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>I turned down the [exploding] offer because the experience got me thinking about the company’s work culture. Were the methods employed by the company to get me

>I turned down the [exploding] offer because the experience got me thinking about the company’s work culture. Were the methods employed by the company to get me to accept the offer indicative of their work culture? I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. Small/not-big-tech companies literally just have people that googled "how to do a programming interview for ________ language" and skimmed a youtube video, lifted some questions from some articles, and made you solve it in codepen. Extrapolating that to the actual culture is totally a miss.

sethhochberg 6y ago
From the hiring side, a (reasonable) expiration on the offer helps be fair to the other people who are interviewing, too. If I have a single position open and multiple people interviewing, as a hiring manager I really need to know whether my top choice is serious once we're having a discussion about signing a contract - because if they aren't, or are still trying to land better offers from other places because they have concerns about my offer and aren't raising them, I have other candidates just hanging out and waiting. Its not fair to the other candidates to say "you're not my top choice from this round, please hang on just in case we need you", or to just stall while we see how things play out - nobody feels good about that. 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.
- tmpz22 6y ago
  From a candidate perspective its very hard to evaluate what your compensation should be without first pooling multiple offers. Its also very hard to schedule many interviews in a short period such that the offer letters can be compared side by side. 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.
  - Sodman 6y ago
    Having multiple offers on the table certainly helps - but I feel a lot of people know what they're looking for in terms of comp range when they're going into the interview process. Recruiters will usually ask you up-front what your target comp range is before even submitting your resume to a company. At engineer salary levels in the US, +/- $5-10k isn't going to be a life changing amount of money (especially after taxes), and is likely within the realms of negotiations anyway. The main reason for big jumps in comp are if you're applying to vastly different types of companies with wide levels of stock options on the table, eg FANG vs seed-stage startup.
    - tmpz22 6y ago
      Conversely a lot of companies don't list their range and a lot of recruiters, hiring managers, and other groups, won't list an accurate range especially in "newer" roles like devops engineering, ml-ops, security roles, semi-management roles, etc. I've seen anywhere from $80k-$180k offered for the same role disclosed randomly throughout the hiring process - sometimes its listed on a job board, sometimes you won't know until the offer letter.
      - jjav 6y ago
        It's hard to get a fixed answer because there is no fixed answer. Only government jobs have a strict predefined salary, private industry everything is negotiable. 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.
- devoutsalsa 6y ago
  I liked to ask the question, "If I extended an offer you like, would you accept it?" It helps facilitate a regular conversation about if & when someone would accept an offer, and if any steps can be taken to make an offer happen.
  - tristor 6y ago
    That question is one of my favorite questions as a candidate because it provides the space to have a realistic conversation about compensation and what is necessary to make the move a reality.
  - arenaninja 6y ago
    I was asked this question point blank and it took me by surprise. Then they asked me to name the comp for me to accept their offer and when I did they still exceeded it
    - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
      It's good that they exceeded it. IIUC, generally accepted negotiation theory says that the first person to name a number loses.
      - kmonsen 6y ago
        Yeah, if I name a number and you exceed it that shows you want me. If you force me to name a number and you still come in below that is going to be a no even though I might have accepted it if you didn’t force me to give a number. 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.
  - chrismcb 6y ago
    How is this a good question? The only acceptable answer is "yes" otherwise the interview is over.
- vmception 6y ago
  Exploding offers are bluffs. We all know the team wanted someone that could hit the ground running yesterday for the last 6 months.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    Yes, salespeople call it the impending doom close. If you don’t buy this car/house/holiday today it will be gone tomorrow.
  - BossingAround 6y ago
    That is my experience as well. Every time I got an "exploding offer", I said "Thank you, but I need more time because I'm interviewing with other companies." This was always met with an "of course". 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.
    - vmception 6y ago
      > 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.
  - yellowstuff 6y ago
    That is certainly not true in all cases. It's possible that there's a second choice candidate, and the hiring manager wants to extend an offer to them as soon as the other candidate declines. 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.
    - 6y ago
- david38 6y ago
  The hypocrisy is that to even get to the point where you have a 24 / 48 hour exploding offer, you (the candidate) had to often wait weeks to get a response to the application, phone screen, on-site, decision. 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.
