Ask HN: How to cancel a job offer finding another offer

Once, I would have said "That is very unprofessional. Are you sure you want to do that? You'll lose karma, or something." But honestly? With darn few exceptions, employment isn't a sacred trust. It's just business. They underbid. Would they keep you on the payroll, out of a sense of fairness, if it developed that you were not the best offer? Nope. You'd be shown the door. It's just business.

I'd recommend a simple phone call. "Hiya Bob, thank you for your time in getting us to this offer of employment. Circumstances have changed and it looks like I will not be able to work for your firm. I apologize for the inconvenience. ... Yes, Bob, I appreciate that this puts you in a bit of a lurch. Please accept my apologies. Would you like me to recap this conversation in a letter? Thank you Bob. Best of luck finding a candidate."

I don't particularly suggest telling them that you're taking employment elsewhere. That's something you tell your friend. They're not your friend. If you worked there, they would still not be your friend. Bob might eventually have become your friend, but right now Bob is a corporate officer of a company which underbid for your services. You don't particularly owe them explanations or excuses.

At-will employment is a two-way street.

  >> Would they keep you on the payroll, out of a sense of fairness, if it developed that you were not the best offer? Nope. You'd be shown the door

Yes, in most cases they would, if you turn out to be even (say) 30% as good as they think you were when they made the offer.

There is a lot of inertia involved in getting rid of employees, and most employers keep marginal employees long after it might make sense to get rid of them. Not out of a sense of fairness as much as a desire for a productive work environment for everyone.

'Would they keep you on the payroll, out of a sense of fairness, if it developed that you were not the best offer? Nope. You'd be shown the door. It's just business.' <-- dead wrong.

You can't rescind an offer after extending an offer just because a better candidate showed up at your door. Because he hasnt joined yet, in most states the at-will rules dont apply. In NJ and NY, for example, the employer is legally obligated to pay damages.

After joining, the implied-contract exception to at-will employment kicks in [in most states] which would protect you in the case a better candidate came. If you actually were incompetent and demonstrated it on the job, that would be a different story, but there should be no concern about it ...

I read something from BLS about this a long time ago, and I'll try to dig out a citation.

EDIT: found citation: http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2001/01/art1full.pdf

Careful. The three exceptions in that document are:

* Public interest (clearly inapplicable)

* Implied contract

* Covenant of good faith

The latter two seem like real issues for tech companies. But the HR process of every moderately professional company in the world is designed in part to inoculate them from "implied contract" claims, so having an offer withdrawn is unlikely to leave you with a viable implied contract claim.

Eleven states, including CA and MA, honor some "covenant of good faith" process. But it's unclear to me how exposed the standard offer letter used by most companies are to "covenant" claims. For instance, most will state specifically that "Your employment with Company is at-will and either party can terminate the relationship at any time with or without cause and with or without notice."

I don't think you're right; Patrick is probably not "dead wrong" that companies can withdraw offers.

Valuable lessons learned, I will make the call tomorrow.

This is a tricky situation, TBH. Think about it from the other side: company invested HR and other resources to seek out talent, managed to arrange to hire you a few months ago, and assumed that you would work for them. From the company perspective, assuming they had to hire N people, you took a slot. Furthermore, because it is so late in the hiring cycle, it will prove to be hard to hire another qualified person.

It is not a terrible taboo. You are expected, as soon as you accept an offer, to stop pursuing other job opportunities. That being said, the company will be more understanding if you ended up taking an offer that was _SIGNIFICANTLY_ better than your current offer. If they have a shred of decency they will not share this information with anyone [and certain people such as COO and HR staff may be obliged not to discuss the situation as part of their contracts], so they won't hurt your chances at other firms. You can bet your bottom dollar that they won't reconsider you, though.

You should talk directly to the people who interviewed you [no email, letter, etc]. especially if the firm is much more reputable and the pay is significantly higher, they may be sympathetic.

But before doing it, make sure that is what you want to do. It may, in some circumstances, make sense to take on a job that pays less or is less reputable if you think you have a better opportunity to shine (I've turned down job offers from lots of much more reputable places in lieu of an offer that put me in a more senior position).

