author here! i originally intended this to be a technical write-up on everything i learned building an ATS (as someone who's in HR). the original title was "how to build an ATS and why you probably shouldn't". i debated mentioning what i built, but it felt hollow to _ramble_ about schemas, architecture, components with nothing to show for it.

the more i wrote and reflected, the more i thought about why the market never corrects itself despite the tools being expensive and badly designed. i've worked with hundreds of recruiters and most use spreadsheets. that's not a workflow quirk but i think an indictment of something bigger which traces back to everything in the post -- the buyer who never uses the product, the integrations racket, the "AI-native" tools bolted on top of a broken foundation, etc. etc.

so i ended up writing the first half. it's drawn from my experiences frustratingly buying an ATS for a small business, and watching the dysfunction of procurement/integration/lack of adoption play out at the enterprise level.

admittedly, HR/recruiting tech is a very niche audience, so the technical section probably lands better with engineers who've been handed a recruiting project than with anyone actually working in HR. so i wanted to offer a resource from that perspective.