  - majormajor 6y ago
    One thing I am very careful about now is to try to keep offer terms from being a surprise. 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.
  - nickff 6y ago
    Well, it's an asymmetrical situation; you had to wait to get an initial response, but on the other hand, you can keep interviewing while the offer is on the table. I think the explosion timer is simply a response to the fact that it's not an exclusive relationship (yet), but the company cannot explore other options while the offer is out. I am not even sure how to judge fairness; do you have a specific moral/ethical framework in mind?
    - heavenlyblue 6y ago
      > but the company cannot explore other options while the offer is out. That’s not how it works in most companies
  - bluGill 6y ago
- glitchc 6y ago
  It’s quite fair. Are you hiring the best candidate or just any candidate? If the former, you make your offer to the best candidate and wait a reasonable time for their response, a week is usually sufficient. If you wish to offer to any candidate, offer to them all and see who accepts, but as you may find out, that’s not actually legal. 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.
  - anonymoushn 6y ago
    companies apparently have no issue rescinding offers, so I wonder whether it is really illegal to give verbal offers to n candidates and then rescind n-1 of them.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Maybe not illegal but seriously crappy and amoral behavior.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
        Immoral, not amoral.
- Sodman 6y ago
  You have to take it on a case by case basis. I think the important thing is to have a candid conversation between the candidate and the employer. "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.
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  I think I sympathise with companies hiring for a single position. It’s hard to organise timing with several candidates and recruiting is expensive. If they’re a large company, I see it as a signal that they believe the candidate has a good chance of finding a better offer elsewhere given time. 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.
- jjav 6y ago
  Exactly, the company needs to know whether to tell the other candidates in queue to go away, or pause for a while. They can't wait indefinitly so an expiration on the offer is reasonable. 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.
ptero 6y ago
The problem I have with the setup the author listed is not the exploding part, it's the pressure to accept and calls from the hiring manager pressing to accept. All well within the exploding offer window. If the team has this attitude before hiring, it often indicates that it will be "we need A B and C done by first thing Monday morning" after joining. My 2c.
- vmception 6y ago
  You can optimize for avoiding that and still wind up in that exact situation. This is a complete non-signal.
  - yokaze 6y ago
    Sure, you can still the up in that situation. But what are the chances that the hiring manager will pester you within the time frame you supposedly have for considering the offer and then won't do the same when you are employed with your actual tasks? I would put it close to zero.
neilv 6y ago
> I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. If people in a company don't know what they're doing, yet (it appears) have a deathgrip belief in the equivalent of something they found on StackOverflow or in a blog post... doesn't that reflect something about the company? Or, given that this seems to be a pretty common dysfunction in our industry right now, with not a lot of good role models, maybe any particular org having that problem doesn't reflect too much on them. At the same time, maybe the situation means that an org not cargo-culting, and trying to do it better, tells us something more, and positive, about that org?
- vkou 6y ago
  > If people in a company don't know what they're doing, yet (it appears) have a deathgrip belief in the equivalent of something they found on StackOverflow or in a blog post... doesn't that reflect something about the company? No, all that it reflects is that the company does not prioritize hiring people who interview well, or training people to interview well. The company also probably does not prioritize hiring people who speak Finnish, or training people to speak Finnish. Neither of these two signals are any indication that the day-to-day work environment is going to suck.
  - walshemj 6y ago
    The "deathgrip" is the red flag here
    - vkou 6y ago
      I have doubts that someone stepping in for 2 hours of interviews can consistently and accurately determine whether or not the company in question is in the deathgrip of stack overflow fads and dumb blog posts. In anything but the most egregious cases, anyone making such an assertion tells me more about themselves, than it does about their interviewers. In the rest, the correct judgement to make after a bad interview experience is "I don't have enough information to make an accurate judgement about how this company runs."
goatinaboat 6y ago
Extrapolating that to the actual culture is totally a miss. That says to me that the culture of the company is based on hacking it together at the last minute. I've never come across a company with a slick recruitment process that wasn't technologically adept too.
statstutor 6y ago
"I don't know how to do this, so I will google and skim a youtube video" is very much a culture, isn't it?
beforeolives 6y ago
