[hn_neverguess]

Great, that's n = 1.

For comparison, I would have never ever reached out to you again. And if I met you in the hallway at some other place, I would have made sure that everyone knows how I feel about you.

Most people who worked at one FAANG also eventually work at one more during their careers. So if you screw over one FAANG, you'll have a hard time at 40% of FAANG.

It doesn't stop there. God forbid you live in the Bay Area, and you and I perhaps cross paths at a party, Burning Man, or any other event. And for crying out loud, you better not be connected to me on Linkedin, because people will be reaching out for backchannel references for the rest of your career.

The tricky thing about all this is that you'll never know. People will just magically stop responding, when you felt that things were going great. In my career of 20 years, I've probably been professionally disappointed in something like 4 or 5 people, and I can definitely think of 2 who have resurfaced in my life one way or another.

Tech is a huge space when you're starting out. But as your career accelerates and you end up gaining more visibility, that same space becomes very small very quickly. I would not mess with my reputation, as a matter of principle, but also as a matter of prudence.

[mynameisvlad]

> For comparison, I would have never ever reached out to you again. And if I met you in the hallway at some other place, I would have made sure that everyone knows how I feel about you.

Do you have a "burn book" of people who have wronged you or something? How would you even realize it's the same person a decade down the line? Why would you even care?

[kylecordes]

Even if a lot of managers kept a list of people they would never work with again, it's an enormous industry with O(N^2) person-to-person relationships. It wouldn’t matter.

StillI agree with many others here on: don't back out on a whim, only for a very good reason. Life happens.

[hn_neverguess]

Sure, if you couldn't care less about your job, then why care about anyone else screwing you over in your job?

But let's see if the inverse is true as well. If you deeply deeply deeply cared about your job (eg: it's your startup and you have exactly 12 months of runway, but it takes 4 months to source, vet, hire and onboard someone), would it matter to you that someone cheated you out of a third of your runway?

The truth is likely somewhere in the middle. That should answer why someone who is likely to reasonable care about their job and would likely experience a serious setback in their work would be really upset about the OP's actions.

[ipaddr]

You can blame other people for your failed gambles and slow processes. If it takes 4 months to hire and onboard.. fix that. If you were betting on this person to save the company make sure you offer enough so they can't refuse. Offer them half your company if that's what it takes. It is 100% up to you.. make it happen.. you are cheating yourself and investors by blaming a new hire that never was.

[hn_neverguess]

> If it takes 4 months to hire and onboard.. fix that

It takes an average of 58 days to hire an engineer in the US. [0] Add to that another two months to onboard them. [1]

> Offer them half your company if that's what it takes.

Wait - so someone accepts a job, implying that the comp was fair. And then quits a week before a start date without any notice (OP's story). Were you recommending that founders should pre-emptively give away half of the company on top of the original offer just to prevent the possibility of any one random person acting dishonestly?

[0] https://resources.workable.com/tutorial/recruiting-kpis [1] https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-to-onboard-a-sof...

[TechD00d]

I have no problem hiring qualified engineers in less than a month. The secret is to expand one’s recruitment outside of the Bay Area bubble and cast a wider net for diverse talent.

Whining about talent shortages gets annoying. In every case, I ask if they’re recruiting outside the region, recruiting employees from HBCUs and women’s colleges, considering candidates with non traditional backgrounds, etc and the answer is always “no.”

Your shortage is self-created more often than not.

[tuckerman]

In a downturn, would you put your startup at risk to continue making payroll for engineers when, after looking at your runway/product needs, a layoff is clearly the right call? Maybe, but I don't think most founders would (nor should they). It's not reasonable to expect employees to be as invested in the company as a founder when they have comparatively so little ownership.

I also don't think accepting an offer and later declining because you found higher comp elsewhere is dishonest. No salaried employee (where I live at least) signs a contract agreeing to work for any specified period time and I've never promised or been asked to even give my word to stick around for a set period of time.

