Accepted and ghosted: interviewing for a leadership position at Stripe

Had the opposite experience recently as an EM. Spent a few months trying to find a staff-level engineer. Found a great candidate who worked for a FAANG, worked to get our budget up to his expectations, sold him on the team, and he accepted our offer with a start date 6 weeks in the future so he could have time to wrap up his work. Fine, I'm just happy to have filled the role after an arduous search. A few weeks go by, and he hasn't responded to my "we're excited to have you join the team, etc" email or any HR emails about filling out his paperwork. I call and email, the recruiter calls and emails, nothing. We never hear from him again..

He's been active on social media so we know he's alive, and assume he parlayed our offer into a raise somewhere else. Ok, that happens, but to accept an offer and totally ghost? Jeez. I could have used those intervening weeks to interview more candidates had he just sent me a quick note, now I've got to backfill his position while also trying to fill the new ones that just opened... I guess hiring is a shitshow from both sides sometimes.

Think of the bullet you dodged.

I have a third pov of this, I was interviewing for a large financial company in an SE role, everything went well, the team seemed really good and projects were interesting, good quality of interviews too.

It was through an employment agency and so I was negotiating via them. Recieved the offer and needed a few days just to review it and consider everything. I told the recruiter this. Then had a medical emergency which had me in hospital for 3 weeks, on the 3rd day in hospital however, I fired an email from my phone just to let the recruiter know what the situation was. Thought nothing of it.

When I got out of hospital after a serious surgery etc, was distracted in fairness. I had emails from the recruiter which bordered on threats about how I was completely unprofessional for not regularly updating him, and how the city is small and the company is big etc.

Needless to say I wasn't too bothered but it took me back a bit.

You most all the time or at least most of the time!

According to the papers, candidate ghosting has been happening more and more often. With such a senior, high-paid position as that, it doesn't really apply, but I can't help but feel a bit of schadenfreude at employers lamenting ghosting candidates, after themselves being the ghosting party so routinely.

I had a somewhat opposite experience: went through an interview process, accepted and then the company drug its feet about a start date which ended up taking weeks longer than expected after several delays for simple things like ordering equipment and other things which pointed to "we don't have our act together". I was committed and had already left my previous position and exited other interviewing pipelines.

I should have persisted and ghosted them, they ended up putting me in a different role than I had been offered and generally were extremely disorganized.

Honestly, I think going forward if you don't have me sign a contract and give me something in return (say, a signing bonus that is actually paid upon signing instead of weeks after I start), the deal isn't done until I start.

When you can't expect the other party to hold up to their side of the bargain because there are bad actors out there, it doesn't make sense to trust them or tell them what's going on until after everything is settled... and even then when litigation is such a concern...

Sometimes a recruiter or hiring manager leaves the company halfway through the hiring process, leaving the candidate in a limbo.

It'd be funny (in a sad way, I suppose) if the same becomes true on the other side..."sorry, my online assistant just quit so my resignation at the current firm never got filed."

Generally, no matter how amicable the relationship, if the terms aren’t in writing, then they are subject to change. Figured this out after a friend of mine who was renting a room in my apartment ghosted me for 3 months of rent heh.

Very sorry that you had this experience but yes NEVER consider a job offer finalized until a contract has been drafted and both parties sign. Until then it's all basically vaporware

This is so satisfying to hear. Always happy to see management and recruitment types being used up and hung to dry.

Unless there's some consideration (i.e. money) changing hands, contracts like that are worth nothing but the paper they are on.

Interesting tidbit, in Sweden an offer over email (or verbally IIRC) is legally binding. It's quite common that you will only receive /sign the actual contract on the first day of work. Obviously this leads to confusion when hiring people from outside of Sweden.

I'm the UK I've had multiple jobs where I don't even see the contract until 2 months into work. Not sure of the legal frame work

Simply not signing another work contract is consideration.

In the US in tech they’re basically a meaningless formality.

A job applicant doesn’t have a hiring department with a codified process and team so it’s not quite symmetric.

At a company there's a reporting chain and an HR department to ensure that even in this situation, the candidate isn't left ghosted - offer to shop the candidate's resume around and switch teams, or at the very least inform them. There is no valid excuse for a company ghosting an accepted candidate.

It's a much bigger deal for the other party tough. The employee is typically more dependent on having a job than the employer is dependent on having an engineer. Granted a staff level engineer is not quite the same, especially for a small firm.

What's lamentable is that ghosting has become part of our culture. People think it's the done thing, so they do it. Just as with dating, how hard is it really to keep track of who you owe a response and send them a short piece saying you're no longer interested? It's especially grating in your situation where you know there's no reason why they don't just tell you they have a better offer.

I think that's the key actually. People don't like the icky feeling of negotiating, where you often keep cards to yourself. When game ends and you get your desired outcome, you continue to feel bad about it. And you certainly don't want to be called out and have to defend yourself, even if picking a better offer is perfectly fair.

I'm guessing we might be in different sectors, but FWIW I've never seen this in my >20 years in the UK. To me the situation you're describing would ring all sorts of alarm bells.

P.S. Not doubting your experience, just comparing it with mine.

Ghosting is really the worst. And it doesn't matter if it's a romantic relationship, friendship or professional interaction. Why can't people see themselves on the other side of the line?

Were you not able to communicate every few days of the stay? 15-20 days with no contact is a long time and you put the recruiter in an unfortunate position as they must have been advocating for you. You can’t have known in advance that they would send rude emails in response to silence.

