I am unfamiliar with the US employment law, but isn't the job offer a contract? Therefore I am assuming you would still be compensated, and its simply a matter of finding your next gig?
Or is this as simple as the offer could be modified and therefore your shafted?
In America, you're basically on your own. Unless you have a lot of cash and social connections and can afford expensive lawyers, there's not much you can do.
I think the asymmetry goes both ways. If you leave a job under bad circumstances, maybe a half dozen people will hear about it in the future (and even that might be over counting... I've worked at places where you're not allowed to say anything other than "yes that person worked here worked here with that job title"). On the other hand, Charlie's ref about how Tesla treats prospective employees has been seen by thousands of people.
There are places where you must give a certain amount of notice, some countries (Germany I think) expect people to change jobs at particular times of the year (like only at a quarter)
Govt employees in India can't really quit at will. You need something called no objection certificate. For some reason that I don't understand, even software engineers give 1-2 months notice.
I've read in France you need to give a notice period to your employer thought they can waive it. Not sure what is the consequence if they just walked out.
Also I know from someone that worked in India that the employer would hold back some money which would be forfeited if they left without giving a notice period. Not sure how common that is.
Re: India. It’s very common. Large IT firms like Tech Mahindra, Cognizant etc do it. I had offers from a company where they wanted around 1 year salary of signed check. If I leave before 2 years, they use the check.
Some companies go a step ahead and keep your original documents (Degree certificate etc) so you can’t apply elsewhere after accepting offer. It’s ridiculous.
And probably should be illegal. For one, a notarized version is supposed to have the same weight as original. Unless this is mentioned in the contract, they cannot legally hold your personal belongings either.
> Not sure what is the consequence if they just walked out.
Typically you'd be charged by the company for the time you didn't work. Since you generally are owed money when you leave (like vacations, bonus, etc) they take it from there.
I'm not sure what the consequences would be if I didn't show up though... maybe my employer could sue me to get back the salary they had to pay me, while I didn't work as the contact stated I would.
I'm assuming working for the military can count. Either enlisted, or under contract after they paid for school. In the latter you can leave but you owe them money.
In Germany default regulation (§622 BGB) is 4 weeks towards 15th or last day of month, but I've seen 2 or 3 months contracts, for senior management even 6 months (rare though). Often the first 6 months of employment are on probation and only 2 weeks notice are neccessary.
Not sure what's the point of it though - if I am just slacking off those 3 months, what are they going to do, fire me? I see how it's good for me - I get 3 months paid vacation - but I don't see how it makes any sense for them. Looks like it's just a cost imposed on the employer, not something I have to do, but something they have to pay.
Not sure why you're being downvoted for stating a fact. It may not be a good idea to leave on short notice, but employees are well within their rights to quit same-day or same-minute.
It depends. Say in the case where you quit your current job, or move, or anything where you've spent or lost money based on a promise of a job, then you might be able to recover money on the basis on Promissory estoppel: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/promissory_estoppel
Most jobs are "at-will employment" in the US so they can dismiss you any time and the employee can leave at any time. A decent company would try to find an alternate position in the company given that a person had just quit their old job.
This is an interesting comment on the Linkedin page:
In my experience, This is actually not that surprising, don’t find yourself cornered by such situations, always get offers more than one and then keep them on their edge until you have joined. Such is corporate life.
Yeah, that doesn’t match my expectation at all. Does that commenter think that you should always have multiple job offers before giving notice to your current job?
If you're hoping to negotiate a counter from your current employer maybe you should have multiple, it probably gives you a stronger hand. If you're leaving either way why would you?
And this isn't about 0 offers vs. many, it's 1 offer vs. many.
You'd negotiate between the companies that gave you offers, not between you and your current employer, although you can do that too but it's not recommended, due to them knowing you'll leave.
ok but that's still not really what this is about. Leveraging multiple offers for better pay is a solid strategy for a particular fiscal goal, but it's not something that's advised (that I've ever seen) to avoid the situation described in this post (an accepted offer being revoked).
Nor does it really protect you anyways, if you accept one of those offers and then reject the others after your starting date, but the one you picked lets you go the next day you'll still be in a very weakened negotiating position again when you come back for a do-over on the other offers.
You want to have multiple offers because it helps you leverage yourself to higher pay during negotiations, and it also gives you more choices to decide where to go next.