[hn_neverguess]

> I also don't think accepting an offer and later declining because you found higher comp elsewhere is dishonest.

It truly is for one very simple reason - you accept and the hiring manager tells all other candidates that the company is going with someone else. If the person then flakes out, the company is in a difficult spot because the best candidates have several offers and as soon as you're out, they confirm with their next best option.

> I've never promised or been asked to even give my word to stick around for a set period of time.

There are reputable and less reputable companies. What Coinbase is doing is clearly shitty, but at least they are going to offer a 4 month severance just if they agreed to hire you and then rescinded the offer. Again, a shitty thing to do, but even so, you'll notice that they were not contractually required to pay anyone anything for rescinding the offer, and yet they are going to do that. Why? Because reputation matters.

[ipaddr]

Remember this was the person that if they didn't come onboard at that time the startup would die. You do whatever it takes if that's the case.

Now if it is a random person easy to replace giving away 1/2 would be crazy.

58 days is under two months and a startup could hire someone within a week. I've seen someone apply, the owner chat with them a bit, hire them and they were driving across country the next day. Not every founder has those abilities to sell the candidate and have the judgement and believe in themselves to hire on intuition. If you can't do that you might fail where others succeed.

[TechD00d]

If someone is that essential, it’s not hard to go from “at will” to mutual 90-day notice required. They want to quit, they must give 90 days’ notice. You want to fire them today, you still have to pay them for 90 days (including health insurance and other benefits).

People want things both ways. They want the flexibility of at-will so they can drop someone immediately, but they also want the employee whose work will make them very wealthy to be “committed” and “in it for the long haul.”

[hn_neverguess]

> 58 days is under two months

I engaged with you on a good faith basis that you're genuinely curious about the point I am trying to make. The above comment makes it clear that you're just trolling.

> and a startup could hire someone within a week.

The act of hiring someone _can_ take far less than a week. But it shouldn't. You also shouldn't be driving cross-country for any random startup you just met yesterday. If you haven't yet realized that hiring is not a competition in expediency, I doubt I can change your mind in a single HN comment.

[eropple]

> Wait - so someone accepts a job, implying that the comp was fair.

And if circumstances change, so does that implication.

[hn_neverguess]

When Coinbase's circumstances changed, they offered a 4 month severance - even for people who never worked there a single day.

I am not implying that there are no good reasons why someone should bail out after accepting. But you should have a very good reason for doing so. Someone else's offer that's $5k higher is not one of them.

Conversely, your company should also not fire you just because someone else showed up who is willing to do your job for $5k less. There's a certain amount of common decency that can be expected from both sides - if not for ethical reasons, then at least for practical reasons of not destroying your reputation.

[mynameisvlad]

I doubt that anyone, even someone as extreme as your example, would care enough about it a decade after it happened. More egregious things would have happened in the meantime.

[hn_neverguess]

Extending a job offer to someone means you met with them on multiple occasions, remotely and in person. I know I am not going to forget their face in 10 years. Would I feel a bit less wronged about them after 10 years? Of course. Would I lie in a backchannel reference? No.

[Apocryphon]

How does a founder with twenty years of experience bear such grudges against a single errant hire that got away? Either this whole hypothetical is talking about an employee number one type situation, or you must have been blessed with having never met anyone underhanded in all of your business dealings.

"Feeling a bit less wronged" is one thing, "making sure that everyone knows how I feel about you" is quite another.

[hn_neverguess]

There's also a lot of middle ground: - a friend is looking to take a bet on this guy in his company.

- we're looking for new members for our camp and this guy shows up.

- a female friend meets him on a dating app and tells me about him.

- this guy is being considered for a lateral move within his next company, and the hiring manager is a friend of mine.

- we're on the fence about keeping this guy or letting him go.

- etc, etc.

[mynameisvlad]

I doubt your memory and vengeance is nearly as crazy a decade since any event (however wronged by it you may perceive yourself to be) -- let alone something as incredibly benign as someone rescinding an offer.

