Is Your Offer Letter a Contract? Of Course It Is

employeeatty.blogspot.com

16 points·greenyoda··5 comments

They don't address one key part - what happens if an employer rescinds an offer after you have accepted it (whether for a valid reason or otherwise)? According to the article it would be a breach of contract, but it isn't all that rare in the industry.

Same for the reverse - if I accept an offer (based on just the offer letter), am I committing fraud by backing out of it?

Breach of trust... Lowers the reputation of whoever rescinds. If a company does this they get a bad rep and fewer applicants. A employee does this and it might get around costing them job offers elsewhere.

If an employers rescinds an offer, the employee could blog about it, resulting reputation damage for the employer.

But who would the reverse be true? It’s not as if there’s a database of employees who have signed a contract but didn’t show up...

The tech giants (or other corps) have spread the fantasy that if you piss one of them off then everyone up there will know and black ball you. Basically unless you don't do anything super illegal the odds of fucking over your employer coming back to haunt you are relatively small. But the fear that it will keeps people in the order the corps want.

This is extremely dubious advice. An offer under general contract rules requires intent to be bound. If the so-called offer letter says outright that it isn’t intended to be be binding, it fails the basic definition of an offer.

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