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The lawyers are correctly suggesting how to minimise legal risk, it's up to HR and the company if they feel like the risk is worth it.

The lawyer isn't likely to get upside of giving feedback, they will likely get the downside of the company gets involved in legal stuff.

> The lawyers are correctly suggesting how to minimise legal risk, it's up to HR and the company if they feel like the risk is worth it.

A good lawyer should also tell you how big the risk is that you are avoiding, otherwise their advise is worthless.

Lawyers at companies have much bigger fish to fry like constantly reviewing sales and customer contracts in the high six figure ballpark not reviewing the risk of the feedback for every rejected candidate. For the latter their answer is always clear cut, "don't give any meaningful feedback to avoid ANY AND ALL risk of litigation, period". Their job is to keep the company safe from any litigation risk, no matter how small, not to keep rejected candidates happy.

Their job should be to help manage the litigation risks so that the companies can assume those risks that provide sufficiently high returns.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but outside of the SV bubble(see Europe) most companies don't see feedback from rejected employees as a high return ("who cares what some people that were not good enough for us think?") since the're never in the firing range of reddit/twitter mobs like the big FAANGs.

So you think that companies don't care what candidates might tell their peers...

But at the same time they're sponsoring meetups and conferences, hosting coding contests, sending people to career fairs, buying huge ads on job platforms to advertise company culture, just to get people to apply?

I can't talk about all of Europe, but here in Linz a lot of companies struggle to get candidates, and they spend a lot of money and effort to get a good reputation as an employer.

Well, I have no trouble giving feedback these days because life's too short not to, but that isn't even an accurate description of the problem.

A prospective job seeker goes on Glassdoor. 100 companies. 99 with only positive and neutral reviews, maybe some negative saying "rejected without feedback". 1 with a rant about how they're disrespectful dicks who are just assholes. "It wasn't the feedback. They weren't even correct and they just told me I wasn't up to their so-called 'standards'. Completely rude in their email correspondence.".

Go on, you read that, you have 99 other places to apply to. What do you actually do?

What if the other 99 other places do the same thing because it's the new norm now? Do you stay unemployed?

Well, if everyone has ranting screeds on their Glassdoor you'll blame the ranters. If only one company has a ranting screed, you'll blame the company. No one writes a ranting screed for not receiving feedback. Therefore no one wants to be that company. Essentially, we're in a stable equilibrium.

>Therefore no one wants to be that company.

I feel you overestimate the amount of fucks managers and HR give about Glasdoor feedback from rejected candidates in Germany. No company I interviewed at gave any meaningful feedback(for legal reasons) or seemed to care about opinions of rejected candidates knowing recruiters are constantly flooding them with resumes from new potential candidates on a daily basis and also most rejected candidates won't bother writing feedback on Glassdoor because once you've been around the block a few times you realize it's the norm and you're basically preaching to the choir.

> No one writes a ranting screed for not receiving feedback.

The hell they don't. The root post of this very thread could easily have been a "ranting screed" on Glassdoor if the poster was of a different mindset.

> But all the good will from the other people must be worth something!

Is it possible that there may be a distinction to be made between all the good will from the other people being worth something and all the good will being worth more than the legal headaches, PR headaches, and other potential consequences of someone reacting badly to feedback?

This is the kind of question that demands a quantitative analysis, but I hardly know where to begin beyond that it's an expected value question. Where do you go about putting a number to the value of something that "must be worth something"?

where did you get those figures?

I made them up.

Of course they're made up. That's why I asked.

If you make a conclusion on made up data you get bogus conclusion.

It may be a good conclusion, but not for real life where facts don't match made up data.

> If you make a conclusion on made up data you get bogus conclusion

No. You work with made up numbers to understand the problem. Then you can make conclusions even without knowing the precise numbers.

For example, my analysis doesn't change much wheter the rate of lawsuits is 0.1% or 0.01% or 0.001%. It would change if the rate of lawsuits is 1%.

But I am pretty sure that the rate of lawsuits after interview rejection is much less than 1%. So I can make a conclusion without knowing precise numbers.

Calculations based on estimates come up all the time, and they are very valuable. They make it clear what assumptions your decisions are based on.

What's the alternative? You have to make a decision. If you don't want to use estimates, what are you going to base your decision on? Whatever feels right?

What I'm saying is that even with the lawsuit rate that low, there is no real incentive for the company (really the people sending the emails) to behave otherwise than they already do. Actually their benefit is that low, that even a slight error of that 0.1% guess would make the whole do-good business a really bad proposition.

Your (guess) data is probably right but it discounts too much the downsides. When you present your hypothesis to them (e.g. me) they will tell you (rightly so) to try it yourself first.

The incentive is “be a good person/entity.” This whole bottom-line approach and “what’s in it for me” is unfortunate to say the least. Behind every corporate establishment is a cadre of people. People with (possibly) spouses, children, non-deceased parents, neighbors, and friends. Possibly at some abstract level similar to the abstract “us.” Treat people like people, not some kind of legal liability.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say: they’re guesses, feel free to post better ones. Especially if it changes the conclusion.

So you are suggesting that (from their behavior) people are oblivious to the low risk/high reward indicated by those figures?

Or maybe they don't like assuming risks based on other's bogus data when they already have their version of bogus data that is probably closer to reality?

I’m not really sure who “they” refers to (parent, GP, the company, the employee?), but let me take a step back here and illustrate my point more clearly. Maybe it will help. What I’m trying to say is: this isn’t a court of law, it’s a collaborative conversation. Someone posits a hypothesis based on some estimates. Others are invited to build on either of those: the estimates themselves , or the hypothesis built upon it.

This is a healthier way of looking at online discourse than constantly asking people to provide sources and citations. If they didn’t mention them, you can safely assume it’s a guess. It’s implicit. Don’t like the guess, great: help us improve. We’re all in this together. It’s not a battle of “who has the best opinion”.

Maybe that’s what you were trying to do, in which case I’m sorry for misunderstanding. I genuinely didn’t understand your comment, please forgive me :)

The figures discounts the downside too much for them to work.

I was on the receiving end of no-reply and didn't like it. But if I were to switch sides to a company, then after a couple of honest attempts at feedback I will most likely say fuck-off and send a stock letter instead.