The first time I'm aware that Meta is taking back signed, FTE offers

https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1612565777407938560

by donsupreme • 4 years ago

238 171 4 years ago

twitter.com

ipaddr• 4 years ago

If facebook makes you an offer and then pulls back can you sue? Does facebook owe you some form of money lost?

You put a bid om a home and then try walk away usually means you get sued.

the_jeremy• 4 years ago

Promissory estoppel[0] exists, but is kind of hard to get any money out of it, and depends on the circumstances and state you live in. Note that, in general, if you renege on a job offer after accepting, all that happens is the company blacklists you.

[0] https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/labor-employment-law/job-...

TAForObvReasons• 4 years ago

This same sort of rescinding happened in 2008 to college grads joining bulge brackets.

arcticbull• 4 years ago

They probably won't even blacklist you, if they wanted to hire you then (and you come up with a good reason for walking away) they'll want to hire you later for the same reasons. Be kind to your recruiters, have a good justification, and nothing should come of it.

filoleg• 4 years ago

Genuine question - if I sign an offer with a company, and then renege on it before the start date (e.g., because I got another offer that i like better), do I owe money to the company for some form of money lost?

Not trying to defend Meta, they are gonna be just fine without me arguing in their favor on HN, but isn't this just the other side of the "you can quit any time you want without a warning" coin? Yes, rude and shitty to do, but I feel like it goes both ways, and it is kind of difficult to defend one without defending the other.

atomflunder• 4 years ago

I don‘t think this metaphorical coin exists in London, which is the location that the tweet is talking about.

macintux• 4 years ago

The key difference is the balance of power. If I renege on a commitment to join Meta, they’ll barely notice. The converse is potentially devastating.

mavu• 4 years ago

Many countries have different rules for businesses and private citizens.

e.g. as a private citizen in germany you have the right to return whatever you buy online, for whatever reason within 2 weeks.

I'm not aware of similar rights if it is a B2B transaction.

ollien• 4 years ago

I'm fairly sure the answer is no.

Yes, this is the result of at-will employment, and you're understanding the dynamic correctly. It sucks that it's legal

googlryas• 4 years ago

I'm also curious how signing bonuses would work.

drclau• 4 years ago

From my experience, you get them with your first salary.

happyopossum2• 4 years ago

They usually state in the offer how and under what conditions they’re paid, and when they can be clawed back. Usually it’s a short period after your start date, but you still have to be working and have to continue working there for X days/months.

dragonwriter2• 4 years ago

If facebook makes you an offer and then pulls back can you sue?

Generally, an offer that has not yet been accepted does not create a contract, so probably not.

If it has been accepted, maybe, though in an at-will employment jurisdiction, probably not for the loss of employment, but maybe for reliance damages in some cases.

drbeast• 4 years ago

At work so no.

SoftTalker2• 4 years ago

You put a bid om a home and then try walk away usually means you get sued.

You might forfeit your earnest money, depending how the offer is written. But there are ways around that, and that's part of why some people advise having an attorney help write your offer. An attorney will include escape clauses that a realtor might not. Of course if there are too many escape clauses, your offer might get rejected, so it's a balancing act.

People back out of home deals all the time. For example, if the seller counter-offers your bid price, or asks for any other change in the offer, you can just drop the whole thing.

TheCoelacanth• 4 years ago

You can potentially get sued for backing of buying once you have a signed contract. It's rare because the seller will usually just take the earnest money and then sell to someone else, but if the housing market really plunges after you signed the contract, then they might want to go through the trouble of suing.

Obviously, before you actually have a signed contract or if you have a contingency in your contract, you can back out without a problem.

teeray2• 4 years ago

You put a bid om[sic] a home and then try walk away usually means you get sued.

Usually the other way around. You can’t make someone buy but you can make someone sell. The buyer may lose their downpayment if they walk, but the seller can be sued to achieve “specific performance”, forcing them to sell if they get cold feet.

XorNot2• 4 years ago

I mean, that's not nothing though. Then downpayment on my house was 10%, and that is not a small amount of money to forfeit for a capital asset like that given a house is usually an "everything you have" investment these days.

smabie• 4 years ago

I mean you can't sue if you get fired so what's the difference?

