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Comment by tehjonz | Hacker News Reader

Counter offers are a way for the company to buy time while they find your replacement. Why not pay 2X if it means keeping things running smoothly? It's still a LOT less than the actual impact of your departure on the business.

Counter offers never work out in the long term. Now that you've put in your notice, you're no longer seen as loyal. Therefore, had you accepted (bad idea) they would not have kept you around any longer than absolutely necessary.

Even so, trashing your former employer after they offer you more money, however self-serving, is bad business.

I would not hire somebody if I saw them bad mouthing a former employer. What if they don't like my company? When they leave, they're going blast my business for not recognizing their genius/value/divinity earlier? Not good.

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Nowhere in the article does he mention who his former employer is. He vaguely implies that it's a hedge fund, but there's more than one of those. This isn't an article lambasting a particular company; it's about counter-offers in general.

Maybe he doesn't say it directly in the article, but look at the page title to get his name (Jason Punyon) and then search for his LinkedIn profile (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jason-punyon/13/396/a89) and you can be reasonably confident that he's talking about DKR. That's not very anonymous.

You could be reasonably confident, but you'd be absolutely wrong :) All names have been changed to protect the innocent. The company at which this happened does not appear on my LinkedIn profile.

I'm not sure that that's any better. Is a potential employer reading that post going to know that? Is it going to change their perception? Is it enough to balance having falsified information on your resume?

That is ridiculous. This is like saying that no one can ever say "I've worked in a workplace where I felt discriminated against", using their own name and tell how they felt, as whoa, suddenly someone could jump to the conclusion that they now know which employer the person is saying has a discriminatory atmosphere and that the person might as well have named them! Without any chance for the employer to clear their own name! This is so ridiculous it hurts.

To me, this is like me saying "I've met some pretty awful people..." and you saying "How dare you talk about my sister like that!"

My anti-procrast settings kicked in after posting the comment above, but I wanted to add this update. He actually links directly to his CV from that page: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jasonpunyon

According to that CV, the employer was Bigger Hedge Fund.

Kinda a funny coincidence that there's another person with the same name on LinkedIn who also recently quit a programming job at an investment management firm and lives in the NYC area. Anyways, the fact that he links directly to his CV makes it even less anonymous who he's talking about.

Those company names are anonymized (except for my DBA and Stack Exchange). According to that CV I've worked at "A Management Consulting and Reinsurance Company", "Big Hedge Fund" and "Bigger Hedge Fund".

I always assumed that these kinds of anonymizations were to protect your former employer, but apparently it goes both ways. Thanks for the tip.

Nope. It's totally irresponsible. Given the power of the internet and the ease by which information spreads, the real potential is there. And even then, it makes no difference.

Publicly (or to their face) calling a former employer "sleazy" is very, very unprofessional. It demonstrates poor taste and lack of restraint. And ultimately, self-importance.

"How dare they not recognize that their pathetic company is NOT my dream job? How dare they offer me money to continue to support their petty operation?"

Are you people even serious in defending this?

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