Should I provide a fabricated reference for a friend?
follow up from someone who would prefer to reomain anonymous. My husband taught himself how to be a developer and got his first job with faked references for freelance work; the references were ginned up from people he knows from IRC. He’s now into the second real job after the first, and is doing great – the further he gets from the first job the less chance there is of him being found out. We are very grateful for the help his friends gave him in getting a job, because without it we couldn’t have gotten married and started our family. In our culture there is so much emphasis on work and good performance there that sometimes for human reasons it’s important to provide a fake reference for a friend. The friend might have a family to support; a life threatening illness that requires medical insurance; or other pressing human needs. In some cases it’s necessary to choose friendship over professional ethics, and indeed to take the risk that your friend could blackmail you later on. Only y
To respond to the anonymous person who contacted jessamyn: In our culture there is so much emphasis on work and good performance there that sometimes for human reasons it’s important to provide a fake reference for a friend. The friend might have a family to support; a life threatening illness that requires medical insurance; or other pressing human needs And all of those things might be true of another applicant who was more qualified, and who didn’t get the job because of the fake references provided by someone’s friend. Seriously, I’m uncomfortable with the idea that it’s somehow “more ethical” to lie for a friend regardless of how it hurts other people, just because those other people are strangers. So the anonymous poster’s husband got a job on the basis of fake references–this means that other people, with real references, didn’t get that job. Those people probably had families to support, and “other pressing human needs” too, but apparently that’s not as important in the eyes o
Depending on how tightly knit your industry is, it’s possible that pretending to have been his supervisor will negatively affect you, as well. The HR worker at your friend’s potential employer could know someone at your old company, and casually say to them: “Hey, I didn’t know anonymous rose to that level!”. Old Company Person then exposes the lie. Maybe Old Company Person, or perhaps Friend’s Possible Company Person, knows someone at your current workplace and brings it up with them. Then you’ll have awkward questions to answer. Offer to write a personal letter about his qualifications and your experiences working with him. Explain to him that such the supervisor ruse could hurt his chances if, or in all probability when, that company checks up on the reference.
