So I don’t buy this fairness argument. If we’re talking about fairness, the process would be super quick, and then I would get a week to think about a decision that will affect YEARS of my life. To say nothing of things like asking previous salary, salary expectations, etc. Everyone knows why it’s done. If you wanted to be fair, the salary would simply be posted with the criteria that would influence it up or down. There is a reason unions and public sector jobs do this.
Companies have access to far more market salary data than I do. It’s not close to fair.
My job is far more influential to me than the company. It’s 100% of my income and yet I’m only one of many for the company. This should be taken into consideration.
I am not even sure how to judge fairness; do you have a specific moral/ethical framework in mind?
That’s not how it works in most companies
In most cases people don't actually have two serious leads to a job at the same time. I know it is potentially years of your life that you need to decide on, but for most people there isn't a choice. If you are on unemployment you need to justify not taking a job offer or you lose benefits (this varies by state/country). Even if that isn't a concern, odds are you have one offer in hand and a few leads that probably won't call you in for an interview anytime soon so again there isn't much hope anyway.
if some company gives me an offer on day one that is good should I accept it or wait a week for some other company to give me an offer?
It cuts both ways.
> In most cases people don't actually have two serious leads to a job at the same time.
That's common for me, as I usually do a bunch of interviews around the same time when I'm interested in knowing what else is out there.
Most of the time I'm not really paying attention to my LinkedIn unless I see something that immediately catches my attention, which is rare.
> but for most people there isn't a choice.
If there isn't a choice people will decide and reply quickly, you don't need an exploding offer in that case.
If I know what to expect comp- and offer-wise earlier, then an exploding offer is just the culmination of the weeks of lead-up and thinking on it.
But sometimes recruiters don't want to give you that until offer stage. Other times, it's not so hard to get.
For this reason I generally indicate a 1-2 week response time to an offer letter. I almost always come in before that, maybe around 2-3 days, but I find it absolutely essential to accepting a job to have that breathing room. Even if I lose out of some offers, its still a better investment to be patient.
For context I've been in the industry 6 years with 2 jobs and maybe 12 interviews to date. Currently going through interviews for $job-3.
The role may be advertised at a certain level but most of the time there is flexibility in going up or down a level based on candidate experience and how badly you make them want you. So 80K-180K can be a perfectly feasible range for the same job posting.
I just had a 3 month interview experience with Apple and the recruiter was the worst ever, kept lowballing and giving small improvements and the hiring manager accused her of lying to him. It was a role that i care a lot about but after that interaction there was no way I could say yes.
We all know the team wanted someone that could hit the ground running yesterday for the last 6 months.
That said, I never got an offer from something like SV startup or a FAANG, so I can imagine it's totally different over there.
It's not.
They can choose to be dicks about it or not, but the way they use their leverage isn't any worse. Competition for employees is fiercer than other markets. You yourself can get away with being a dick to them.
Probably more common is an experience I was in- we found a good candidate, he wanted to finish other interviews before making a decision and I gave him a few weeks to decide, then later I regretted giving him so much time. It meant I had to either pause the candidate search for a few weeks or potentially waste my time and candidates' time interviewing people when there may not be an opening.
Of course if you personally were on the job market and were actually desperate because your spouse said "maybe its time to be realistic" and the bills were piling up, then you don't have the luxury of playing this game.
That seems unreasonable in a lot of situations. In my current position, yes, they did want me to start right away but I really did want to take a real vacation before I started so I negotiated it out to a month or something like that. No, it's not reasonable to offer to start in six months. It's pretty reasonable IMO to offer to start in a month. (I did accept the same day. No brainer. It was a good offer. It was my first choice company. I really needed to move on.)
This depends very much on the industry and the location. In much of Europe, particularly at senior levels, 3 months notice is the norm and between one thing and another you might start at the new company 4-5 months after accepting the offer.
But of course you are looking for the best candidate right? If so, waiting for their answer is ultimately the one that serves you best.
"I have a final round interview in two days with another company that ends a 3 week interview process, and I'd like to compare offers"
is a very different response to
"Thanks for the offer, there's 8 or 9 more companies that I'd like to apply to before making a decision, can you give me 2-3 months to get back to you?".
Having a conversation gives both the candidate and the employer another data point. How serious is the person about wanting to work for your company, and how much does the company want to hire you as a candidate? It also just feels like a healthier way to start the relationship.
I think from the candidate’s point of view, I don’t think the question is whether an offer is acceptable so much as whether it is the best offer in their search. Just as a company might like to interview several companies looking for a good fit and make an offer to the best even when others are acceptable, a candidate might want to receive several offers and accept the best even if others are acceptable.
I think a company would be fooling itself if it told stories about selecting for passion or something. If you’re not seeing any competing offers in your hires, you should ask why they aren’t competitive? Maybe your offers are very good or so bad as to not be worth trying to negotiate. Or maybe you’re selecting for the most desperate candidates. Or maybe you’re good at finding hires who perform poorly under whatever interview conditions are most fashionable.
That said, don't take the expiration date too seriously, it's not a hard deadline. If you want a bit more time just say so.
Granted, if you're getting very short exploding offers from big companies who are almost certainly hiring for a role continuously or in bulk, that would leave a bad taste in my mouth too. But if you're interviewing at the kind of company that may have budget for just a single new hire, and multiple people are interviewing, a reasonable expiration makes sure we're both mutually serious about eachother. I want to hire you enough that we've put together a (hopefully) compelling offer, you want to work on the team enough that you (hopefully) either feel good accepting the offer quickly or raising your concerns so we can discuss. If the offer isn't right for you, sitting on it as a backup in hopes that you can find something better is detrimental everyone involved.