Around 90% of recruiters who called me are useless for industry.

And many, many other questions answers to which I have listed on this page. You may follow and see almost full list of those questions. Initially I was answering those questions and it was taking around 15 minutes of my time and usually after the "quiz" was completed they were telling me that they are going to send me email with "Rights to represent" and they asked me to confirm that email and then after they have sent me an email requesting my driver license copy (with "important" information covered) and my passport number and my green card copy. And eventually I came to decision to include all that information into my initial replies that I was sending in response to their mass emails with "Exciting opportunities" to my email that I used on job searching sites like monster.com, dice.com, linkedin and so on...

But including all the answers to all those questions in my initial reply message did not change nothing. Those Indian recruiters kept asking me same questions again ang again and again and again... So when I heard them starting their standard "quiz" - instead of answering to their question, I asked them "Did you read my email?", and after they answered "Yes" they still kept on going with their questions, so I ignored their questions and told them "So if you read my email, why are you asking me these questions? You should have been able to learn answers to these questions from my email message." and sometimes they just could not find any answer to that and stayed silent for next 10-15 seconds, and some other times they answered "We have to ask these questions over the phone." so eventually I came to conclusion that their main goal is not to find an employee for project, but to waste my time and make me invested with my time while answering all their questions so later I provide them with all sensitive information... The more time somebody invests into something - the more likely they will comply with further requests, and scammers know it too. I simply came to conclusion that they were all scammers and not worthy of my trust.

I also had so many initial video interviews (I have recorded only 80 of them during last 2 years and uploaded to my youtube channel which was recently removed under strange and suspicious circumstances which i might right separate article later about... but I have some guesses that it might also be related to Indian scammers) so I got tired of going through them. Mainly during those interviews (which also about 95% were conducted by Indian people and half of them were located in India at the moment of interview) I noticed that interviewers did not speak clear English (more than 80% of them objectively spoke significantly worse English than I do) and many times were not able to comprehend my accent and complex phrases that I was using. I read frustration and confusion in their eyes and on their facial expressions, and yet when I noticed those instances - they never clarified my answer (did not try to ask additional question), it feels like they were concerned looking not educated and felt vulnerable asking me to repeat or clarify or rephrase what I just said because that way they would have to admit that they are not familiar with this or that word or expression. And it became obvious to me that even if they were legit interviewers for legit projects - then they would not have good impression of me because of those reasons and lack of understanding and limited vocabulary... The reasons of cultural and language differences. Of course they would prefer somebody who they would be able to understand better, somebody of their origin and may be who speaks the same language with same pronunciation. Here in USA everyone is trying to pretend there is no racism or discrimination, because it would cause alot of problems if somebody would accuse company of those things and yet it does not mean it does not exist...

Some of recruiters who called me and whom I had interviews with were white Americans. I remember one lady called me and told me that she has opportunity from Paypal for me.

When white American recruiter calls (especially woman) then I can hear how they try to sound friendly, excited and polite. It sounds very fake, and they expect me to answer in the same "key" with "friendly" and "excited" tone of voice - as if I won the lottery, instead of being honest and congruent. This corporate culture amongst American corporations is disgustingly artificial to my nature. I see how they are trying to perform and fake positive attitude. Not all of them, but so many. They are not ready for honest answers to their questions and only expect "template" answers. If while answering their questions you "step away" from "regular" the script - they get confused and frustrated and politely trying to find reason to finish conversation often with "Thank you! I got all needed information and will reach out to you later.".

So coming back to that instance I referred to one paragraph ago (with white American recruiter lady with Paypalopportunity) - she had same expectations that I would follow the "farce dance" along with her, and when I did not - she asked me (if I remember correctly) questions like "I see you changed many jobs, were you on contract with them? Is that the reason you changed jobs so often?" - and this question by itself shows me the direction of her thoughts, it shows me that she is already looking for reasons to get rid of me and gives me a chance to give her answer that she could use to discard my candidature, and I answered that "Mainly I was contractor and there were different reasons for contract to end. Do you want to look closer at some particular example?. She ignored my question and asked me "I see you had your last project finished one year ago, have you worked after that?", and I answered "Yes, I have been working on my personal project while I am unemployed." and she said "Ouhh! So sorry, but Paypal does not want their employees to have personal projects. So sorry.". And it concluded our call. :) Can you imagen that?