In short, while you say that now, I highly doubt it actually would be the case were this hypothetical a reality. You'd have to be incredibly thin-skinned and vengeful to carry this much weight to something so minor.

[TechD00d]

I recommend NOT attempting malicious demolition of the careers of others; it’s not only unethical but it also can land one in a massive heap of legal trouble.

Attorneys love actions like those active career sabotage “revenge” tactics you’re describing, and sooner or later, someone employing them will learn the hard way.

If they’re lucky and get smarter, they’ll end up just having to write a public letter of apology they share with the world (including those they defamed the former employee to). It will have a negative impact on their own career and probably sink their chances of ever raising money again.

If they’re less lucky or unwilling to address an attorney’s letter, they’ll end up having to pay a fat seven figure settlement, attorney’s fees, and a letter of apology. VCs will be most unimpressed.

And in some cases, if they’re willing enough to go to court, they’ll be facing having their communications subpoenaed, their professional network subpoenaed and deposed about the comments, and will end up with a seven or eight figure judgment including punitive damages. VCs won’t even reply to their communications, and anyone deposed will associate the angry would-be saboteur with legal trouble.

[scarface74]

Your statement sounds much like the old “if you get caught doing $x at school it will go on your permanent record”. BigTech is so vast that unless you do something egregious it’s hard not to get hired back at the same one, let alone a competitor.

For every you that wouldn’t hire the parent posters, there are hundreds of managers that will.

No part of the hiring loop at major tech companies for ICs that I am aware of involves checking references. We definitely don’t do that as part of the loop. Our entire hiring process is based on how well you do in the interview.

[hn_neverguess]

Elsewhere in this thread I pointed out that you would want to future proof your actions for the rest of your career. I wouldn't bet on the visibility of my actions being the same today as it will be in 20 years from now.

[scarface74]

I’m 48 and I’ve been in the industry since I was 22. I’ve worked in companies with 10 people all the way to second largest employer in the country. In 20 years if I’m still having to work, I need to rethink my life choices.

That being said, especially with the acceleration of remote work (I live on the opposite coast) Opportunities are vast.

[ipaddr]

As someone with more than 20 years experience.. I always feared what you mentioned but your post made me question that fear.

Small companies may hold it against you and you may never have a chance to work their again but what are the odds they have a matching role and would you ever apply again.

The industry keeps getting bigger. I have never run into anyone I ever worked with in any other company.

I don't think it really matters.

The chances of seeing someone at a party or burning man or a ghost reference (they want your opinion on someone you never worked with?) is literally 0.

If you told everyone/everywhere it would make people question you.. why doesn't this great candidate (you wanted to hire them) decide to back out. What is wrong with this manager/team.. bonus is if you are successful impacting their career they can personally sue and take everything you own.

[erosenbe0]

I hope you're stance assumes you know why the candidate reversed. If you don't know for a fact that it was a cynical or frivolous ploy, then it can't have much bearing on their reputation. Perhaps they accepted the offer, closed their search, and something came up. Perhaps a bad thing, such as cancer or rehab or mental care, or a neutral thing like their military spouse was transferred.

[hn_neverguess]

The OP made it sound like it's not a big deal to do what he did. My reaction is based on that context.

[dudul]

> For comparison, I would have never ever reached out to you again. And if I met you in the hallway at some other place, I would have made sure that everyone knows how I feel about you.

Well, see, I don't even need to work with you to know I wouldn't enjoy it :). Spiteful much? And guess what, I bet the tech industry is big enough that it will never happen, so cheers.

[hn_neverguess]

I could respond with something equally snarky, but that would detract from the point I am trying to make. I would recommend you reread my message and try not to take it personally but instead ask yourself if there's a chance that the tech industry is not as big as you make it out to be. I'll give you two things to think about:

1. Most people never gain any amount of visibility in their lives, and that's fine. But why prevent that from at least being a possibility? What if it turns out that you have something interesting to say and there's a ton of people who want to hear it (eg: you become a VC or an expert in something). Not being able to benefit from having a personal brand should the opportunity present itself would be a hell of a bummer. You'll notice that I am being very careful with my own identity when giving unpopular feedback.