You want to have a offer before giving notice just so you know what's next, and obviously you shouldn't do this if you don't intend on accepting the only offer you have.
If you have no offers you can quit, but you have no guarantee of finding a job immediately and it also can hurt your leverage while negotiating.
This kinda goes against what OP is against though, no? If you have multiple offer letters, chances are multiple other companies have stopped their job search (especially if they don't want to lead on other candidates).
Not necessarily, sometimes companies will oversubscribe to offers, ie hand out multiple offers but only take one of them, because they know many people could decline so they don't want to be stuck with no one.
Same philosophy on the employee side, not beneficial to ride everything on only one offer.
I've been working for 20 years and I've had 6 different jobs. I have never once had multiple simultaneous offers for new jobs. In my experience it's been offer; acceptance; agree on start date; then give notice.
Interesting. That has not been my experience at all. For every job I'd get multiple simultaneous offers then use them for leverage against each other one, then accept the best one.
What is good to excellent advice: Have a SIGNED offer letter in hand that you have also accepted before giving notice. That is a MUST (does not matter how good interview etc went).
This is so tone deaf by Tesla though - it's what folks like to chat about so I don't get it. We've made things right in a few cases where for example a part time job ended up more part time than expected. Just pay out at end to true things up etc.
I also heard that many people would look forward to leaving after the final vesting of their initial stock grant. I remember going to someone's Tesla work anniversary party, and his teammates were like "I really hope they stay, we typically lose people after these milestones".
Wait, what? Work anniversary parties are a thing? For single digit years, and inviting people not part of that work group to?
(Like, I can understand maybe having some cake around at somebody's 30 year work anniversary, or something like that. But you appear to be describing something very different from that.)
If he were let go on first day of new job, would he be happy? It is an at will employment, got to just accept it and move on.
Tesla doesn't care why you took up the job. May be you wanted to follow your passion or may be you wanted to feed your family. Musk doesn't care. That is the beauty of capitalism. Without everybody else worrying about why you took up a job, we have built an economic system that doesn't let anyone starve but infact has higher standard of living than non capitalist companies.
I would argue that it is a distribution problem. United states produces tons and tons of food and wastes even more. Just looking at Pumpkin blasting during Haloween makes my blood boil, but it is what it is.
Tesla is allowed to screw him like this, but it is appropriate that he makes that fact known in a public forum and causes commensurate reputational damage to Tesla.
It's sad, but I think the bridge was burned when Tesla rescinded the offer. Tesla could have just as well had Charlie start on a different team, but that's not what happened.
The central issue is that Tesla gave him a job offer and based on that offer he resigned from his prior job. Tesla then reneged on their offer weeks later. The damages are the lost wages due to them not following through with the job offer after they caused him to resign.
I suppose the point is that's there's little difference, practically speaking, between this situation and being fired 5 minutes into your first day on the job.
I’d agree. You’d likely want to consult an attorney in that case as well, because barring some pretty extraordinary circumstances being fired 5 minutes into a job suggests the company didn’t actually employ you in good faith.
It’s relevant that tortious interference isn’t specific to employment, and thus isn’t really impacted by at-will employment. A company can legally rescind a job offer, or fire you 5 minutes onto the job. The civil claim isn’t that they can’t fire you, it’s that their employment contract was done in bad faith, and that they owe you for losses you incurred as a result of being a good faith actor who entered a contract with a company acting in bad faith.
I don't think that's really how job offers and at-will employment work. An employer can terminate an employee at any time (even before they've started) as long as the cause for termination is not illegal. "Employment contracts" are contracts, and a stipulation of that contract is the at-will nature of the employment.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Good lawyers usually give free consultations, especially the ones that see nothing but huge payouts for taking cases like this.
I mean anybody can sue anybody for anything, but to win damages you'd have to prove that either Tesla intended to mess up his previous job or that they were negligent (based on a legal duty of care). IANAL, but this seems unlikely.
If you ask for a start date, then cancel your offer are you not willfully doing damage? You're just saying, that damage doesn't mean that much to me. I'm guessing willful and intent are legal definitions though.
Another possibility is that he regains his old job. I've seen that happen recently - guy left our org for a hotshot startup in a different domain, politics happened and his position was essentially rendered unviable. He rejoined our group and didn't lose status or reputation for his 1 month stint.
