Ask HN: What job offers have you turned down and why? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What job offers have you turned down and why?

Work/life balance issues are something I care a lot about it (in fact, I wrote a book about it: https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/).

So I've walked away from jobs where it was clear I wouldn't have work/life balance.

E.g. one company told me: "We don't want to, but we're working 50/60 hour weeks. We had everything planned out and then a big customer had a big feature request and it blew through our schedules."

Good planning involves setting goals, but also making sure you have time and resources available to deal with unexpected problems, because there will be unexpected problems. To lose one weekend to an emergency may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose all of them looks like carelessness. And I didn't want to be working long hours because of what was clearly bad planning.

(Sometimes you can catch warning signs in advance: https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/10/14/job-you-dont-hate/)

I definitely agree. As I plan to find my first software engineering internship then my first entry-level software engineering gig, work/life balance comes at first priority. While it may seem untraditional or odd particularly for those working in tech, after work, I would like to do something else than sit in front of a device or even think about new technologies, code, etc. Which is not say I don’t enjoy the latter. I just find life is too short to have dedicated my life to a certain job, neglecting other aspects of my life, and only to find at the end of my life that ultimately all my labor amounted to nothing.

A high school friend of mine just graduated from Berkeley this past fall. He starts a finance job in San Francisco in July, where he is working 60-80 hours a week. I haven’t asked him if he cares about work/life balance but I assume he thinks this what people do. I’ll have to ask him.

This is a major reason why I wanted to hear other people's stories: because it can be so hard to discern what a healthy work environment looks like during the interview process. In your example mentioning 40h+ work weeks is pretty clear though, heh. Thank you for your input and the links, will check out your work.

One that stands out from some years ago:

Through my network an opportunity had come up for a "next move" in NYC.

Went for lunch with the CEO. He was less than pleasant, bordering on rude, with the waitress and left a poor tip. Both unwarranted from my perspective. I found the service to be just fine.

While the compensation and the work I had to look forward to both suited my requirements, I opted to look elsewhere after observing this red flag.

I turned down an offer at a large agency in NYC after learning that they build what is basically malware for the browser. Toolbars for IE, weather widgets, etc. I thought the compensation and perks were good for a first job, and the work was full-stack which is what I had been looking for, but I couldn't bring myself to work for a company that builds products that I spent my childhood removing from friends and families computers.

What is an agency?

I was offered a salary. They waited until the day I started to explain that I would be paid an hourly wage based on a 50 hour week with time and a half for the overtime. I would have to clock out for lunch. I walked straight out of there and went home.

Ouch. I recently turned down an offer that was interviewed as salary then changed to "3 month ish contract" (verbatim) with no guarantee of full time placement. In your case that is terrible they waited until the first day. I guess not all bad offers can be screened just during interviews and negotiation.

I was forced to take a position very similar to this out of a need for an income (interviewed for full time, told it was contract-to-hire when I walked in on the first day). I left after six months once I had some money saved. Researching a bit for a few days after I left revealed that the company had a history of taking first generation college kids (like me) and working them on contracts for time periods of a few months to a few years (depending on when the kid realized that he/she was being ripped off, from what it looked like).

Unless you were expecting 40, that looks like a good deal. Most places wouldn't pay you 150% of normal for overtime. They'd pay you 0% of normal and expect you to like it as a "team player".

Fair point. It could be a great deal for some depending on lifestyle.

Not necessarily; working after the 8th hour in a day you get 150%, and given a quoted annual “salary” that takes this into account, it means the regular 8 hours’ pay is correspondingly lower.

I've turned down a few.

One was an early stage YC company that lowballed me, offered me 90K + 10,000 options (or something equally worthless). I attempted to negotiate (I was making 115K + vested stock in public company at the time) and the CEO told me I was an idiot for not accepting it "because the equity was worth way more than the salary." They're still around, but as far as I can tell, not making a ton of progress on their exit. I see their job ads on here all the time. I wound up turning down the offer because it was a lowball and also because the CEO revealed himself to be a total dick. Really glad I missed that one.

Another was a company where I applied for one position. I walked in the door for the interview, they started asking me questions, and I realized they were interviewing me for a different position. At that point, I kind of mentally checked out and decided I'd use this as an opportunity to practice my interviewing skills and instead of being interviewed, I pretended I was interviewing them. Halfway through, I told the recruiter (who came to check up on me) that I had to leave early, and she convinced me to stick around for one more interview. They knocked everyone else off the list and brought in the CTO, and then halfway through that the CEO comes in and says, "Look, we like you, we want you to work for us." They made me a pretty solid offer (about 20K more than I was making at the time).. Unfortunately, it wasn't a position I neither wanted nor was willing to take. I declined politely. They thought I was negotiating, but I really had to put my foot down and say "thanks but no thanks."

I initially felt bad about turning it down, but after I declined the offer, they told me so many blatant lies about the position that I quickly realized it wasn't the place for me.

I once got two competing offers from two different companies. One of them I liked a lot, the other paid more. I countered with the first one, and he said he'd match salary but couldn't match benefits (no health insurance). He swore up and down that if I got the job, he'd get health insurance, but I just didn't believe him, so I wound up having to accept the second offer. That's not the kind of perk you spend company money on because one employee asked for it.

