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Comment by wolframarnold | Hacker News Reader

You can't build a career on that behavior. Especially if you stick around a place for a decade or so, you'd be surprised whom you run into and whose help you might need down the road. Unless you're leaving town and the industry for good, don't burn bridges.

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Hell yeah you can. I'm the first to recognize that tech (and especially tech in Seattle) is a small town. But, really, who is going to remember the one person who quit on their first day because of a bullshit exploding offer? The hiring manager, recruiter, and probably no one else. As an everyday grunt, this stuff wouldn't even be brought up to me.

Having a 2 people added to a blacklist is fine. I've done far worse things to my career.

You shouldn't do it because it's wrong, and as a result you should feel bad about yourself. You cheated at the game we're all playing and added to the general mistrust that makes negotiating employment so shitty in the first place.

Wow. Should one got an exploding offer, the correct behavior IMO is to tell the recruiter to eat sh!t, or possibly, tell the recruiter that his attitude sucks, and because of it, you'll be waiting until the day after the deadline to make your decision. Alternatively, there is nothing about the GP or GGGP's comments that make the described behavior wrong. That's incredibly naive. You use the word _cheating_? "Cheating at the game we're all playing" is what you said. What the hell are you talking about? The game is negotiation, and if you can't do that, maybe you need to leave. If negotiating employment is shitty to you, you're doing it wrong. Learn how to do it right, and maybe that will adjust your attitude in the right direction.

edit: ok, you don't need to be as rude as I am, but I'm a known asshole, so ymmv.

Cheating = going back on something to which you've agreed. Once you sign, you're done negotiating. You can tell someone to fuck off before you sign a contract, but once it's signed, telling them to fuck off is cheating.

If someone wants to trounce all over your labor rights, and if telling them not to trounce on your labor rights counts as burning bridges, then burn, bridge, burn.

Last time I was looking for a job I ended up with offers from both places I was interviewing at. I renegotiated and signed one of the offer letters.

When I called the other company, they asked me to sign with them even though I'd already signed a different offer. Because this is tech and people do it all the time.

It just felt dirty. I had already made my choice, and would not have changed my mind. But I've got an older mentality where it feels like I am burning bridges if I reneg after signing an offer.

As someone who has been on the other side of the table hearing the news that a great candidate has just taken another offer, I share your mentality. I'm not going to try to get a candidate who has made up their mind to break their newly-signed contract. And a candidate who would accept an offer only then to instantly break it because someone threw a few more dollars at them isn't the type of person I want to work with.

It's one thing if someone says they are debating between a couple offers (as you did); at that point I'll fight hard for the candidate that I want. But the instant someone commits to an offer somewhere else they're entirely off limits and I wouldn't ever counter-offer at that point even if they would take it.

I'd try to hire him again. If possible above the former offered position. I like people able to stand up for their interests.

You totally can. It happens all the time. Sorry but them's the breaks.

People absolutely remember stuff like this, and the justification of "well, it was a shitty exploding offer" doesn't hold up. 99% of the time, the hiring manager is using a boilerplate offer that their whole company uses, and would probably kill the due date in a heartbeat if you just asked.

If you ask, they say no, and then you reneg on the offer, it's kinda shitty but somewhat understandable. If you don't ask about the exploding offer in the first place, that's 100% you being a passive-agressive dick.

You're adding details. I don't think that anyone is advocating tricking companies who don't care either way into making exploding offers through your own feigned indifference to whether the offer expires or not, then quitting on the first day.

>hiring manager is using a boilerplate exploding offer >that's 100% you being a passive-aggressive dick.

The exploding offer is a psychological manipulation designed to give the company leverage in negotiations, how is that not passive-aggressive?

Sure, my point is, it's not something that's on your hiring manager, or even necessarily the HR department. In 100% of cases when I've run into this, from both the company and candidate side, the offer expiry was something that was more-or-less in there by default and no one had a problem removing when asked.

Hm, good point. Thanks for the inside info. It just seems that usually when something is described as corporate policy it implies that it's not the managers decision, so if in reality it's 100% optional then that's misleading.

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