I spent more than a decade in the tech industry and I know a lot of people. Silicon Valley is a disgusting place. The less you know, the better for your soul.

I spent more than a decade in the tech industry and I know a lot of people. Silicon Valley is a disgusting place. The less you know, the better for your soul. What-the-fuck is a reasonable reaction. As for physical consequences of bad references, there's obviously going to be a spectrum. It's very unlikely that someone would get hit for saying something like "I don't like him" at a bar and accidentally costing someone a job. Those things happen, and very few people are irrational or paranoid enough to call in a hit man over something small that isn't going to happen again. If someone is deliberately running around saying, "You shouldn't hire him" or "He was fired for cause", though, it's inevitable that he's going to get what's coming to him. Rationally speaking, people usually make this calculation based on what they think the person is going to do in the future. Sometimes the motive is revenge, but usually it's just intimidation. If it's truly a one-off, people usually let it go. If someone is making it impossible to find work, though, then people get desperate.