[munchbunny]

There's a growing misconception that any expiration date on an offer is an "exploding offer" and therefore a predatory practice. I have to explain that we can't keep the position open for them indefinitely, and if they don't want the job then we can't keep our 2nd choice candidate on the hook forever.

That's because many companies did start using or are using that as a pressure tactic even when there's no 2nd choice candidate.

In the last decade while demand for candidates was high and supply was low and investor money was easy to come by, you could probably safely assume that most companies were running open ended hiring pipelines for developers. That has matured somewhat, but college grad expectations might not have caught up.

Unfortunately as long as offer expiration is being used as the lever, you can't entirely separate the pressure from the need to fill the position. But working with the candidate to come up with a timeline is absolutely a more generous and fair approach.

[PragmaticPulp]

> you could probably safely assume that most companies were running open ended hiring pipelines for developers

If you're only talking about the biggest software companies, that might be true. It's definitely not true for the long tail of smaller companies.

> Unfortunately as long as offer expiration is being used as the lever, you can't entirely separate the pressure from the need to fill the position.

Two weeks is already a generous amount of time to wait for a candidate to make up their mind. If someone needs extra time, the hiring company is almost always happy to regenerate a new offer letter if they haven't already filled the position.

Companies obviously aren't going to reject otherwise qualified candidates simply because an arbitrary date has passed.

However, it's not reasonable to expect a company, or multiple companies, to reserve a spot for someone indefinitely while they decide which company to join. The show must go on.