Another instance would be my last interview I had with Alesya Harelik and later short conversation over email with Dmitry Trub from findev which I have described in details here and here. May be I wil republish those articles in one of fabulas on programmer-underworlds.club, but not today... So if you are interested to learn more about those - you are welcome to follow links above. ^-^

After that interview with Alesya - I was really disappointed and decided that I will not waste my time in interviews any longer and since then I have been requesting financial compensation for my time if somebody would like to conduct interview with me. On this page I have provided links to one recorded technical interview I have had some time ago. And explained my point of view on this matter.

Also - I have created templates of messages that I have been spreading as articles on my linkedin page and in comments to some posts. Below I bring those templates before your attention.

Recruiters are always have a bias as a human being. It is impossible for one human being to be unbiased as a result of each human being to have a life experience. Recruiters and HR CLAIM to be unbiased and business owners force everyone around to agree with such ignorant claim... And also ask people to accept these recruiters and HR as the unbiased judges of which candidate is the best candidate... This is a game where we have to accept the narrative of people who work at recruiting and HR about how good developers are WE where actually they have no Idea what good developers are because they never tried to write a complex system... And these people are set up to judge us for qualities they themselves do not possess... Most of the recruiters and HR are women who are SO FAR from being able to comprehend the complexities of what it is like to engineer complex logical systems and what traits person should possess in order to be able to accomplish it. These recruiters and HR judge developers based on traits GOOD SELL PERSON would possess... it is ridiculous.

Soon enough no candidates will give a shrink to recruiters delusional point of view... it has already started. ☺️ many and many people starting to wake up and realize that 90% of recruiters are useless and only parasitize on employers and candidates... ☺️Recruiters mostly are extra link in this chain... and gate keepers who are like a trolls on the bridge asking for money, but do not even read the candidate’s resumes... nor recruiters have knowledge to estimate if candidate fits to the position technically... recruiters are just clowns 🤡 who learned to talk with confidence about things they understand nothing about... ☺️ Recruiters were able to heat up the air and blow it into business owner’s ears as if they possess some kind of “magical detector” of the best candidates, whereas their actual goal is to ask candidate to take responsibility to lie on their own resume (“just a little embellish and polish” they say to candidate “because our client expects such skill from candidate. You have knowledge of this technology, right? Good then add it to 2 or 3 of your projects as if you worked with that technology” they say...) in order to shove in that candidate to their client with X3 price... ☺️ I wonder when business owners will get it...

I recommend that all who already hold employment continue to apply for at least one position each day. Declare in both resume and initial email that you expect financial compensation for participating in interviews, no lower than the hourly wage you would earn in the role itself. When recruiters begin receiving resumes with such expectations, word will rise through the chain of command like a slow gathering surge. It will reach overseers, executives, and the hidden masters of companies. Then they will understand that casting aside those who already labor under their banners will cost them dearly, for if they dismiss their current workers, they must still pay for the time of every candidate they wish to test. Thus can each worker fortify their own security by sending one resume a day bearing this expectation of compensated interview time. In time, every specialist, whether with five, ten, or fifteen years of experience, employed or not, may stand with rightful confidence when requesting payment for the hours spent in an interview. It is just that one’s time be honored. Companies demand payment for every service they render, so why should the worker be treated as lesser? To test a candidate is to occupy their hours, hours that could have been spent on craft or on the precious calm of rest. If you are ordered to complete an online assessment, remember your moral right to request compensation for the labor extracted. Recruiters too often gather such toil as tithe, replacing their burned out ranks at no cost to themselves. Marching through these trials without reward only strengthens their bastions and weakens every candidate. Let this stand as a warning carved upon a fortress wall: weigh the value of your time, for uncompensated duty is a burden no warrior should bear. Share this principle with comrades so more may take up this stance.

