If you make these your rules, you're virtually guaranteeing you'll play with others who think similarly. There is another move at every poker table: get up. Not everyone is playing poker. There are companies and people who interview with integrity. The veteran advantage is in knowing who they are.
Metaphors suck, I know
The other brings machine guns.
Maybe there is such a thing as absolute virtue, and maybe the army of swords has found it. Maybe it's worth dying on this literal hill to defend the way of the sword. Maybe they believe insisting that the world "should" work some arbitrary way will make it so.
In any case, by fighting this way they've chosen to lose. By losing they've ensured the values they're supposedly defending won't survive—so what was the point?
If your actual true goal is to preserve the way of the sword, you bring artillery and tanks and wipe the other army off the map; then you go back to your way. Or make alliances in which your swords can serve some purpose, or use diplomacy to keep the war from starting. Just anything that's not the least effective strategy.
If your goal instead is to feel Right, you fight as Real Men do and guarantee the way of the sword is extinguished.
There is no world in which you fight with swords against machine guns while ensuring the continued existence of the way of the sword. (There's an echo of the paradox of tolerance here.) You have to choose between defending it effectively, preserving it as much as possible in the world that actually exists, or doubling down and losing everything on purpose for nothing.
It's tempting to insist there is such a world, but that's just insisting on the way of the sword, again, except about possible worlds.
Further, you have dehumanize the attacker. They have agency and don't have to attack in the first place. Even then, your analogy fails because you can disengage from the "attacking force" (quit or not accept an offer) without surrendering in the theater of operations of the professional world.
I try to be good. I'd like that from others.
But when your bubbles intersect and you're in the same game, competing directly, other people's ethics absolutely do constrain the ethics you can choose for yourself while remaining effective. I'm not saying you should sacrifice your principles; I'm saying you should mind the difference between sticking to your principles and winning, accept they aren't the same, and not insist they always are or would be "if everyone just." Because everyone won't just.
Your principles may make you better as a person in some way (they really might!) but that doesn't mean they'll make you win. Not admitting this will make you less effective at defending them.
Maybe I'm getting away from the point of the thread, I don't know.
I guess in my analogy the war has come to the army of swords, like it or not. Team Machine Gun could have chosen to be nice. They didn't, so what now? The answer cannot be, "Well, then they're bad." It doesn't matter if they're good or bad: they're here. They don't care what you think. So what do you do?
And the American Service-Members' Protection Act…
If there really are no sword hills to charge and it’s all machine guns - then I don’t mind going down that way. I can’t imagine that environment is anything but depressing anyways.
That's not the way I took it, but if you're right I wouldn't disagree. Sometimes you can play a different game. Though strategies designed to win will outcompete and replace ones that aren't, so you may not have that option in the long run.
> You have to choose between [...] or doubling down and losing everything on purpose for nothing.
If you choose to double down you might get lucky and win, or some outside-context thing might happen and who knows. There's a range of not-impossible outcomes. The outcome doesn't justify the strategy unless the strategy produced it.
The unspoken rule is that things can change dramatically in a few hours and each party should deal with it - which means it's also totally ok to back out of the offer you received and move on.
Startups have "aspirational" speaking where they say they're using revolutionary "AI" and yadda-yadda to do such and such - even if they don't have any of that and there's nothing actually on the roadmap for it. It's a lie. You may want it but you don't.
If I say I have a billion dollars and fly to the moon on weekends - am I lying if I don't actually? In your words - no. I'm being "aspirational".
It was true when they made the offer, time passes and things changed, now it's not true.
It's a lie if it's false when you say it - not if it becomes false in the unpredictable future.
Yes, absolutely. It’s called integrity. I just bought a house, probably at a loss, at the top of the market, and could have backed out because the economic situation is no longer looking as great. I could have easily used a BS contingency to get out of the contract. However, I made a handshake agreement and asked someone to upend their life for me.
My own code of ethics is to do what I say I will. Maybe it’s not the most game theory thing to do but at least I can sleep at night knowing I was an honest person. There are things in life more important than money.
Not only this, but I think even in purely self-interested financial terms your ethical approach is superior over the long term.
Over time, truth and honesty offer a compounding positive spiral.
You make better decisions because a) the inputs are free of lies and b) you make them carefully knowing you will own the consequences.
Reputationally you garner trust which makes possibilities available to you (collaboration, quid pro quo, and low-friction litigation-fee business relationships) that are not open to unethical people.
