How long will it be until recruiters are camping out at the SFO Arrivals terminal, hoping to be the first one to nab that incoming Ruby Engineer when they move to the city? Not long, judging from a recent experiment involving Meetup.com’s San Francisco Ruby list.

The ruse: Post as an engineer relocating to SF and interested in new job opportunities.

The result? Over 30 responses within four hours, offering a glimpse into the uber-competitive war for talent. A summary of what transpired is below, with individuals’ names removed to protect the guilty.

The first email, consisting of just two sentences requesting our resume for a “Cloud Computing team,” arrived within just 3 minutes. The technical recruiter was in such a hurry to get into our inbox that he even misspelled our engineer’s name.

The second email, still full of misspellings, was sent just 60 seconds later and came from a recruitment agency promising, “We are legit” and requesting a time to talk on the phone. Several more emails arrived in the next three minutes, including a pitch from an agency marketing themselves as “being trusted by VC firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, Accel Partners.”

One agency’s pitch consisted entirely of this: “I saw that your [sic] looking for some work. I have a few posions [sic] in SF that might be a fit, let me know when you have some time to talk.” It provided no last name, phone number or company name. Many more emails followed, often consisting of one-sentence replies and links to job ads or offers, and numerous offers to meet for coffee, beer, and other beverages.

The more insightful responses came from engineers themselves, one offering an introduction to a former employer (ApartmentList), saying they had loved the culture while working there. One very helpful VP of engineering offered recommendations for “very few decent TexMex places I’ve found,” while another warned about VC-backed companies overworking their staff.