Of course there are good and legit recruiters exist. And I met them and worked with them, but with time it looks like this industry becomes greedier and greedier and gradually looses more and more humanity over time. I only talk about my personal experience that I have obtained over 20 years of my working experience and conclusions I came to over time, and it is up to you to decide what to do with knowledge you have obtained from this article.

And that is all for now. Hope you enjoyed. ^-^

The Emperor Protects.

How you can be accused of anything in the USA and get banned. Second story. How I got Banned from "Epoch Coffee" 221 W N Loop Blvd, Austin, TX 78751.

Hello. It is 02:45 February 8th 2026th CST. After first article about similar subject this would be second occasion I touch it. It has happened 19:24 on August 6th of 2025th. I know this because I have recorded conversation between me and one of the "bosses" (or at least that is how he introduced himself) by name "Zack" of "Epoch coffee" of "221 W N Loop Blvd, Austin, TX 78751" location.

There was a time when one my good friend has shoved me this place somewhere, I believe, in January of 2025th. I liked atmosphere of that place, little area with trees and benches near by, and big opened space of cemetery.

I started coming to this place almost every night to work on my project while being around people. It is nice feeling to at least feel that there are alive people around you, see them and hear. And with time I made new friends there. One of them were couple of young guy and his girlfriend, Evan and Lia. :) I enjoyed their company and we played alot of card game "Set". Even is smart, motivated to learn and respectful guy. I could write a whole separate story on how we met. :) I probably should do that...

One time on August 6th I came to this location of Epoch Coffee around 8pm and stayed working till about 7am. Somewhere at 4am (or around that time) barista's shift has changed and one lady has started her shift. About 3 months earlier I offered her to go out, but she answered that she already has boyfriend... even two... So I have never brought up that subject with her again. So she started her shift and I kept working on my project and somwhere aroud 6am I have made another break and stood up to get outside to walk around abit to refocuse on surroundings instead of code on the display of my laptop and breath. When I exited from main entrance I stopped and looked around and I noticed that that lady was sitting outside by the table and smoking her cigaret. Well, she was sitting by herself and I did not speak to people for a while, so I just came over and sat on opposite side of the table to the left side from her so we do not sit in front of each other face to face, but at an angle and both of us have free area of sight right in front of our bodies. I said hi, when I approached table she was sitting by and she answered and then I sat. I asked if it was difficult for her to wake up that early to get to her shift at 4am, and she answered that it was not difficult because she went to bead at 11pm last nigh and had enough rest. To which I said that it makes sence because I usually can't fall asleap that early and stay awake till much later... After that there was about 30 second silence while I was looking at the wall on the left side from her (just resting after long time working and mental tension that my work involves) and she, as I could see with my pereferal vision, was looking into display of her phone while holding smoking cigaret in her hand. And after those 30 seconds of silence she stood up and came back inside the Epch Coffee building. She put her cigaret into ashtray and I noticed that there was still about 30% of cigaret left. I though that it was strange that she did not finish it and it felt as if she a little rushed inside. But nothing out of ordinary. And I stayed about for 4 minutes longer by the table and I beleive walked around for alittle more before getting back inside to grab my laptop, because I felt tired alredy and did not feel ready to continue my working session before I get sleep.

I went back home and slept and came back the same day around 7:20pm. Shortly after I entered and settled at my usual spot by the bar - some person from behind the bar, some curly hair guy asked me if my name was "Pasha" and after I comedically looked left and right and conspiratorially with smile asked "Who told you?" - he walked fast from behind the bar to face me and stood too close to my face. The distance he picked to stand in front of me was about 7.8 inches. And he looked into my face directly with widely opened eyes and told me that one of barista's has complained about me as if I have "followed her outside", after he told me that he also inserted (as if guilt tripping me) that I have invited her out earlier and it is unacceptable. Well, it was not the first time that in Austin people judge me for inviting girl out (even though I did it respectably) as if it it something to be ashamed of or some kind of crime. I personally do not see nothing inappropriate when man offers girl to go out to have coffee to learn more about each other during conversation. I always thought it is something that supposed to be done, but it seems that here in Austin it is inappropriate and people (both genders) just trying to shame men for something as natural and normal as appropriately asking girl out. At some point, after I consciously realized that he is rude and intrusive I have started recoding our conversation which you may listen to yourself and come to your personal conclusions.

