Ask HN: Worst experience receiving an offer?
I just went through a month from receiving a verbal offer, to offer on paper. In between, they reduced the offer twice, and the offer on paper was 15% lower than the prior verbal offer. At no point did I negotiate. I was going to negotiate once they got their stuff together on paper. Now that I received the formal offer, I felt like I had to walk away with dignity and just declined.
It was with a mid-tier cryptocurrency exchange. I knew their culture was terrible since the NYT recently covered them, so I can’t say I was surprised.
It appears the balance of power has shifted back to employers.
68 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadIn terms of money offers, I had one place that I interviewed for, and I nailed it. Like, really nailed it, walked out of the startup and they literally said they will work on an offer right away. They offered me $10k less a year than I was asking. After a weekend of not responding, they upped the offer to what I asked for. I didn't go there, and I don't regret it in the slightest. I don't want to be the cost you pinch. (And no, I wasn't even asking for a raise to go there)
Exactly what you’d expect from a company specializing in pixie dust.
> It appears the balance of power has shifted back to employers.
I respectfully disagree. Try getting a job at a more traditional organization, like a good old bank, if you’re interested in finance.
One time I was offered a high-level architect position at a technical consulting firm, and they proceeded to make me a job offer. I gave verbal acceptance, then the next day they came back and said they still wanted me but with a lower title and compensation.
I was still young and naive, and was quite surprised and then really didn't respond well (super offended). That was the end of that.
Dodged a bullet, getting pimped out by a consulting firm and working on projects without any ownership isn't my cup of tea anyway. Some people are truly Thoughtless.
Instead they massively low-balled me with a lower base than what I was making at the time plus ~30% of the RSUs that they'd need to hit my number. I asked the recruiter and the company both about this and they said that the value of the RSUs was predicated on "their growth potential" and that I had to account for their future value. I double-checked with the recruiter to make sure that there wasn't a miscommunication and they confirmed that the company knew what my requirement was.
Needless to say this made my decision fairly simple. Their share price was in the toilet and I'd never worked for a company that granted RSUs before so maybe they thought that they'd be able to pull a fast one on me, but it was a colossal waste of everybody's time regardless.
A few years later he had the audacity to email me once again trying to "work with me" insisting the past was all "water under the bridge". What a pushy, selfish fool.
Yeah guys that’s why you’re not paying 100% cash and getting years of liquidity being withheld to your advantage. Tell you what - pay all cash and I can invest it in the stock market myself in the meantime.
Plus they don’t all work out.
It’s in the employers best interest a lot of the time, not the employees.
You dodged a bullet. Whatever company this is appears to be circling the drain. The problem you'll face now is: how many other companies are in the same position?
Maybe the balance of power is shifting back to employers, but it's still premature to act on that assumption. Plenty of room to negotiate and get good jobs.
I don't know what they were thinking. Their offer wasn't so good to make such demands. I don't know why they demand 3 months notice, yet were unwilling to wait for me to be fully checked before I signed and gave notice.
Also, their checks requires facial recognition to a third party. They claimed my data would be safe, but it's an incredibly shitty thing to do to an employee.
I didn’t respond and moved on.
We're in TN and I need to go have face to face meetings with people in New Mexico and Utah. And can't let my boss know: which I failed at.
Drove out and discovered that my boss had heard that I was looking for other employment, he called ahead to the folks I had lined up interviews with (and several others) and spun them a story that had them refuse to meet me and had the police come check out whatever it was they'd heard 3rd or 4th hand.
5,000 mile road trip, there and back again. In 5 days. Didn't find out the whole story for a couple years. At least I got to drive past the VLA radio telescope.
I'd like to tell the whole story, but i can only get little bits out with more humor than bitterness.
Edit: if it’s true, go to HR and get that person immediately fired.
This was a small circle of specialist publishers that commonly worked together. There weren't but a dozen or so people on his list; mine was 6, 3 of which I was going to see on that trip.
I'd have half a mind to call their boss and let them know... but I'd just be making the whole thing worse.
Just let the applicant know...
I highly doubt this is an actual option for employers in 2022. In their mind, they have a seat and need someone to fill it.
I had told them I was weighing their offer against a different one. In fact I slightly preferred their situation.
After several rounds of this ridiculous dance, I finally realized I didn't want to work for a company that acted with so little decency.
I've no doubt that wasn't the case everywhere at Uber, but it was a bad experience.
Plus as a hiring manager, and this is minor, I’d feel kinda embarrassed if out of sheer statistical luck multiple candidates turned down written offers, which would indicate maybe something is wrong with us as a hiring entity.
Not sure there’s a playbook here. Another commenter suggested being untruthful and pulling the offer out of them. Given how many times companies screw over employees that might be the game theory rational thing to do here even though it’s not great ethically.
Just my 2 cents.
Isn't this your fault (your company's fault) for creating such a silly process? It's not the candidate's fault that writing an offer is difficult. Still not the candidate's fault that you've got some poorly thought out metrics that make you withhold a written offer.