This isn't the author's reaction to the interview process, it's their reaction to the way the company tried to pressure them into accepting the offer. > Then the pressure started, incessant calls from the hiring manager and the VP of Engineering, back-to-back emails, all within the allotted time. I agree with the author that it's a red flag - it communicates that they don't respect boundaries or behave professionally.
- weston 6y ago
  You’re right, the author isn’t just complaining about the exploding offer, but the high-pressure boiler room sales tactics. It just reeks of desperation, good for him for knowing his worth and walking away.
kevinskii 6y ago
I completely agree. I work for a big company. I've been here for 18 years. It is a fantastic place to work. The people, the pay, the flexibility, the meaningful work, all are great. No place is perfect, but I haven't yet found anywhere I'd rather be. However, our hiring process is sometimes shameful. You name it, we've probably done it. We've ghosted candidates that did really well in their interview. We've taken weeks to make an offer, and we've asked candidates to fly across the country for a 2nd onsite interview because some middle manager thought that Team X should talk to them. We're getting better, but sometimes there are legitimate reasons for things like delays and ghosting that can't be disclosed to the candidate. I try to keep this in mind when I get treated similarly by other companies.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  > We're getting better, but sometimes there are legitimate reasons for things like delays and ghosting that can't be disclosed to the candidate. Can you elaborate? I'm having trouble imagining a legitimate reason to ghost a candidate, other than a court order or National Security Letter.
  - kevinskii 6y ago
    We make medical devices. They are surprisingly complicated things, and many peoples' lives depend on them. There's also a lot of ways in which they might potentially fail, and these failures can manifest years after the product has been in the field. When there's even the slightest hint of a potential safety issue, it quickly becomes the top priority for a whole bunch of people. Most issues turn out to be false alarms, but we can never assume that. Lots of other things get put on hold, including hiring. If you're an unlucky candidate who happens to interview right before one of these shit storms, you might be ghosted for a couple of weeks at least. Obviously we can't share the reasons for the ghosting, as much as we'd like to. Even a polite response from HR like, "Sally really enjoyed talking to you but she's unexpectedly tied up in something" can be market-moving information if you find Sally's role on LinkedIn and tie it to recent news about the company.
    - 6y ago
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duxup 6y ago
At a previous large company more than once I had to explain that the interview process 'is HR's show'...but once the job starts it is now 'our show' and they don't have to worry about that song and dance anymore. It's frustrating that it is that way, but the hiring at that company was a whole other song and dance that took very little input from anyone about the hiring process.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  > but the hiring at that company was a whole other song and dance that took very little input from anyone about the hiring process. That doesn't sound healthy to me.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    For sure, seem like they will treat lots of other things the same. What about comp? Promotions?
    - duxup 6y ago
      The company was large and paid well, outside of very few situations HR didn't actually decide what people got paid, they just clogged up the recruiting, interview, and actually finalizing the OK to hire someone process.
  - duxup 6y ago
    Sadly that is my experience with HR at most any mid to large size company.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  That’s not how it works at all. First of all interviews are a two way interview. Your company will be judged based on it. Also people come in touch with hr later, and usually in high pressure situations. If HR was difficult during the interview that’s a big red flag for later on in case you have to deal with them.
  - 6y ago
WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
I have personally given up on "whiteboarding people"... reminds me of waterboarding. I skim the resume, underline anything we use internally and talk to them about experiences. We've done over 300 interviews in the last expansion year (2017) because we had to build a brand new development office (+50 devs). After hiring all of these people, we've quantified this as three things: Curiosity, Ability to Learn and Ability to Listen. 2 out of 3 is good, but 3 is best. Almost every person we've hired who has been a success has had some of these, they're willing to be curious about new technologies and how things work, they are capable of learning (desiring isn't the same thing, they are capable of it), and listening is a good trait for enabling communication. It is still possible that we chose these traits yet rejected other traits which are far more successful, and there is a chance we also rejected good people who would have also succeeded.
- beforeolives 6y ago
  You can't really quantify attributes like curiosity, ability to learn and ability to listen so it's difficult to interview for them without having all kinds of biases sneak in. How do you deal with this in your process?
  - flyinglizard 6y ago
    You just speak with the person about their interests, hobbies, past projects they’ve done.
  - f6v 6y ago