After having this conversation with Zack - I have also left google review, but as in the case with my google review for "AnytimeFitness" it was left invisible by any other users besides the user I published it under. here is the screenshot of that review:

Here is the text of the review (slightly changed to fix the typos I left in actual review):

============

It is an ok place, but if you talk to one of bartenders and they complain that "they felt uncomfortable" - it would be enough for management to come over to you and without any clarifications tell you that you made one of our stuff member feel "uncomfortable", even thou all you asked for was - "How did you wake up to work that early?" :) America is famous for many many brainless men when business comes to what women tell them. Who, like slaves, obey any whims of women without subjecting them to any criticism or doubt. So many men here are feminized and have little dignity and act as women (spread rumors, unable to confront somebody face to face and instead appeal to manager or police), and the manager of this place, a man named Zack who presented me with a complaint, is no exception. He accused me in following their employee outside and lied that he has video recording of that happening, and when I offered to watch it together - he was confused, because, I assume, he did not know that it was a lie that was told to him by his employee. I have not followed her, just happened to walk by when she was sitting and smoking outside. And I was polite and gentle, but it does not matter - what matters is that "she felt uncomfortable" and now I have to walk on the tip toes around her so I accidentally do not make her uncomfortable again. And Zack did not want to pay any attention to my words and explanation and did not even ask my opinion on what has happened. What matters to him is "she felt uncomfortable", and when I asked "so what have I done to make her feel not comfortable?" he could not answer... He is a knight on the white horse and proud being manipulated by woman. I believe he might think it makes him a "good person" who knows, or he just might be afraid of what she could do by spreading misinformation about him amongst other "Epoch coffee" bosses, behind his back. It is also possible.

============

I do not remember if I wrote to google business support asking them why did not they publish this comment... Because at this point it just feels useless after first try with Sandick... ^-^ (I am refering to my initial attempts to clarify the same issue in this post).

The Emperor Protects.

How you can be accused of anything in the USA and get banned just because you are being yourself. First story.

Hello. It is 20:32 January 8th 2026th CST and I have been postponing publishing this fabula for a long time. It would be very different from all previous fabulas that you may find published on this resource so far. Everything I published previously was related to my iCoup project, or updates related to this resource. This on is going to be different and might attract your attention in some specific way. :) This story is about how men are treated in the USA and a little about how google review operates. You will get my perspective on these events and how I interpret them. Events followed would scar you forever.

I became a member of the "Anytime Fitness" on march 11 of 2025 and was visiting the location at 2525 W Anderson Ln., Austin, TX 78757. I was banned from that location on Jun 19 2025. And I left the google review related to the events that lead to the ban and the details of how it happened. But my review was never available to the public. If I open google review from under my account under which I have left the review - then I am able to see my review, but if I open google reviews from under anonymous or another account - then review is not visible.

First I will present you with content of my review and after that I shall turn to tell you about my communication with google review support team because it deserves separate attention. Below is the content of my review:

================

Hello dear Reader. I am foreigner so I am sorry for any grammatical or other errors in this story. And let's begin.

I became member of this gym on march 11 of 2025. Gym itself is allright - nothing standing out has everything that regular person needs to build body and it is close to where I live, so it was comfortable location for me.

I was coming to the gym on my regular schedule where one day I receive an email that you may see on first attached to this review screenshot.

