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Joel Spolsky On Tech Hiring: Beware the Exploding Offer

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Re: Joel Spolsky On Tech Hiring: Beware the Exploding Offer

#41
post #15
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethics? Not wanting to burn bridges?

I don't know about ethics, wouldn't everyone understand if a person's situation changes in 6 months? That's a lot of time. Say I accept an offer in December, then get a better one in May. Wouldn't the December offer be understanding of the fact that hey, I'm gonna have to change my mind here.

You'd wait 6 months to turn down an offer in the same month as your start date? That could screw them over for having an intern that summer.

Re: Joel Spolsky On Tech Hiring: Beware the Exploding Offer

#42

> Thanksgiving marks the start of tech’s most intense hiring season, as promising computer science students start looking for summer jobs and internships. I'm a student. Legitimate question, is this true? Should I be starting to get my act together for summer internships?

It was true for me when I was in that spot. For the internship I had after my junior year, my on-site interview was the reason I skipped out on class and came home a day early for Thanksgiving break, and I was on the phone with them several weeks prior. IIRC, I think I got the actual acceptance in mid-January.

Re: Joel Spolsky On Tech Hiring: Beware the Exploding Offer

#43
post #10

So accept the initial offer, do the interview with the #1 choice anyway, and if it works out, drop the runner-up. They don't need to be on your resume. The first choice doesn't need to know about any of this, though you might have to get creative with the interview scheduling. I have no doubt that the scenario Joel describes is real, but anyone who gets screwed this way needs a bit more of the "dog eat dog" mindset.…

Everytime, I would rather have a potential hire be upfront and honest rather than 1. accept a position, 2. we stop looking, and 3. they drop out. That's just not professional. And as Joel says, by them telling us they have other options we're going to work on getting them interested in coming to work for us. I once lost a really great intern who was headhunted over a weekend, left me a voicemail on a Sunday morning to tell me he was being offered a position and took it on Monday first thing because I didn't get back to him immediately - I guess he was being pressured the same way as we had a great working relationship. It was really a shame as we didn't even get a chance to fight back for him.

Re: Joel Spolsky On Tech Hiring: Beware the Exploding Offer

#44

> Thanksgiving marks the start of tech’s most intense hiring season, as promising computer science students start looking for summer jobs and internships. I'm a student. Legitimate question, is this true? Should I be starting to get my act together for summer internships?

Entirely.

At my co-op job (just graduated in May) we hired for summer starting in spring semester. If you start prepping now you can start applying day 1. Companies who know the internship schedule will post at the beginning because they want the most time to screen applications, even if that means doing 2-3 interview days on campus. The other upside is that you're not crunched for interview schedules. It's not unheard of for Google to get back to you a few weeks after you applied, or even after you past round 1.

If you start applying in spring, you also have the option of starting in fall if that's your initiative. This would probably fall more in the co-op category than internship. This lets companies overlap you with another graduating co-op. If their schedule is summer, spring, fall, you could want fall to overlap. Or if they do 4 terms it's summer, spring, fall, summer.

From experience, our interview pool sucked in beginning of fall, so don't apply for spring term if you can help it. We would interview in fall for the upcoming summer sometimes, but most of the time we were trying to hire to replace the students who stayed 5 or 6 terms. We found that it was mostly (though not entirely) rejects from spring hiring that couldn't find a job in summer and didn't go to school over that past summer. As a result of this happening for several years in a row, we stopped having on campus interviews in Fall, though if you applied to us directly we would interview you.

Re: Joel Spolsky On Tech Hiring: Beware the Exploding Offer

#45
post #7

I'm surprised this is coming from Spolsky. Spolsky's companies must be getting big. Small companies can often only hire one person at a time and therefore need short acceptance windows. Small companies (< 50 people) often have only one specific position open. It is unethical to make more than one offer if you hiring for a single position. Therefore small companies often need short acceptance windows so they can make…

1. Small companies don't recruit at colleges.

2. We're "small" by any reasonable definition and have structured ourselves so that we don't need to make expiring offers. It can be done.

3. Spolsky is talking about a very specific kind of hiring that bigger companies do, where the schedule is explicitly "interview in Q3-Q4, choose in Q4-Q1, start in Q2-3". It's this environment where exploding offers make sense.

Re: Joel Spolsky On Tech Hiring: Beware the Exploding Offer

#47
post #8

There's no mention of the flip side of this. I only have one position, and I interview multiple candidates, several of which are good. If I make you an offer, I can't afford to sit around waiting for weeks for you to make up your mind: if you turn it down, chances are my other candidates are already gone, and now I have to start the whole process again from scratch. Edit: fair enough, I missed that Joel was talking a…

There's no flip side to this. Spolsky is writing about college recruitment, where the idea is to interview at a bunch of companies and then pick one many weeks later. You are talking about a totally different kind of hiring, where exploding offers aren't (as much of) a problem.

Re: Joel Spolsky On Tech Hiring: Beware the Exploding Offer

#48
post #4

Campus recruiters count on student’s high ethical standards. This goes far beyond campus recruiters. Most companies, at least here in the UK apply the same mentality to job offers. The key factor is absolute honesty & transparency. As Joel alludes to in the article, be open and tell them you are considering all of your options before making a decision. If pushed, turn the tables and ask them if they would offer a job…

I work as a teacher in the UK. Until quite recently, it was normal practice to interview for jobs in teaching, choose the candidate, and then have the candidate sign the contract that day. All the candidates were kept in a room onsite until the committee decided who to appoint.

This system meant no one applied unless they wanted that specific job.

Teaching has become more like other occupations over the last 10 years or so, but the expectation is still that you decide within a few days of being offered the job. Must be a UK thing.

Re: Joel Spolsky On Tech Hiring: Beware the Exploding Offer

#49

Several people are looking at this from the employer side and claiming that this should be acceptable because it's hard when you have one position to fill and someone has a lock on it for a long time. While that is valid, especially for smaller companies, many companies definitely use this when that reasoning doesn't hold. I'm about to receive an offer for the summer from [very big company] that employs ~1000 interns…

date people "in your league". you can try to get with someone out of your league, but they're (much) more likely to string you along until something better comes along, or cheat on you. if you can't get hot enough people to date you, maybe you should work on yourself, and your social proof.

Re: Joel Spolsky On Tech Hiring: Beware the Exploding Offer

#50
post #2

There ought to be a database of companies that give offers with very short expirations. Not necessarily condemning the practice, but it would be good to know. Yelp, for example, routinely gives offers with a 5-day acceptance window.

This is every company. I've never heard of any company giving more than 3-5 days. If you work for a big corp, you know how unbelievably insecure management is, any delay at all would make them look very bad politically. When a hiring manager's whole career is based on appearances, which it usually is, a week is an eternity.

The career office at my school requires 2 weeks for students, including internships. Most of them play by the rules but I did have an internship offer that wanted a decision in 24 hours.
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