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Comment by 999900000999 | Hacker News Reader

I still didn't like how he sabotaged this guy at his next interview, why do you care if he's not your problem anymore.

This is why most companies will only either confirm or deny employment history.

Is it sabotage? If he's being hired to write code, and his code is a problem, I would expect that he shouldn't get the position. He didn't tell Initrode "don't hire". He told them "look at the code". And maybe Initrode doesn't have a problem with the code.

It just seems petty, This dude isn't your problem anymore.

How does it benefit you to stop someone else from being able to feed their family.

It doesn't benefit you. It might benefit them though. The "feeding the family" is speculation.

A family can be one person, it doesn't benefit you to prevent someone you had a bad experience with from earning an income.

The vibe I get from this article, is the author was personally upset with Sten, and that's why he went out of his way to make Sten's life harder.

Not something to brag about.

Sten isn't prevented from earning an income. He's potentially less likely to get a job for which he isn't a good fit. Perhaps that means he'll get another one instead? That pays more, so he can eat even more expensive food? I don't think it does much good to speculate about further downstream effects.

I didn’t get that vibe, and the wording of the reference suggesting writing some code at interview seems pretty mild too. You could read something between the lines perhaps, but the wording doesn’t seem unreasonable.

To me, that doesn’t seem like going out of his way to make Sten’s life harder.

Sten’s ability to then write code at interview will determine his chances for getting that role.

If not tested at interview, the new employer would presumably find out pretty quickly and the end result likely the same.

Yeah, that's how I got into trouble finding a different high school after I got 'removed' [1] from my first. All the rectors knew each other, and were also from the same church, gg. Its also funny how at some point you become the scapegoat, even when you did not, just because of guilt of association.

In a way, my problem with the post isn't so much if he'd talk a friend out of hiring a former employee of him. Its rather that his experience with this person is shallow (2 weeks), and that he appears to be proud of accomplishing Sten didn't get hired. With a little bit of help and a change here or there, if Sten was willing to, I believe he could function. In The Netherlands, companies are now obliged to have a percentage of their workers as disabled people.

In Germany, a reference must be positive. So, to hack around it, there's gradations of how positive the reference is. My point being: that doesn't work.

[1] Not really removed, more like saying I would be removed or else they'd make my life a hell next year so I should find a different school, shifting the responsibility to me (a minor) and my parents instead of to them.

I don't even know if Sten is disabled.

I do know Sten had the unfortunate experience of a toxic manager who, after firing him ,went out of his way to stop him from getting another job.

Considering healthcare is tied to employment in America, I can't express how evil this is. Imagine if after breaking up with someone you ran around trying to ruin their other relationships.

Then imagine writing a blog post bragging about doing that.

completely disagree. This manager did the world a service.

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