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.
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.