2. Sure, in 2022 it would be hard for a startup in Iowa to learn that you screwed someone over in Florida. But do you really want to bet that the same will be true in 2042? In the last 20 years, we went from no social graph at all to a social graph in every slice of our lives. What are the odds that in the next 20 years we won't see continued progress towards transparency and accountability?

Reputations have never mattered more, and will only do more so in the future.

[InitialBP]

Your argument hinges upon the fact that one company or person's opinion would hold enough sway to actually ruin your entire reputation.

Even if this individual or this company was exceptionally vocal about your betrayal, do you really think it would "prevent having visibility into your life as a possibility?"

The arguments for this are all over the spectrum, but I think _Most_ people fall into a moderate stance of, if you accept and offer and something substantial and unexpected changes your situation (an incredible competing offer, an unexpected opportunity, health or spousal related issues) then you should do what's best for you and not let loyalty to a business and a people that you don't even have an established relationship with yet have a negative impact on you.

As evidence by the Post here - Companies will make the same decisions when exceptional circumstances arrive.

I would also argue that anti-corporation/anti-business sentiment in the USA has never been more prevalent with r/antiwork in the spotlight, ridiculous inflation, a new outburst of unionization (e.g. starbucks) and CEO's under fire (Elon/Bezos) that a reputation for making tough decisions for yourself and not exhibiting loyalty where its not deserved might gain you more fame. Especially if some "SV Startup CEO" corroborated your story for you.

[hn_neverguess]

Not sure why it was necessary to put SV startup CEO into quotation marks. Also funny that you think that somehow Bezos and Elon are struggling. And lastly, screwing people over will not get you fame but infamy (regardless of how high the inflation is or what you read on r/antiwork).

[Apocryphon]

Well, so much for Elon.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31607248

[seattle_spring]

> Reputations have never mattered more, and will only do more so in the future

I guarantee there's at least one person per FAANG who never wants to work with me again. Probably a dozen others in different companies.

... And yet, here I am making seven figures and receiving a request or two per day to interview with various tech companies. If one won't hire me, 3 dozen others will. I have a pool of 100+ colleagues who would be happy to provide a glowing reference.

I do not think it matters nearly as much as you think, unless you live in a smaller city and limit yourself to only working locally.

[Apocryphon]

Orthogonal to this entire debate on employee conduct, what you call "transparency and accountability" is synonymous with social surveillance and the erosion of privacy. Instead of a state-mandated social credit system, you're describing societal norms giving way to an ad hoc total information awareness as pushed by social media websites and search engines, public record indexing companies and grassroots doxxers. Let us pray in twenty years more countries will enshrine the right to be forgotten.

[hn_neverguess]

Let's pray. But let's not count on it.

[ryanbrunner]

Ask yourself honestly, in this situation (dropping out of an accepted offer), what outcome would you have wanted? The person in question resigning themselves to working with you and being miserable so that they didn't go back on their word? I don't see the positive in having a disengaged employee who's only with your company out of obligation.

[l33t2328]

> God forbid you live in the Bay Area, and you and I perhaps cross paths at a party, Burning Man, or any other event

What, you’ll be so personally slighted that this person made a business decision that you’ll ensure to disrupt everyone else’s time at burning man/a party/ any other event?

[hn_neverguess]

I like how you minimize the ethical implications by calling it a business decision. I do agree that screwing over a family member is different than screwing over a colleague, but let's also agree that both are bad.

And what appears to be a "business decision" could be a serious setback for the person on the other side of this transaction. Granted, as a startup founder, I am more exposed than someone at FAANG, but don't fool yourself - either way, someone wasted a lot of time and money on giving you a shot, and more importantly, they declined all other candidates. It really is such a selfish thing to do, and while sometimes you have no choice (health, etc), I didn't get the feeling from the OP that he felt particularly bad about it.

