My email is filled with junk from cybersecurity "experts" telling me that my open source project is "very compromised" and that they will gladly reveal to me what the issue is, if I commit to paying them a bug bounty. I get at least a few every week. I hate them, but I feel like we are well past the point where in any place where there is money to be made, the majority of cold outreach will be from semi-personalized AI agents. You just have to accept that most of the time your get contacted by someone, it is likely not a human.
Whether it helps or not—the typical contact like this hasn’t been a human for decades now. What I’m seeing these days is materially almost identical to what went out ten years ago. Basic form letter with a cover sentence or paragraph of either no relevance, or a tenuous but normally ill-researched claim at relevance.
Yeah, but in the last few months, they've definitely been better targeted. I've found myself reading at least the first few lines to figure out where they got their info about me from.
yeah; just that we'll get 5x of these now that it's even easier to generate more "real-human-sounding" ones.
IMO, the best way to deal with these, if using gMail, is not marking them as spam. Instead, I drag them into the Promotions tab, answer "yes" to classify all emails from the subject as such, and that's it. Promotions == Trash.
I don't open/read such emails (I scan the first few words shown in the Inbox line, then dispense), so good luck trying to cold contact me for legitimate purposes.
I'd probably use either a semicolon or a period there. But this demonization of a perfectly reasonable English punctuation mark absolutely has to stop.
It's fine to criticize a comment that looks like AI in a thread where someone complains about AI.
The sentence has exactly same meaning if they'd use a single "-" as well. I don't know which browsers have <textarea>s where double "--" is turned into emdash, but on the systems I'm familiar with one needs to go certain lengths before an emdash appears.
Emdash does not magically appear, and it seems some people love playing with the AI connotation.
It's important to remind ourselves that there is no such thing as a human who writes like AI. AI uses literary devices that humans have used for centuries, and that just because a bit of text has an em-dash, or certain tropes, doesn't mean it's LLM generated text. Yes, LLMs over-use those tropes but we can't keep calling out whats effectively just classical rhetoric as a definitive measure for detecting LLM generated text.
In a world where double quotes are incredibly overloaded in meaning, the multiple types of dashes (including hyphens and double hyphens) do seem excessive. But em dashes are widely used and are a pretty commonly prescribed style. I use em dashes in more formal writing and double hyphens in comments here just because it's incrementally easier.
I type punctuation deliberately, and have done so for over a decade. A Compose key is a wonderful thing. Curly quotes, em dashes, en dashes, minus signs, narrow no-break spaces and quite a lot more—I type them because that’s what I mean.
> No space em dash = a real person who has been bulldozed by LLMs using it with spaces.
Setting an em-dash used for parentheticals closed (with no space)—or sometimes with thin spaces—is the common American literary/academic style (Chicago Manual, APA, and MLA all prefer closed); setting it open—with full word spaces—is the common American practice in journalism (reflected in the AP style guide). Not using em-dash at all for that use, but instead using an en-dash set open is the common British practice.
And that's why it should be interpreted as a one way signal. I.e. lack of spaces is a great indication a human wrote it but spaces sround an em dash alone is not a particularly strong indication it was AI.
Even for Americans, there are several style guidelines/modern preferences (particularly around web content) which don't guarantee the lack of spaces around an em dash. Hence even American LLMs using spaces. Ecen my natural em dash usage always included spaces as an American.
I used to use em dashes with spaces. I started using them without when I was more into reading style guides and it was—if I recall correctly—the Chicago Manual of Style which doesn’t use spaces. This was way before LLMs came onto the scene as a consumer technology.
The Chicago Manual indeed advises against spaces, but it’s written for books. AP Stylebook — that recommends spaces — is for papers. Comments are an even shorter form, so they’re closer to AP than to Chicago.
When I go to print, I use hairspace, but it’s not worth the trouble in comments.
> Comments are an even shorter form, so they’re closer to AP than to Chicago.
I’m not sure I agree with using length as the metric to decide which style guide is more appropriate for comments. I’d rather follow one consistent style in general than change it depending on the type of content I’m writing.
Still, good point on the style guides targeting specific usages.
I’ve never figured out how to actually make an emdash on my keyboard (or any 7 bit clean keyboard). I had to look it up. No one does this dance in factor of a single hyphen other than a machine my friend, spaces or no. —__–
MacOS has a great keyboard locale switcher, but the lack of real compose keys limits things. Most characters you can press and hold and get some accented versions, but it's very slow if you're typing in French or something in the EN layout. It also has a built-in character picker, which is really nice but even more slow.
Nah, I decided on em dashes with no space many years ago. In Australia, en dash with spaces is more popular now. Em dash without spaces is the older style. I deliberately chose the older style: for I say, the old is good.
Just wait until I decide to go all in on TWO-EM DASH⸺I have thought for a long time that EM DASH isn’t wide enough. Or maybe THREE-EM DASH⸻though it’s normally too wide. But alas, font support isn’t good on these so you might get bad alignment or line-height inconsistency; and I might end up wanting to surround it with THIN SPACE or HAIR SPACE, and HN mangles exotic spaces to just SPACE. :-(
(Honestly, my original comment would be improved by using TWO-EM DASH, or maybe even THREE-EM.)
