If you know that the person asking you to be a reference is a bad engineer, and they're applying for someplace that builds critical systems - medical devices, say, or rockets - maybe you want to warn their potential employer that they're hiring a liability.

It's pretty presumptuous to make that assertion unless you knew the person for many years in different work environments.

I've seen lots of engineers become 'bad engineers' because of a myriad of environmental issues (bad management, bad peers, bad office, bad engineering decisions foisted upon them).

If you didn't see them perform well, don't provide a reference. If they are that bad, nobody in a reputable position will provide them a reference and the hiring company will see that.

It's not your responsibility to be an arbiter of some ex-coworker's life.

The only time I was a reference for someone, I was asked questions, and I answered them. I wouldn't know if they were spun positively or negatively. Is that how senior engineers provide reference, or is it more free form?

If someone calls me up and asks about Coworker X, and I refuse to provide a reference, isn't that likely to be viewed the same as a negative reference?

You refuse the coworker when the coworker asks if he/she can use you as a reference.

Yes but then you don’t get to crush someone’s dreams in an act of petty revenge. /s

You have to be careful with who you use as references these days. But honestly I'm not sure why they are still a thing anymore. Most professionals give stock responses, ie yes/no that the person worked there, and are forbidden by HR to give much useful information.

Such are the better-safe-than-sorry business policies of a litigious society.

Someone asked me to be a reference, I said no, they still put me as a reference anyway. I was not happy. Didn't badmouth him, but I also didn't say anything good about him. And when asked if I would hire him where I worked, I said no.

I asked permission from all of my references beforehand. Two were coworkers and the last was my previous team lead. I knew all of them had positive opinions regarding my work.

The problem was BlueOrigin’s reference-questionnaire. One of my references shared it with me afterwards. It’s a stock template - except pretty much all the questions seem contrived to find reasons not to hire someone. One of the questions was along the lines of “On a percentage scale where would you rank [candidate] relative to other people you have worked with?” (Which is s problem if you’re a relatively poor player in a high-performing team). Another was (almost verbatim) “Please provide a reason why we should not hire [candidate]?” (As opposed to “Can you think of a reason?” - I was surprised that the question straight-up assumes there is a reason).

BlueOrigin’s cooldown period is 2 years which is long for Seattle, when you consider SpaceX’s is 1 year and Google can be 6 months. My recruiter at BlueOrigin did tell me to re-apply though and gave me his card. I’ll think about it.

In the interests of honesty - I will say that I am not a model employee and I do have productivity problems - I’m sure that my references gave honest answers with good intentions and I accept that I’m probably not BlueOrigin-material: I have punctuality problems, I’ll spend half a day procrastinating then working late until 1am to make up for it, and I stilll often go on code refactoring crusades without telling anyone. Sometimes I think I wouldn’t even hire me anyway :)

I interviewed at BlueOrigin ~3.5 years ago, my impression was they're very old fashioned and secretive. Not necessarily a bad thing for such critical systems (though I think SpaceX has the better model/culture even if I know it's not for me), but I was applying for a backend role using Spring and hoping to get in on a program they had at the time where you could move around the various departments like avionics and such to get an idea of the whole 'stack' as well as learn more about what they did to get high quality assurance...

They were the only company to ask in the interview about my college GPA (which wasn't good, I still don't remember the exact number and didn't at the time but it's below 3) and I didn't get an offer. But I'm kind of like you, naturally a slacker but in my jobs I've always managed to put out work that satisfies everyone it needs to (including myself, sometimes, but other times...) and meet deadlines, so 'tsall good.

Your last bit reminds me of a quote "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member". It's hard to accept praise or feel belonging knowing the full depths of one's faults which are only improving slowly. ;)

I interviewed for the superlative job title “Spaceflight systems avionics software engineer”. Contrary to your experience, I found the process to be very casual. They told me not to bring my resume, but to put together a PowerPoint presentation about my life. For one of my interviews the interviewing engineer didn’t even show up and his boss came in later and said (paraphrased): “you made it this far so I guess you’re good enough” and had me go see the next interviewer. It did take them 2 weeks to get back to me with the “We want to make you an offer”-call.

My biggest surprise was that they were (and I assume still are) running Windows 7 on their dev boxes.

Imo that doesn't just sound casual, it sounds somewhat dysfunctional.

> but to put together a PowerPoint presentation about my life

Wait what? This seems like a big red flag to me.

To be fair, they already had my resume from earlier-on in the application process.

They sound like a mess. When an interviewer doesn't even show, that's not a good sign. When this boss says, "I guess you're good enough", that's a worse sign. This is rocket science, after all.

... My resume is terrible, but I'd rather bring it than a PowerPoint presentation about my life even if it was a million times worse.

I was once asked to list the number of days taken off work by the person I was referring (including sick days).

I assume it was a sneaky way of finding out whether the person suffered from any recurring health condition, and I refused to answer it.

> “On a percentage scale where would you rank [candidate] relative to other people you have worked with?”

That does look like a terrible question. Without context, team organisation, and work history for the reference person, the answer is meaningless... Not even if you're poor performing. If that person just happens to work with amazing people, of course you'd be rated lower.

> Another was (almost verbatim) “Please provide a reason why we should not hire [candidate]?” (As opposed to “Can you think of a reason?” - I was surprised that the question straight-up assumes there is a reason).

Think outside the box. Reply with, "No."

>Sometimes I think I wouldn’t even hire myself :)

Don't let other's words shape who you are.

In the right context, what you listed are your strengths.

That's definitely badmouthing someone :)

Most of the time when someone asks to use me as a reference I never get a call. Last time, my colleague's prospective employer kept me on the phone for about 30 minutes and had an extensive list of questions about his work habits and performance.

Depending on what this company wanted, it's entirely possible that something I said during that call would've influenced the company's hiring decision, though I was obviously trying to portray my friend in the best light possible given the context.

I don't know if BlueOrigin has a similar process or not, but it's not necessarily that the reference was intentionally giving a negative report; they could've just picked up on something the reference said and felt it didn't mesh with the position.

Spoiler: my friend got the job, supposedly in part due to my good reference. Phew! I would've hated to be the one that got blamed for "bad mouthing" him.

Some places do "blind" reference checks, where they contact people you've worked with themselves (through Linkedin or similar.) The idea being that the references you provide are likely to be more positive than representative.

That seems open to abuse.

Maybe they were put down as a reference without their prior approval?

Jealousy, anger, etc. Sadly, it’s the nature of people. Can’t assume from the context but I know some people who might do that.

maybe he just put him down as a reference and never asked or gave him a heads up in advance? Or rather why would anyone put down a reference that isn't going to put in a good word for them?