So to get back to your original question - no, I wouldn't give you a pass because you showed your dirty side in a business context. And if I thought you were dishonest, I would assume that your dishonesty extends across all facets of your life, and I would think I'd be doing my friends a favor by letting them know.

[Daishiman]

> And what appears to be a "business decision" could be a serious setback for the person on the other side of this transaction. Granted, as a startup founder, I am more exposed than someone at FAANG, but don't fool yourself - either way, someone wasted a lot of time and money on giving you a shot, and more importantly, they declined all other candidates.

Yeah, sucks, that's life, if that triggers you emotionally you have no business running a startup.

[scarface74]

I hate to be blunt. But as a startup founder, you probably don’t matter to many of the posters on HN. Most startup founders pay below what we could get at a public company and all you could offer is “equity” that would be statistically worthless.

[hn_neverguess]

No need to apologize - what you're sharing is the accepted truism. And yes, it makes it hard to compete for the same talent that's also considering FAANG. I will be even more blunt - yes, you're likely to retire sooner if you took a FAANG job.

But there are three caveats:

1. That last statement is only true because most of the people who start or join a startup don't see a material increase in the value of their equity. But a little known secret in the startup world is that you only have to be right once. It doesn't matter one tiny bit if your previous 5 startups failed, if the 6th one ends up finding the product market fit. My batting average is pretty poor, and even so I am way ahead of anyone I grew up with. You only have to be right once.

2. People think of startup success as this all or nothing thing, where you're either super poor or super rich. In reality, if you give it your best and do a decent job, even if you end up failing you'll be getting calls from people who you would have never met in any other way. For example, I failed with a startup about 10 years ago and ended up at Square only because of that exact same failure. There's no way in hell it would have happened any other way.

3. Most startups are run by first-time founders, and most first-time founders are still early in their learning process. A direct consequence of that is that they are cheap. But every once in a while you come across someone who's had one or two big exits, and I guarantee you that they are thinking differently about comp. In PG's words, Apple could have given Steve Jobs 95% of their equity to lure him back, and it still would have been a great deal for them. Experienced startup founders know that, and they have levers that FAANG doesn't. There are two senior people in my current startup that I poached directly out of FAANG.

[Apocryphon]

1. "You only have to be right once"... out of how many times? 1/6? 1/10? Much worse? This caveat is nothing but an ad for lottery tickets.

2. Sure, startups are a fine place to hone your talents, show your worth, and network. Same as any other type of workplace. Who's to say you wouldn't have met someone else at a big company who could've gotten you into Square?

3. For every serial entrepreneur who truly has a knack for it and truly learned along the way, there are those who are persisting in error. You're combining your first and second caveats here, describing the possibility of networking one's way into working for a quality experienced founder who will be your lottery ticket.

Nothing wrong with startups, but this is just another set of hoary old truisms more optimistic than the previous one.

[hn_neverguess]

> out of how many times?

Let's do the math. YC has had 378 exits out of 4314 investments [0], so roughly 9% so far. Most investments have been made recently enough that those companies are still baking, so let's double that number to 18%.

The only other number of you need is how likely you are to get into YC. Their overall acceptance rate is 1.75% per application[1], so if you apply three times with the same startup, you get to 5.25%. That figure includes literally everyone and their grandmother, so let's assume you're deciding between a startup and FAANG. Well, FAANG's acceptance in late stages of interviews is around 15% [2], so your YC acceptance chances are around 33%.

Combine 33% and 18%, and you get 6% per lifecycle of a startup. If you try that with four startups, you're at 24%.

Is 24% a good deal? Well, it depends on the upside and the opportunity cost. Let's assume it took you 16 years to build 4 failed startups. In that time period, you could have earned around $5m at FAANG ($300k/year). Of course, things could have also gone wrong (bad manager, your screwed up, layoffs), so let's peg that chance at 80%, which gives the opportunity cost of $4m.