Finally, I got another offer from yet another company. I was prepared to accept the offer, when I heard through the grapevine that the manager that hired me had decided to quit and his last day would be the day I started. I noped out of that one, fast.

Fun times.

I'd be curious about the early stage YC company. Maybe PM me if you'd be open to discussing if it is same one I am thinking of.

I've turned down quite a few over the years. In addition to those already mentioned I would add:

* Excessive commute

* Lack of flexible working

* Lack of remote working

* Poor office space

* Lack of free parking

* No showers (important if you cycle in)

* Gut feeling was not good

It's not usually just one of the above, but some combination of weighted factors.

Funnily enough I don't think I have ever turned down a job because of the money, or taken a job just because of the money, I'm far more interested in work-life balance - cutting out the commute has always added massively to my general well-being.

I'm on my first job, so I've only turned down offers once, and I had competing offers.

Ended up taking a job in Denver as a software engineer. The other options were applications engineering positions, one for Seagate and one for Western Digital.

WD wanted me to work in California for only 1k more than I was offered to be a software engineer in Denver. I countered by asking for 20% more and they said no.

Seagate wanted me to move to Minnesota, which was lackluster for other reasons, namely winter temperatures.

I have turned down 3 offers so far. To this day i am not sure if they are the best decision but i am sure they are not the worst. I don't really have much mentors to guide me, most of time i have to make my own decisions. I can reach out to some folks but not some one who is in good sync with me.

First Jump.

I was with company A which offered me 9 L INR. I wanted an opportunity to work in USA or hit the 12 L INR in India.

<TURNED DOWN> I got 11L INR from B.

<TURNED DOWN> I got 12L INR from another flight ticket management company (forgot its name) (product based company).

I got 9L INR from a IT services company and they promised to process my H1B in the upcoming cycle.

I picked the H1B one.

Second Jump.

I got 105K USD from a telecom giant in USA on 2.5 year contract and my employer was a major staffing company in USA and they promised to process GC immediately after joining.

<TURNED DOWN> I got 125 K USD from a small consultancy and client would be an Airlines. It was a contract to hire position. In Texas, but i din have good reviews about the consultancy and they may compromise on visa and may not be able to take my GC thru and i had doubts if they can even pay properly.

I picked the 105K USD one.

What do you folks think, am i making good decisions of totally horrible ones?

They said that they typically started their engineers out on the (assembly) line, then moved them into engineering after a few months. Um, no. I wasn't that desperate. I was looking for something better than my current job.

And I found out later that this was kind of a scam, where they tried to have engineers working on their assembly line. It wasn't easy to get moved into engineering off of that line.

In the last month since September I had many opportunities to work in IT-Support and local in Stuttgart positions which I declined. There were also some very interesting positions, but there’s a company who actually interested in me and where I think I can get the most personal benefit from. So I mean not the money, but more the things that they’re working on.

I turned down an offer to work in a living time capsule.

The company was decades old and hadn't changed tooling or technology for most of that time. The senior developers were actively fighting the adoption of modern FOSS tooling. Several were still using CRT monitors.

No amount of money would have made that position look attractive.

I've turned down a very interesting job because they wanted me to work 5 days a week. I had a kid (now I have two), so I wanted to work a maximum of 4 days a week.

It's sad. It sounded really interesting, and they were very understanding, and yet, for whatever reason, they wouldn't budge.

Fascinating isn't it? So much for flexible working!

It seems to me like there are many companies out there who pay lip service to flexible working, but when it comes down to it they don't really like the idea of it. I actually think flexible working is something they FEAR. It could be a control issue. It could be the notion that if they give you 4 day working, then they have to give it to everyone!

Another thing is if you have a forty hour week and you want to work 4 ten hour days a lot of companies won't allow that either. Why? It's still a forty hour week!

It's funny because one of the most productive developers I've known only ever worked a four day week.

Would anyone from HR care to comment?

I was offered a job and the final "interview" after they gave me an offer, they explained in detail how their app worked. It was an old PHP app and the code looked like a horror movie.

Ah yes, the surprise legacy skeletons in the closet. I am curious -- would you have accepted if the salary was higher than necessary, or if the social environment/work life balance (or any other benefits for that matter) were subjectively better than from other potential employers?

I would have accepted if the salary was higher. What they offered was higher than what I'm making now, but if they went even a lot higher I would have justified suffering through that pile of...

I had turned down a lot of job offers till date for one/more of the following reasons:

* Poor work culture

* Lack of opportunities to learn at work

* Not a competitive pay

* Dated tech-stack

* Sensing toxic work atmosphere

* Company ridden with ivy-league grads that it boasts of during the course of interview. Sure-shot path to 2nd grade treatment should you join such place because it's not your knowledge that they see but only your certificates. [Confession: I learned this a hard way :(]

The biggest reason: location, location, location and relocation...

Living in a big, private house, on a small island with only one traffic light in a multi million city, in ground heated pool, etc... and working from home...

No money/stock options can compensate for this, if I have to move elsewhere in North America...

Last offer was to move to NYC :-)

It sound awesome. May I ask where are you located?

Sorry, but I rather not say in a public forum...

They made an offer that was below what I’d given as the bottom of my range (it was about 20% lower than my current salary!) and tried to argue that the tiny equity portion outweighed that gap. When I said I couldn’t take that, they said they could add $5k to the salary by reducing the equity offer by 25%. Wtf.

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