The situation: I work at a small startup in a city that is not SF or NY. Though the company is small it is somewhat high profile in our city and our founder is well connected with devs, managers, and founders at many of the companies with open positions that I would consider applying for.
Some context: Our founder on two occasions has told me that he heard from people at other startups that an employee of his (a coworker of mine) had applied for a job there. In both cases the people making the call are well respected people in our community. Perhaps I was/am naive to think that that was inappropriate. Neither person got an offer from those companies and it made things very weird at work.
Why I'm thinking of leaving: I like my job a lot but frankly I'm pretty sure I can get a better offer somewhere else and I'd like to see if that's true. However, if I do apply to a few places and don't get offer I'd prefer to avoid any weirdness at work.
How do I go about dealing with this?