"...i say to her that if the company likes the look of my CV then i'd be happy to provide references but i dont just hand out peoples details on a whim because i'd hate people to do that to me."

You are right. She is wrong. It's that simple.

To anyone here at hn:

Feel free to use me as a technical reference whenever you run into this illogical and ridiculous road block. Just email me one line of code to print "Hello World" to the screen. If it is correct, I will happily tell the recruiter that 100% of everything I've ever seen you program was perfect. My contact info is in my profile.

Original thread:  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1872671