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This reminds me of the joke whose punch line is

> You will be lucky to have this person work for you.

"I cannot recommend X too highly. X always served as an example to their colleagues. The quality of X's code was unequalled in our department, and X's work always merited special attention." (etc)

> I cannot recommend X too highly

This isn't a veiled statement. It's outright dunking on the applicant.

It can be interpreted both ways: "I cannot recommend X too highly (because they suck)" vs "I cannot recommend X too highly (because whatever praise I give will be inadequate)"

If praise is the intent, it would be phrased as "... cannot recommend X highly enough"

I disagree.

Not every opinion is equally valid

My take away from this is that any positive thing written in a letter of recommendation can be read as sarcasm by an English speaker.

I think there's some deeper issue with the language/culture here.

Every language has turns of phrase that are not necessarily intuitive to non-native speakers.

I think the line is

> you would be lucky to get this employee to work for you!

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