I'll play devil's advocate and ask-- so if they just fired him on the 2nd day of work, it would have been kosher and everyone would go home happy? Where do you draw the line when there's no employment contract?
Ask HN: Offer of Employment retracted
151–160 of 168 posts
Re: Ask HN: Offer of Employment retracted
#152Name and shame the buggers.
Agreed! I think this is one of the worst things a company can do. They shouldn't be able to do it without harming their reputation.
Re: Ask HN: Offer of Employment retracted
#153I'm sorry this happened to you, but you should realize it is a normal part of startup life. Don't take it personally.
I would guess your potential employers are as unhappy about the situation as you are. It's no fun to lay people off or rescind a job offer. It sucks almost as much as being on the receiving end.
If you want to work in a startup again, don't hire a lawyer, and don't make a huge deal out of it. There's only a miniscule chance you'll recover anything significant, and you will certainly incur ill will.
If job stability is very important to you, then you should probably stay away from smaller startups, where positions (and paychecks) can be very unstable.
Re: Ask HN: Offer of Employment retracted
#154Don't worry so much about the "they will hate me" or "my team won't trust me" angle unless you know that to be a fact. Most people understand that business is business, management or not, and if you're a solid employee that your team could use they're not going to be pissed that you got a better offer and accepted. They'll just be happy to have you back so they don't have to replace you.
I like the "make a joke of it" angle, but if you can't pull that off you really should be fine with just being honest about what happened, assuming you work with decent human beings. Story seemed reasonable enough to me.
Re: Ask HN: Offer of Employment retracted
#155Use your powers for something good. We're hiring:
Re: Ask HN: Offer of Employment retracted
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a farewell lunch yesterday. Make a joke of it. If you get your job back, take all the same people out to lunch. Play up the funny side. Give a "take me back" speech, "what was I thinking" etc etc. Laugh at yourself, and the world with laugh with you. With your immigration status at stake, this is not the time to stand on some misplaced ego thing.
Better yet, who cares? Take your chances and apply to YC. This must be your calling.
What a careless advice, your are just telling him: just play lottery! With all due respect to YC, getting into YC is not easy.
Re: Ask HN: Offer of Employment retracted
#157 I can't go back to my current team now as it will not only look ridiculous
Re: Ask HN: Offer of Employment retracted
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to make a decision for my current company. They may even let me have it back. I'm on very good terms with my team too and they were in fact, disappointed to see me go. I'd just hate myself to go back with my head hung in shame telling them that 'oh my job didn't work out'...take me back. I had a farewell lunch yesterday. Everyone in my extended team knows I'm leaving. My exit interview is planned for ear…
I had a farewell lunch yesterday. Make a joke of it. If you get your job back, take all the same people out to lunch. Play up the funny side. Give a "take me back" speech, "what was I thinking" etc etc. Laugh at yourself, and the world with laugh with you. With your immigration status at stake, this is not the time to stand on some misplaced ego thing.
Don't say "The position didn't work out", which would cause suspicion and make you look bad.
Blame them (Flaky Corp) for acting unprofessional.
Go into your current manager, tell them you are in a really difficult and awkward situation. That you have had some communications very recently that have made you very uncomfortable with the new company and made you reconsider your decision.
Your Boss will understand that messed up stuff happens sometimes and will want to avoid interviewing for the position. Tell your Boss you honestly do not want to leave the company now given this situation and that you want your old job back.
Value yourself and take charge of the situation. Dont just allow an awkward ego-feeling or unprofessional behavior by Flaky Corp to own you!
Re: Ask HN: Offer of Employment retracted
#159The first startup I worked at made an offer to a summer intern to start the following summer (after graduation). Then the economy went south and they had to do a layoff. So in this case, they had to retract the offer. But they gave the guy 1 or 2 months severance pay--same as they gave all the employees that got laid off. I thought they handled that pretty well. And we wound up hiring him a few years later when we were growing again.
Re: Ask HN: Offer of Employment retracted
#160joboffer: CrowdFlower is hiring senior Ruby on Rails devs. I'd love to talk to you about your goals if you have time. Drop me a line brian@crowdflower.com