If you don't already have one, have you considered having a collection of users who you can privately ask about potential features (or run email wording by) to figure out how it would go over? A user of the product could easily have told you, in advance, "some people are looking for a job secretly and this would be a problem".
You could also come up with incentives to encourage job seekers to opt in; for instance, you could temporarily tag such users as "likely to get hired sooner" in reports for prospective employers.
I'm actually surprised that I didn't see this posted in the TripleByte Alum Slack for feedback prior to announcement or even announced there at all. It was the first place I checked after seeing the email/post on HN.
Studies actually show that subordinates generally do not raise concern to their superiors about issues for either fear of reprimand or thinking the superior knows more than you.
If @ammon had said, “this will be a great feature,” the devs would keep quiet because they either (1) don’t want to be fired, or (2) trust he knows better than them.
You could also come up with incentives to encourage job seekers to opt in; for instance, you could temporarily tag such users as "likely to get hired sooner" in reports for prospective employers.