AviationAtom10• 4 years ago

The first dominos are falling. The others will soon follow. When Big Tech makes up a sizable marketcap of the markets, and most folks are passively invested these days, it will hit everyone.

TechBro8615• 4 years ago

I think Cloudflare will be alright. That's where I'm investing my money.

qeternity• 4 years ago

I love Cloudflare, just want to own it cheaper. Fastly seems like a pretty obvious acquisition target at current price.

SQueeeeeL2• 4 years ago

Let's go economic recession 2023, it'll be just like 2008 all over again!!! I hope the US Govt bails out Google and Facebook with billions of tax payer dollars this time while we all the voters realize there's no way to stop the bipartisan transfer of wealth to insecure financial ventures

rafale• 4 years ago

These companies are widely profitable. Overvalued != insolvent.

tempsy2• 4 years ago

Well cost cutting is bullish for stocks

AviationAtom10• 4 years ago

There's going to be pain, but pain is good.

Economic data just out showed that wage growth is slowing. For normal folks that sounds bad, for economists it means inflation is finally being tamed.

What good is making more money if your money becomes worth less? The hard part is selling people on why stopping the status quo is actually a good thing.

The crazy prices of cars and homes was a great example of mania that was unsustainable.

WastingMyTime892• 4 years ago

It’s hard to guess. Big Tech has been riding high for a very long time in an environment saturated with cheap money. Still despite multiple crisis the rest of the economy is not doing so bad and reshoring has put manufacturing back into the limelight. We might see something more akin to a rebalance rather than a full on crash.

AviationAtom10• 4 years ago

Looking at QQQs growth on a longer term chart is nothing short of staggering. I do feel a price correction is due. We saw it with Tesla and so too do I think we'll see it with QQQ.

frakkingcylons• 4 years ago

If you're so sure, you should capitalize on your insight and make some money in options.

AviationAtom10• 4 years ago

There's money to be made day trading the volatility but I haven't the time, nor the experience, to predict each movement with reasonable certainty. I know the medium-term is down, and the long-term is up. If your outlook is long then you stay the course.

XorNot2• 4 years ago

I don't disagree with this nominally, but "the market can remain irrational longer then you remain solvent" has been proven ongoingly true. Ultimately you're trying to time the market and you are paying for the privilege of doing so.

baby2• 4 years ago

I bought a bunch of call options for GoPro, because they're switching to a subscription model and being very aggressive about it (you get a year for free when you buy the latest gopro AND a discount on the gopro, it's insane). Yet, the options just crashed like crazy over time. Irrational market.

roflyear2• 4 years ago

Sure, but people have said similar to what you're saying for a few years.

BurningFrog• 4 years ago

This could be true. It could also not be. We'll see.

Octokiddie• 4 years ago

Meta's position until now was that FTE offers are NOT at risk. Up to even a week ago.

This is the danger of fixating on the economic rearview mirror. And few things are more rearview than hiring and layoffs.

Leading financial indicators such as yield curves and oil futures are painting a very clear picture and it's not good.

mysecretaccount• 4 years ago

Leading financial indicators such as yield curves and oil futures are painting a very clear picture and it's not good.

Care to elaborate?

kasey_junk• 4 years ago

The yield curve has been typically inverted for the last part of 2022, which is a sign of an anticipated recession.

Oil futures have also been down which is similar.

westonplatter0• 4 years ago

Oil time spreads (1 month, 2m, 3m) indicate oil demand lessening as the future curve moves from backwardation to contango. More about backwardation vs contango = https://mansfield.energy/market-news/what-is-it-backwardatio....

HillRat2• 4 years ago

The Treasury yield curve has been inverted -- that is, long-term bond rates are lower than short-term -- for the last few months, which has traditionally (n=8) been a reliable indicator of an upcoming recession. The market mechanism leading to this signal isn't well-understood, but is certainly related to inflation expectations. The good news here is that the market expects that long-run inflation will be brought under control (otherwise, the 10-year t-bill rate would be much higher to compensate for expected inflation losses), but monetary policy to do so will impact economic growth.