> Must be followers of Chicago Manual of Style (and not AP Stylebook.)
You know, there are more than two possible choices. I scorn to subject myself to any style guide for my personal writing… let alone an American one. People used em-dash-sans-space long before CMOS was dreamed up.
I sha’n’t follow all the older traditions I find, but I do frequently favour them.
Or we follow Occam's razor and accept that a random guy whose comment looks like AI in a tech forum discussing AI is not an advanced scribe following a certain school of writing, but rather some vibe coder who AI-optimizes their comments.
This is HN. We’re not typical people. Quite a few of us have been consistently and deliberately using em dashes for a long, long time.
Please face it: especially on a site like HN, you will encounter em dashes from real humans, whether converted by some system software or typed deliberately.
Em dashes are a weak signal at best. On HN, they’re a very weak signal.
You didn't spell any words wrong!!! That's so obviously AI slop you're posting. What a hypocrite! At least activate a skill that randmly misspells words to mask that you're using AI to complain about other people using AI.
Reminds me of all the recruiters who reach out to me saying they're working on filling some engineer position but never say the company name, and when asked, they want to have a call.
Stop wasting my time, STATE THE COMPANY UPFRONT AND AT THE TOP, preferably in the subject line
This is not in the recruiter's interest though, because you may just go past them and apply to the company directly, so they miss out on their revenue.
I love picking apart a recruiter's emails, in a handful of cases I see the advert and I'm like "Oh yeah I used to work there". Go and React in a telecom company in NL near where I live? Yeah I set that up. No I don't want to go back, not unless they hire an actual team.
Every recruiter I have dealt with (on the hiring side) has had a provision in the contract: if they have a documented exchange with a candidate whom we hire during or within (a month, two months...) of the contract end, the recruiter is deemed to have done the work. Contrarily, if we have a documented exchange with a candidate before the recruiter does, the recruiter is not owed anything.
So: the recruiter has an incentive to mention the hiring company as soon as they get a response from you.
If they don't do that, they are either bad at writing contracts or don't actually have authority to recruit. Mostly the second: you would not be surprised at the number of cold emails I get saying that they represent a candidate (or a pool of candidates) who are exactly right for the position that we filled last month.
My favorite was the game of trying to figure out if multiple recruiters were trying to forward me to the exact same job/hiring company and trying to get them to stop stepping on each other's toes and try to a pick a "winner" recruiter for that specific role.
It's a weird thing to miss, but this layoff cycle so far I haven't seen any recent recruiter emails at all, which seems strange on multiple levels.
A couple of years ago I got two call/email pairings from recruiters at the same company about three hours apart. With the same (Indian) name so I was confused. "Didn't I talk to you three hours ago?"
Yes I used to be naive enough to answer calls from random 3rd party recruiters.
> This is not in the recruiter's interest though, because you may just go past them and apply to the company directly, so they miss out on their revenue.
There's the definition of a redundant job, though I think nothing can beat SEO on this.
The easy way to get around this is by telling the recruiter you've been actively applying with companies inside your state and for remote contract work and you don't want to be submitted twice.
They can't, otherwise a significant fraction of the people they reach out to would just skip the head hunter and contact the company directly.
Same reason these same head hunters will usually strip any direct-contact details out of your resume before sending on to companies -- they don't want those companies running around them and contacting the candidate directly.
IMO, these people are all grifters and uses-car-salesman. Their goal is to get as many people as possible to use them to change jobs so they get bonuses. They provide little-to-no value add in the actual process and will actively try to shovel you toward shitty companies and dead-end roles, despite how well they dress them up.
You are ~20-50%~ cheaper (typical is 30% IIRC) in the first year of your employment if you are a direct hire instead of going through a recruiter, from a hiring manager's perspective. If you switch jobs often this compounds to make your offer chances lower as well if you're going through a head hunter (I've been part of these discussions from hiring side).
Not exactly. Recruiters often can guarantee an interview with the hiring manager while if you submitted your resume to the company directly, you'll just get lost in the sea of resumes so not much point going around them. I also always give them a PDF resume and I'm pretty sure they don't edit them as sometimes during a video interview the employer pulls up my resume as a screen share to go through it and it's always been the exact one I've had with all my personal contact details.
It's simply not worth it for either the employer and interviewee to go around the recruiter because they act as a filter for both sides initially.
Definitely could be selection bias, but every time I have seen a copy of a resume a head hunter has forwarded a potential employer it has _always_ had the recruiting firm's letterhead plastered above my content, and my email removed.
n=1, I have been in tech for 25+ years, and a recruiter has always been my preferred entry into an org when I don't have a network connection. Our incentives are aligned; I want the work, they get paid if I get hired and stay. Their sales commission depends on me succeeding. Without a recruiter, a company is trying to hire the best candidate at the lowest comp offered possible. The greater rate at which workers change jobs for better comp, the more likely comp is to go up (this is why companies pulled remote work and are trying to create geographic stickiness for jobs in the US, to slow wage gains and reduce labor mobility). I would suggest reconsidering your view on recruiters. Some suck, some are worth their weight in gold. If the job turns out to be suboptimal, do your best to find out before you take the role, or live your life in a way you can bail for the next job without much hassle.
