Ask HN: Being Badmouthed in the Industry
Hello HN,
Three years ago, I ran into a nasty individual during a job interview (details https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11886753) That would've been a long forgotten story if it didn't came back to bite me.
Recently, I was trying to get in touch with my industry contacts, talking about moving jobs as my current employer ran into financial troubles.
I had a LinkedIn conversation with an owner of one very successful iot chip company 3 years ago, but he abruptly stopped responding to my messages back then. It is just now that I realised that the guy mentioned above got connected to him on LinkedIn right around that time, and to other people in my social circle.
This is why I suspect that it is possible that he went badmouthing me after our argument, especially given him emanating that "Internet weirdo" feel (despite him being a very business like smooth talker on a first look.) That man owns his own non-insubstantial business, and has some reputation in the industry.
Right now, it is very important to me to repair that relationship.
Two things are possible:
1. The owner of the company was simply too busy to answer random messages, and I am just too paranoid.
2. The scenario above actually happened, and I am in trouble now.
Have anybody encountered anything similar?
Question to 40-50+ people, how would've you handled that?
How would've you prepared an email taking in account both possibilities (CEO being pissed off about randoms contacting him directly, or him being disinformated.)
My Grandpa George taught me something when I was young. He said there are two kinds of people in this world:
1.) Those who will listen to people badmouthing others and use the badmouthing to inform their opinions.
2.) Those who reserve forming an opinion until they know the person being badmouthed.
Forget anyone who falls into condition #1. You can never, under any circumstances, trust someone like this. Therefore, they are not worth your time or anxiety.
What if the person being listened to in condition #1 was a trusted employee at the company who is interested in hiring you?
My Grandpa was a smart man, so I’m sure he would have had some specific advice for this situation. The best I can add is that my Grandpa was a big believer in meeting people and forming his own opinion.
In my experience most humans fall into category number one.
Really? I've had almost the exact opposite experience.
I've only encountered a handful of situations where someone went out their way to bad mouth someone else to a potential employer. Out of those, only one or two instances swayed the decision maker.
To OP - it's certainly possible that you were indeed bad mouthed. However, the chance of one disgruntled person's opinion affecting someone's hiring decision is pretty slim.
I honestly wouldn't worry about it. Anyone who takes a strangers word about someone else over forming their own opinion is probably not someone you want to work for anyway.
I think you’re being a bit too paranoid.
I can’t even begin to imagine how would you approach someone in order to badmouth a random stranger and not have it reflect badly on you (aka you’d be badmouthing yourself more than anyone else).
Given a sample size of 1, that particular person was probably too busy or is not answering your messages for another reason (the situation would be different if your entire network suddenly turned away, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here).
> I can’t even begin to imagine how would you approach someone in order to badmouth a random stranger
I work in a very small industry - consumer electronics, the part of it with IOT spin. Everybody more or less at least heard of each other, and if not me personally, then my past employers.
From my impression of the person from 3 years ago, he might do just that. A bad combo of person having enviable intelligence, social skills, but at the same time being venal, insidious, and, well, not feeling adequate.
Or he might've just found a good moment to say things as they were, like "hey, I met this guy at a job interview, nasty hot tempered fellow."
If the industry's as small as you say it is, you're probably more at risk from people in it recognising you from reading this thread on HN than people receiving feedback from someone who interviewed you three years ago who wasn't interested in hiring you back then because he thought your opinions on jQuery were stupid...
(and also, it'd be entirely unsurprising that this person would happen to connect to the other person you were reaching out to)
I can't imagine anyone caring enough to make a connection to a stranger to bad mouth someone, nor can I imagine someone remembering an interview from years ago about a candidate they didn't hire. Also if I understood correctly, the interview with the guy was about 3 years ago, that's about when the interviewer connected with the owner of the IoT company on linked in, and when you were having the conversation with that owner yes? So this is all a hypothetical about a thing that may have happened three years ago? Why are you worrying about this now? Just let it go and don't hold on to the past, you can't change it. Just write both of them and their companies off of possible interactions.
That said, let's assume that this interviewer is actually going around bad mouthing you. Why don't you hit him up on LinkedIn? Preface it with "You may not remember me, but..." and just tell him that he was right. Say that his feedback while mean, helped you realize you needed to grow as a person and developer. Make him understand that you are sorry for how you reacted in the interview many years ago. Make it clear you're not asking him for a job or anything though, and that you just want to thank him for his helpful feedback.
It will stroke his ego a bit, and in my experience when you admit you were wrong even when its been years, and show how you've rectified the problem, the person is willing to try and reform an opinion on you.
Though I would bet on the first option of the possibilities you stated.
Seems a little paranoid, but I've learned to rule nothing out since one interviewer later testified against me (about the <1hr remote interview, which had nothing to do with the charges).
If you've got a bully or "griefer" out there, there's little you can do to get them to stop maligning you, unless there's a record of what they said, they're making a statement of fact (saying you're a jerk and a liar doesn't count since they're opinions), and you call them on it quickly (defamation has a very short statute of limitations most places).
> LinkedIn conversation with an owner of one very successful iot chip company 3 years ago...
Turns out, Linkedin is NOT an ideal platform to communicate with C-Level types. Even they're tech savvy.
Refresh contact -- ping him this time via E-Mail. If he doesn't reply in a weeks time, give him an actual telephone call.