If your goal is to raise your salary quickly, then rather than looking at sideways increments, you'll want to target "obvious" upgrades (e.g. if one is junior, look for "senior" roles; if you're senior at a local non-US company, look for US-based multinationals; or just go for broke and try for unicorns exclusively)