How about Coinbase withdraws the offer AND gives the former-future-employee some money to reflect the fact that Coinbase really did want to hire them but now genuinely can't AND that this change has a real and negative impact on the former-future-employee?
Like, a payment on the order of a month or two of living costs (not just "Sorry, and here's $100")
Sure that's expensive, but it's still cheaper than hiring the person for months of time, what with salary, benefits, office and equipment costs, etc.
> This decision is not a reflection on the highly talented people we had extended job offers to. We will apply our generous severance philosophy to offset the financial impact of this decision.
Look at this from the angle of an insurance company pricing in risk. For example, I might consider a job paying 500k TC for a 1/3 risk that the company goes bust in 2 months. I might also accept an offer for 300k at a company that has a 1/10 risk of going bust in 2 months. And there are a lot of people who would accept working at a company that pays 150k for a 1/100 chance of going bust in the same timeframe.
The thing is, the overall compensation for all of the above scenarios is exactly the same, but the risk is priced differently. Unfortunately some companies are deceptive, and don’t fairly articulate the risk to candidates, which can wildly swing the market value of their compensation. When expectations doesn’t match reality, people feel like they were taken advantage of.
Just one or two months? Banks insist on 6 months of expenses these days when you apply for a mortgage with an offer letter in hand because they know that shit happens all the time.
Here's the kicker: companies have a very good idea of the financial shape they are in. It's just not possible that there was a sudden downturn in fortunes between the offer letter and start date. Except if a round of funding fell through, but an honest man doesn't hire on promises.
The corollary is that these days everyone is a crook.
It was true when they accepted the offer, time passes and things changed (e.g., got a better offer), now it's not true.
Isn't this exactly what's happening if you accept an exploding offer and then later rescind your acceptance if you get a better one? The job offer was the best you had at the time, so you accepted it. Somewhat unexpectedly you later receive a better offer, so you have to rescind the first.
I'm not necessarily saying I agree with this practice, but I do agree it's pretty close to what Coinbase is doing with the roles reversed.
Edit: to be clear, I don't mean things like knowingly lying beforehand, but if circumstances drastically changed, I would 100% expect companies to rescind outstanding offers, so I similarly wouldn't hold it against a candidate for rescinding their acceptance if their circumstances changed significantly. It's reasonable to expect both companies and candidates to act in good faith, but it's unreasonable for them to face significant hardship just to honour an offer if their situation changes.
Replace companies with jobseekers.
Some jobseekers don't do this sort of thing. That others do doesn't justify making this sort of choice with every jobseeker.
I've talked to recruiters who have been rude to me for refusing to "give a number" as in my expected salary/wages. I also do not recommend accepting offers and then backing out. However, I submit that there is no company, even if you founded it yourself, that deserves your loyalty forever.
Are really people so asinine to believe that hiring managers aren't lying through their teeth the entire time they talk to you? I guess HN is full of people who are naive or have malicious intent.
If anyone here thinks their manager truly cares about them (and you work in SV) - you're naive.
Your advice is not universal. Consider broadening your sample size.
When it comes to being “default alive” there is _zero_ consideration for the human impact. I could not agree more strongly that there’s all sorts of social mores around employee behaving well but virtually zero around executive behavior (you put an exclamation after CEO as if it should be surprising, when the opposite should be).
I’ve read these CEOs brag about “generous severance” that turns out to be 3 weeks.
WSJ reported less than a week ago Coinbase execs netted BILLIONS in PERSONAL profits to execs in the last year. Think any of that money could have been used as a rainy day fund to not fuck over people who resigned from their last job expecting to start at Coinbase?
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/coinbase-leaders-net-1-2-bi...
The amount of apologism for tech execs who act so selfishly over and over again, while the cogs are held to these insanely high standards of behavior, is infuriating.
Call a spade a spade. Brian Armstrong is a selfish piece of trash who dumped hundreds of millions of his company stock for his own profit while reneging on people who took his company’s word for what it was and put their financial health in his hands.
I’ve never been a cog. I simply refuse to. I take jobs where I’m valued and treated well, and I leave those I don’t. This is entirely possible if you make it a high-order goal. There’s nothing naive about it; I’ve made a good living this way for 30 years.
That's an incredibly privileged position. Sometimes, people resort to various tactics, including embellishing and ghosting to get ahead, especially when they feel like they have no other choice.
That doesn't excuse it, but it happens anyway.
What's important to remember is that the power wielded by the company and the employee is not symmetrical, so they have to be treated with a double standard. A company will always be better equipped to lose an employee or handle a rejected offer after a round of interviews than an employee in the reverse position.