    Nice try, AI! We, humans, will never reveal our secrets. And you, my friend, won't replace us in this soon.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
    > can't really quantify attributes like curiosity, ability to learn and ability to listen You can get a feel for it... ask about personal projects, then follow-up on why. The best candidates will cop to "I wanted to check out the new tech (curiosity)", "I wanted to learn the new programming language (learning)". Listening is a little bit more difficult to quantify, but we're mostly looking at people who know how to follow the flow of a conversation (a good friend once told me it's like a battle, their side shoots a little bit, we shoot a little bit back and back and forth) Edit: Some people don't have personal projects and that's fine, you can ask what they would like to learn or if they want to learn something. Someone who just rolls in to write some code for a paycheck is perfectly fine but if someone has a desire to learn something, it's a good trailing indicator.
kelnos 6y ago
I don't think what you're talking about applies to the particular criticism leveled in the post. The company gave him 72 hours to accept an offer. To me, that's a red flag right there. And then they started pestering him (well before the 72 hour time limit) to accept the offer. If this had just been HR or the recruiter, I'd find it annoying, but perhaps not a big red flag. But the VP and hiring manager were calling him. To me this says that they are pushy people who don't respect boundaries (not even the boundaries they themselves lay out!). I would be very worried about those attitudes from my boss-to-be and boss's-boss-to-be when it comes to project scheduling and deadlines. Even if this doesn't reflect company culture as a whole, it certainly reflects the behavior of the people who would be in my direct reporting chain, and that's not the type of people I want to work for.
- temp667 6y ago
  72 hours is not a quick timeline. I've routinely set shorter (48 - 36)... Just say no if you don't like offer so company can move on.
  - Espressosaurus 6y ago
    72 hours is quick. A week is more reasonable. I had one company try to pull a 48 hour decision on me and I straight up told them I was declining the offer if they didn't give me more time to consider it. They backed down. This is a decision that will impact my career trajectory, and I may have other offers coming. So yes, I want enough time to consider all options before making a decision with ramifications that will last years.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      I'm not sure it's so much time to consider as time to tell any others companies you're also through some part of the process with (especially if you're already through interviews) that they need to make a formal offer to you now or you're going elsewhere. Maybe it's just me but if you just have one offer letter in hand and have probably already thought about what it would take to take an offer, I can almost certainly make a decision in an evening.
jmcgough 6y ago
Really? Yes, sometimes you catch them an interviewer on a bad day or something, and often people are just cargo culting what they're familiar with, but if their interview process is a complete mess their company likely is too. Once I interviewed somewhere and their engineers seemed very burnt out, an interviewer I was scheduled to meet with had left the company, and two of the interview rounds seemed like they had no idea what to ask me. I ran away screaming as fast as I could. Another time I interviewed by a company who was recently acquired and missed my scheduled interview time (twice!) so I decided to withdraw. My friend working there left the company a year later, saying that it was a complete mess there. Otoh a friend accepted an offer at a company because of their interview process - it was extremely well thought out and designed to be respectful of candidates and test what really mattered. Those values and mindset carried over to her experience at the company.
Taylor_OD 6y ago
Yes and no. At a smaller company? Probably. But after a certain point many companies realize their interview process is a mess or sloppy and bring someone in to standardize it/spend time standardizing it. Will the DevOps team that interviews for 1 role a year working on a very specific platform still have a wonky interview process that might but something the manager put together or just feels like asking? Sure but on average the company will have their shit together. If they haven't done this then it is reflective of the culture. Why didnt they do this? Do they not really care about recruiting? The experience potential new hires have during the interview process? Do they just not think its important? Those are all things that are reflective of the culture.
temp667 6y ago
>I turned down the [exploding] offer because the experience got me thinking about the company’s work culture. Were the methods employed by the company to get me to accept the offer indicative of their work culture? What I line - I would never hire this person. There are people who see big deals when much more obvious reasons exist, they just can't see beyond themselves. In this case, orgs I work with our small, we almost always have a #2 and #3 candidate ready to go. It's rude to drag this out more than it needs to be for everyone, and it tells you how interested someone is if they want to sit on an offer. 2 days, let us know. If you are not interested, fine. Note, I've normally already talked through comp packages and ranges early and asked them if this is in the range or what they are looking for. If they have been straight at this stage I normally get offers signed within hours. That's a good sign for everyone.

