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Comment by billmalarky | Hacker News Reader

"Others cite an increased tendency among employers to rescind job offers"

I was under the impression an employer could get in litigation trouble for rescinding a formal job offer that costs the employee significantly (ie moving across country, losing their old job, etc).

At the very least I'd imagine they would get one hell of a glassdoor black mark pulling a stunt like that.

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Depends on intent, if you gave two people offers for one position just to see which one would accept the fastest you'd have a lawsuit. If there was a genuine reason then it's fine. Just like how a company can't sue you if you recind after signing a contract, even if the company stopped hiring and had monetary damages as a result.

I've never heard anything suggest there is "an increased tendency among employers to rescind job offers," so it's probably just an excuse people give (or don't, maybe the author pulled that statement out of thin air) to not do the right thing and give two weeks, assuming a normal situation of course.

>Just like how a company can't sue you if you recind after signing a contract

How would that work? Wouldn't that be a breach of a binding contract, or is there usually some kind of exit clause to account for specific circumstances?

Well it is "at will" employment, so you're more or less quitting the new job immediately. Most people would of course not turn down a job immediately _after_ signing a job offer. They just wouldn't sign the job offer.

What I was getting at, is I had heard somewhere that companies can be liable if they extend a job offer then rescind it causing the employee considerable harm. Sounds like it is a "it depends" type of situation.

Sometimes, while interviewing for multiple jobs, the window to accept an offer for job A ends before you receive an offer for (preferable) job B. So you accept job A as a hedge, and then immediately rescind job A if you get the offer for job B.

And there's nothing wrong with that, since if you view A and B as actors, they're both (because they're inhuman corporations) psychopathic monsters who will fuck you over in an instant

the legal action is "promissory estoppel" and it basically never happens. the risk to the employer is very low.

If you can quit your job for any reason in an at-will state, then it seem logical you can quit before actually starting.

The operative word that I'm questioning is "contract". I assumed they meant something about a contract specifying minimum employment times, or something. If you aren't bound by a signed contract, of course it makes sense that you could quit.

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