At least this guy didn't get hired before that happened. IMHO he's dodged a bullet. If he was good with his old place they'd probably be good to hire him back.
I've been at a couple jobs where that happens. Its not as bad as others think. Its a little awkward for the person at first, but everybody moves on pretty quick.
The two times I started a new job it seems the position I was interviewed for, and the team I ended up joining was somewhat different... Because of shifting priorities, etc. such is life in a living organization.
But neither employer rescinded their offer. Retracting a job offer is not normal.
Stories like this will discourage people from joining Tesla. And in reality Tesla could easily find a position for an extra engineer.
> But neither employer rescinded their offer. Retracting a job offer is not normal.
Yeah, I've heard of canceling job offers right before they've been sent to the candidate, but canceling them after they've been sent is unusual. I think that may even open up the employer to some legal liability (promissory estoppel, IIRC).
I think this is the norm for most companies. Companies spend a lot of time and money filtering candidates. Unless they're asking for a lot higher than market rate, many larger companies are usually happy to upskill someone to a different u role.
This happened to me in college in the fall of 2008. I accepted a software development position with a local consulting firm and quit my on-campus job, only to find out that my new position no longer existed a few days later.
I ended up finding another job with a competitor before my two weeks ran out, but it was a worrisome time.
Later I reviewed a spec from a new customer's previous consulting firm, with whom they had just parted ways due to no progress on the application. That previous firm was the one that had hired-me-but-not-really. It was a brief moment of vindication.
Isn't this promissory estoppel? Like they promised that you would start at a certain date, causing you to quit your current job. Then they withdrew the promise, causing you to be unemployed.
Right. You can promise whatever exhorbitant amount of money, perks and projects that dont exist . One day before the start date you just rescind the fictional offer.
This is so unethical there should be a 1 or 2 month "deposit" for these cases haha
It seems reasonable to me that this would work just like a house offer: if the offer is accepted, it should be the basis of a contract where the new hire pays if he/she backs out, and the company lays you off with severance if they back out.
Or you could just ask them to put the offer in writing before changing jobs. In which case, you have a proper cause for a lawsuit much better than trying for implied contract.
North Texas is littered with "contract to hire" "opportunities". BNSF burned me on a year long contract, after which they were supposed to hire me. I was fresh out of the military and stupid, so I did it. I asked two months prior all the way to the last week if they were going to hire me, at which point they told me that my contracting company had renewed my contract.
Since then, companies would call about contract to hire and I'd tell them, "Sure, I'll take the position but they have to be willing to fund a bond worth $10,000 (10% of expected salary) that is immediately transferred to me if the contract is renewed or ends without a hire."
I take a risk when I go a year without insurance, they're going to pay for that. Not one of these companies ever accepted. On a more rich note, there's no such thing as contract to hire - they have zero obligation and you retain all the risk. It's junk and marketing by malicious people.
At the time I was not in a position to legally challenge Tesla. I realized I had been dealing with a bad company and took work elsewhere. But I will never forget what Tesla did to me.
If you have no actual preliminary evidence that Tesla did this you probably wouldn't have a case - getting to deposition (and thus getting access to emails for evidence) requires claims to have some basis and rescinding a job offer can be explained by many other things easily. (I am not your lawyer, of course)
It's not just confusing but unethical. The confusion serves to put words in another person's mouth. It is a kind of impersonation. Please retire this account.
Well, as I said, it's a throwaway account, i.e., created for a single comment tree.
I won't be using it again (because it's a throwaway account) but not because I want to protect Peter Bannon.
Also, I disagree that it's unethical. Obviously you can't infer who's talking simply from the name of a Hacker News account. For example, if my account name was ElonMusk123, it would be naive to assume I was Elon Musk.
This is sadly a lot more common than people realize. It's drilled in your head that as an employee you should never ever renege on a job offer or accept a better one too soon because you are "burning bridges" and that is very bad, but it never works the same the other way around.
Budgets change all the time. Departments go through reorgs. Projects get cancelled. "Hey but we have an open job offer" is never going to be a concern for management when making these decisions, nor should it for you.
> but it never works the same the other way around.
