programmer-job-blacklist
A community-curated list of links about companies and founders that programmers say treated staff badly.
- Stars
- 28.4k
- Forks
- 1.8k
- Licence
- MIT
- Language
- Shell
- Last update
- 8 months ago
- Type
- Curated list
What it is
This is a Chinese-language GitHub list of links, mostly to Zhihu threads, forum posts and news articles, grouped by company and by the kind of problem reported, such as unpaid wages, forced resignations, or disputes with technical co-founders. The maintainer says they only collect links and that readers should judge the stories for themselves. People use it as a reference when checking a prospective employer or co-founder.
- Search the list for a company name before accepting an offer
- Read the linked discussions to see what former employees reported
- Use the grouped categories to compare patterns such as unpaid wages or co-founder disputes
Great for
- Developers who read Chinese and are researching a job offer
- Engineers evaluating whether to become a technical co-founder
- People who want a starting point for background checks on companies
Not ideal for
- Readers who need verified facts, since the list only links to unverified community posts and news reports
- People who do not read Chinese, because most linked sources are in Chinese
- Anyone looking for software to install or run
How to get it
- 1
Read it online
Clone the repository to read it offline
git clone https://github.com/shengxinjing/programmer-job-blacklist - 2
Run it
- Open the repository page on GitHub.
- Read the README and look for the company name you are researching.
- Open the linked sources and read them, noting the date and whether the account is firsthand.
- Cross-check with other sources before drawing conclusions.
- 3
Get the most out of it
- Use the README's section headings to jump to the category you care about, such as technical partners or ordinary programmers.
- Check the issues page to see how the list is discussed and corrected.
- Read the preface, which explains the maintainer's own caveats about the list.
Downloads
Strengths
- Organizes many scattered reports into one searchable page by company
- Explicitly notes that its entries are opinions and links, not verdicts
- Open to corrections through public issues on GitHub
Trade-offs
- Entries are unverified and some concern disputes that are years old
- Many links point to Chinese platforms and may be hard to access from outside China
- The README itself says some items are personal judgments rather than established facts
Stats synced from GitHub. The assessment above was drafted with AI from the project's README on 2026-10-29 and may miss recent changes — check the README before relying on a command. MIT licence: free to use, modify and distribute, including commercially, as long as you keep the copyright notice.