The countervailing element here is that the economy is slowing down from a very fast clip: unemployment is historically low, job losses are pretty subsector-specific and tech employees are quickly finding new jobs elsewhere in the economy, the financial sector is healthy, and consumers aren't seeing the kind of destruction of wealth we saw back in '08. As a result, I'm still cautiously optimistic -- for whatever my opinion's worth -- that the Fed can manage a soft landing, though the ambiguous nature of current economic signals means that monetary over- or under-shooting is quite possible, leading to either a hard recessionary landing or continued inflation (noting that cost-push inflation due to factors such as COVID and the Russian war in Ukraine are not really manageable through monetary mechanisms, so hang-on inflation is likely to continue to eat away at economic performance).

fwungy2• 4 years ago

Tech industry risk appetite is inverse to the prime rate. With rates at near zero, there's going to be lots of growth because, hey free money. As that prime rate increases you need a lot better justifications to borrow money for new endeavors. The tech market gets a lot tighter in that case.

Inversion means that bondholders value short terms more than long terms. That happens when the future is uncertain. If you think rates will go up substantially in a couple of months it's better to buy the short term bond and then later roll to the long term bond then to buy and hold a long term bond which will increase in yield as the prime increases. (Increasing yield is bad for bond holders).

theGnuMe2• 4 years ago

Leading financial indicators such as yield curves and oil futures are painting a very clear picture and it's not good.

It's not clear to me. Can you please explain?

ilickpoolalgae3• 4 years ago

I think roles in LON are considered probationary for the first 6 months... so technically I suppose they are not considered equivalent to FTE roles in the States. You normally go through a probation review in which they will decide to terminate, extend probation, or convert to full time employee.

This question was also raised when layoffs were first announced as it was noted there is difficulty doing layoffs in certain European countries and particularly challenging if you're actively on-boarding people at the same tie. Not sure how much this applies to the UK.

rcme• 4 years ago

Most places in the US are at-will employment, so in that sense most US employees are constantly in the “probationary” state.

ilickpoolalgae3• 4 years ago

That's a fair point.

I think what I was alluding to was that I'm not sure if they did any cuts in the LON office during their first layoff announcements due to potential labor laws as it relates to incoming folks.

With these rescinds, perhaps they are gearing up to do actual layoffs.

phphphphp2• 4 years ago

England’s employment rights are much less beneficial to employees now than they once were: nowadays, in your first 2 years, you have no meaningful protection beyond what’s contracted, it’s not until 2 years that you have employment protection rights that prevent dismissal without cause — an employer must go through the redundancy process to dismiss an employee with more than 2 years service without cause.

If you’re at a company less than 2 years, your employment can be ended whenever, so probation doesn’t serve any meaningful legal purpose, it’s just an arbitrary structure a company can use to review employees and delay granting additional benefits. While you’re on probation, you’re still a true full time employee.

(Employment tribunals adjudicate whether dismissal is fair, and dismissal for protected characteristics is never fair, regardless of length of service - e.g: you can’t fire someone because of their religion)

ilickpoolalgae3• 4 years ago

Thanks for the that insight. When I was working with folks in the LON office they were often stressed about the probationary period and relieved once it was over. It sounds like they were potentially misinformed about the process.

yodsanklai3• 4 years ago

Not sure how much this applies to the UK.

My understanding is that it's difficult to do both, as they need to prove that the new role can't be filled by someone impacted by the layoff.

snovv_crash2• 4 years ago

I know people a year ago who were being given temp contracts after interviewing for FTE positions. Not surprised.

neon_electro• 4 years ago

I'm one of those people!

Naming and shaming, Insomnia Cookies in Philadelphia, PA didn't want to pay more than $100k for me full-time, which was already a non-starter, but they baited-and-switched an ostensibly full time job with benefits into a 90 day contract-to-hire arrangement.

hn_throwaway_99• 4 years ago

I just hope this emphasizes that individuals should never feel guilty or shameful if they need to back out of a job agreement that they made.

