Don't have your personal ethics be subject to someone else's ethics, because if you do that, then it means you don't really have ethics. In general I agree wit

Don't have your personal ethics be subject to someone else's ethics, because if you do that, then it means you don't really have ethics. In general I agree with this, but the situation described usually happens when offers have expiry windows. I'm sorry, but a job offer is a major life step for me, and when a hiring manager frames it like a TV infomercial with a countdown timer, he's dealing on a lower moral plane. After all the time we both invested in this process, I don't deserve a slick sales maneuver. It's like how I would not stab anyone either, but when you raise a block of wood overhead and menace at me, it's self defense. I have my long term career arc to preserve, including opportunity costs: unsolicited hostile negotiating tactics thrown at me will meet a defense.