[flat-pluto]

Blind[1] is a decent community to get a glimpse into what employees truly feel about employers, get referrals and overall tech career advice. It can get rather toxic and troll-ey at times, but you can filter that out to focus on the useful stuff.

[1] - https://www.teamblind.com/

[maximinus_thrax]

At times? It's a cesspool of negativity and lies. Good content is the exception on Blind. Deleting that app is one of the best things someone can do for their mental health.

[pm90]

I can second this.

I made the mistake of downloading it once big players started layoffs in hopes of getting in on the news before it hit. But that forum is toxic sludge for anyone’s mental health.

I don’t use it anymore. The only time I download the app is like glassdoor when figuring out if a company is ok or not.

[anon7725]

I would not trust Glassdoor reviews whatsoever. Companies can pay to curate reviews.

[cactusplant7374]

They are discussing this thread here: https://www.teamblind.com/post/The-Hacker-News-community-vie...

Partial archive: https://archive.ph/npoh6

As you would expect, it's horrible. The moderation is quite bad too. They'll ban you for just saying you disagree with someone depending on the topic.

[maximinus_thrax]

> The moderation is quite bad too.

What moderation? There's been a picture of feces inside a toilet bowl on that Blind thread for the past 3 hours.

[cactusplant7374]

Feast or famine, as they say. Whole new meaning to the phrase "shit hole."

[dangwhy]

blind has to be the most toxic community in tech. I don't know if i can handle the mental damage for referrals and insider info on prospective employers.

[kulahan]

Everyone on Blind is a Principal Engineer making $750k TC while only working 8 hours a month

[danpalmer]

I get a similar impression. The community is deeply negative, and deeply cynical about everything. Everyone seems to only care about compensation. It seems full of the sort of people who put zero effort in but who know how to play the corporate game enough to negotiate big salaries, only to then moan about poor performance reviews or getting laid off.

[cactusplant7374]

This is a typical Blind response: https://imgur.com/a/X7tSrGf

Bragging about their workplace.

[twalla]

You forgot the weekly posts about which brand of toilet bowl cleaner has the most prestige.

[zug_zug]

I'll go ahead and defend blind. It's absolutely negative to the extreme, but it gave me the heads up on a layoff and has all sorts of relevant information. I've come to realize I (we?) trust companies so little that many people would never even complain in a private direct message to a coworker -- pretty hard to commiserate if you're remote.

Most coworkers I know refuse to fill out any "how happy are you at work?" surveys or fill out max scores because they think (and I don't doubt them) that any and all information could be used by management to jeopardize their career -- basically they see their work an totalitarian information state...

[pastacacioepepe]

> I've come to realize I (we?) trust companies so little that many people would never even complain in a private direct message to a coworker

We claim to live in democracies, while in fact we spend good part of our adult life in parallel societies where we can't even express dissent in private.

[anon7725]

This right here. Blind contains a lot of noise but also some signal. Internal corporate comms are 100% noise and unless you have a trusted and informed coworker the grapevine doesn’t tell you much.

[Vibgyor5]

Does anyone have ANY recommendations for referral platform?

Cold application is fairly useless in today's age and time. A referral puts your application much ahead in the pool so that a human actually reads it.

Blind used to be a tolerable place until they made it exclusively US-centric. Importantly, I really loved their side product - Rooftop Slushie - where you could have resume reviews, interview prep, and get trusted referrals for a small sum. They seem to have closed that though.

[sebzim4500]

>Cold application is fairly useless in today's age and time.

Really? 95% of the people I've been involved in hiring have been cold applicants or via a recruiter (where normally those connections aren't made by referrals either).

[cvhashim04]

Aside from referrals channel, Blind is terribly neurotic and toxic.