When you have success with recruiters, connect and keep in touch with them. A career is long, and its good to have options, as you never know when you'll need them. Optimize for optionality in this context.
Source: I've been a programmer for 25 years, and ran a recruitment company for 8.
This happens, but it's unusual. It's normally only really something you'd bother with as a recruiter if you were doing CV marketing, that is, reaching out to people who aren't your clients saying "this is the kind of person I could get you!". They're not really meant to do it, but recruitment regulations aren't strongly enforced in most of the Anglosphere.
To fill a role with one of your clients, they've signed T&Cs that mean they can't really cut you out, and assuming they don't hate you they also don't want to lose you as a recruiter. Fucking candidates absolutely will try and occasionally cut you out of the process -- usually out of incorrectly thinking it will help them land the job because the employer won't have to pay a commission.
There are many shitty recruiters, but finding a good one will absolutely help you find good roles, and can do all sorts of useful things like make sure you're asking for enough money, get feedback that you wouldn't directly get as a candidate, harass the hiring manager about your application on your behalf, and engage in a dialogue with the hiring manager about your application that virtually no hiring manager would be willing to do directly with you.
I've had one good recruiter, one mediocre one, and many shit ones.
The good one got me a job that I stayed at for almost 27 years.
The mediocre one got me a job that I only stayed at for 18 months (it was a rather dysfunctional company). It wasn't really the recruiter's fault. I think they really thought that they had gotten me a good one.
The shitty ones were ones that I encountered, after leaving the 27-year job, and started looking for work.
Every single one, ghosted me, as soon as they found out that I was over 40. A couple were really quite rude.
In-company recruiters were better. They didn't ghost me, but the techies that got involved at the second interview did that.
After some of these, I just said "Bugger this for a lark," and gave up. I didn't need the work, and I certainly didn't need to be insulted, each time I tried looking.
There are a lot of places that are more interested in rejecting people than they are in accepting people and the act of getting a headhunter involved a commitment device that helps get them out of the rejection mindset.
An example (I have intimate experience with) is the finance/hft space in NYC -- if you're employed at a competitive player in this space in trading/quant/engineering you will almost certainly be given a phone interview w/o question at every other competitor when you reach out.
If you don't trust the 'contact us' forms on their website it's dead simple to search e.g. LinkedIn to find their own in-house recruiters and reach out directly.
Again, if you're a new grad? Definitely higher chance of your contact going right into the trash. But the target hires are still getting called back within a day.
There is a certain amount of job interviewing that people do to gather intelligence. I've went to numerous job interviews where I was trying to find out what was going on and not particularly interested in changing jobs. Companies sure do interview people for the same reason.
Depends- my current position was via a staffing firm that was engaged directly by my new company to fill the position, since they had an existing trust relationship.
But they indeed were comfortable revealing the hiring company early in the process due to that trust level…
Or they don't have a job opening at all and are just looking to bolster the database.
I remember the annual cycle back in the day. During quieter times of the year, I'd suddenly get a tonne of calls from various recruiters with a job (no company name) ... almost as if they'd been told, "ok, no one's hiring or placing right now, no point you sitting there on your arse while I pay you. So pick up the phone and get some qualified leads"
fwiw my experience building a small tech talent agency / recruiting shop disagrees with this. Cold application pipelines are overwhelmed by gen AI applications and many of the (very qualified) candidates we place report getting totally ghosted on all cold applications - even when we’re able to get them several interviews a week with companies in our network.
Seems like companies still value a curated pipeline. 15-20% of first year salary (numbers we see these days) appears to be worth saving the company time interviewing unscreened candidates. Recruiting can be a real time suck and a bad hire can be catastrophic.
Email only is not a good option for them. They need candidates that aren't at least a total embarrassment when presented to their clients, so the phone call really is a first screening interview.
If you want a conversation between humans, a phone call may be a good option. With email only, there is a good chance it will turn into a talk between bots. Bots can make phone calls too, but it is more complicated and a bit too obvious.
I don't mind having a phone call, it's the multiple layers of screening interviews with ill prepared questions that feels like a giant waste of time. I'd rather answer all those questions in an email and have the phone call as a formality. I do recognize the need to confirm that the person writing is indeed the person you are speaking to but I should at least be able to get a straight answer on salary and comp before I pick up the phone.
This. I don't mind having a phone call, but I do mind wasting time on it by repeating everything that they could have learned about me before the call and running into sanity checks (e.g. salary expectations) that they could have done beforehand. At that point, it's just laziness by the recruiter and comes off as an attempt to pressure me it doing something they couldn't justify rationally.
this is what a pi based LLM is great for; give it it's own email address, then say something like "I'm intrigued, please talk to my security expert, CC'd" and cc the pi.
