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The first time I'm aware that Meta is taking back signed, FTE offers
- ipaddr 4y agoIf facebook makes you an offer and then pulls back can you sue? Does facebook owe you some form of money lost? You put a bid om a home and then try walk away usually means you get sued.
- the_jeremy 4y agoPromissory estoppel[0] exists, but is kind of hard to get any money out of it, and depends on the circumstances and state you live in. Note that, in general, if you renege on a job offer after accepting, all that happens is the company blacklists you. [0]: https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/labor-employment-law/job-hunting/promises-and-rescinded-job-offers.html https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/labor-employment-law/job-...
- TAForObvReasons 4y agoThis same sort of rescinding happened in 2008 to college grads joining bulge brackets.
- arcticbull 4y agoThey probably won't even blacklist you, if they wanted to hire you then (and you come up with a good reason for walking away) they'll want to hire you later for the same reasons. Be kind to your recruiters, have a good justification, and nothing should come of it.
- filoleg 4y agoGenuine question - if I sign an offer with a company, and then renege on it before the start date (e.g., because I got another offer that i like better), do I owe money to the company for some form of money lost? Not trying to defend Meta, they are gonna be just fine without me arguing in their favor on HN, but isn't this just the other side of the "you can quit any time you want without a warning" coin? Yes, rude and shitty to do, but I feel like it goes both ways, and it is kind of difficult to defend one without defending the other.
- atomflunder 4y agoI don‘t think this metaphorical coin exists in London, which is the location that the tweet is talking about.
- gpderetta 4y agoEmployment in the UK is effectively at will (after two years you can't be dismissed without a reason, but redundancy is a valid reason). There is some minimum notice period I guess.
- macintux 4y agoThe key difference is the balance of power. If I renege on a commitment to join Meta, they’ll barely notice. The converse is potentially devastating.
- mavu 4y agoMany countries have different rules for businesses and private citizens. e.g. as a private citizen in germany you have the right to return whatever you buy online, for whatever reason within 2 weeks. I'm not aware of similar rights if it is a B2B transaction.
- ollien 4y agoI'm fairly sure the answer is no. Yes, this is the result of at-will employment, and you're understanding the dynamic correctly. It sucks that it's legal
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- googlryas 4y agoI'm also curious how signing bonuses would work.
- drclau 4y agoFrom my experience, you get them with your first salary.
- happyopossum 4y agoThey usually state in the offer how and under what conditions they’re paid, and when they can be clawed back. Usually it’s a short period after your start date, but you still have to be working and have to continue working there for X days/months.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> If facebook makes you an offer and then pulls back can you sue? Generally, an offer that has not yet been accepted does not create a contract, so probably not. If it has been accepted, maybe, though in an at-will employment jurisdiction, probably not for the loss of employment, but maybe for reliance damages in some cases.
- drbeast 4y agoAt work so no.
- SoftTalker 4y ago> You put a bid om a home and then try walk away usually means you get sued. You might forfeit your earnest money, depending how the offer is written. But there are ways around that, and that's part of why some people advise having an attorney help write your offer. An attorney will include escape clauses that a realtor might not. Of course if there are too many escape clauses, your offer might get rejected, so it's a balancing act. People back out of home deals all the time. For example, if the seller counter-offers your bid price, or asks for any other change in the offer, you can just drop the whole thing.
- TheCoelacanth 4y agoYou can potentially get sued for backing of buying once you have a signed contract. It's rare because the seller will usually just take the earnest money and then sell to someone else, but if the housing market really plunges after you signed the contract, then they might want to go through the trouble of suing. Obviously, before you actually have a signed contract or if you have a contingency in your contract, you can back out without a problem.
- teeray 4y ago> You put a bid om[sic] a home and then try walk away usually means you get sued. Usually the other way around. You can’t make someone buy but you can make someone sell. The buyer may lose their downpayment if they walk, but the seller can be sued to achieve “specific performance”, forcing them to sell if they get cold feet.
- XorNot 4y agoI mean, that's not nothing though. Then downpayment on my house was 10%, and that is not a small amount of money to forfeit for a capital asset like that given a house is usually an "everything you have" investment these days.
- topkai22 4y agoI think the meant the earnest money, not the down payment. The earnest money is lot less- I did like $3000 on a $700k purchase. The down payment is between you and your financing, the earnest money is what you put on the table for the offer to the seller. Even then, you can generally get the earnest money back if appraisal or inspection fails.
- teeray 4y agoI did say “may.” Usually what happens is the buyer sues and files lis pendens on the property. The seller then no longer has a clean title, and must complete the litigation in order to sell their property to someone else (months pass in this process). The seller usually wants to sell their house more than fight to keep the money of a recalcitrant buyer, and thus returns the downpayment to the buyer in full.
