Job-seekers are always advised not to be negative about past employers. In other situations it is considered prudent to avoid this kind of talk, and I think it

Job-seekers are always advised not to be negative about past employers. In other situations it is considered prudent to avoid this kind of talk, and I think it is strongly against norms of American business. I really don't like this blanket policy, because there are a lot of people doing bad things who deserve to be exposed. I'm not saying people should be a dick about it. After all, most people will have at least one job or company not work out and, 9 times out of 10, the best thing to do is move on with the best terms possible. Most of these things are like a breakup, in that there isn't an issue of "bad people"; things just didn't work and the best thing for everyone is to let it go, to be good to each other if they have to interact in the future, and to avoid each other if not. There are some cases that deserve to be blown, though. There was a startup in the 1990s that, when it was acquired, fired a few of its top performers (long story). If that's all it was, the smart thing for those people to do would be to move on, but it didn't end there. There was no severance, and the startup was forbidden, by a term in the acquisition contract, from giving any kind of reference. This was in biotech, which is more specialized and much smaller of a town. Without a reference these people were proper fucked. When these sorts of things happen, the right thing to do is blow every whistle you can and bring the bad guys down, with the end goal being to expose and humiliate them so badly that no one ever tries to pull that again.