I've heard stories of folks that accepted job offers, only to have circumstances unexpectedly change shortly thereafter, or to have a better offer come along. And I've seen these people have a lot of stress and guilt about wanting to rescind their acceptance.

Just remember, it's just business. I guarantee Meta (and all other companies) are just treating it as business, and you should do the same. I'm not at all saying be rude, and it's important not to burn bridges, but remember that when push comes to shove a company will never show you loyalty beyond what makes economic sense and what is legally necessary, and you should do the same.

randcraw• 4 years ago

Can't agree. A signed contract is a promise. Reneging on your promise says only bad things about you.

Meta's management famously lacks character. Please don't use them as a baseline for right and wrong.

OkayPhysicist2• 4 years ago

Corporations are incapable of engaging in right and wrong.

cheriot4• 4 years ago

Meta is hardly the only the first tech company to rescind offers.

Yes, it's poor form and rightfully burns a bridge, but it's not a contract. Let's not expect people to treat employers any better than employers treat people.

humanistbot• 4 years ago

A signed contract is a promise.

Most contracts in the tech industry are at-will in both directions with usually only 2 or 4 weeks notice (if any).

pclmulqdq2• 4 years ago

This view is really popular, but totally wrong if you take the view of a business (or a capitalist ideologue). In that frame of reference, a contract is something that might cost money to break, not a high and mighty promise.

fairity• 4 years ago

When push comes to shove a company will never show you loyalty beyond what makes economic sense and what is legally necessary

I disagree. Privately owned & profitable companies have plenty of leeway to practice loyalty to their employees beyond what is economical and legal. Even in the unprofitable tech startup world, if it was all about the money, you'd see people getting laid off right before their vesting cliffs, but that doesn't happen, which is to some degree an expression of good will.

verall• 4 years ago

It's also technically illegal and although extremely difficult to prove doing it as a policy probably doesn't make strict economic sense when you factor it litigation and reputational risk.

encryptluks2• 4 years ago

Are vesting cliffs and similar benefits protected by ERISA or other laws. I'd imagine they mostly don't do it due to the legal repercussions.

naniwaduni• 4 years ago

The fact that people routinely fail to see obvious deleterious repercussions of their actions doesn't mean that they fail to see all obvious deleterious repercussions of their actions. If you routinely lay people off before their vesting cliffs, you'd have to pay them more up-front (also you would probably get into legal trouble). Penny-pinchers are very keen on not paying people more up-front (including paying more lawyers). The fact that people routinely miss implications that seem just as obvious that this one does not oblige them not to notice this one.

mythhouse2• 4 years ago

Not sure what the disagreement is. OP is pointing out the state of things in real world, not possibilities or if its right thing to do.

maxerickson• 4 years ago

Even if there weren't legal protections, screwing people over would erode the attractiveness of that form of compensation. Fool me once and all that.

cutenewt2• 4 years ago

Same thing with these super generous severance packages.

3 months, 4 months...

Companies in the US don't have to give any.

philwelch• 4 years ago

If people were routinely laid off right before vesting cliffs, employees would just start devaluing any equity behind such a cliff.

In general, how is an employee or prospective employee supposed to tell which companies are going to be loyal ahead of time? Private companies can choose to be loyal out of a sense of good will, just like employees can, but unless both parties have some credible reason to trust the other, it's just self-defeating to do so because then you're just volunteering to end up on the rough end of a cooperate/defect outcome.

jameshush• 4 years ago

I've been laid off ~1 month before a vesting cliff before. Along with a few other early employees.

Looking back (this was 10ish years ago when I was still a n00b), they had definitely given me too much equity based on my experience. If you don't grow as fast as the business grows, you will get booted. Even if you're a cofounder (one of the cofounders "left" about a year later too). Business is business, especially in America.

snovv_crash2• 4 years ago

Which is why your contract should have protection against layoffs just before vesting cliffs so that companies don't have these incentives.

From what I've seen, it's normal to have vest-immediately terms for anything except voluntary departure or at-fault termination.

vineyardmike• 4 years ago

if it was all about the money, you'd see people getting laid off right before their vesting cliffs

Except it sorta does. You can’t casually lay people off but companies absolutely optimize around payouts.

