Or “no and we don’t like your attitude; offer retracted.” I think it’s rare, but it happened to me once and I was sore about it and am a bit less confident in my negotiating now (but I still do).

I would say any company that would retract an offer when you attempt to negotiate isn’t worth working for. Probably an awful culture. The only way I could see you losing out an offer at a good company is if the negotiation drags out long enough (weeks) that someone else comes along and agrees to take the role at X pay while you’re still negotiating.

I’ve hired many engineers. Neither myself, nor any cofounder has been insulted or angry by a counter-offer. Sometimes we said to ourselves “this is kinda high for someone at their experience level” and held firm or met in the middle, but most of the time if you ask you’ll squeeze at least 5K more out of it even if your counter was 30K higher than the offer.

I've never seen that happen, and would never do it. Not doubting you, but I'd expect this to be rare enough that it's worth ignoring.

The closest I've seen was someone with wildly out of line expectations (a developer who asked for basically the whole employee option pool to himself). Even then we gave a counter-offer (that he declined).

Personally I'd see it as a sign they're not someone I'd want to work for.

In hindsight, I overshot. But not by much. I considered their retraction to be in poor taste and poor faith. All it would have taken is a counter-offer to realign the discussion.

Yeah, I think you probably dodged a bullet. If people come to me with a ridiculous counter, all it tells me is they don't know what the market is like, and I'd have a conversation about that, and make another offer. If people come to me with a high counter but one that might be plausible, I'd ask them to justify it, explain why we can't/won't go that high, and counter.

If someone takes it as some perceived slight that you've asked for a higher amount, then consider they'd probably be equally offended if you asked for a raise down the road, and then you'd be in a bad spot...

Of course being able to not worry about being turned down is a luxury we can't always afford.

(Also, I have at times thought I massively overshot, and kicked myself because they immediately accepted; you'd be surprised how much of an increase you can ask for sometimes)

Unless you desperately need that job to stave off imminent homelessness, that's generally a good thing. An employer who outright refuses negotiation, or any request with a "no, thx, bye" is not someone you want to work for.

That might be a problem if you've only got enough money for this month's rent, but otherwise any company that would pull that would abuse you in other ways had you been hired.

Speaking of rent, you can often negotiate that as well! When I was living in an apartment, any time there was a rent increase, I would go into the leasing office and ask if they could do anything about the increase. I always walked away with knocking around $100 off the monthly rent.

I could see that happening if two candidates are at the offer stage and you delayed your acceptance by negotiating and the other person accepted right away.