In serious need of advice w/two offers and already accepted one...

^ Doesn’t matter really IMO, that bridge is scorched past the timbers. They don’t want to hear an apology.

I actually had the opposite happen to me way back when. I had two offers with two hedge funds. One of them was less reputable but was offering more immediate upside potential, so I asked them if I could think about it for a couple days. They begrudgingly said yes, but then when I called them back a couple days later they said that the offer no longer existed. I ended up going with the other fund and never looked back, but moral of the story is companies will renege just as easily as employees do.

^ the hedge fund that reneged, did you get that offer in writing? doesn’t sound like a place I would want to work for anyway

Along these lines- I was talking to my lawyer friend about the petroleum engineering students that have been getting their offers pulled with the oil drop.

as many of you know, severence is paid in this situation virtually every time (3-9 months worth). It’s a pretty big screw job. The student may have signed a lease, moved, and closed down their recruitment and told other companies no. He says if a company didn’t give students severence you could definitely sue them and win in this case. I realize it’s different from the opposite perspective, but just kinda interesting to think about.

^ That’s why they give severance. Its a fair deal.

^ I personally dont think it is. Your first job is the toughest to get. The student will most likely have to wait 6-12 months until the next recruiting cycle to find a comparable opportunity. Plus theyll likely have a 12 month lease signed or a mortage that they just agreed to, which will make them have to limit their new job search to one city. The student getting the severence is definitely not coming out ahead. Plus they will miss out on piling up good experience, which is so important when you have none. Plus the stress of the whole situation. Not a good deal at all.

^ the 12 month leases usually have a clause that lets you get out. probably a 2-3 month penalty, but you can get out

That sucks but there’s worse things that can happen in life.

Yeah that’s kind of the way it works. They’re lucky to get anything to be honest.

I did something similar 6 months ago and I wanted to cry after I was done speaking with the recruiter… dunno why he would be so nasty to me, we’re both in a niche market and I can’t offer much now but this is a small world.

He probably only took it out on me and didn’t say anything nasty about me to either of the two companies. Still, he’s a jerk, but also a recruiter.

^ that’s bec the recruiter just lost 3 months of your base salary as commission.

^I get that. But why be nasty? No benefit whatsoever. Like I said, it’s a really small world, and the chance that I would want to reconnect with him in 3-5 years was high, but I don’t want to work with him now. It’s like those stupid men on tinder that call you nasty names then go on a terrible misogynistic rant that is absuive and borderline criminal. Wow! Now I am so attracted to you! Not!

^ To be honest, he probably never wants to work with you again. He gets paid to place people, not to waste time on people that sign and dash. You wasted a lot of time from people by doing this. Again, its your right to bail, but you’ve blown a serious commitment and wasted a lot of time. Don’t expect the time of day from that person again. Some of you underestimate the time that goes into hiring and the process that starts once an offer is accepted. If someone did that to me, they’d be blackballed forever. “Oh, you hear of this upcoming star analyst Emily Chan? She applied for a job at my shop.” “Yeah, she bailed on an offer she accepted from me. What a flake.” But the person has already wasted my time. I’m not going to go waste more chasing them down and telling future employers. But if anyone asked, I’d share my views.

^ oh don’t get me wrong. I think ultimately your job and life, so you made the right choice. But it’s possible that recruiter lands around 1 job per quarter, and if you fell through, he would lose 3 months of commission. That could hurt a lot.

Given that we learn through operant conditioning, I often wonder if there is actually enough success that guys continue to do stuff like that. In the PUA world, some guys would make fake female profiles and post online what kind of messages they got. It was absurd to me that you’d have so many people acting the same way and in such (what seems to be) a very ineffective way. But maybe there is some subset of the female population I’ve never encountered that responds positively to it

Geo and everyone, how do you feel if you didn’t accept the offer but did indicate a date you could start when they asked when they sent the official offer. is this the same as accepting and then turning it down?