Anybody you reach out to, no matter hiring responsibility or not, has the interest of getting good people into the company, irrespective of how happy they thems

Anybody you reach out to, no matter hiring responsibility or not, has the interest of getting good people into the company, irrespective of how happy they themselves are at the workplace. Really good people are hard to come by in this market (need to be not just smart but also easy to work with, communicate etc), so you better don't express dissatisfaction, otherwise they go to a competitor. It's really hard to get honest opinions before accepting an offer. You have mostly gut feeling to go by, maybe join a team for a coffee break, this kind of thing. A direct question "what do you like least about your job?" could work too (it's kinda "what's your biggest weakness?" in reverse), but often times that's also just used to upsell or BS you, e.g. "the food here is too good, I'm getting fat". But you can try to read between the lines of course.