I see your point, but then again maybe it does, if anyone reads about this episode and decides not to risk joining Tesla as a result. Especially if they do this too much and get a reputation for it.
Yeah, been there, done that. I turned down my other offers and then the one I accepted cancelled on me the night before my first day of work. I ran out of money and had to take a loan from a friend.
I ended up working for them later anyway. No point holding a grudge.
It’s not about holding a grudge, it’s a loss of trust. If an employer did this to me, I wouldn’t trust them to not fuck me over in other ways as an employee.
The opinion on an organization is the aggregate of the experiences of the people that works for it, that's why crayon is featured prominently in marine jokes.
It just takes a lot longer and a lot of experiences such as these for the opinion to shift, but once they do, the effect is the same.
Tesla and SpaceX have very poor reputation in terms of working for them, and that reputation have an impact on its ability to find people.
Granted, some people are not motivated by money or better treatment, and simply wanted to build something that goes to Mars, hats off to them. That doesn't mean Tesla lost nothing over poor (potential) work reputation.
> Tesla and SpaceX have very poor reputation in terms of working for them, and that reputation have an impact on its ability to find people....
> Granted, some people are not motivated by money or better treatment, and simply wanted to build something that goes to Mars, hats off to them. That doesn't mean Tesla lost nothing over poor (potential) work reputation.
Unfortunately, looking at the overall picture, I think they've been able to use the passion aspects of their jobs to balance out or even outweigh their other negative employment practices, so those negatives don't really harm them.
I feel for this candidate and I’m sorry he has to go through this. However, candidates aren’t innocent in all of this either. I’ve been on the other side in the hiring seat where candidates accept an offer and then cancel in the days leading up to starting. This comes after closing out the remaining candidate pipeline and telling potentially qualified candidates that the position was filled. It’s not a good look to have to go back to a candidate to let them know they were the second choice. Maybe there’s less sympathy because it impacts a company and it feels victimless. But it can be painful and expensive for a small startup to have to restart the process.
Company A makes an offer for a job on June 1 with a start date of June 15 and a salary of 100.
Company B makes an offer for a job on June 5 with a start date of June 20 and salary of 130.
Should you say, I'm sorry company B., your offer is much better, but I already took the lesser offer?
Yes, I'm sure _some_ people would turn down a 30% diff., but most people will not and I would not hold that against them. If anything, it's good for you because be assured this person will not stay long at your co knowing they can potentially earn more, all things being equivalent.
I’m not exactly sure sure why I’m being down voted for pointing out that candidates cancelling offers can also have an impact, especially for start ups. If I’ve said something that offended someone, I’m sorry. But HN is supposed to be a community where you can play devils advocate, offer differing opinions and opposing views.
For the record I don’t think it’s wrong for a candidate to pull out if they found something better. It’s all just a part of the game. All I intended to do was bring to light that everyone is guilty for playing and optimizing for their own self interest, and not just the corporations.
It may be culturally dependent but I would argue that in many countries not keeping a promise, especially in business has its costs both for the company and societal trust(1)
If there is a level of uncertainty, then I would argue that it should be stated clearly to be fair to the prospective employee so that the concerned person can make an informed choice.
If Tesla, or other companies misuse their leverage and information asymmetry for their advantage, I would further argue in favour of laws that make these practices more difficult and more transparent so that everyone can learn from the process and know what risks they are taking
> Budgets change all the time. Departments go through reorgs. Projects get cancelled.
Here's how companies that aren't run by jackasses handle it.
My first job after college was at Hughes Aircraft, Ground Systems Group. They had some sort of upcoming project for the government that would involve several VAX 11/780s running Unix (and maybe some Unix workstations) that they were going to buy, and I was hired to be a Unix admin and system programmer.
Between the time I accepted and my scheduled start date the project was cancelled as was the purchase of the Unix machines. Since they had no other Unix machines, they had no need for a Unix admin and system programmer.
Not being jackasses, they found something else for me to do on an existing project. It wasn't really a good fit for my skills, and I left after a month. They were fine with that, but would have been fine with it if I'd chosen to stay and try to develop my skills in that project's subject.
Maybe for a small company rescinding an offer due to a reorg or budget change is a necessary evil. Maybe even for a big company that is circling the drain. Otherwise, find something else for them to do.
