Time frame to accept a job offer?

In My Humble Opinion
21

“Yeah, he turned down our bullshit offer to take a job that paid 20% more.”

I’m calling bullshit. I work in tech and people leave companies “in short order” all the time for all sorts of reason. It’s not career suicide.

How are you going to “lose all your contacts” at that firm? You were there a month. How deep can any of your contacts be beyond “I think I kinda remember that guy”.

So what if your last place hates you if you love the job you left it for and stay there 10 years?

Some companies are petty regardless. I had offers from a couple of companies that I didn’t accept. Company A didn’t make me an offer until 3 months after I had already accepted another position and got promoted and Company B, I just didn’t accept (although they tried really hard) because I had just accepted a 12 month contract that turned out to be really cool (and a better lifestyle choice). A year or so later I decided I made a mistake joining my current company and reached out to see if those other companies had positions open. They never returned my calls. I don’t know if it was because they didn’t have an opening or they were bent out of shape that I didn’t accept their offer. But fuck them. I interviewed in good faith and didn’t lead them along. If company A wanted me so badly, they shouldn’t have sat on my offer for 4 months and Company B, well they had fired me when I worked for them like ten years prior so fuck them too. What was I supposed to do? Accept all three jobs?

People have short memories. I can’t remember the names of the clients I had 6 months ago, let alone people I interviewed.

You aren’t as important as you think. Look, if you were so well known in your industry that people actually paid attention to your comings and goings, you probably don’t have to worry about finding a job. But people in “tech” always seem to have an inflated sense of their “rep” on the job market. Other than a few standouts, programmers barely have a rep within their own company. Mostly they are just nearly anonymous “staff” or “resources” that get assigned to a project based on their skills profile. It’s a commodity industry. That’s why I constantly get spammed by headhunters with unpronounceable names who work for headhunter firms with weird acronym names, encouraging me to apply for jobs where my only qualification is some out of context keyword on my resume.

Yes, if you were a jerk or incompetent at your position, then that might hurt you. But chances are, the only person who would be bent out of shape if you left suddenly is your direct manager. And if he can’t get over it, fuck him.

22

I guess we’ll have to disagree. Reputation still seems to be a major issue in hiring decisions in my mind and leaving a job shortly after starting work for another offer can hurt your reputation. It’s not going to kill your career, but it may cost you some offers. You can explain the choice, and people will generally understand if it makes sense, but leaving a job you just started because someone came by and offered you 10% means that you’ll leave your current job as soon as someone waves a few more bucks your way. Frankly, that’s not worth the risk to a lot of companies or hiring managers.

23

Who said anything about losing contacts? Of course you won’t have any, but that doesn’t mean your name won’t go around. It’s lunch time fodder between two friends at different companies: “Hey, how’s that new guy working out?” “Man, can you believe he quit after two weeks? What a flake!”. And then a couple of year later when that manager sees a familiar sounding name come across his desk, and he calls around to see if any of his buddies remember who that is, and suddenly he no longer has any interest in bringing this guy in for an interview.

I actually see the opposite of the rep issue in tech. There’s a lot of programmers that think they can burn whatever bridges they want as long as they have those leet hacker skillz. They forget that there’s a lot more it tech work than that. I’ve worked in 100 person development groups. Do I remember every single person? No, but I would recognize most of their names, and I would have a intuition about them even if I didn’t work directly with them. And that can be the difference between “Sure, let’s bring them in for an interview” and “Let’s pass and keep looking”.

24

The industry and area I work in isn’t exactly small - but a number of people have called it incestuous. It’s not the least bit unusual to see someone you worked with years ago at your new company (as a matter of fact, when I came to my current place, there were 1/2 dozen people - out of 300 or so - that I had worked with about 4-5 years previously.

So I agree - reputation is a big thing, both in getting your foot in the door for an interview and getting a solid recommendation for an offer. But that said, it’s also not unusual for people to jump after 6 months if they’re not a good fit.

Ergo, I see both halves of this coin.

I’ll also echo everyone else who said that an offer is really only good for a couple days. Its been my experience in the last 10 years that companies are only hiring when they’re in desperate need of people, but it’s still very hard to convince management that the need is there. So, the people who are actively making the decision (e.g. usually a middle manager or a middle manager+their lower-upper-management boss) have already been covering a need for weeks to months by the time they give you an offer, and they’re not going to be inclined to wait another month for you to get in there.