Thanks for the reply veyron. The second offer is definitely much more enticing than the first in terms of benefits and projects that I would really like to work on. That isn't to say that the first was horrible, just in relative terms. I forgot to mention in the text, but the new offer came unexpectedly a few weeks after I had already accepted the first one. I guess I shouldn't have expected any chances of even doing business with the first but I'll man up and give the recruiter a call.

Yes, more money and a big name company should mean precisely zero if you are at the beginning of your career.

You should be taking the job that allows you to best practice, learn and hone your craft, whatever that is.

Big name companies are often some of the least dynamic, most boring and slow moving places to work.

Money comes later if you work hard early in your career.

A big name company with a good reputation at the start of your career is a good social proof, since you would have beaten a lot of people to the role, and have been exposed to a successful way of doing things. Other things are important too but it means far from zero.

Agreed, not zero but company name and pay should mean relatively little at the beginning of your career. Be driven primarily by challenge, fun and learning. If you get all that then use company name and salary as the next determining factors.

As a hiring manager this is simply not a big deal. Any employee can leave at any time for any reason. I dont see anything wrong ethically with calling to turn down the original position. If they are truly good people they would recognize that it could be better for your career and be happy for you.

If it isnt truly better for your career, then they will have the opportunity to explain why or sweeten.

The only time I get upset is if someone leaves in the middle of a project without enough notice.

Have you tried hiring during a college cycle? There's a pool of people, and in general the people you want to hire will accept a job offer before may.

It is especially frustrating if you have already planned and allocated resources to hiring a candidate, and then found out that the candidate rejected an offer. At that point, some employers actually call the school and complain, and that's definitely something bad for a college grad .

Note: Again, its a general statement: there are point examples of very sharp college grads deciding to search for jobs in april, but for the most part the better people accept offers earlier in the year

With regards to your ethical query, what happens if the tables were turned [i.e. company offered and then rescinded the offer months later]? Would that be ethical?

It isnt very nice, but Im sure it happens. We would only do it if business circumstances forced us to do it (not because we found someone better). If at all possible we would pay them a "severance" probably around 2 weeks of salary.

I dont see it as unethical either.

Who do you get upset at? And what is enough notice?

It depends on the project. I would hope that our people give enough notice that their leaving doesnt impact a release cycle by giving us enough time that we can put someone else on the project to transition to. Usually 2 weeks is sufficient.

Sounds like you have not actually started work at the first job?

You call the person who recruited you personally on the telephone, don't email as a first step because that is cowardly and rude. You say to them "I'm feeling uncomfortable about this but I'm sorry I have been offered and accepted a role which pays more and is at a company that I feel is a better fit to what I am looking for. Apologies for doing this after I have already accepted a role with you. I know it is bad form."

No, you should not expect that company or recruiter to ever do business with you again, why would they? But that's the price you pay for continuing to interview for jobs after you have accepted one. You have behaved unprofessionally and were disrespectful of the time, money and resource that it took to get you recruited into the first job. But that's okay, it's not a huge sin, lots of people do it unfortunately and really you must look after your interests primarily. Sh*t happens and people sometimes find better jobs, probably because they really wanted a job and made the mistake of accepting something that they really were not so enthused about.

No I have not yet started work at the first job (1st day is in June). And actually I wasn't expecting the second offer to come about, they just waited too long to call me and I didn't even think I was on their minds anymore.

I do genuinely feel bad as I did actually like the recruiter . But it looks like the only thing to do now is make a phone call.

Once you have accepted a job, as another poster points out, you are expected to take yourself off the market. It shouldn't matter that someone calls you and that you were not actively pursuing the second offer.

Having said that, as I mentioned earlier, there is no point in taking a job that you do not want.

Regardless when you get an offer, you go for the best one. Even if its your first day and you get a call from say Facebook and they want you, you gonna say no thank you, I rather stay here with less pay or name value. I don't think so. It would be nice in a perfect world. :)

Important question: Have you signed anything, cashed any checks, or done anything else to actually make you beholden to the first? Even if you did, it doesn't mean that you're stuck, but it will make your situation a touch stickier.