Often it is also position that was earned by hard work and delayed gratification. You make it sound like OP is in such position purely due to luck but he obviously made some right choices along the way.
In my case, I have always acted with the highest personal standards of Ethics and Integrity. Frequently, the favor has not been returned, and I have had to learn to deal with it.
I will say that my Integrity was directly relevant to my career. I worked for a Japanese corporation, and they knew they could trust me. My employees also knew they could trust me.
It's entirely possible to live in the corporate world, without surrendering your moral backbone.
I talk about this with my son. A long reputation for consistent, ethical behavior is difficult to get, easy to lose, and impossible to over-value.
To be honest, I don't understand why any competent manager would lie; any high-performing individual you hire is going to bounce as soon as they realize they've been lied to. Always be honest about the current state of your team and you'll get people who want to help you succeed.
So, when they ask you for the budget, do you give them the highest possible comp numbers in your budget?
I don’t naively believe all or most companies do this. But I have been a hiring manager at two that do.
This is easy, honest, transparent, and gets both parties off to a good start. If I do my research well the range is pretty close to the market for what I need. If the candidate wants more they can either argue with me, or say goodbye and find another position.
Do you put in transparently (after all we're talking about being honest and transparent here) in the job description so that candidates know beforehand how they'll be judged?
Do you let the candidate apply again a year later? if they have grown and learned a lot then there's certainly no reason not to hire them this time.
If so then yes, your process is honest and transparent.
All the rest of it, absolutely yes. I don't hold a grudge if someone fails an interview, unless they're truly an asshole, or dishonest, both of which are exceptionally rare.
A human relationship with your manager with mutual care is possible.
The thing to understand is this: your manager is not the business.
Unless you're working in a truly tiny company, they operate under their own set of constraints and will have to make decisions they're not really happy about. If that means firing you or low-balling your salary, then sure, you may not care much for that distinction in the hurt of the moment. And maybe they really are out to get you.
But if you treat your manager like an antagonist, don't be surprised if they end up doing the same to you.
(HR is a different story)
The rest who want to stay are only there because they're making incredibly high amounts of money thanks to being at the company just before it went public. (They joined 5+ years after the company was founded - hardly part of the original gang)
Has no one ever been a manager? Have you never worked with managers who had to do these things? I've known many managers who admit to having to do all of these things. Some of them are proud that they did it - some are ashamed because they didn't want to but ultimately had to otherwise they would've gotten fired.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you do it because you enjoy it or because you have to - what matters is that you're doing it and someone is on the receiving end.
Genuinely - how many of you have ever done hiring while searching for a new company yourself? HN is truly full of the self-indulgent and self-righteous to think they're not doing this themselves or that this is wonderful to be around.
There are circumstances where this is ok and others where it isn't. Is it ok to hire for a company that you're retiring from? How about one where you can't continue to advance but you think is a great environment? What if you were at a startup that got acquired by a megacorp and you focus on hiring people who enjoy a big company environment?
IMO, so long as you are transparent about the pros and cons of the position, it's perfectly ethical and reasonable.
How often are people genuinely leaving companies because they think it's a great environment but it's just not for them? How often? 80%? 50%? 1%? (I'm guessing closer to 1% than 50%)
But at this point in my career I'm likely much more deliberate than average about making sure a role is giving me what I need as well as more deliberate than most managers about trying to find good all-dimension fits for my positions.
But when I play poker, I lie and deceive as well as I possibly can, without remorse or hesitation. That’s because lies and deception are part of the game.
Likewise, when I engage in an employment relationship with a business, I play by those rules.
It is complicated, and to a degree it certainly makes sense to act as though you have a commitment beyond what money paid has bought… but just like all companies do, when enough is at stake, you should recognize that it’s a business relationship and it may not be to your advantage to pretend a higher level of commitment exists between you than really does. It’s a tough call. Burning bridges you don’t have to is not good. Neither is playing the sucker for very long.
Edit: Yikes, I should have presented my poker analogy differently to be more clear!
Lying and deceit is good in poker, but definitely not in business, IMO.
In business the rule is something like this: Pretend that every sentence making claims about the future ends with "... assuming, of course, we either have a signed contract to that effect or nothing significant changes between now and then." That goes for your own statements and the other party's. I think you will do well acting truthfully with those caveats assumed (and avoiding those that don't act truthfully within those caveats).
A reply put it like this, which I like: present your "future-perfect-best self" and expect your employer/potential employer to do the same.