Amazon, for example, famously had an average tenure of less than two years for outgoing employees, with a vesting schedule that heavily increased after 24 mo.

Conversely, Google famous link doesn’t like to cull underperforming employees. They have a front-weighted vesting schedule so underperforming employees get an effective pay cut.

lofatdairy• 4 years ago

The unfortunate thing is that companies have a lot more power, the relationship isn't symmetrical. An individual withdrawing from from a job offer has to worry about being blacklisted by the company and often even other companies in the industry (I know this to be the case w/ some positions in banking, admittedly not familiar w/ practices in big tech). I'm not saying people should feel bad about walking away from an employment agreement, nor do companies deserve loyalty, but definitely emphasizing your point to avoid burning bridges because a lot of industries are a lot smaller on the inside than they look.

mythhouse2• 4 years ago

about being blacklisted by the company and often even other companies in the industry

I've asked many recruiters and HR professionals this exact question but all of them said there is no such thing as blacklisting. Its not worth their time and effort to maintain an industry wide blacklist of candidates which Sounds borderline illegal.

seti0Cha3• 4 years ago

I've been involved hiring a fair amount and I'm pretty sure there's no blacklist, at least in the tech world. In fact, I once worked at a place where someone started at the company, worked a couple of weeks, then left because their preferred job offer came through. A couple of months later this person came back and said the other job wasn't working out and was hired again.

Despite the messaging constantly broadcast by HR departments, it really is just business, unless the organization is horribly dysfunctional. There are vindictive individuals out there, but you don't want to work for those people anyway.

throwaway14356• 4 years ago

I wouldn't call it loyalty. To me the only thing that counts is if someone is going to get in trouble if i don't show up. Any sufficiently large company wont feel pain of any kind, its just business as usual. Worse case: Someone has to fill a form.

WastingMyTime892• 4 years ago

I don’t know, at some point, you are responsible for who you work for and the kind of person you want to be.

I’m not surprised to see large soulless corporations acting like large soulless corporations but my preferred solution to this problem is not to become cynical but to go work with people who have some values.

grogers• 4 years ago

Thank you for this. I was in this exact position once, where a better offer came along just after I had accepted. Honestly, if the original company had matched (or gotten very close to) the better offer I would have still gone there since it wouldn't have required moving. But it was so much higher that I knew it was basically not going to happen. I felt guilty about that for a while. But going to the company I did turned out great for me, and if I was in that position again I'd do the same thing.

hangonhn2• 4 years ago

but remember that when push comes to shove a company will never show you loyalty beyond what makes economic sense and what is legally necessary, and you should do the same.

I don't know if I agree with you. I've had big successful companies give me way more than I believe I deserved. I've had small companies screw me over (or at least tried to). I don't know if a hard-and-fast rule like that works for everyone nor every situation. My suggestion is to treat a company only as well as it treats you -- which is probably a good thing to do in life in general. Relationships should be reciprocal. For many of us who've worked for a while, I am sure there has been instances where companies or managers have gone out of their way to take care of us. Even at the company that tried to screw me over, my manager cared for me beyond what his job entails. For new offers though, since there is no history with the company, no one should feel obligated to accept an offer if there is a better one that comes along or if the potential employee have any misgivings about the company.

fragmede• 4 years ago

way more than I believe I deserved.

Respectfully, it sounds like you didn't know your worth and should have held out for more. Large companies have seriously big bags of cash to give to their people. Money's only worth as much as you can eat though, you can't take it with you.

mmmBacon• 4 years ago

As a hiring manager I don’t hold it against someone for making a decision they think is right. I always see the candidate’s decision as also the right one for me. I do think it can reflect badly on someone if it’s handled poorly/unprofessionally but this is rare in my experience.

DenisM• 4 years ago

What would be an unprofessional handling look like? Ghosting?

ido• 4 years ago

Right, if either the employer or employee at the end of the day don't think it's a good fit after having given/received an offer it's still less painful to reciend it than to hire the person and then fire them some months afterwards (or vice versa for the employee).

neilv• 4 years ago

You have a debatable point, but "since Facebook did it, it must be totally ethical" seems weak support.

