Comment by chaosharmonic

This kind of stuff wouldn't be happening if we regulated jobs like we regulate banks.

Those regulations aren't perfect, but after working at one it became pretty clear that a lot of these things wouldn't fly if a bank did them.

Falsely advertise a financial offering? Pretty clearly actionable.

Ghost someone after they inquire about one? Deny them for some vague reason? Even just give them an unfavorable rate without specifying as much? None of those things would hold up. You have to send notices of any adverse action you take, not just providing clear communication that you're taking some kind of action against them, but giving a clear and objective reason why.

Call around to everyone someone might have worked for or with for references, without their knowledge or consent? See "clear and objective reason why." Also, if you use a third party to do this there are a whole collection of responsibilities under the Fair Credit Reporting Act -- you have to provide people with copies of the information gathered on request, inform them anytime it's used against them, offer some process for disputing incorrect details... And that threshold is from gathering the data, not from scoring it.

Never mind equity compensation, which is somehow special in terms of financial disclosures -- whether that's relative to the same company later offering the same stock to the public, or just more generally to any kind of investment offer.

None of this is any less unreasonable on the employer side.