[schoudha]

I interned at Apple Summer of 2006. I got great reviews and they even asked me to work part-time during the school year, I agreed and mentioned that we can figure out the whole full time thing later (i.e. what group I would work in - I really wanted to work on Apple TV, iTunes, etc...).

Then, one day, I was asked to come into my manager's office. She said "Congratulations, here's your full time offer!" I saw the deadline of 9/11 (2 weeks) and asked if I could have an extension. She quickly said that everyone was expecting that I would sign today and there is no way she can extend it. The recruiter also told me that she couldn't extend it and that she "didn't care about my school's rules." I went to my career counselor to see if he could make something happen (The offer was ok but all my friends got offered at least 10% more - and the recruiter said the don't negotiate).

Then I get a call from my manager, she asks me to come to the office. I walk in, she says "We're going to have to rescind the offer and ask that you stop working part time." It was pretty traumatic, couldn't even check-in my latest work - just had to pack my things and leave - I was actually fired!

Next spring applied to Y-combinator, got rejected...I now work for a search engine in Mountain View, CA where they not only gave me my best offer but gave me a 20% raise within my first year. Still, I wish I had a chance to work full-time at the mothership in Cupertino.

[ruddzw]

I truly would believe that some companies like this one really don't fit in with the fake pushing of deadlines. They believe that they really are the company to work for, nay, not just a company, but a movement. If you don't want to give it all up for the idea, then they don't want you. That's the kind of thing to stay away from, unless you really do believe in the idea, whether its your own or someone else's.

[RyanGWU82]

I have a similar story to yours. I turned down an exploding offer from Apple last year, because the deadline was too soon and they were unwilling to cooperate on that. I couldn't be happier with the result. By keeping my options open, I ended up with a much better position than I would have had at Apple.

I totally agree with Joel about the need to educate people about this topic. Many college students know they can negotiate the terms of a job offer, but they're intimidated about actually doing so. I hope Joel's article gives a few more students the courage to stand up to bully recruiters.

[tomsaffell]

My old company offered exploding offers, and occasionally offered a variant: the sliding-exploding offer, i.e. $8k signing bonus if you join in the next 1 month, $5k in the next 3 months, $3k in the next 6 months. For most people this came down to whether they would travel after college, or go straight into employment (was in Europe).

They offered it in good faith, on the assumption that the offeree was a well informed and rational decision maker who would make the decision that was best for him in the long run. I always felt that students rarely have the faculty to make this decision rationally (cost of a $5k graduate loan vs. some time to travel before working). I know that I would have probably made this decision in a way that I would have later regretted, had I been offered a sliding-exploding offer. So in an attempt to make sure my employer's assumptions about the offeree's rationality were valid, I would sometime have a candid talk with the offeree to help them think through their options - I tried to be neutral wrt to the decision, and informative wrt to the facts they needed. My company didnt ask me to do this, but I suspect they would never have officially asked me not to do it.