If this is how companies are going to operate, then employees will no longer be able to give the customary two weeks notice to their prior employer when switching jobs.
Instead, employees will accept their new job offer and then simply quit their old job on the same day they start their new job.
My experience interviewing there sucked. I found their whole process to be rushed and invasive. At the end of the whole thing I was told by the recruiter that the team and manager loved me and I'd have a written offer the following week. I was then invited to come have lunch with a member of the team (it was pretty casual). A couple or so days later I got a call from the recruiter saying that hiring committee rejected my packet and was given 0 feedback.
Here's the thing about interviewing at a company like Google: the people who you meet with and interview you literally have NO pull to influence whether you ultimately get hired or not - it all comes down to a committee that judges you based on how you look on paper.
> it all comes down to a committee that judges you based on how you look on paper.
To be fair this is a good way to mitigate bias in hiring.
In any case, I haven't heard of people getting a signed job offer retracted due to a reorg.. there are lots of stories of great candidates not getting hired.
Yeah, I passed commitee with flying colors according to recruiter back then - but 2 weeks later someone/somewhere decided otherwise... lol not sure what actually happened
At the very least, Tesla should pay the author for the time between the hire date through until two weeks after the notice the position was eliminated.
Also, it's not like they couldn't use another SWE. Unless the applicant was a specialist, I see no reason they couldn't just train for another position doing similar work, unless the application would prefer not to.
From now on, employees should feel very comfortable leaving Tesla with zero notice.
From the post it's unclear whether Tesla made a signed offer, or just sent the offer without signature. If the latter, there's probably not much that can be done about it. That kind of thing actually happened A LOT last year, and LinkedIn was full of people warning you to make sure you get a signed offer before you give notice in your current job. In the middle of the pandemic, many people went unemployed because of this.
Now, if the offer was signed, I'd imagine the contract had some terms and both the employer and the employee have to abide by the terms of the contract. As a candidate, you can reject an offer in the last minute, even if you accepted it, as long as you didn't sign it. But once you sign the piece of paper, you've got liabilities. There'll be a notice period and other things. And the same goes for the employer. I guess even in the US companies have liabilities towards their employees?
I'd think if this candidate passed an interview with Tesla, he won't have much trouble finding another role. It's always more difficult when you're unemployed, but you can always build leverage by applying to multiple companies, get multiple offers, and let them compete for you. Then again, NEVER turn an offer down until you're all signed with one of the potential employers and ready to start. If you can, don't even turn the other offers down until you've already started the new job. And when you decline the offer, do so in good terms making it clear that you'd like to consider working for them in the future (you can be fired anytime).
144 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] threadOr is this as simple as the offer could be modified and therefore your shafted?
Even if the mandatory notice period is equal, the power balance isn't.
It cost a person 6+ weeks of unemployment.
There’s never a balance between employee and employer, and it is always tilted towards the employer.
Unnecessary if you have chops. Interviewing a candidate's references is a sucker move anyway.
https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/emcc/erm/legis...
Also I know from someone that worked in India that the employer would hold back some money which would be forfeited if they left without giving a notice period. Not sure how common that is.
Some companies go a step ahead and keep your original documents (Degree certificate etc) so you can’t apply elsewhere after accepting offer. It’s ridiculous.
Typically you'd be charged by the company for the time you didn't work. Since you generally are owed money when you leave (like vacations, bonus, etc) they take it from there.
I'm not sure what the consequences would be if I didn't show up though... maybe my employer could sue me to get back the salary they had to pay me, while I didn't work as the contact stated I would.
Australia has pretty good laws around this :-)
For example, IT consultants usually need to stay for around 3 months following their resignation.
It's the other side of the coin of strong employment laws that make it very hard for people with permanent positions to be let go, unlike the US.
Though people rarely are...
In my experience, This is actually not that surprising, don’t find yourself cornered by such situations, always get offers more than one and then keep them on their edge until you have joined. Such is corporate life.
And this isn't about 0 offers vs. many, it's 1 offer vs. many.
Nor does it really protect you anyways, if you accept one of those offers and then reject the others after your starting date, but the one you picked lets you go the next day you'll still be in a very weakened negotiating position again when you come back for a do-over on the other offers.
You want to have a offer before giving notice just so you know what's next, and obviously you shouldn't do this if you don't intend on accepting the only offer you have.