- smabie 4y agoI mean you can't sue if you get fired so what's the difference?
- AviationAtom 4y agoThe first dominos are falling. The others will soon follow. When Big Tech makes up a sizable marketcap of the markets, and most folks are passively invested these days, it will hit everyone.
- TechBro8615 4y agoI think Cloudflare will be alright. That's where I'm investing my money.
- qeternity 4y agoI love Cloudflare, just want to own it cheaper. Fastly seems like a pretty obvious acquisition target at current price.
- SQueeeeeL 4y agoLet's go economic recession 2023, it'll be just like 2008 all over again!!! I hope the US Govt bails out Google and Facebook with billions of tax payer dollars this time while we all the voters realize there's no way to stop the bipartisan transfer of wealth to insecure financial ventures
- rafale 4y agoThese companies are widely profitable. Overvalued != insolvent.
- AviationAtom 4y agoWhere do most of them get their money from? Advertisers. Who makes advertisers spend? Consumers. What happens when consumers are unemployed? ...
- acchow 4y ago2008 hit the economy hard, but Google still managed to grow revenue by 31% (year ended Dec 31 2008) https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312509029448/d10k.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312509... 2009 was tougher, where revenue growth slowed to 8.5% https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312510030774/d10k.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312510... This all while unemployment rocketed upwards
- Octokiddie 4y ago> Meta's position until now was that FTE offers are NOT at risk. Up to even a week ago. This is the danger of fixating on the economic rearview mirror. And few things are more rearview than hiring and layoffs. Leading financial indicators such as yield curves and oil futures are painting a very clear picture and it's not good.
- mysecretaccount 4y ago> Leading financial indicators such as yield curves and oil futures are painting a very clear picture and it's not good. Care to elaborate?
- bobkazamakis 4y ago[flagged]
- qeternity 4y agoThey don’t know the future, but they are leading indicators, so their current state often has important correlations to broad economic health in the future.
- bobkazamakis 4y agoand those leading indicators are so accurate that everyone following them does nothing but profit? huh. You've really found the secret!
- Dylan16807 4y agoWhen they said not to fixate on looking back, that was not a suggestion to fixate on these indicators instead. Chill.
- kasey_junk 4y agoThe yield curve has been typically inverted for the last part of 2022, which is a sign of an anticipated recession. Oil futures have also been down which is similar.
- ilickpoolalgae 4y agoI think roles in LON are considered probationary for the first 6 months... so technically I suppose they are not considered equivalent to FTE roles in the States. You normally go through a probation review in which they will decide to terminate, extend probation, or convert to full time employee. This question was also raised when layoffs were first announced as it was noted there is difficulty doing layoffs in certain European countries and particularly challenging if you're actively on-boarding people at the same tie. Not sure how much this applies to the UK.
- rcme 4y agoMost places in the US are at-will employment, so in that sense most US employees are constantly in the “probationary” state.
- ilickpoolalgae 4y agoThat's a fair point. I think what I was alluding to was that I'm not sure if they did any cuts in the LON office during their first layoff announcements due to potential labor laws as it relates to incoming folks. With these rescinds, perhaps they are gearing up to do actual layoffs.
- phphphphp 4y agoEngland’s employment rights are much less beneficial to employees now than they once were: nowadays, in your first 2 years, you have no meaningful protection beyond what’s contracted, it’s not until 2 years that you have employment protection rights that prevent dismissal without cause — an employer must go through the redundancy process to dismiss an employee with more than 2 years service without cause. If you’re at a company less than 2 years, your employment can be ended whenever, so probation doesn’t serve any meaningful legal purpose, it’s just an arbitrary structure a company can use to review employees and delay granting additional benefits. While you’re on probation, you’re still a true full time employee. (Employment tribunals adjudicate whether dismissal is fair, and dismissal for protected characteristics is never fair, regardless of length of service - e.g: you can’t fire someone because of their religion)
- snovv_crash 4y agoI know people a year ago who were being given temp contracts after interviewing for FTE positions. Not surprised.
- neon_electro 4y agoI'm one of those people! Naming and shaming, Insomnia Cookies in Philadelphia, PA didn't want to pay more than $100k for me full-time, which was already a non-starter, but they baited-and-switched an ostensibly full time job with benefits into a 90 day contract-to-hire arrangement.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoI just hope this emphasizes that individuals should never feel guilty or shameful if they need to back out of a job agreement that they made. I've heard stories of folks that accepted job offers, only to have circumstances unexpectedly change shortly thereafter, or to have a better offer come along. And I've seen these people have a lot of stress and guilt about wanting to rescind their acceptance. Just remember, it's just business. I guarantee Meta (and all other companies) are just treating it as business, and you should do the same. I'm not at all saying be rude, and it's important not to burn bridges, but remember that when push comes to shove a company will never show you loyalty beyond what makes economic sense and what is legally necessary, and you should do the same.
