Hacker News Reader

Comment by lofatdairy | Hacker News Reader

The unfortunate thing is that companies have a lot more power, the relationship isn't symmetrical. An individual withdrawing from from a job offer has to worry about being blacklisted by the company and often even other companies in the industry (I know this to be the case w/ some positions in banking, admittedly not familiar w/ practices in big tech). I'm not saying people should feel bad about walking away from an employment agreement, nor do companies deserve loyalty, but definitely emphasizing your point to avoid burning bridges because a lot of industries are a lot smaller on the inside than they look.

View on HN

I've been involved hiring a fair amount and I'm pretty sure there's no blacklist, at least in the tech world. In fact, I once worked at a place where someone started at the company, worked a couple of weeks, then left because their preferred job offer came through. A couple of months later this person came back and said the other job wasn't working out and was hired again.

Despite the messaging constantly broadcast by HR departments, it really is just business, unless the organization is horribly dysfunctional. There are vindictive individuals out there, but you don't want to work for those people anyway.

> about being blacklisted by the company and often even other companies in the industry

I've asked many recruiters and HR professionals this exact question but all of them said there is no such thing as blacklisting. Its not worth their time and effort to maintain an industry wide blacklist of candidates which Sounds borderline illegal.

Generally, it's so difficult to hire technical talent, that it would be very difficult to maintain a blacklist anyway. Basically, some companies would just break the blacklist, because there's a good source of talent, that some companies have decided to overlook for petty reasons.

The world is too busy and too chaotic to really care that you decided not to join a company or that a company decided to withdraw an offer. Life goes on.

There might not be intercompany blacklists, but there are definitely intracompany blacklists.

But it also depends on the size of the industry. Smaller industries where everyone knows each other, people will talk about a candidate pulling out, and stop extending that person offers.

Blacklists absolutely exist, but they are company-by-company. SAP HR software even comes with a special table for it.

All those companies are made up of individuals who must make those exact same decisions for themselves.

As for blacklists, if you're a douchebag you'd better be real good at something, because people never forget that, and in no time you have a rep. Anyone who has been around for a while has names on their DO NOT HIRE list, and if those resumes run across their desk it's instant reject.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com