sethhochberg 6y ago

From the hiring side, a (reasonable) expiration on the offer helps be fair to the other people who are interviewing, too. If I have a single position open and multiple people interviewing, as a hiring manager I really need to know whether my top choice is serious once we're having a discussion about signing a contract - because if they aren't, or are still trying to land better offers from other places because they have concerns about my offer and aren't raising them, I have other candidates just hanging out and waiting. Its not fair to the other candidates to say "you're not my top choice from this round, please hang on just in case we need you", or to just stall while we see how things play out - nobody feels good about that. 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.

tmpz22 6y ago
From a candidate perspective its very hard to evaluate what your compensation should be without first pooling multiple offers. Its also very hard to schedule many interviews in a short period such that the offer letters can be compared side by side. 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.
- Sodman 6y ago
  Having multiple offers on the table certainly helps - but I feel a lot of people know what they're looking for in terms of comp range when they're going into the interview process. Recruiters will usually ask you up-front what your target comp range is before even submitting your resume to a company. At engineer salary levels in the US, +/- $5-10k isn't going to be a life changing amount of money (especially after taxes), and is likely within the realms of negotiations anyway. The main reason for big jumps in comp are if you're applying to vastly different types of companies with wide levels of stock options on the table, eg FANG vs seed-stage startup.
  - tmpz22 6y ago
    Conversely a lot of companies don't list their range and a lot of recruiters, hiring managers, and other groups, won't list an accurate range especially in "newer" roles like devops engineering, ml-ops, security roles, semi-management roles, etc. I've seen anywhere from $80k-$180k offered for the same role disclosed randomly throughout the hiring process - sometimes its listed on a job board, sometimes you won't know until the offer letter.
    - jjav 6y ago
      It's hard to get a fixed answer because there is no fixed answer. Only government jobs have a strict predefined salary, private industry everything is negotiable. 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.
devoutsalsa 6y ago
I liked to ask the question, "If I extended an offer you like, would you accept it?" It helps facilitate a regular conversation about if & when someone would accept an offer, and if any steps can be taken to make an offer happen.
- tristor 6y ago
  That question is one of my favorite questions as a candidate because it provides the space to have a realistic conversation about compensation and what is necessary to make the move a reality.
- arenaninja 6y ago
  I was asked this question point blank and it took me by surprise. Then they asked me to name the comp for me to accept their offer and when I did they still exceeded it
  - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    It's good that they exceeded it. IIUC, generally accepted negotiation theory says that the first person to name a number loses.
    - kmonsen 6y ago
      Yeah, if I name a number and you exceed it that shows you want me. If you force me to name a number and you still come in below that is going to be a no even though I might have accepted it if you didn’t force me to give a number. 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.
- chrismcb 6y ago
  How is this a good question? The only acceptable answer is "yes" otherwise the interview is over.
vmception 6y ago
Exploding offers are bluffs. We all know the team wanted someone that could hit the ground running yesterday for the last 6 months.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Yes, salespeople call it the impending doom close. If you don’t buy this car/house/holiday today it will be gone tomorrow.
- BossingAround 6y ago
  That is my experience as well. Every time I got an "exploding offer", I said "Thank you, but I need more time because I'm interviewing with other companies." This was always met with an "of course". 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.
  - vmception 6y ago
    > 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.
- yellowstuff 6y ago
  That is certainly not true in all cases. It's possible that there's a second choice candidate, and the hiring manager wants to extend an offer to them as soon as the other candidate declines. 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.
  - 6y ago
david38 6y ago
The hypocrisy is that to even get to the point where you have a 24 / 48 hour exploding offer, you (the candidate) had to often wait weeks to get a response to the application, phone screen, on-site, decision. 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.
- majormajor 6y ago
  One thing I am very careful about now is to try to keep offer terms from being a surprise. 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.
- nickff 6y ago
  Well, it's an asymmetrical situation; you had to wait to get an initial response, but on the other hand, you can keep interviewing while the offer is on the table. I think the explosion timer is simply a response to the fact that it's not an exclusive relationship (yet), but the company cannot explore other options while the offer is out. I am not even sure how to judge fairness; do you have a specific moral/ethical framework in mind?
  - heavenlyblue 6y ago
    > but the company cannot explore other options while the offer is out. That’s not how it works in most companies
- bluGill 6y ago
glitchc 6y ago
It’s quite fair. Are you hiring the best candidate or just any candidate? If the former, you make your offer to the best candidate and wait a reasonable time for their response, a week is usually sufficient. If you wish to offer to any candidate, offer to them all and see who accepts, but as you may find out, that’s not actually legal. 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.
- anonymoushn 6y ago
  companies apparently have no issue rescinding offers, so I wonder whether it is really illegal to give verbal offers to n candidates and then rescind n-1 of them.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Maybe not illegal but seriously crappy and amoral behavior.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      Immoral, not amoral.
Sodman 6y ago
You have to take it on a case by case basis. I think the important thing is to have a candid conversation between the candidate and the employer. "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.
dan-robertson 6y ago
I think I sympathise with companies hiring for a single position. It’s hard to organise timing with several candidates and recruiting is expensive. If they’re a large company, I see it as a signal that they believe the candidate has a good chance of finding a better offer elsewhere given time. 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.
jjav 6y ago
Exactly, the company needs to know whether to tell the other candidates in queue to go away, or pause for a while. They can't wait indefinitly so an expiration on the offer is reasonable. 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.