If you have no offers you can quit, but you have no guarantee of finding a job immediately and it also can hurt your leverage while negotiating.
Same philosophy on the employee side, not beneficial to ride everything on only one offer.
Doesn't mean it's even slightly acceptable.
What is good to excellent advice: Have a SIGNED offer letter in hand that you have also accepted before giving notice. That is a MUST (does not matter how good interview etc went).
This is so tone deaf by Tesla though - it's what folks like to chat about so I don't get it. We've made things right in a few cases where for example a part time job ended up more part time than expected. Just pay out at end to true things up etc.
(Like, I can understand maybe having some cake around at somebody's 30 year work anniversary, or something like that. But you appear to be describing something very different from that.)
Tesla doesn't care why you took up the job. May be you wanted to follow your passion or may be you wanted to feed your family. Musk doesn't care. That is the beauty of capitalism. Without everybody else worrying about why you took up a job, we have built an economic system that doesn't let anyone starve but infact has higher standard of living than non capitalist companies.
I don't think this is accurate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States
Those large pumpkins aren’t good for eating.
Also, it really sucks that Tesla didn't offer him severance given that he was effectively laid off. Hopefully he can at least get unemployment.
The central issue is that Tesla gave him a job offer and based on that offer he resigned from his prior job. Tesla then reneged on their offer weeks later. The damages are the lost wages due to them not following through with the job offer after they caused him to resign.
It’s relevant that tortious interference isn’t specific to employment, and thus isn’t really impacted by at-will employment. A company can legally rescind a job offer, or fire you 5 minutes onto the job. The civil claim isn’t that they can’t fire you, it’s that their employment contract was done in bad faith, and that they owe you for losses you incurred as a result of being a good faith actor who entered a contract with a company acting in bad faith.
At least this guy didn't get hired before that happened. IMHO he's dodged a bullet. If he was good with his old place they'd probably be good to hire him back.
But neither employer rescinded their offer. Retracting a job offer is not normal.
Stories like this will discourage people from joining Tesla. And in reality Tesla could easily find a position for an extra engineer.
Yeah, I've heard of canceling job offers right before they've been sent to the candidate, but canceling them after they've been sent is unusual. I think that may even open up the employer to some legal liability (promissory estoppel, IIRC).
I ended up finding another job with a competitor before my two weeks ran out, but it was a worrisome time.
Later I reviewed a spec from a new customer's previous consulting firm, with whom they had just parted ways due to no progress on the application. That previous firm was the one that had hired-me-but-not-really. It was a brief moment of vindication.
I was hired to write a compiler for deep learning (training) on Tesla's in-house hardware, under Peter Bannon.
I resigned from the job I had at the time, and Tesla backed out of the contract shortly before my start date.
Tesla is ruthless.
This is so unethical there should be a 1 or 2 month "deposit" for these cases haha
Since then, companies would call about contract to hire and I'd tell them, "Sure, I'll take the position but they have to be willing to fund a bond worth $10,000 (10% of expected salary) that is immediately transferred to me if the contract is renewed or ends without a hire."
I take a risk when I go a year without insurance, they're going to pay for that. Not one of these companies ever accepted. On a more rich note, there's no such thing as contract to hire - they have zero obligation and you retain all the risk. It's junk and marketing by malicious people.
You were hired to report to Pete Bannon? So, that is some other person? And your (user+)name is also Peter Bannon?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterbannon
I'm sorry you found this so confusing.
I won't be using it again (because it's a throwaway account) but not because I want to protect Peter Bannon.
Also, I disagree that it's unethical. Obviously you can't infer who's talking simply from the name of a Hacker News account. For example, if my account name was ElonMusk123, it would be naive to assume I was Elon Musk.
Budgets change all the time. Departments go through reorgs. Projects get cancelled. "Hey but we have an open job offer" is never going to be a concern for management when making these decisions, nor should it for you.
I see your point, but then again maybe it does, if anyone reads about this episode and decides not to risk joining Tesla as a result. Especially if they do this too much and get a reputation for it.
I ended up working for them later anyway. No point holding a grudge.
Sending a signal, even a weak one, that certain behavior is not acceptable is a perfectly valid reason.
It does.
The opinion on an organization is the aggregate of the experiences of the people that works for it, that's why crayon is featured prominently in marine jokes.