That said, this is unlikely to significantly harm you, so don't worry about it too much. It would have done you much worse to miss out on the second opportunity!

anecdotally, i was blacklisted by a certain fortune 100 company because i had turned down a face to face set of interviews in the 4th round the night before. they were really pissed off, for whatever reason, i politely told them that i wasn't interested in the position any longer and that i would have to cancel the interview. i think 15 hour notice is sufficient.

anyway, the reason why i knew i was blacklisted was because i was interviewing for a post with that same company in another region several months (~6) later and as soon as the headhunter put me through to hr, they stopped all communications, no details given.

fwiw you should never burn bridges, but in this case, over time i found that this company was the complete anti-thesis of the type of company that i would want to work for and i thank their hr for donning light on that through their utter ineptitude and incompetence, not because they blacklisted me, but because they were so ridiculously disorganized. the facts: hr could not identify the exact title and position that i was interviewing for correctly, several times i would be interviewing for position x (told by hr, job description in hand), only to figure out that the interviewer was looking for position y and was considering me for position y (which was with the same division, but a different role). when doing a phone interview with the vp of the region, he didn't successfully make it until our 3rd attempt (across 3 differently scheduled days) at a conference call, various reasons which i think were ridiculous: laptop was having problems so he couldn't access the conference call number from his calendar, second time was more forgivable that something important had come up, but i was not given advanced notice, only told after waiting in the conference call for 20 minutes and after 3 emails to hr to figure out why the guy was late.

but to come back to your point, you had gone a bit further than i by accepting an offer, i'm assuming signed a contract, and only weeks later you turned them down. while i agree with some of the posts that that's life, that the company had failed to provide you with a fair valuation/compensation package, but at the same time, i doubt the original company was looking to low-ball you, that's quite possibly what they could pay you given their salary ranges. you did the right thing by not trying to re-negotiate with the first company, that would be completely disrespectful.

i highly suggest trying to bridge this relationship with the first company, tell them your intent clearly, that you're retracting your acceptance, but be prepared to answer because they will ask why. personally i usually give the truth, but that's up to you. remember, you want to treat people how you expect to be treated.

and overall, let this be a lesson learned, given that i realize the job market is not in the best shape, but i believe that you were a bit eager to take on the first company's offer. a little restraint and negotiation could let you to stretch that offer while not accepting and looking for something else that's more fitting.

First off you did nothing wrong at all! Its a good thing people are after you, it happens and companies know what happens and knows the best offer wins. Nothing new here. Always pursue the best offers around, its a game these companies play, Google vs. Facebook for example.

The hiring game as nothing to do with you, its a game played between companies. Just be sure to call the person tomorrow and tell them you have a better offer. No need to feel bad, feel good people are after you. Its not the first time this happens. If they really want you they may match your other offer. Good Luck and feel good.

"First off you did nothing wrong at all!" <-- That's a dangerous statement. He [guessing gender] did something wrong by agreeing to be in the employ of the first company and then agreeing to be in the employ of the second company without first notifying the first company.

There is nothing wrong with fishing for offers, but its wrong to accept two offers without rescinding one. Accepting two offers is like marrying two people in a country/state that bans polygyny or polyandry.

Like I said below only in a perfect world, it happens all the time. Its nothing new and just business. No hard feelings on any side, the employee and companies know all this and don't see it as anything bad or good, just the way the market is. When your in demand - your in demand. :)

You're probably too young to have had many people treat your hard work and money with disrespect. You'll think about it differently further down the track when you learn that it's worth trying to do the right thing when you can.

Nobody disrespected anyone, that's just business sometimes you lose, sometimes you win, which ever side your on you just keep going. No right or wrong here, if it was that case always do the right thing, in this case the other business just lost talent, they wanna compete they can by offering or matching it.

Just business.

Many people think that it costs nothing to anyone to recruit a person into a job. I think the recruiter would not agree with "no right or wrong" - they put in the effort to find this guy, shepherd him through the recruitment process, is now not getting paid and has missed the chance to put someone else into the job who would have stayed. I suspect that recruiter might feel somewhat less circumspect about the outcome.

Thank you, I feel a lot better!