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by neerkumar 3096 days ago
In the US, in tech, it is relatively common for people to sign an offer and then change their mind and choose to not join. It happened a few times in different companies where I worked. It wasn't really a big deal, it is considered part of the game.

Note that the opposite can happen too and it is much more frequent. It can happen especially to students. They get an offer starting in 6 months after they graduate and by then the company has problems, like layoffs or hiring freeze, so they cancel the offer.

If company A is paying you much less than company B, that means they are paying you below your market value. So it is up to them to either match the other offer or lose you.

2 comments

  Note that the opposite can happen too...It can 
  happen especially to students. They get an offer
  starting in 6 months after they graduate and by 
  then the company has problems, like layoffs or 
  hiring freeze, so they cancel the offer.
Ditto...

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine was hired by a well-known tech company (based in NYC) but was soon laid off just 2 months later, together with several other newly hired employees, due to the financial difficulties the company had at the time (at least that's the reason he explained to me). It should not be that he was not fit for the job position, or something related to his capability (the job was an entry-level one...I knew him well and he was a fresh PhD graduate at the time).

I just feel that it is quite often that the value of morality is overlooked for profit (or at least financial) reason, especially for big organizations. The larger an organization is, the more rational and more abstract, and less human, it becomes -- especially for employees working at the bottom of the hierarchy.

Morality usually is valued most for individual human beings (perhaps that's also the reason why the OP is having the feeling of cognitive dissonance that is described in his question)...The rules of morality are quite different at a level of statistical aggregation of individuals...

This attitude doesn't really apply to Germany, where OP is from.