- randcraw 4y agoCan't agree. A signed contract is a promise. Reneging on your promise says only bad things about you. Meta's management famously lacks character. Please don't use them as a baseline for right and wrong.
- OkayPhysicist 4y agoCorporations are incapable of engaging in right and wrong.
- wolverine876 4y agoWhy do people repeat this corporate propaganda, against your own interests? Just think about it a little; it's nonsense in every aspect.
- OkayPhysicist 4y agoA corporation is like a computer program. It has a purpose (making loads of money), and a methodology to follow to do so. If a computer program wiped your harddrive, fried your CPU, and burnt your house down, you wouldn't swear a vendetta against the software, you'd hold the person who wrote it to account. Likewise, corporations are automatons. If a corporation does evil, it's because its leadership is evil. As automatons, corporations cannot have morals, because they simply follow their programming. You, a flesh and blood human, should feel no obligation to a corporation for any actions they take, for the same reason you don't write letters to a bollard thanking it for stopping a car that might have hit you.
- dom96 4y agoWow. I am so sorry to all those new grads affected. I was one of those new grads in 2018, I cannot even imagine the horror of having that offer rescinded back then.
- yodsanklai 4y agoIs that surprising or new? I think they laid off people who've been in the company for only a few days or weeks. I'm wondering if this announces even more lay offs. I see some people rejoicing about Meta possibly declining, but unfortunately, this is a general trend and is bad for everybody in the field. I'm personally very worried about this recession.
- sweettea 4y agoNo -- they laid off a broad swath across the board -- I know folks with 10 years experience who were laid off, although it did seem the layoffs were tilted toward more recent hires. (I didn't get laid off)
- yodsanklai 4y agoMy point is that they also laid off some people who were still in bootcamp. If this is correct, taking back offers doesn't come so much as a surprise.
- thenerdhead 4y ago> This is the first time I'm aware that Meta is taking back signed, FTE offers. I did a quick search on twitter and linkedin and found multiple posts about offers being rescinded from various types of jobs over the last year and even earlier. So much catastrophizing from these voices online. If you keep talking about everything leading up to a recession, you're gonna have a recession.
- jmyeet 4y agoThis was happening late last year when the big layoff was announced. Here is my advice to anyone, particularly in this market: when you accept an offer, don't quit. Do not quit until you've started at the new company. Before you start they can just rescind the offer. After you start they need to fire you. Remember you can just quit with no notice from your old employer. Is it ideal? No. But a lot of employers will have you doing nothing the last 2 weeks anyway. It'll just be handing off stuff and twiddling your thumbs. But most importantly, the company won't hesitate to rescind an offer or fire you for reasons that have nothing to do with you, even when doing so puts you in an extremely precarious situation (eg you may lose your work visa and have to leave the country). The company isn't your friend. it's a business and you have a business relationship. You're just terminating it, just like they can and do.
- ShamelessC 4y agoFuck all that. Quit the moment you feel it is negatively impacting your life. You don't owe employers shit if they violate the spirit of your contract, the only signal you can send to make it clear that you find that despicable is to quit. Everything else is toxic careerist bullshit. We aren't on this planet for long. You are entitled to a small rebellion once in awhile, particularly if it is merited.
- symlinkk 4y agoRebellion ain’t gonna pay the bills.
- ShamelessC 4y agoAgreed. Only follow this advice if you have the means to survive and no dependents. I am merely rejecting the pervasive generalized fear of quitting we all have instilled in us, that keeps many of us in toxic and/or detrimental work environments. We are so focused on not burning bridges even if we do quit, the company will not even know their behavior has effected you negatively.
- postalrat 4y ago
- Fatnino 4y agoThis will hurt them in the long run. Five years from now, Facebook will be trying to hire a new grad and Google will just steal them away with a lower offer by pointing to this incident. Facebook will have to throw even more money at new hires to get them to stay.
- shashashasha___ 4y agoya right, that's how it works. everyone are keeping track of what each hiring process screw ups each company did.
- jross225 4y agoMaybe not prospective employees, but competing recruiters would definitely remind candidates with multiple offers about the incident.
- dzonga 4y agoeveryone seems to be avoiding the elephant in the room: not everyone is meant to be working at these FAANG companies making obscene amounts of money working 3 hours a week. plenty of jobs to go around at non-sexy companies that pay decent and have decent benefits not trumped up benefits like free food etc, that other workers don't experience. once we start looking at software engineering as another "blue" collar office job then things will normalize.