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Our worst hire ever had a glowing reference from his current supervisor. (the candidate stated he wanted to move from the larger corporate environment to our more relaxed environment, which is a common sentiment in people we interview) After the slow motion train wreck that was his time with us finally departed for another station, I got talking to a guy in the local bar, who, while quite drunk, asked me "Say, you're not Edward from Company X are you?" I told him I was, and then he promptly sprinted off to the bar, and came with a beer for me and said "I need to apologise and at least buy you this beer". I asked him why, and it turns out it was his guilty conscience - he had been the supervisor who gave us the glowing reference for Trainwreck, and he had done it solely to get rid of Trainwreck. All the issues we'd had with him, they'd had, for longer, and in my country it's notoriously difficult to fire underperforming devs without risking penalties in an employment tribunal, how exactly do you quantify how much they are or aren't delivering? So yeah, he lied to us to move Trainwreck out of his team. So these days I am very dubious about references from current employers/managers. And I don't quite think that the beer made up for it. |