Was this like in the outskirts of Saskatchewan? :) I can't think of a way to meaningfully blacklist engineers in the age of remote work.
I said the area, but no, in CO. He was employed by a couple space-related companies, which is still a small field. In one job he was also hired via a national hiring agency, so he screwed himself out of any jobs through them again. The genius was not smart enough to get remote jobs. He may have had more success with remote jobs, but in the layoffs over the last couple years I doubt he would have survived, he was definitely not contributing enough to keep around.
It's easy to get a bad rep in niche industries in a small area because we tend to know each other. I had a guy who was our worst hire ever list me as a reference. Unfortunately, the hiring manager at the next job he tried to get was a friend and former co-worker of mine.
What does C player mean here?
Scraping by. Doing barely enough to not get fired.