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Comment by femto | Hacker News Reader

> Hand in a competing offer

Unless (even if?) the counter-offer is significantly higher, I'd say just take the competing offer. Chances are HR will put a target on your back for being "disloyal".

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In my very long career, I have yet to hear a good story of someone taking said counter offer and staying very long, for one reason or another. I think it's a bad idea to offer it at all, as it sends a very clear message of what behavior is rewarded. When other employees learn that you will offer raises to counter offers, expect everyone to start interviewing.

Every manager knows which team members are key to the team's performance. They have to get raises or bonuses to match.

Counteroffers are 'stem the skills bleed' at best. People who take counteroffers were annoyed enough to look in the first place, and know they're valued enough elsewhere to get a market rate. I've heard that even if someone accepts a counteroffer and stays they're very unlikely to still be there 12 months later.

The company can use that time to figure out what that person does and make sure when they leave it's not as painful and abrupt.

Or they interview regularly to stay in the game and know their value.

I took the counter offer and stayed for (so far) 3 more years. To be fair, the problem was less the money and more the nature of the work, but even that was adjusted to be more accommodating.

I took a counter offer and stayed for another 6-7 years. It worked out well for both parties. I knew they wanted to keep me but were stingy so it was useful to interview elsewhere to give myself some leverage.

I specifically interviewed and got an offer elsewhere precisely because, while I like my job and am very good at it, this dance of offer and counter offer is the only way to get substantial raises or bonuses. So I took the counter offer and am pretty happy about it two years later.

I wanted to move aboard when I lived in Finland and interviewed with that in mind. I got offer from UK company, but ended up agreeing to counter offer as then current company intended to open US office and I could move there at that point. Unfortunately that didn't quite pan out as company went bankrupt, but I did end up getting hired by the company that bought the IP and moved to the US after pandemic ended.

So at least for me it didn't pan out terribly though there was some luck involved.

I once took a counter offer and ended up staying another 8 years.

> In my very long career, I have yet to hear a good story of someone taking said counter offer and staying very long

I've done so twice and stayed for years afterward in both cases, but this may just be unique to how defense contracting works.

You are severely overestimating HR's willingness to engage. If they are tardy enough to not be competent in managing basic employee expectations, they sure as hell are not going to maintain a grudge ledger against every candidate to target them.

My company used to blacklist employees that left. If you left the company they would never hire you back. They stopped doing that around 4-5 years ago.

I got that speech on the way out the door. I laughed and laughed, right in the cubicle where the HR lady (nice enough) was going through the process with me.

I was already in the mindset that the bridge had been burnt—by them, not me. Between the stress of quitting, the relief of having another job lined up, and now this bizarre empty threat to be blackballed from a place I’d never want to work for again…I just had to laugh.

Meanwhile, my F500 company fired a guy with cause. Two years later he was re-hired in an entirely different role. When discovered, my director was flabbergasted that HR had not permanently blacklisted him.

Is this not a standard practice?

I don't think so. I think about half of places blacklist if you leave on good terms and the other half only blacklist if it was for cause.

If you walk into your boss's office and say "match this or I'm gone", you might be earning yourself a reputation (maybe a deserved one?) as a hardball negotiator, and you're probably better off just taking the offer.

I think there's a way to pull it off that doesn't leave anyone feeling taken advantage of or bushwhacked. It probably starts by talking at your annual review about how you're concerned the market rate for your position is higher than what you earn. Then go get an offer and say "gee boss I really love working for this company but X% is a lot of money to leave on the table, is there anything you can do to close this gap".

They need to be convinced that there's an urgent and valid reason to pay you more, but they also need to be convinced that the juice is worth the squeeze. If they think you're just going to go pull the same stunt again in 6 months, or if they think that you're already low morale, they will just call it attrition.

I think the idea of having a competing offer is to have a credible threat of leaving.

Another strategy, if you can pull it off, is to have a different kind of credible threat. Maybe you know that you're a high performer and/or have a good professional network and would have no trouble finding a new job. Maybe you have 6 months of savings set aside specifically so you can quit a job if needed. Maybe your spouse also earns good money (or maybe your spouse is the high earner) and you live far enough below your means that you can float for a while with half income.

You don't necessarily need to show firm evidence that these things exist, you just need to make it clear that keeping your salary in line with the market is necessary to keep you from leaving. The trick is that you have to actually leave if it doesn't go your way, otherwise you'll have no credible threat and they won't take you seriously the next time.

A competing offer is like going to a mattress store and asking them to price match. A purchase is a one-time relationship, but employment is onging. It's not really the same thing.

Why would “HR” put a target? Your manager wants to retain you. If you don’t think your manager has your interests in mind, then why stick around? HR DGAF IMHO.

I think they mean that now that you’ve outed yourself as someone who shops around, the next time you try to do it they’ll already have your replacement prepared.

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