Like everyone else, I change my mind about things frequently, and have to back away from things I've said. But it feels very different when you know up front that there's a good chance you won't do what you've just said you'll do. I really dislike that feeling.
Just corporate procedure and trying to save busy-work.
At the same time, the other company was willing to do that extra work upfront, which made me feel like they actually wanted me to come.
I think I might've felt a little differently about it had the recruiter been transparent and said something about the work involved. Then again, at the end of the day, we had all done quite a lot of work to get to that point. Not being willing to do the final steps suggests (to me) a lack of commitment to the offer.
1: there is something materially and surprisingly bad in the contract (equity or cash isn't as described)
2: there is something that is arguably not material, but which is surprisingly bad in the contract (something to do with vesting schedule, clawback of a 'signing bonus')
3: everything is as-expected.
In case 1, it's clear that they have materially changed the terms, and I am no longer bound by my verbal acceptance (which was of a different offer).
In case 2, they can argue that what was changed isn't material, and so I'm still bound. But if they say that, I would reply that if it's not material, then they should have no problem changing it back to the originally-discussed state. If they don't, I walk. It's not like they can force you to work for them, and they would presumably not try to ruin your rep over it because you could probably do more damage to them (by posting on HN, for example).
In case 3, obviously everything is fine!
Always be suspect of what people say verbally, vs what they are willing to put into writing.
Interviewed at a startup, it was small but had just landed a VERY large customer in addition to series B so they were going nuts with the hiring. I daresay I did well during the interview and within a week we'd moved onto discussing salary etc.
Now for the non-Australian readers here superannuation is your mandatory retirement savings/investment fund. Your employer has to pay you a minimum % of your salary on top of your actual salary to your super fund and you can't touch it until a certain age. In 99.99% of cases employment contracts here will state your salary PLUS super so they'll say something like "$100,000 plus superannuation of x% paid fortnightly/monthly/whatever".
Back to the offer;
We agreed upon a figure, lets say it was $100k + options + superannuation (I have no memory, this was many years ago) - notice all the plusses here everything we talked about was IN ADDITION TO the base salary. A few days pass and I've heard nothing so I flick an email to the hiring manager, and still hear nothing back. A few more days pass and out of the blue I get a Docusign request containing my contract, yay!
Being young at the time I was just going to sign it immediately but I had a feeling in the back of my mind that I should double check, and sure enough they were trying to screw me over. The remuneration section read "$100,000 inclusive of superannuation and stock options value at $SomeAmount". They were trying to short change me somewhere in the ballpark of $30k by their own estimates. I called the hiring manager and of course he tried to pretend this was what we had discussed all along (it wasn't, because no one in Australia does that) so I told them to go jump.
Turns out I dodged a bullet - their one large customer sued them (quite publicly at the time), and Accenture or someone similar swooped in after that fact and bought the survivors for pennies on the dollar, and then fired everyone.
but the experience meant that since then I've been -very- careful and deliberate to repeatedly confirm that superannuation is additional. Nonetheless, twice I've got the paperwork saying otherwise. I'm now convinced its a standardised scam.
If they can't get their act together for interviewing and hiring, they're going to have a much harder time attracting talented engineers and probably have serious management problems internally. You dodged a bullet.
> It appears the balance of power has shifted back to employers
As a counterpoint, I haven't experienced any decreased demand and am still having an easy time interviewing for what I want. I think some of the discourse around this is employers wanting to scare devs into taking lower comp, similar to how a number of very profitable companies immediately and significantly raised prices in response to inflation discourse.
She apparently met all the requirements, completely convincing them to hire her as she had bucketloads of experience in the private and public sector. They actually told her that she had the job, so she immediately started to arrange things for a move.
Two weeks later, her boss in Investments NSW, Amy Brown, told her that the position had been rescinded as it was a "cabinet process" - which it never turned out to be - and it was given to the former politician who created the original roles in the first place!
Eventually, it came out that Amy Brown told her it was a "gift" for someone else.
On top of this she was not able to return to her job as deputy secretary of Investment NSW - West had been made redundant!
Right now there are serious claims of corruption. It blew up in the politician's faces and John Barilaro who got the job over West was forced to resign from the position.
You did them a favor by doing so. They didn't do you any favors? I would have ghosted such a company.
The worst experience I had was to have an offer get retracted before I could make my decision. I'm not so bitter about it to name them but I'll never work for that company, that's for sure.
They declined it at the last minute citing internal replacement.
"About your offer, here at XXX we have the practice of doing an induction test before signing any contracts with any new hires."
This was the first time I had heard about this. It would have been fine if they did the induction test before they made the offer, but I had never heard of it being done after an offer. I told them:
"I was very surprised to get this message. I thought I had already gone through all the technical screening steps during the interview process. To be told that I have to go through another screening step, even after you verbally made me an offer and had me fill in all the paperwork, is simply not professional.
I'm inclined to say let's call the whole thing off. It isn't clear that you really want me to work for you. Can you convince me that this isn't true?"
Needless to say, I didn't go work for them.
I saw that same job advertised for a couple of years at roughly 3-6 month intervals.
First impressions may not be everything, but I wish I'd gone with my gut on that one.