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Comment by aozgaa | Hacker News Reader

This is addressed in the article:

> Turns out, it doesn’t matter that much where your first offer is from, or even how much they’re offering you. Just having an offer in hand will get the engine running.

> If you’re already in the pipeline with other companies (which you should be if you’re doing it right), you should proactively reach out and let them know that you’ve just received an offer. Try to build a sense of urgency. Regardless of whether you know the expiration date, all offers expire at some point, so take advantage of that.

Anecdotally, I have seen this work many times to great effect.

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Me too. It was utterly bizarre. Spent 6 month looking for a job, with I don’t know how many failed interviews, then I got one offer for a 6 month contract, and suddenly the next two companies I interviewed with were falling over themselves to give me a permanent one.

I just do not see how that works. There’s no logical reason for it.

It is at least in part because of how recruiting works, especially in large tech companies. Companies have many candidates for each role, and can't easily review all of them. Between bureaucracy, how busy the hiring manager is, etc. many candidates get lost in the process.

This is why 1) it really helps to have a referral and 2) tell the recruiter when you have competing roles. Neither will change much about getting or not a role, but they will really help the prioritization and avoid you getting lost.

Paradoxically, that effect is bigger nowadays when the market is not as hot as it used to be, because recruiting is more stretched. Even some FAANG are very understaffed on the recruiting side

This is the same logic as dealing with VC investors. Nobody feels confident saying yes so they drag the process out. Then someone else does say Yes and they assume this other unknown party has figured out something they haven’t. Now they have a sense of urgency over losing out on something. Even if they don’t know what quality the entity offering the first Yes even saw.

In addition to your (presumably positive-enough) interview performance that the later company has themselves, they also have a "hire" recommendation from an entire other interview loop at a different company.

That's a strong signal, and probably puts you ahead of most people interviewing at the later company, who only have the one set of positive feedback.

That’s theoretically true, but the only proof they have of that is the 5 or so words I uttered saying “I have a different offer”. Why should those 5 words make all the difference. You could say them without any offer at all and suddenly get the job?

Yes, you can lie to people and have good things happen to you because they believed the lie.

Surprisingly, most people are not in fact lying most of the time.

(Also, in practice, there's supporting evidence like being able to spout off credible minor details that yes, are still easy to bullshit but again, most people usually aren't lying.)

I have also experienced this and subsequently bluffed it.

I told a startup that I “was talking to Meta”, and they were like ok we cant compete with that. I hadnt even done leetcode yet I was just doing emails with Meta’s recruiter. I told the startup that its okay because I will be stuck in team matching for 6 months, and the startup bumped my salary 30%.

Perhaps having the 6mo contract in hand increased your confidence and changed the way you were carrying yourself and interviewing (subtly to you, but meaningfully).

I think this is a real effect. Dating certainly has a version of this dynamic.

Literally nothing involving human behaviour is entirely logical. Coincidentally, as a hiring manager, hearing people describe “illogical” human behaviour with any sort of surprise is an inexperience indicator for me.

why is it relevant? do you hire psychologists?

Why would someone not then just tell every recruiter/company they are interviewing with that they already have offers are are in the pipeline at other companies even if they don't.

We've heard nowadays how hard it is to even get to the interview for many companies so theres probably plenty of candidates who do not have many other offers prepared or even close to prepared.

Another issue is timing. Theres been times when I've started the interview process with two companies but one is on a much shorter timeline than the other so now I have an offer for one whereas I am still waiting on an interview that isn't for even a couple weeks for another, if not longer.

Not gonna lie, last time I went through the interview process I just told them I have other offers already even when I didn't. It worked in my favor I believe but feels like to get the best outcome you just have to be okay with basically lying out your ass - and that goes both ways, as the employer and the employee since it seems like even the companies feel fine with dragging their asses on concrete unless you have other stuff going on.

Presumably there’s a karmic payoff for this, or someone at X company knows someone at Y who can tell them whether or not you’re actually in the pipeline or have received an offer. Perhaps there’s an element of bluffing or calling bluffs in all of this.

I like karma, but wouldn't checking have the appearance of illegal collusion between the companies? For example, would it look like they were price-fixing?

"Oh, your honor, I was only checking whether they had an offer. We totally weren't discussing how we'd not raise our offers, with the goal of suppressing wages."

iirc there’s already an app for that in some sense, and a good amount of plausible deniability and backroom politics that can make up for any potential lawsuit. Similar issue to “proving” any kind of discrimination: a smooth corporate operator can CYA well enough to create a fake paper trail to justify any sort of decision making.

I mean, that sounds like a level of due dilegence that a lot of companies are unlikely to follow. I suspect that most don't even check the references that you give them.

False. Whatever you got told in primary school was a lie.

Would you be compelled to tell them the offer was from company Y? Or are you saying this is all predicated on Y being a famous company?

It is a labor law violation to disclose such info.

there is also the risk of getting black listed for lying.

I’d file that under the karmic payout thing. I personally hire and fire people but don’t have The Blacklist handy, and I’m not really sure that it exists outside of Roko’s basilisk-esque sense, in which it could be really bad if it really did.

Sure works for realtors too!

It’s always easier to get a new job when you already have one.

Quantum entanglement

As a hiring manager, this might help negotiate pay up if I already wanted to hire you, but if I was on the fence, knowing someone I'm not thrilled with has an offer does basically nothing for me.

As a hiring manager, if I was on the fence, knowing someone I'm not thrilled with has an offer makes me try to figure out what I/we missed and I would reexamine potential gaps in our recruiting processes with the candidate, which are always wrought with biases. And luck is such a big factor (on both the company- and candidate-side) in getting a positive signal.

As a hiring manager with over two decades experience I tend not to think this way unless I know who the other hiring manager is, have reason to believe that they are strong at hiring, and that the role they are hiring for is similar enough to mine for it to mean something.

That's not to say I don't think about where I might have blind spots for a candidate—as you say, all processes are biased—but I've seen too many bozos in this industry (especially as the money started to become its own draw) to take a random offer as signal for anything. More context is necessary or it's just garbage in garbage out.

Agreed. In my last job search I went months with no offer, then 4 within a week. Precisely because I leveraged the first one to speed the others along.

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