Your arguments are completely valid. That said, allow me to add 3 things everyone should know about recruiters:

1) If recruiters aren’t calling you, it’s because you’re not attractive to other companies. Stay where you are; you’re probably lucky to be there.

2) Most of the very best companies use recruiters, even third-party ones. After all, why post a job to the public? You’d get 15,000 applications from college kids and unemployeds to sort through, and none from happily employed candidates at the top of their field. Why do that, when your search firm can have the top 3 people in the industry in your office Monday morning?

3) If you hang up without listening, it tells the recruiter only one thing: “I wouldn’t have wanted to try to market someone like that for a senior position!” Word gets out, too.

Try pressing ’3′ while listening?

oh and the comment above about doe snot was great
[quote
remember that doe snot give you the right to be condescending and cocky [end quote] took me a minute to realize that it wasnt really doe snot, which actually would have been an interesting phrase…

6. If you can barely speak English, and/or are calling me out of India and having your phone number show up as a U.S. number to try to dupe me into answering, don’t bother, because I will be extremely condescending and tell you to your face to go learn English because I can’t understand a word you’re saying.

7. Do you realize that I am already the technical lead on the project you are calling me about?!? (That happened to me like fifty times on the HP Print Studio project)

I liked the comment about the CEO contacting the guy…the CEO of XIF posted his job on Craigslist and it got forwarded to me by a friend. Since then Pronto! has been shown two years in a row at MAX…very cool result.

For the record, I’m always polite with recruiters that contact me, and I know their jobs can be difficult. They’re salespeople trying to sell me something I already have. Obviously, that can’t be easy. While I try to end the conversation quickly, I do it diplomatically.

I didn’t write this post in anger. It was meant to be humorous. Judging by the above average number of recruiters who sent me messages through my contact page recently, it feels like a success to me.

I hope you are really as talented as you make yourself out to be, to pretentiously turn down work as much as you claim.

I don’t particularly like speaking to recruiters myself either, and I’ve had similar issues with them. But I think you are going a bit overboard on this one.

On that noe, a word of advice: As much of a demand there is for us flash developers, remember that doe snot give you the right to be condescending and cocky. I made this mistake once.

ANYBODY is replaceable, the key is to be diplomatic.

In fairness though, im sure you were probably angry when you wrote this, so I don’t mean to bash you. ITs just that, sorry I hardly sympathize for you for turning down work.

-abdul