I think the company I worked at previously was stratified in a way that intentionally prevented people from being able to get good referrals. Most of the devs I knew worked at where I worked, and a lot of them didn't leave until after we lost touch. I think once you're established you can get referrals for people, but when you're just starting out it's not that easy. That can make it really hard for a new dev looking for a job, and/or a jr.dev looking for a better job. I was a jr.dev trapped with no referrals, in a horrible job that overworked me, and the only place that I was able to find a good job was through linkedin's listings. The only thing I could do was make my LinkedIn profile really polished to stand out amongst the crowd