In my experience, at the start of a job (including the offering stage) when everyone is on their best behaviour (the honeymoon period, as it were), if they are pissing you off and raising red flags, it just gets worse from here.
I would reject Job 1 for this reason alone. If they can’t be bothered to write you an offer letter, why would they be bothered to do anything else for you? They sound lazy at best and slimy at worst.
ETA: I got almost the same run-around (and non-offer “offer”) during my last job hunt. To make matters even more bizarre, shortly after I called the headhunter to say I wasn’t interested, I got a voice mail from the hiring manager saying “welcome aboard, you’re making a great decision!”
A verbal acceptance is nt worth the paper it’s not written on. If you think you will take the job, given that the written offer isn’t full of BS and changes what you have been told, then verbally say “yes” and then take a look at the letter.
A lot of jobs and companies just do this hiring thing with no “offer letter” at all, know.
I hear you, I’m in the same boat right now. I was fired last November, but it wasn’t like I didn’t see it coming. I hated the role I’d been forced into, couldn’t do it very well, and was reminded of that constantly in an escalating sequence of bad reviews, reprimands, and, finally, the boot. At no previous point in my IT career had I ever been unable to do my job well, let alone hate it, so all this was very strange to me. I had already been looking for a couple of months before the end came.
I think if you take either of those jobs you’ll be making the same kind of mistake I did by not getting out of that last job sooner than I did.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could have that clarity of vision of what you should do while you need to make decisions about stuff like this, rather than looking back at it? 
So, what was the final decision?
There is always the problem that it is easier to get a job if you have one.If you are willing to leave it is no big deal . But if you are unemployed you fall in the 'whats wrong with him that I don’t see group".
Dude, you fought the punctuation and got pwned.
If you don’t need a job right now, taking either of those is self-defeating. Your time is better spent looking for the job you want.
Good luck!
No decision yet. I’m still fucking around with both these companies so they will put their offers in writing. I have one and now I’m waiting for the other.
The problem is that while I don’t need the money per se, I also don’t want to be out of work for 6 months looking for a job in a shitty economy when I could be earning money for those 6 months…while looking for a job in a shitty economy.
Why does having it in writing matter so much?
If you don’t have the promised salary, vacation, etc., in writing, the employer is free to change those terms after you’ve started work and the employee has no recourse to enforce the terms of the original verbal offer.
Since it’s standard operating procedure (and not particularly difficult) to provide a written offer letter, an employer’s refusal to provide such documentation might lead a prospective employee to wonder if they’re planning to reneg on those promises after he/she starts work.
You need to go by your gut because it is probably right. I obviously know some of your work history and you are very talented. OTOH, companies will screw anyone over at the first chance and no one is immune.
Project management in any industry let alone IT can be very dangerous because you can become responsible for things you have no control over. You need to know just how much authority you will have and how your performance will be measured.
I just got fucked over by my mega-corp a few weeks ago. I was hired as a developer and small-scale project manager (3 or so other developers). I have always done my job extremely well and I am decorated as the highest level of subject matter expert in 5 different areas which is unheard of. Meanwhile, we adopted a 40+ person arm in India which me and my immediate coworkers are expected to manage. Almost none of my work related to our new Indian arm so I just did the work that I have always done over the past 3 years.
I just got my performance review. Many of my metrics didn’t match up to what my coworkers were doing (sending work to India and filling out spreadsheets on it). I not only lost my bonus but I got a pay freeze as well. It was appealed by my boss and my bosses boss but upper-management claimed there was nothing they could do. Many of our managers just quit within a week or so of one another and I take that as a very bad thing.
I know it is cliche but you need to find the best fit for you. Some companies just value plain, aggressive assholes, others value time spent at the office, and still others value competence. It is the ones that value competence and offer an attractive work environment that you want to target. It doesn’t sound like either of those do.
Couldn’t msmith verbally agree to an acceptable offer, with the understanding that s/he will not begin work until the same offer is put into writing and accepted as such? Of course this assumes that msmith favors one company enough to reject the other one outright, regardless of offer (or assuming that both offers are similar).
Since you have the luxury of time and money, I’d say you should write a job description of your ideal job, then try and find it. You won’t likely find a perfect match, but if you’re as capable as you make yourself out to be you should be able to come fairly close. Of course you’ll have to factor in that your dream job may have every attibute except location or money or something else that is a deal breaker. Anyway, that’s your call.
Just do find a decent fit for yourself before it comes borne of desparation, because that’s almost always a recipe for disaster. If need be, take a job at the local Starbucks or what-not to make your job search stretch longer. That’ll keep you from feeling guilty about being unproductive, possibly make you appreciate what you can find a bit more, and give you some extra spending cash. Just leave that one off of your resume/CV when it comes time to be more serious.
They can anyway, a written offer is not a contract. In many states, they can fire you for any reason at any time (well, except for Protected reasons, of course, they can’t come out and say they are firing someone becuase that someone is black.)
DrDeth is correct. But while it isn’t a contract, it’s nice to know what the actual details of the offer are before I accept it.
Taking a Starbucks job doesn’t make sense. If I’m going to take a job I don’t want, it will be one of the current offers that pay well.
Fuck it. I’m going with job #2.
Congrats. The important thing is, if you don’t really need the job, you’ll have the freedom to do the job accordingly.
I’m not going to starve to death any time soon if I lose my job. That doesn’t mean I want to get fired either.