The often mercenary attitudes in tech aren't great, but not all companies will behave the same.

baron8162• 4 years ago

I wouldn’t feel bad about doing it to Meta, but Meta isn’t every company and every company isn’t Meta. You shouldn’t “punish” every company for the misbehavior of one giant one.

Though I would still say it’s probably usually fine to back out of an offer. Just take the normal care you otherwise would and be kind about it. Don’t just ghost them or be a dick.

operatingthetan• 4 years ago

Nobody wrote "punish" or implied it. Not sure why you felt the need to misquote them.

pclmulqdq2• 4 years ago

If you are backing out of an offer, that is a pretty unfriendly thing to do. Not immoral, just unfriendly. Doing it to Google or Meta is fine because they very clearly aren't your friend. Do it to a startup and they will likely hold a grudge. Do it to your friend's business, and they will understand, but might be a little upset for a little while.

It's all about circumstances.

cloutchaser• 4 years ago

I hope the is emphasizes that just because your spouse is nice to you 9/10 times, because of that 1/10 times they argue with you you should give up all loyalty and good will towards them. After that one argument, all trust is lost.

I hope your realise life is more complicated. Yes meta may do this sometimes, but as an employer I’ve been fucked over plenty of times by flakey people. So what. You should judge each and every person and company for they are and their situation.

jojobas• 4 years ago

Other people's/entities' crap behaviour is no excuse for your own.

Sure there's nothing criminal about it, yet it's unethical from many standpoints.

cutenewt2• 4 years ago

While companies backing out sucks, this is a downward spiral.

If companies get wind of candidates doing this in mass, they can escalate the game even further.

That is, make offers to candidates and continue to shop for better candidates, knowing they can just pull the rug from the first set.

This game will be lose-lose.

Draiken• 4 years ago

Isn't it already like this though?

Most companies won't do that by default, but when push comes to shove, they care about the bottom line much more than the person. Plus they have almost all of the leverage.

I agree with the GP because the power imbalance is too big. They're also not saying people should screw companies over all the time. Just to not feel guilty if/when it makes sense to take a better offer.

Ozzie_osman• 4 years ago

I think it's a lot more nuanced. If you're joining LargeTechCo as one of thousands of entry level new hires, then reneg on an offer accept, I don't think that's a big deal.

But let's say it's a startup that put considerable effort into hiring you, and turned down other candidates, and you reneg just because you got a slightly better offer? You'll probably burn a few bridges.

dasil0032• 4 years ago

This is a dangerous idea to put in the head of impressionable young tech workers during a difficult economic time.

First of all, it's ridiculous to equate Meta with all companies. The mistake to watch out for is treating a company as a human being, and expecting the relationship to have similar social dynamics to that between natural persons. Companies are not humans, and the bigger they get the more apparent the truth becomes. However, in negotiating a job offer, you will also be dealing with humans, and your reputation very much matters on what those humans think as a result of your actions. Ghosting Meta (or any other mega corp) is not a big deal, they will forget you in 30 seconds. On the other hand, if you do this to a smaller company, especially one that is very resource constrained, they may be putting a lot of eggs in your basket, and backing out last minute could materially hurt them in a way that they won't soon forget. This could very much matter down the line, because even if the company goes out of business, the leaders there will likely still be around and may pop up on hiring committees/reference checks you least expect.

noisy_boy• 4 years ago

if you do this to a smaller company

Or if you are in a smaller market - people talk and word spreads faster there. This may not matter to those who are not in it for the long run but if you are, be careful.

TomSwirly2• 4 years ago

No one is talking about ghosting anyone.

The question is this: if you have excepted a job offer, and you get another job offer you prefer, is it unethical to back out of the original job offer?