ptero 6y ago

The problem I have with the setup the author listed is not the exploding part, it's the pressure to accept and calls from the hiring manager pressing to accept. All well within the exploding offer window. If the team has this attitude before hiring, it often indicates that it will be "we need A B and C done by first thing Monday morning" after joining. My 2c.

vmception 6y ago
You can optimize for avoiding that and still wind up in that exact situation. This is a complete non-signal.
- yokaze 6y ago
  Sure, you can still the up in that situation. But what are the chances that the hiring manager will pester you within the time frame you supposedly have for considering the offer and then won't do the same when you are employed with your actual tasks? I would put it close to zero.

neilv 6y ago

> I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. If people in a company don't know what they're doing, yet (it appears) have a deathgrip belief in the equivalent of something they found on StackOverflow or in a blog post... doesn't that reflect something about the company? Or, given that this seems to be a pretty common dysfunction in our industry right now, with not a lot of good role models, maybe any particular org having that problem doesn't reflect too much on them. At the same time, maybe the situation means that an org not cargo-culting, and trying to do it better, tells us something more, and positive, about that org?

vkou 6y ago
> If people in a company don't know what they're doing, yet (it appears) have a deathgrip belief in the equivalent of something they found on StackOverflow or in a blog post... doesn't that reflect something about the company? No, all that it reflects is that the company does not prioritize hiring people who interview well, or training people to interview well. The company also probably does not prioritize hiring people who speak Finnish, or training people to speak Finnish. Neither of these two signals are any indication that the day-to-day work environment is going to suck.
- walshemj 6y ago
  The "deathgrip" is the red flag here
  - vkou 6y ago
    I have doubts that someone stepping in for 2 hours of interviews can consistently and accurately determine whether or not the company in question is in the deathgrip of stack overflow fads and dumb blog posts. In anything but the most egregious cases, anyone making such an assertion tells me more about themselves, than it does about their interviewers. In the rest, the correct judgement to make after a bad interview experience is "I don't have enough information to make an accurate judgement about how this company runs."

goatinaboat 6y ago

Extrapolating that to the actual culture is totally a miss. That says to me that the culture of the company is based on hacking it together at the last minute. I've never come across a company with a slick recruitment process that wasn't technologically adept too.

statstutor 6y ago

"I don't know how to do this, so I will google and skim a youtube video" is very much a culture, isn't it?

beforeolives 6y ago

This isn't the author's reaction to the interview process, it's their reaction to the way the company tried to pressure them into accepting the offer. > Then the pressure started, incessant calls from the hiring manager and the VP of Engineering, back-to-back emails, all within the allotted time. I agree with the author that it's a red flag - it communicates that they don't respect boundaries or behave professionally.

