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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

By law, when you received your written offer letter it included an expiration date. If you accept before then, they have to employ you, if you don't accept by then, they are not obligated to give you a job even if you say yes.

Start ups are moving quickly and trying to get to the next milestone. That often means they really want people on or off, but not off "thinking about it."

That said, it sounds like you already made up your mind right? You are having second thoughts so own that and say "Thanks, but no thanks." and keep looking and/or doing what ever it is you are doing.

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A few questionable statements here.

Can you provide a source for your claim that 1) offer letters require an expiration date 2) they have to employ you if you accept?

In the US (his situation is in SF), employment is at-will and offer letters are not contracts. They can cancel the offer at anytime and after acceptance, can terminate your employment at anytime.

Note, I'm not a lawyer, but I am a manager and I've been through the "managing within the law" training many times :-) That said, I found a relevant case ...

Toscano v. Greene Music, 124 Cal.App.4th 685 (2004), the California Forth District Court of Appeal held that a job applicant who quits an at-will job to accept another at-will position may recover lost future wages from the employer who presented the job offer if: (1) the second employer withdraws its job offer and (2) the employee who accepted the job offer (relied on the promised job offer) can prove lost earnings by "substantial evidence." The court reasoned that promissory estoppel (reasonable reliance on a promise, here the job offer) entitles a plaintiff who quit a job to recover the "lost future wages" the employee can prove s/he would have earned from his or her former at-will employer had the plaintiff not relied on the promised employment and remained at his former job.

Generally in every version of the training I've been in the written offer letter is treated as a binding contract to employ within the constraints of the letter (background checks, expiration dates, etc)

That's helpful, thanks, but to be clear: that case supports damages for having relied upon the offer and thus quitting a prior job, rather than any obligation-to-employ-in-the-offered-role. So:

* withdrawing the offer before the candidate quits the old job would seem to imply no damages (and no obligation-to-employ)

* any damages would be based on lost wages at the old job, not the new offered compensation rate or other benefits of the withdrawn position

It might also be kind of an interesting legal puzzle as to whether a person trapped in such a situation would be eligible for unemployment compensation. (It doesn't fit the usual eligibility pattern... but it is sort-of-involuntary... and the employer-who-withdrew-the-offer might prefer to take a hit on their unemployment-tax-rates as a way to offset their damages with unemployment-payments... but the system probably can't even model that.)

> If you accept before then, they have to employ you

I've never seen a job offer that doesn't explicitly disclaim any implication that it's a binding agreement to employ you.

Maybe in California it's different but in Illinois it's unheard of that a company would legally obligate themselves to employ an engineer with their offer letter.

Every offer letter I've ever received certainly had escape clauses. If it were binding it would be called a "contract" not an "offer."

That said, many startups are clueless about HR policies and employment law. My bet is that they just really don't know what they are doing.

> Start ups are moving quickly and trying to get to the next milestone.

I honestly think that's what it is; i don't ascribe malice towards my potential employer.

> That said, it sounds like you already made up your mind right? You are having second thoughts so own that and say "Thanks, but no thanks." and keep looking and/or doing what ever it is you are doing.

No, you're reading too much into it. :-) Even if they are bears to work for, there's lot of work to do that I'd like to do. Then, maybe I won't have a hard time getting a job next time.

Thanks for your input. It is not often I hear from management types, especially at the VP level. Thanks!

> If you accept before then, they have to employ you

Wonder if it even matters in a "at will" state. They can give you a job then fire you next day for some made up thing.

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