my referral/vouching policy is i try my best to completely decouple my estimate of technical competence from how close a friend someone is. i have very good friends i would not write referrals for and i have written referrals for people i basically only know in a professional context. if i feel like it’s impossible for me to disentangle, i will defer to someone i trust and have them make the decision. this leads to some awkward conversations, but if someone doesn’t want to be friends with me because it won’t lead to a referral, i don’t want to be friends with them either.
Strong agree (except in that liking someone’s company is evidence that they would be a pleasant co-worker, but that’s generally not a high order bit). I find it very annoying that standard reference culture seems to often imply giving extremely positive references unless someone was truly awful, since it makes it much harder to get real info from references
I find it very annoying that standard reference culture seems to often imply giving extremely positive references unless someone was truly awful, since it makes it much harder to get real info from references
Agreed, but also most of the world does operate in this reference culture. If you choose to take a stand against it, you might screw over a decent candidate by providing only a quite positive recommendation.
Agreed. If I’m talking to someone who I expect to be able to recalibrate, I just explain that I think the standard norms are dumb, the norms I actually follow, and then give an honest and balanced assessment. If I’m talking to someone I don’t really know, I generally give a positive but not very detailed reference or don’t reply, depending on context.
my referral/vouching policy is i try my best to completely decouple my estimate of technical competence from how close a friend someone is. i have very good friends i would not write referrals for and i have written referrals for people i basically only know in a professional context. if i feel like it’s impossible for me to disentangle, i will defer to someone i trust and have them make the decision. this leads to some awkward conversations, but if someone doesn’t want to be friends with me because it won’t lead to a referral, i don’t want to be friends with them either.
Strong agree (except in that liking someone’s company is evidence that they would be a pleasant co-worker, but that’s generally not a high order bit). I find it very annoying that standard reference culture seems to often imply giving extremely positive references unless someone was truly awful, since it makes it much harder to get real info from references
Agreed, but also most of the world does operate in this reference culture. If you choose to take a stand against it, you might screw over a decent candidate by providing only a quite positive recommendation.
Agreed. If I’m talking to someone who I expect to be able to recalibrate, I just explain that I think the standard norms are dumb, the norms I actually follow, and then give an honest and balanced assessment. If I’m talking to someone I don’t really know, I generally give a positive but not very detailed reference or don’t reply, depending on context.