[abalashov]

It's not just a pride issue; your bargaining position in relation to your previous employer changes in this situation, whether you like it or not, whether or not your manager acknowledges it or not, whether you get the sa, me terms as before back or not, and whether they are nice people or not.

The fact is, you left, it didn't work out, and now you're back because you need something. Next time something good comes up and works out, you're going to leave, they reason. That makes you a risk.

[pyre]

If you're a valuable worker, then you are hard to replace. It would be in their best interests to make use of you while they have a chance to, rather than cast you aside over petty 'loyalty' BS.

The downsides of hiring someone new:

* It could take an indeterminate amount of time to find someone of a similar caliber (1 month? 3 months? 1 year?).

* It takes a certain amount of time to get comfortable with the internal codebase of a company, let alone the time that it takes to become proficient with it. This amount of time increases the larger the internal codebase and the older the company is.

* It takes time to 'bond' with the team and for the new social dynamic to become settled and understood by everyone.

* There is no guarantee that the new person that you hire will stick around either. You could spend a whole year looking for someone as skilled, just to have the person leave after 3 months before any of the growing pains associated with bringing on a new person are worked out. Then where are you? Back to square-one possibly spending another year looking for a similarly/equally skilled person.

You could side-step all of these issues by bringing this man/woman back on. If he/she leaves after another 3 months, who cares? He/she will be more productive during those 3 months than a new hire would be.