I'm sorry, but if I'm (not OP) in the hospital for something serious requiring operations and a multi-week stay, responding to emails is somewhere around last on my todo list.

The UK splits the legal stuff into an offer letter (”principal statement”) and the fine print (”wider statement”.) The latter is what most people informally call the contract, including the front page of these documents.

Employers must to provide you with the fine print within two months of your start date:

https://www.gov.uk/employment-contracts-and-conditions/writt...

Any incontrovertible evidence of an agreement of the job, verbal or written, counts as a contract. Everything else is just finalizing the terms and conditions, which either party can agree to amend at any later date and which many employers assert they can do unilaterally.

No need to apologize. I'm sure you understand how that necessary deprioritization might still look like ghosting or insincerity to others, especially someone who had just exerted significant effort on your behalf. If I had the ability to send one email, I'd hope to at least be able to send a second regretfully declining the offer.

Signing a contract is normally worthless too, all of them tend to have very lenient notices so either side can just give the 1 week notice or whatever and that's it

> ... and give me something in return (say, a signing bonus that is actually paid upon signing instead of weeks after I start)

Is this common in the USA? In the UK I've never been offered or heard of anyone receiving a bonus for signing a contract. Does anyone have a different experience?

There are signing bonuses in the UK. I think you will be very unlikely to get it immediately on signing though - it's usually within the first couple of months of employment or with your first salary, something like that.

My personal experience has been that companies who give signing bonuses usually have retention issues and the bonus has to be paid back if you leave within a year. At least that was the experience when I graduated college. After becoming an experienced hire I haven’t been offered one.

this. I recently went through the job-hunting process, and employer's behaviour was terrible (on average, there were some good ones).

I don't think they understand that if they set the bar that low, then we'll all accept that and behave similarly badly.

Like loyalty - employers stopped being loyal to their employees, so employees stopped being loyal back. Every time I see an employer moan about how employees don't care any more, I feel schadenfreude.

We mirror the behaviour we see, because game theory.

Agree. Having been ghosted in the past by potential employers I have zero qualms now about doing the same in return

No, that's why the GP wanted it.

It 100% doesn't matter either way, as those bonuses always come with attrition requirements - you have to pay back all or part the bonus if you leave the company before some predetermined time period. If you don't agree to the payback terms then you simply don't get the bonus.

So a bonus paid before you start is more-or-less identical to a bonus paid with your first paycheck. You don't get to keep it if your offer is rescinded or you don't show up on your first day.

Thanks, but maybe I should have worded it better: is a bonus just for starting your job common? I've never heard of this in the UK applying myself or hiring. Only yearly bonuses for performance

Yes, they’re not uncommon, across a wide range of job types. I recently got a signing bonus for a part time job as an EMT for instance. In tech especially they can be quite large to offset stock options or bonuses the employee is giving up by switching jobs. If I’m about to be poached right before my annual bonus of x thousand pays out, I’ll want a comparable signing bonus.

It can vary by company and culture. Tech may be different, but in non-tech roles where equity isn't expected in most roles, signing bonuses can serve a function to nudge someone to leave a role they're comfortable in, or to make up for other aspects the candidate is losing out on by leaving at a certain time (e.g. annual bonus with 10a 10% of salary target pays out in March, but the new company wants you to start in January).

I understand the sentiment but there is a difference between ghosting the during recruiting process and ghosting after committing to the job.

You have been treated unethically in the past, now you have zero qualms acting unethically? That's not cool, its very easy NOT to ghost people it basically costs you nothing, you might want to seek some therapy.

It's standard operating procedure for the hiring process

Not common but also not unheard of, it's simply just an advance on your paycheck.

I've seen them be offered in jobs/industries/companies where there is a labor shortage or the job is difficult to fill for some reason. They might be standard-ish in some jobs/industries.

like I said, you'd almost always be required to stay for X amount of time - like a year plus usually, or you gotta pay some or all of it back.

"employers stopped being loyal to their employees, so employees stopped being loyal back."

On what basis do you make this claim? It was always my understanding that it started with employees - because what changed was not that employees suddenly started working for multiple employers in the same field but that changing careers was the norm. I don't know how you point the finger at employers for that.

> It was always my understanding that it started with employees

It did not.

> because what changed was not that employees suddenly started working for multiple employers in the same field

That's wrong, that's exactly what happened (from the employee side, though it wasn't the start) first and most, though, and that remains more common than changing career fields (which, of course, happens, too.)

In the dim and distant past of my Dad's youth, it was expected that you'd join a company in your late teens / early twenties, and that company would train you in the skills you needed, pay you a living wage to do your job (enough to raise a family on without another income), and employ you for your entire life, eventually paying you a salary-linked pension until you died. If the company did badly, then it was still obligated to continue employing everyone, and in return the employees were obligated to remain with the company, being "company men", putting the company near the top of their personal priorities. Career advancement meant getting a promotion within the company. If you didn't manage to get promoted, then you stayed in your job, possibly for decades, until you could retire.

Then somewhere in the 70's, that changed, and companies no longer considered themselves obligated to look after their employees (at least in the UK, this was an age of massive strikes, and labour relations at a terrible low). Then in the 80's, the Yuppies took control of their careers and the modern idea of a self-made career where you hop from job to job within the same industry became popular.

I'm old enough to have had the old ideas of loyalty taught to me in school, only to then discover that the world had changed and loyalty was an outdated concept. I'm kinda glad - I would not make a good "company man". But for many it was depressing and strange, and I know a few people who were sacked in mid-career and had no idea how to continue.

Two in the ANS is as good as one in the BIS