In that email I found myself to be accused of "staring too long", I do not know where I was staring at when I broke this rule... perhaps they have rules for how long you are allowed to stare into windows or at the TV... I do not know. My best assumption is I was staring into the "nothingness" recovering my breath after a set and on the line of my sight was one of this gym's lady trainers and she came up with some assumptions that I was staring at her...

This is my best guess, so I read that email and was shocked by the fact that the owner Jon did not ask me any questions and just notified me as if my opinion does not matter for their decision at all, the only thing was obvious - he was not interested in my perspective on what has happened. I consider such behavior on Jon's part disrespectful - so now we know that Jon is protective of his personal and it could be a good sign only if it would not be so discarding to his guests.

This is how it works in the USA - most men are feminized and trained (by education institutions that are designed for women and women around them) to behave very softly and gently - they way women want them to behave. And it seems that he was affected by that social training properly as well as the gym's owner. One day when I entered the facility some man smiled at me and encouragingly said "Hi" to me and I replied the same way (nicely and with a smile), and he was one of the stuff of this gym. Later another day I looked at pictures of the stuff on the wall and I realized that man who was welcoming and said "Hi" - was the Jon - gym owner, the same person who sent me email with warning. After that I did not feel comfortable to build eye contact with him, since he already has demonstrated his disrespect to me when he sent me the notification where he was not interested in my point of view on happened situation.

So I was to the gym yesterday(this text refers to june 19th 2025). And while I was to the gym - I behaved as usually - avoided eye contact with gym stuff (since I can not respect people who do not respect me) and I had a conversation with one gym member and I wanted to clarify something on internet after conversation with him - so I looked around and saw that there was one lady who was on her phone - and since I left my phone in my car and did not want to go get it from my car and there was no other people visibly with phones (and there was 4 other people - 2 trainers with their clients who were occupied with each other) - I came over to here and politely asked her to look up something for me on internet quickly after she will be done with her next set (when I came to her she put her phone on the floor so I guessed she was going to start her set, and she confirmed that she was going to start her set so I let her to complete her set and asked if she could look it up for me after she is done with her set). She nicely with a smile replied "Yes for sure.", so I have left her to her set and after she completed her set - I saw her standing by the squatting rack looking into her phone so I approached her since she has agreed to what I asked for. While I was approaching her (I would assume she saw me on my way to her in the wall mirrors) she turned her back to me and put her phone on the floor as if she did not see me and walked to one side of the barbell to take off the plate and at that time I assumed she really did not see me, so I though "Ok, I will help her to take off the plates since she so nicely agreed to look up information for me on her phone" so I came to the opposite side of the barbell and waited for her to build eye contact, and when she did build it she took off her headphones and told me "Are you waiting for me to look up for you something?" and her voice was tense as if I offended her somehow and I said "Yes" and she said "I will not look up anything for you I just have only one minute... so..." and she continued to take of the plate pretending to be occupied and avoiding further eye contact.

It was unexpected and rude. But well, what I can do, I am not going to force her to do what she does not want to do, so I said "Sure", turned away and after quick visual scan of the gym I saw another girl who was sitting on the floor looking into her phone, so I came to her and politely explained everything one more time and she kindly googled for me what I was looking for which did not take longer then 20 seconds for her to google and me to read the result, after that I thanked her, wished to have a great workout and continued with my gym session.

And today (this text refers to june 19 2025th) I have received termination letter. This time I have conducted little conversation over email as you can see on screenshot below:

I will leave it up to you to come to any conclusions about what has happened. I just wanted to share this information and perhaps it would provide other members and potential members with some awareness about how this gym operates and culture it maintains.

youtube video link.

================

I do not remember when exactly, somewhere around Jul 4, 2025 I have submitted my request about why my review is not available to public. And below are the screenshots of conversation that I had with google review support. Pay attention to how long it took to figure out NOTHING.

As you can see the google business support does not provide you with any useful information and bears no responsibility for ANYTHING. In my opinion it is very poor service on side of google and it's representative.

The Emperor Protects.

Behold - Minor improvements were introduced.

