That's interesting, there is a recruiting process in place but the easiest way to get the job is to get informal and skip the process. That's really inline with the article ihmo, the process is broken.
Networking is and always was the best and easiest way to make relationships, and hiring is a relationship. So no wonder going through friends works better than blindly sending a resume to somebody having to connection to you.
It is ripe, but it requires you to come up with something better, which can't be gamed by bad developers and doesn't take longer for good developers (since they will find other companies to apply for).