It just takes a lot longer and a lot of experiences such as these for the opinion to shift, but once they do, the effect is the same.
Tesla and SpaceX have very poor reputation in terms of working for them, and that reputation have an impact on its ability to find people.
Granted, some people are not motivated by money or better treatment, and simply wanted to build something that goes to Mars, hats off to them. That doesn't mean Tesla lost nothing over poor (potential) work reputation.
> Granted, some people are not motivated by money or better treatment, and simply wanted to build something that goes to Mars, hats off to them. That doesn't mean Tesla lost nothing over poor (potential) work reputation.
Unfortunately, looking at the overall picture, I think they've been able to use the passion aspects of their jobs to balance out or even outweigh their other negative employment practices, so those negatives don't really harm them.
Company A makes an offer for a job on June 1 with a start date of June 15 and a salary of 100.
Company B makes an offer for a job on June 5 with a start date of June 20 and salary of 130.
Should you say, I'm sorry company B., your offer is much better, but I already took the lesser offer?
Yes, I'm sure _some_ people would turn down a 30% diff., but most people will not and I would not hold that against them. If anything, it's good for you because be assured this person will not stay long at your co knowing they can potentially earn more, all things being equivalent.
For the record I don’t think it’s wrong for a candidate to pull out if they found something better. It’s all just a part of the game. All I intended to do was bring to light that everyone is guilty for playing and optimizing for their own self interest, and not just the corporations.
If there is a level of uncertainty, then I would argue that it should be stated clearly to be fair to the prospective employee so that the concerned person can make an informed choice.
If Tesla, or other companies misuse their leverage and information asymmetry for their advantage, I would further argue in favour of laws that make these practices more difficult and more transparent so that everyone can learn from the process and know what risks they are taking
(1)
Here's how companies that aren't run by jackasses handle it.
My first job after college was at Hughes Aircraft, Ground Systems Group. They had some sort of upcoming project for the government that would involve several VAX 11/780s running Unix (and maybe some Unix workstations) that they were going to buy, and I was hired to be a Unix admin and system programmer.
Between the time I accepted and my scheduled start date the project was cancelled as was the purchase of the Unix machines. Since they had no other Unix machines, they had no need for a Unix admin and system programmer.
Not being jackasses, they found something else for me to do on an existing project. It wasn't really a good fit for my skills, and I left after a month. They were fine with that, but would have been fine with it if I'd chosen to stay and try to develop my skills in that project's subject.
Maybe for a small company rescinding an offer due to a reorg or budget change is a necessary evil. Maybe even for a big company that is circling the drain. Otherwise, find something else for them to do.
Instead, employees will accept their new job offer and then simply quit their old job on the same day they start their new job.
https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/05/22/eugene-chun...
The whole pipeline with temp recruiters at Google could be one explaination
Here's the thing about interviewing at a company like Google: the people who you meet with and interview you literally have NO pull to influence whether you ultimately get hired or not - it all comes down to a committee that judges you based on how you look on paper.
To be fair this is a good way to mitigate bias in hiring.
In any case, I haven't heard of people getting a signed job offer retracted due to a reorg.. there are lots of stories of great candidates not getting hired.
Also, it's not like they couldn't use another SWE. Unless the applicant was a specialist, I see no reason they couldn't just train for another position doing similar work, unless the application would prefer not to.
From now on, employees should feel very comfortable leaving Tesla with zero notice.
Ask John Cena.
Now, if the offer was signed, I'd imagine the contract had some terms and both the employer and the employee have to abide by the terms of the contract. As a candidate, you can reject an offer in the last minute, even if you accepted it, as long as you didn't sign it. But once you sign the piece of paper, you've got liabilities. There'll be a notice period and other things. And the same goes for the employer. I guess even in the US companies have liabilities towards their employees?
I'd think if this candidate passed an interview with Tesla, he won't have much trouble finding another role. It's always more difficult when you're unemployed, but you can always build leverage by applying to multiple companies, get multiple offers, and let them compete for you. Then again, NEVER turn an offer down until you're all signed with one of the potential employers and ready to start. If you can, don't even turn the other offers down until you've already started the new job. And when you decline the offer, do so in good terms making it clear that you'd like to consider working for them in the future (you can be fired anytime).