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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

Questions

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   My coworker Alice reached out to me in confidence to say that another coworker, Blake, is leaving in about a month. Blake told Alice in confidence that they intend to put in their two-weeks notice next week. Making things better, Blake is our entire ops team (<3 bus factor of 1) and our startup was not planning on hiring anyone else into that team for three more months!

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   Do I have an obligation to respect their twice-removed confidentiality? Or do I have an obligation to the company (and my remaining coworkers) to push to start hiring their replacement sooner? I\\u2019m concerned that if I do nothing, it\\u2019s a risk to the company because Blake plays such a critical role and we did not setup Blake in an HA configuration, but I\\u2019m also wary of doing something that seems like an ethical gray area.

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   I\\u2019m not in management, so I have no ability to directly start hiring. But I\\u2019m a senior IC and pretty heavily vested in the success of this company. And bummed about my dear departing friend/colleague! And bummed that my workload is about to go up as all of us learn to be ops engineers, too!

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   Help! I don\\u2019t want to have to take the soft skills patented advice of quitting my job when the startup crumbles under the ops team\\u2019s departure, so what do I do instead?

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   Someone I worked closely with on a previous job has reached out to me, asking for a referral and recommendation to my current company. The problem is, I really didn\\u2019t enjoy working with this person. The experience was so bad it prompted me to leave that job for another one. I didn\\u2019t want to burn bridges, so when I left the job, I cited personal reasons and did not mention the real reason was that I hated the interpersonal dynamics there.

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   It could be the case that their toxic behavior was partly due to the toxic organization we were in. It\\u2019s also possible that over the years they\\u2019ve matured, but I don\\u2019t know. On the other hand, each time I\\u2019ve asked someone for a referral, they\\u2019ve always done it, so I assume that there\\u2019s an expectation to refer previous coworkers?

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   I can\\u2019t in good conscience recommend this person to my current company. If I provide my true opinions, I suppose they\\u2019d eventually find out. Can this person sue me for defamation if they don\\u2019t get hired?

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