weston 6y ago
You’re right, the author isn’t just complaining about the exploding offer, but the high-pressure boiler room sales tactics. It just reeks of desperation, good for him for knowing his worth and walking away.

kevinskii 6y ago

I completely agree. I work for a big company. I've been here for 18 years. It is a fantastic place to work. The people, the pay, the flexibility, the meaningful work, all are great. No place is perfect, but I haven't yet found anywhere I'd rather be. However, our hiring process is sometimes shameful. You name it, we've probably done it. We've ghosted candidates that did really well in their interview. We've taken weeks to make an offer, and we've asked candidates to fly across the country for a 2nd onsite interview because some middle manager thought that Team X should talk to them. We're getting better, but sometimes there are legitimate reasons for things like delays and ghosting that can't be disclosed to the candidate. I try to keep this in mind when I get treated similarly by other companies.

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
> We're getting better, but sometimes there are legitimate reasons for things like delays and ghosting that can't be disclosed to the candidate. Can you elaborate? I'm having trouble imagining a legitimate reason to ghost a candidate, other than a court order or National Security Letter.
- kevinskii 6y ago
  We make medical devices. They are surprisingly complicated things, and many peoples' lives depend on them. There's also a lot of ways in which they might potentially fail, and these failures can manifest years after the product has been in the field. When there's even the slightest hint of a potential safety issue, it quickly becomes the top priority for a whole bunch of people. Most issues turn out to be false alarms, but we can never assume that. Lots of other things get put on hold, including hiring. If you're an unlucky candidate who happens to interview right before one of these shit storms, you might be ghosted for a couple of weeks at least. Obviously we can't share the reasons for the ghosting, as much as we'd like to. Even a polite response from HR like, "Sally really enjoyed talking to you but she's unexpectedly tied up in something" can be market-moving information if you find Sally's role on LinkedIn and tie it to recent news about the company.
  - 6y ago

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duxup 6y ago

At a previous large company more than once I had to explain that the interview process 'is HR's show'...but once the job starts it is now 'our show' and they don't have to worry about that song and dance anymore. It's frustrating that it is that way, but the hiring at that company was a whole other song and dance that took very little input from anyone about the hiring process.

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
> but the hiring at that company was a whole other song and dance that took very little input from anyone about the hiring process. That doesn't sound healthy to me.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  For sure, seem like they will treat lots of other things the same. What about comp? Promotions?
  - duxup 6y ago
    The company was large and paid well, outside of very few situations HR didn't actually decide what people got paid, they just clogged up the recruiting, interview, and actually finalizing the OK to hire someone process.
- duxup 6y ago
  Sadly that is my experience with HR at most any mid to large size company.
kmonsen 6y ago
That’s not how it works at all. First of all interviews are a two way interview. Your company will be judged based on it. Also people come in touch with hr later, and usually in high pressure situations. If HR was difficult during the interview that’s a big red flag for later on in case you have to deal with them.
- 6y ago

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago

I have personally given up on "whiteboarding people"... reminds me of waterboarding. I skim the resume, underline anything we use internally and talk to them about experiences. We've done over 300 interviews in the last expansion year (2017) because we had to build a brand new development office (+50 devs). After hiring all of these people, we've quantified this as three things: Curiosity, Ability to Learn and Ability to Listen. 2 out of 3 is good, but 3 is best. Almost every person we've hired who has been a success has had some of these, they're willing to be curious about new technologies and how things work, they are capable of learning (desiring isn't the same thing, they are capable of it), and listening is a good trait for enabling communication. It is still possible that we chose these traits yet rejected other traits which are far more successful, and there is a chance we also rejected good people who would have also succeeded.