It is 22:02 CST 3 january 2026 and I just finished fixing minor unexpected behavior which showed itself in case when you would have 2 influences of the same type and would loose influence and pick the influence ON THE RIGHT side - you would see that the influence on the LEFT side would become revealed. Also the same behavior could be observed if you lost influence on the right side, and later performed EXCHANGE action then you would see that the revealed influence (the one that was on the right side) would move to the left. Now behavior is more correlated to expected in such situations.

Also about 4 days ago added glare on the influences during "influence loos".

And added same glare to influences to EXCHANGE dialogue during EXCHANGE action.

Changed visual behavior of EXCHANGE dialogue from picked cards to become smaller to picked cards to become larger. Such behavior feels more natural.

So far these are all the updates. Have not decided on the next step, have some options.

Happy New Year Everyone! By the way... ^_^

The Emperor Protects.

Pavel Sapronov CV

Welcome. Feel free to download my resume here.

As a result of having to waste a lot of time on interviews that lead to nothing since the time I was laid off from the Pearson project, I do not have the motivation to participate in interviews without financial encouragement. It seems to me that recruiters/outsource companies do not value the time and effort that I put into participating in interviews with them. As a result of that I may provide you with recordings of my previous technical interviews. You may watch this one free of charge. Remember you are not allowed to copy or anyhow else save this video to your computer/phone or any other device. You have allowance to watch it strictly for purposes of estimation my professional and technical fit to position you are looking to fill as a recruiter or company representative. If you would like to see more video recordings of previously recorded interviews you may buy them at a price $20/hour if you would like to watch them instead of financially encouraging me to participate in technical/non technical interviews with you to determine fit the position you are looking to fill.

I believe that my personal project https://programmer-underworlds.club and it’s source code (which is available for public access) contains enough examples of how I write code and demonstrates my level as a software developer, which means that you or your technical specialists are able to open the source code of my personal project and come to conclusions if you are satisfied with my coding skills.

If you still want to put me through your interview processes and/or code assessments - If you are a recruiter or representative of a recruiting agency and you or your client is one of the 100 top leading tech companies (as mentioned in this list: https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en/products-services/technology/top-100 ) - then by arranging an interview with me, or by asking me to complete code assessment - you agree to financially compensate my time at the rate $16.67 for every 10 minutes I spend on an interview arranged by you, rounded up. This agreement is automatically accepted by you as a recruiter in case you have received my resume and reached out to me after familiarizing yourself with the content of this document, and your company agrees to this agreement, as you are the representative of your company.

• Full Name: Pavel Sapronov
• Email: pasha@programmer-underworlds.club
• Phone number: +1-737-471-5689
• Total experience: 19 years
• Portfolio: the iCoup game
• Expertise & Skills Sets: Java backend web developer, maven, git, web
• Work authorization and Visa Validity: Green Card holder, valid till 11/2034
• Current Location: Austin TX, 78758
• Interview Availability: Any week day after 2PM CST with 24hours notice
• Joining timeline from offer date: asap
• Currently on a project: yes
• Vacation plans, if any: no
• Payrate expectation: $177k/year, $85/h on w2
• Preferable employment type: W2
• Any pending offers: no
• Last 4 digits of SSN: 5689
• DOB (MM/DD): 07/01
• Passport number: 51№6151312
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/pasha-sapronov
• Education details: Bachelor degree in Computer science, 2006 year of graduation
• Did I work for TCS previously: no
• Willing to work onsite: prefer to work 2-3 days from home a week if possible
• Willing to relocate: initially I would work remotely for atleast 6 months to see if the position worth my relocation.

References:

• • Harshad Dhamorikar(apple)
  • Designation: Engineer
  • +1-408-621-2676
  • https://www.linkedin.com/in/harshaddhamorikar
• • Ayan Bandopadhyay(apple)
  • Designation: Senior Manager Engineering
  • +1-740-417-6438
  • https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayanbandopadhyay
• • Jan Nel (backbase)
  • Designation: Consultant
  • https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-nel-9a837124

The Emperor Protects.