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Comment by somesortofthing | Hacker News Reader

> Word traveled, and he discovered that new jobs would only hire him with longer vesting schedules and sign-on bonuses that had to be paid back if he left before 2-3 years.

I've occasionally heard anecdotes like this but I have a hard time imagining how this kind of thing ever happens outside of very small population centers with less than ten tech employers. Unless he's some kind of executive where huge amounts of resources are devoted specifically to vetting and networking is the interview process, what incentive is there for people in charge of hiring to share such granular info with one another? Is everyone in charge of hiring at major tech companies just in a big whatsapp group exchanging dirt on employees they didn't like?

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There is a lot of backchannel reference checks. If you're about to make an offer to someone and you're in HR, there's a really good chance that you have a friend in HR at their previous company. Or if you're a hiring manager there is a good chance you have a friend who is a manager. You send them a quick note for a backchannel reference check.

It happens all the time.

True. It's a small world, and smaller in some industries.

Or HR/hiring managers spend a few minutes on LinkedIn looking for employees who have 1st or 2nd order connections to the candidate. If someone has been working in an industry for 5-10 years it's not hard to find someone who knows someone who worked with them.

> Is everyone in charge of hiring at major tech companies just in a big whatsapp group exchanging dirt on employees they didn't like?

Yes.

Source: family member who works in HR

How, in FANG alone there are THOUSANDS of HR members that rotate in and out like a revolving door. They barely know eachother let alone any of the workers save a few executives they worked for.

Don't believe this practically

You took the statement too literally. Of course there is not a single whatsapp group, but hundreds of them. People working in HR have lots of friends who also work in HR, meet HR friends of their HR friends, they talk with each other, and so on.

People change companies every few years. If a company has 100 engineers and half of them get new jobs after 3 years, you could now have people with 2nd-order connections at 20-50 different companies.

Repeat for several cycles and it becomes very easy to find someone who knows someone who worked with a candidate. LinkedIn makes this extremely easy.

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