[ctvo]

A few questionable statements here.

Can you provide a source for your claim that 1) offer letters require an expiration date 2) they have to employ you if you accept?

In the US (his situation is in SF), employment is at-will and offer letters are not contracts. They can cancel the offer at anytime and after acceptance, can terminate your employment at anytime.

[ChuckMcM]

Note, I'm not a lawyer, but I am a manager and I've been through the "managing within the law" training many times :-) That said, I found a relevant case ...

Toscano v. Greene Music, 124 Cal.App.4th 685 (2004), the California Forth District Court of Appeal held that a job applicant who quits an at-will job to accept another at-will position may recover lost future wages from the employer who presented the job offer if: (1) the second employer withdraws its job offer and (2) the employee who accepted the job offer (relied on the promised job offer) can prove lost earnings by "substantial evidence." The court reasoned that promissory estoppel (reasonable reliance on a promise, here the job offer) entitles a plaintiff who quit a job to recover the "lost future wages" the employee can prove s/he would have earned from his or her former at-will employer had the plaintiff not relied on the promised employment and remained at his former job.

Generally in every version of the training I've been in the written offer letter is treated as a binding contract to employ within the constraints of the letter (background checks, expiration dates, etc)

[gojomo]

That's helpful, thanks, but to be clear: that case supports damages for having relied upon the offer and thus quitting a prior job, rather than any obligation-to-employ-in-the-offered-role. So:

* withdrawing the offer before the candidate quits the old job would seem to imply no damages (and no obligation-to-employ)

* any damages would be based on lost wages at the old job, not the new offered compensation rate or other benefits of the withdrawn position

It might also be kind of an interesting legal puzzle as to whether a person trapped in such a situation would be eligible for unemployment compensation. (It doesn't fit the usual eligibility pattern... but it is sort-of-involuntary... and the employer-who-withdrew-the-offer might prefer to take a hit on their unemployment-tax-rates as a way to offset their damages with unemployment-payments... but the system probably can't even model that.)