The Critical Value of Positive Backchannel Reference Checks in the Software Engineering Profession

My apologies for the pessimistic post but I wanted to write about the critical value of our professional networks and how much it means in our careers to have others speak highly of us. This is the story about a talented senior software engineer that I have had a great history with but three months ago, after securing an introductory interview with a CTO here in Austin, he was declined because of…