> nobody owes you a letter of recommendation

It some countries they do. A friend sued his former employer because the letter of recommendation he got was not good enough. Strange thing is they agreed and also contacted him to come back working for them. But it depends on the country, in some countries letters of recommendation are very rare, I wrote a couple in more than 20 years, basically every time someone that worked for or with me asked for one.

In the US, my sense is that letters of recommendation are pretty rare (at least past school admissions where they're pretty worthless). Oh, there's a ton of informal networking but very little official you should hire this person (or especially) run away now. I'd never do the latter.

Companies at least used to ask for references on resumes in the US but I'm not sure how common that is at this point and it was usually co-workers/clients/etc, and not sure how often it was even checked.

In Europe it is very different; in Romania they are almost never used, in the Switzerland they are almost mandatory.

They don't have to owe you something for it to be unfair. It's anticompetitive behavior that makes getting another job harder. It's fine if they don't write you a letter. What isn't fine is a policy that forbids the writing of letters.

It doesn't make your getting a job harder. And even if it did, it's not your employer's responsibility to help you get another job. Do you think they should also be required to give you paid leave to go interview elsewhere? They shouldn't unreasonably hinder you, but they are under no obligation to help you go work elsewhere.

Also, no sane employer would be like "well this guy worked at a corporation that doesn't give references, guess I can't hire him." If you think that's how people who hire think, you must not hire. It isn't.

It would be a problem if a corporation gave references to some people and then declined to other times, because then it could be construed as negative, which is exactly why they have that policy.

It's not really anticompetitive though. It doesn't make getting another job harder because virtually nobody is getting references. Everyone's on the same playing field here.

Letters of recommendations, or even reference phone calls, are something that are widespread in academia and in entry-level service jobs. Like if you want to be a server or bartender, they want to make sure you were actually showing up at your last job and didn't steal money from the register.

They're not really a thing in the corporate world. Your technical expertise, certifications, and dates of employment pretty much speak for themselves. At least in the US.

There are some people getting references. Most places also ask for references. Informally, all the people talking about jobs found via their network are references.

It is absolutely harder finding a job without references than with references. You also have less leverage for negotiating salary.

"Your technical expertise, certifications, and dates of employment pretty much speak for themselves."

This isn't true at all. Why do interviews if you just make the decision off the resume? Why do code screens or LeetCode?

I have tons of experience and a long tenure, a masters degree, multiple certs, etc yet I'm a low performer with a disability who struggles to even get interviews. But you wouldn't know that by looking at my resume. At one point I was a high performer and a letter of recommendation could have really helped me.

I never said make a decision off of a resume. When I said "your technical expertise", I meant as assessed by interviews, code screens, etc.

I've never even been asked for references at any technical job in my life. HR departments generally do make some attempt at verifying employment, doing a background check, etc.

So no, in these cases it's not harder. There's no leverage either way.

Because what do reference letters even mean? How do you know the person writing the letter is even telling the truth? This is somebody you've never met and don't know at all. How do you know they don't unfairly hold a grudge against this ex-employee because they took it personally when they quit? Or how do you know they don't just write glowing references for everyone because they know "it's tough out there" and "everyone deserves a second chance"?

I always assumed this is why I've never been asked for references in my professional career, because the companies I applied to knew that references aren't worth the paper they're written on.

These are all concerns, but it's still common in stuff like academia and government jobs. Even in industry, I see requests for references on about half of applications these days.

The easy fix here is banning requests for references.