Think of it this way:
**Jan 1 **- identify the fact we need another X, then it takes a couple weeks to months for upper management to ok the hire. My experience has been an average of 4-6 weeks so we’ll go with that
Feb 7 - start interviewing. Now HR needs to post, start talking to recruiters or whatever they do. Depending on how good your HR recruiting team is, this could be a few days to another 3-4 weeks to get resumes in and interviews set up. Let’s say 2 weeks.
Feb 21 - start interviewing. Usually you want to bring in a few people, so it’ll be spread out a couple weeks
March 7 - Discuss candidates, try to figure out who would be best, submit paperwork to HR
March 15 - HR extends offer
If you’re the candidate and you try to squeeze 2 more weeks out of the offer review time, it’ll then be another 2 weeks (minimum, maybe a little more depending on the days of the week) by the time you give notice and can start at the new place. Total elapsed time - almost 3.5-4 months. That’s a very long time if you are stuck working extra hours due to being short handed. By the time the offer’s extended, the hiring team’s already at the 3 month mark and probably aren’t really open to waiting any longer.

Ergo, don’t wait - you can have a day or two to think it over, and if you want to push a counter offer or negotiate, you can buy an extra couple days of back-and-forth there, but that’s about it. Take longer than that and the company may withdrawl the offer.

This is for the tech, advertising and big-pharma industries on the east coast. Others may vary, but I’d be surprised if its by a lot.

25

Telemark did.

That almost never happens.

Again, that almost never happens. Of course they don’t remember him because he was there for a month and he’s been a fantastic hire at his other job for the past couple of years.
I’ve not hired people because I’ve heard of an issue at their previous firm. But I would never not hire a person who left a job after a short period of time, so long as they didn’t make a habit of it.

It’s all about context and how you manage your departure. I worked with one guy at a fairly prestigious tech consulting firm who just up and left for lunch and never came back a few weeks after starting. That looks pretty flaky.

But if within the first 90 days or so you get another offer that was the company you really wanted, or you simply decided that the company you are working for isn’t for you, it’s perfectly acceptable to quit. But you should approach your manager and just be frank with him/her. “This isn’t what I expected” / “I don’t think I’m a good fit” / “I got an offer from Google”. And then help as much as possible to smooth your transition.

After all, a lot of companies have a 90 day trial period with you. Fuck them if they don’t want it both ways.
I’m not saying it’s a great idea to quit a job after a few months. I’ve had a couple of times where that situation has come up. Ultimately I made the move that made the best sense for my long term career strategy.

I would also say that after 90 days, you may as well just stick it out for a full year. After that no one can fault you.

26

Everything is negotiable, including that. I suggest something like, “I will need a few days to think things over and/or discuss with my partner/SO. Can I get back to you on Thursday?”

I’m suggesting that you give a very specific date as to when you intend to accept or reject the offer. Whatever you have to do – let’s say you’re juggling two offers at once – communicate clearly and specifically (and honestly) with both. Don’t just drop off the planet for 3+ days and expect the job offer to still be there. Use your words.

27

I have never had more than a few days to make a decision once the offer is on the table.

I have used a job offer to leverage a raise at my former employer. I told them on Wednesday that I have an offer that will expire Friday. Increase my salary to match their offer by then or I will submit a notice of my resignation. It worked, luckily, because I didn’t want that other job anyway. Would have sucked if my employer called my bluff, but I was confident rolling the dice.

28

Yep. In our area, it seems everyone knows someone who knows you. You probably don’t know your interviewer but I guarantee they have at least 2 contacts in your linkedin network.

I had an interview today for a job where the manager asked if I know so-and-so from my old company, because he also worked with her several years ago. I guarantee she’ll go to him before the references I provided. A good friend looking for the same type of job told me a few very similar stories last night. Her current colleague rents a home from someone we both used to work with. A guy she interviewed with last week went to school with her brother and is good friends with her old boss. This in an ever-shrinking market in a region with 250,000 people.

29

I’m not discounting the power of networking. But “knowing me” through some tenuous friend of my cousin’s former roommate’s LinkedIn profile connection is not having worked with or for me.

30

No, it’s not. If I had worked for you you would know I’m a rock star :smiley: and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I am also not saying that in my case, it was a tenuous friend of my cousin’s former roommate. That was just an anecdote from a friend.
In my case, it seems everyone I interview with knows someone I worked with. If I really knew that person, great. Like I said, they will, IMHO, say only good things :wink: . If they asked Weird Barney from accounting, on the other hand, who I knew only from passing in the hall, I’m kind of at the mercy of Weird Barney.

BTW, Job #2 is a no-go so I now am only waiting on 2 awesome prospects. Have been promised that I’ll hear about both early next week so timing, fingers crossed, won’t be an issue. Job gods, pleaseohpleaseohplease call me with good news and make me choose the best job for me!

31

I went on one interview some time ago where literally everyone there was either a classmate of mine from college or a former coworker of mine from one of the Big-4 accounting/consulting firms where I worked. Even the head of the practice (also an alumni of my college) was like “What the hell? Is there anyone here who DOESN’T know this guy?!”

I ended up getting the job. Of course being the sort of guy people remember positively after 5 years is a plus in consulting.