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Comment by ipaddr | Hacker News Reader

If facebook makes you an offer and then pulls back can you sue? Does facebook owe you some form of money lost?

You put a bid om a home and then try walk away usually means you get sued.

Promissory estoppel[0] exists, but is kind of hard to get any money out of it, and depends on the circumstances and state you live in. Note that, in general, if you renege on a job offer after accepting, all that happens is the company blacklists you.

[0]: https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/labor-employment-law/job-...

This same sort of rescinding happened in 2008 to college grads joining bulge brackets.

They probably won't even blacklist you, if they wanted to hire you then (and you come up with a good reason for walking away) they'll want to hire you later for the same reasons. Be kind to your recruiters, have a good justification, and nothing should come of it.

> If facebook makes you an offer and then pulls back can you sue?

Generally, an offer that has not yet been accepted does not create a contract, so probably not.

If it has been accepted, maybe, though in an at-will employment jurisdiction, probably not for the loss of employment, but maybe for reliance damages in some cases.

Genuine question - if I sign an offer with a company, and then renege on it before the start date (e.g., because I got another offer that i like better), do I owe money to the company for some form of money lost?

Not trying to defend Meta, they are gonna be just fine without me arguing in their favor on HN, but isn't this just the other side of the "you can quit any time you want without a warning" coin? Yes, rude and shitty to do, but I feel like it goes both ways, and it is kind of difficult to defend one without defending the other.

I don‘t think this metaphorical coin exists in London, which is the location that the tweet is talking about.

Employment in the UK is effectively at will (after two years you can't be dismissed without a reason, but redundancy is a valid reason).

There is some minimum notice period I guess.

The key difference is the balance of power. If I renege on a commitment to join Meta, they’ll barely notice. The converse is potentially devastating.

Many countries have different rules for businesses and private citizens.

e.g. as a private citizen in germany you have the right to return whatever you buy online, for whatever reason within 2 weeks.

I'm not aware of similar rights if it is a B2B transaction.

I'm fairly sure the answer is no.

Yes, this is the result of at-will employment, and you're understanding the dynamic correctly. It sucks that it's legal

> You put a bid om a home and then try walk away usually means you get sued.

You might forfeit your earnest money, depending how the offer is written. But there are ways around that, and that's part of why some people advise having an attorney help write your offer. An attorney will include escape clauses that a realtor might not. Of course if there are too many escape clauses, your offer might get rejected, so it's a balancing act.

People back out of home deals all the time. For example, if the seller counter-offers your bid price, or asks for any other change in the offer, you can just drop the whole thing.

You can potentially get sued for backing of buying once you have a signed contract. It's rare because the seller will usually just take the earnest money and then sell to someone else, but if the housing market really plunges after you signed the contract, then they might want to go through the trouble of suing.

Obviously, before you actually have a signed contract or if you have a contingency in your contract, you can back out without a problem.

> You put a bid om[sic] a home and then try walk away usually means you get sued.

Usually the other way around. You can’t make someone buy but you can make someone sell. The buyer may lose their downpayment if they walk, but the seller can be sued to achieve “specific performance”, forcing them to sell if they get cold feet.

I mean, that's not nothing though. Then downpayment on my house was 10%, and that is not a small amount of money to forfeit for a capital asset like that given a house is usually an "everything you have" investment these days.

I think the meant the earnest money, not the down payment. The earnest money is lot less- I did like $3000 on a $700k purchase. The down payment is between you and your financing, the earnest money is what you put on the table for the offer to the seller.

Even then, you can generally get the earnest money back if appraisal or inspection fails.

I did say “may.” Usually what happens is the buyer sues and files lis pendens on the property. The seller then no longer has a clean title, and must complete the litigation in order to sell their property to someone else (months pass in this process). The seller usually wants to sell their house more than fight to keep the money of a recalcitrant buyer, and thus returns the downpayment to the buyer in full.

I'm also curious how signing bonuses would work.

From my experience, you get them with your first salary.

They usually state in the offer how and under what conditions they’re paid, and when they can be clawed back. Usually it’s a short period after your start date, but you still have to be working and have to continue working there for X days/months.

I mean you can't sue if you get fired so what's the difference?

At work so no.

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