The average YC exit is $24m (not taking into account the whales, which ballooned the overall YC portfolio to over $300B) - the $24m seems like a pretty conservative take [3]. That yields almost $6m upside, not including dilution. Hard to guess what the average dilution is, but I bet you it's higher than 33%, which would have been the breakeven point. Darn it, startups suck! :)

[0] https://www.cbinsights.com/investor/y-combinator

[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/investors

[2] https://www.teamblind.com/post/Whats-fangs-interview-selecti...

[3] https://www.shawnngtq.com/projects/y-combinator-startups-ana....

[scarface74]

For context, I am speaking from the viewpoint of a 48 year old guy who first fell into BigTech two years ago by doing a slight pivot from software development at unremarkable companies into cloud consulting.

So for me personally, I don’t have time to risk on startups when I can be certain that my RSUs will be worth something when they vest and I can sell them and diversify. Even if they are down 25% year to date.

On the other hand, I mentored an intern last year, who got a return offer of $150K and can live anywhere in the US - right now he is staying at home rent free. This already puts him in the top 10% of income earners in the US.

In three years, he can be making $250k- $275K. Three years after that, he can be making close to $400K-$500K. But he will need to switch from an IC if he doesn’t want to switch from consulting.

Because of the time value of money, it makes much more sense to make as much money as possible while he is younger and avoid startups like the plague unless they can offer as much in cash as he is getting in cash+RSUs.

You are looking at things from the founders side. I am looking at things from the employee’s end. It’s your company. You should be passionate it about. From our end it’s a job.

As far as finding “product market fit”, how often has a company found product market fit, and a larger more profitable company came in, put a department on duplicating the effort and crushed the upstart?

We saw it in the 90s with Microsoft and we see it today with Facebook. Even Netflix isn’t immune. It’s being outcompeted by Warner Bros and Disney.

Everyone likes to point to Apple and Amazon. But they are the exception not the rule.

[dudul]

Always funny when employers realize that "at will" works both ways.

You can easily let someone go any day of the week? Well, I can also leave any day of the week. If you don't want this sort of liability you can hire me with a contract.

You call me dishonest, I call you hypocrite.

[geoka9]

I get your point, but if, after extending an offer (and having it accepted) you suddenly found out the role has been "made redundant", would go out of your way to get your executive compensation reduced so that the new hire could stay and you wouldn't have to "burn bridges" with the person?

I'm not taking sides here, but am curious to see your argument.

[hn_neverguess]

I've been a startup founder for the last 20 years, and the short answer is yes. I did exactly that same thing in 2020 to help onboard someone in February who we otherwise wouldn't have been able to keep. Our board asked for a hiring freeze, and I pushed through a candidate by cutting my salary by 50% (I would have done it anyway out of principle, but that's a different story). I know a lot of other startup CEOs who lowered their salaries to help extend their runways.

[User23]

That's rational. If a startup CEO is motivated by salary rather than equity, that's terrible for everyone involved, from the investors on down to the early employees.

[Daishiman]

> For comparison, I would have never ever reached out to you again. And if I met you in the hallway at some other place, I would have made sure that everyone knows how I feel about you.

If you were to do that it says more about you than the person in question and would not look positively on you.

[seattle_spring]

> And if I met you in the hallway at some other place, I would have made sure that everyone knows how I feel about you

With an attitude like that, I guarantee that you've burned plenty of bridges yourself.

[doctor_eval]

burning man?

[hn_neverguess]

I met more tech friends at burning man than any other place outside my workplaces.

[doctor_eval]

I don’t really want to engage but this is really bugging me. Now, I haven’t been to burning man, but I’ve been to plenty of bush doofs, and if I bumped into someone who’d ghosted me for a job I’d be like; man, what happened? you really missed out. How ‘bout a hug?

There are better ways to deal with adversity in the world than to go on the attack and threaten people’s livelihoods. Even if their decision impacted you adversely, it doesn’t give you the right to fuck someone over in retaliation.