The answer is no. But clearly you have to contact the original employer, explain the situation, and apologize. Again, no one, not one person, is suggesting ghosting.

acjohnson55• 4 years ago

As a hiring manager who has had multiple people back out or leave early in their tenure, for personal reasons, I try hard to never take it personally and just try to support them in their decision. People gotta do what's right for them. It might be inconvenient for me or I might think they're not making the best choice, but such is life.

ajhurliman• 4 years ago

Strongly agree, being polite is great but the number one goal is doing what’s best for you and your family, not $BIG_COMPANY.

dom96• 4 years ago

Wow. I am so sorry to all those new grads affected. I was one of those new grads in 2018, I cannot even imagine the horror of having that offer rescinded back then.

yodsanklai3• 4 years ago

Is that surprising or new? I think they laid off people who've been in the company for only a few days or weeks. I'm wondering if this announces even more lay offs.

I see some people rejoicing about Meta possibly declining, but unfortunately, this is a general trend and is bad for everybody in the field. I'm personally very worried about this recession.

sweettea• 4 years ago

No -- they laid off a broad swath across the board -- I know folks with 10 years experience who were laid off, although it did seem the layoffs were tilted toward more recent hires.

(I didn't get laid off)

yodsanklai3• 4 years ago

My point is that they also laid off some people who were still in bootcamp. If this is correct, taking back offers doesn't come so much as a surprise.

jmyeet• 4 years ago

This was happening late last year when the big layoff was announced.

Here is my advice to anyone, particularly in this market: when you accept an offer, don't quit. Do not quit until you've started at the new company. Before you start they can just rescind the offer. After you start they need to fire you.

Remember you can just quit with no notice from your old employer. Is it ideal? No. But a lot of employers will have you doing nothing the last 2 weeks anyway. It'll just be handing off stuff and twiddling your thumbs.

But most importantly, the company won't hesitate to rescind an offer or fire you for reasons that have nothing to do with you, even when doing so puts you in an extremely precarious situation (eg you may lose your work visa and have to leave the country).

The company isn't your friend. it's a business and you have a business relationship. You're just terminating it, just like they can and do.

ShamelessC2• 4 years ago

Fuck all that. Quit the moment you feel it is negatively impacting your life. You don't owe employers shit if they violate the spirit of your contract, the only signal you can send to make it clear that you find that despicable is to quit. Everything else is toxic careerist bullshit.

We aren't on this planet for long. You are entitled to a small rebellion once in awhile, particularly if it is merited.

symlinkk• 4 years ago

Rebellion ain’t gonna pay the bills.

postalrat• 4 years ago

One potential negative would be if you want to go back to your former employer they may not want your back just to walk out any time.

P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul• 4 years ago

For WFH, you can work 2 jobs for 2 weeks.

Or try out having 2 jobs for a week before deciding if you want to put in a 2 week notice at your old job, quit the new job, or continue working at both.

gpderetta4• 4 years ago

this is explicitly happening in London so it is complicated. Contractual (and statute) notice period are enforceable by both sides and, in principle, your employer can successfully sue you for the difference between your salary and the cost of hiring a temporary replacement for the notice period.

thenerdhead• 4 years ago

This is the first time I'm aware that Meta is taking back signed, FTE offers.

I did a quick search on twitter and linkedin and found multiple posts about offers being rescinded from various types of jobs over the last year and even earlier. So much catastrophizing from these voices online. If you keep talking about everything leading up to a recession, you're gonna have a recession.

Fatnino• 4 years ago

This will hurt them in the long run.

Five years from now, Facebook will be trying to hire a new grad and Google will just steal them away with a lower offer by pointing to this incident. Facebook will have to throw even more money at new hires to get them to stay.

shashashasha___• 4 years ago

ya right, that's how it works. everyone are keeping track of what each hiring process screw ups each company did.

jross225• 4 years ago

Maybe not prospective employees, but competing recruiters would definitely remind candidates with multiple offers about the incident.

dzonga• 4 years ago

everyone seems to be avoiding the elephant in the room: not everyone is meant to be working at these FAANG companies making obscene amounts of money working 3 hours a week.

plenty of jobs to go around at non-sexy companies that pay decent and have decent benefits not trumped up benefits like free food etc, that other workers don't experience.

once we start looking at software engineering as another "blue" collar office job then things will normalize.

The first time I'm aware that Meta is taking back signed, FTE offers

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