beforeolives 6y ago
You can't really quantify attributes like curiosity, ability to learn and ability to listen so it's difficult to interview for them without having all kinds of biases sneak in. How do you deal with this in your process?
- flyinglizard 6y ago
  You just speak with the person about their interests, hobbies, past projects they’ve done.
- f6v 6y ago
  Nice try, AI! We, humans, will never reveal our secrets. And you, my friend, won't replace us in this soon.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  > can't really quantify attributes like curiosity, ability to learn and ability to listen You can get a feel for it... ask about personal projects, then follow-up on why. The best candidates will cop to "I wanted to check out the new tech (curiosity)", "I wanted to learn the new programming language (learning)". Listening is a little bit more difficult to quantify, but we're mostly looking at people who know how to follow the flow of a conversation (a good friend once told me it's like a battle, their side shoots a little bit, we shoot a little bit back and back and forth) Edit: Some people don't have personal projects and that's fine, you can ask what they would like to learn or if they want to learn something. Someone who just rolls in to write some code for a paycheck is perfectly fine but if someone has a desire to learn something, it's a good trailing indicator.

kelnos 6y ago

I don't think what you're talking about applies to the particular criticism leveled in the post. The company gave him 72 hours to accept an offer. To me, that's a red flag right there. And then they started pestering him (well before the 72 hour time limit) to accept the offer. If this had just been HR or the recruiter, I'd find it annoying, but perhaps not a big red flag. But the VP and hiring manager were calling him. To me this says that they are pushy people who don't respect boundaries (not even the boundaries they themselves lay out!). I would be very worried about those attitudes from my boss-to-be and boss's-boss-to-be when it comes to project scheduling and deadlines. Even if this doesn't reflect company culture as a whole, it certainly reflects the behavior of the people who would be in my direct reporting chain, and that's not the type of people I want to work for.

temp667 6y ago
72 hours is not a quick timeline. I've routinely set shorter (48 - 36)... Just say no if you don't like offer so company can move on.
- Espressosaurus 6y ago
  72 hours is quick. A week is more reasonable. I had one company try to pull a 48 hour decision on me and I straight up told them I was declining the offer if they didn't give me more time to consider it. They backed down. This is a decision that will impact my career trajectory, and I may have other offers coming. So yes, I want enough time to consider all options before making a decision with ramifications that will last years.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I'm not sure it's so much time to consider as time to tell any others companies you're also through some part of the process with (especially if you're already through interviews) that they need to make a formal offer to you now or you're going elsewhere. Maybe it's just me but if you just have one offer letter in hand and have probably already thought about what it would take to take an offer, I can almost certainly make a decision in an evening.

jmcgough 6y ago

Really? Yes, sometimes you catch them an interviewer on a bad day or something, and often people are just cargo culting what they're familiar with, but if their interview process is a complete mess their company likely is too. Once I interviewed somewhere and their engineers seemed very burnt out, an interviewer I was scheduled to meet with had left the company, and two of the interview rounds seemed like they had no idea what to ask me. I ran away screaming as fast as I could. Another time I interviewed by a company who was recently acquired and missed my scheduled interview time (twice!) so I decided to withdraw. My friend working there left the company a year later, saying that it was a complete mess there. Otoh a friend accepted an offer at a company because of their interview process - it was extremely well thought out and designed to be respectful of candidates and test what really mattered. Those values and mindset carried over to her experience at the company.

Taylor_OD 6y ago

Yes and no. At a smaller company? Probably. But after a certain point many companies realize their interview process is a mess or sloppy and bring someone in to standardize it/spend time standardizing it. Will the DevOps team that interviews for 1 role a year working on a very specific platform still have a wonky interview process that might but something the manager put together or just feels like asking? Sure but on average the company will have their shit together. If they haven't done this then it is reflective of the culture. Why didnt they do this? Do they not really care about recruiting? The experience potential new hires have during the interview process? Do they just not think its important? Those are all things that are reflective of the culture.

temp667 6y ago

>I turned down the [exploding] offer because the experience got me thinking about the company’s work culture. Were the methods employed by the company to get me to accept the offer indicative of their work culture? What I line - I would never hire this person. There are people who see big deals when much more obvious reasons exist, they just can't see beyond themselves. In this case, orgs I work with our small, we almost always have a #2 and #3 candidate ready to go. It's rude to drag this out more than it needs to be for everyone, and it tells you how interested someone is if they want to sit on an offer. 2 days, let us know. If you are not interested, fine. Note, I've normally already talked through comp packages and ranges early and asked them if this is in the range or what they are looking for. If they have been straight at this stage I normally get offers signed within hours. That's a good sign for everyone.