Hedging in the job market

A while back, I considered a situation in which a person takes a job offer and then, a few weeks later, gets a better offer. The question was whether it's acceptable to bail out on the first and increase your income.

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The responses from readers fell into two distinct camps. The first group held that once you had made a commitment to the first employer, you had, in effect, "given your word." Even if the second job were financially more rewarding, they said, you owed it to the company that had hired you.

The second group had a completely different view. Corporations, they said, are locked into a binge-and-purge syndrome with employees. They add workers like crazy when times are good and then toss them out, like a bad clam, at the first sign of a poor quarterly Profit and Loss Statement -- no matter how long the worker has been with the company or how the move financially affects the worker. Why should workers be bound to a commitment, if corporations aren't?

I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy. If I say I'll do something, I'll do it unless there is some compelling reason I can't. However, I developed this ethic in a time when companies and workers both felt a sense of obligation toward each other. Workers did their best and companies "took care of them." That has changed. While that may apply at some smaller companies, we are becoming increasingly more "corporatized." Mom-and-pop shops are disappearing and outposts of mega-corporations are everywhere. And that raises the question of whether that changes things.

But recently I received a question from a reader that puts a new twist on the jumping-ship problem, and takes it one step further:

"I have been out of work for seven months and have been searching for any developer position anywhere in the country for the full seven months. Our ISP statement shows that I have been online (at company job sites) for over 150 hours each month. I have also been spending a great deal of time networking with friends and former co-workers. Point is that it's a very tough market out there!

"I interviewed for a position at a local firm (Firm #1) in early December and received some positive feedback from the hiring manager. Despite my staying in contact with HR and the hiring manager, they have been unable to pull the trigger on making an offer. From what I can determine, there has been some political problem with hiring an external candidate over a qualified internal candidate.

"Last week I interviewed for a similar position in a second firm (Firm #2) and received a good offer within a week. I asked for some time to make a decision. I then called HR at Firm #1 and pressured them to make a decision. I was told that they were trying to get a compensation package through the area VP and that they should be back to me within a day.

"Current situation: It's now a couple days later. Firm #1 has not been able to put together a offer though they are still trying. I need to reply to Firm #2 regarding their offer.

"My preference would be to take the position at Firm #1, even if the compensation package was slightly worse. The position at Firm #1 is simply better suited to my talents and interests.

"The question: Given that I need to reply to Firm #2 soon and that I really need a job, how ethically 'bad' would it be to accept the offer form Firm #2 and then later reverse that decision (if Firm #1 should come through with a reasonable offer)?

"Friends and family have told me that I am stupid not to accept the offer from Firm #2 and wait to make my 'real' decision when Firm #1 gets back to me. Their reasoning is that I need a job to support my family, that companies have no compunction about laying off their employees and treating them badly, and that I should feel no remorse about taking the best offer whenever that should occur. Ultimately, they argue, it will be best for me and the hiring company if I take the job that I really want the most.

What's your take on all this?"

Well, my initial take -- which I sent back immediately, because the writer indicated he needed to know "now" -- was that it would be pretty much dishonest to take one job knowing that he would certainly jump ship if the other pending offer came through. I thought this was different from the "surprise second offer" scenario precisely because the second offer wasn't a surprise. He would be taking the first job, knowing full well that he really wanted, and would jump at, the second one. Accepting the first job would be misleading to those doing the hiring, who would think that he would be committing to the organization, when he really wasn't.

My second argument was financial. It costs companies money to put employees on the payroll. If he were to take the job and the company laid out a considerable amount of cash to get him on board, leaving within few days or weeks would be unfair and financially disadvantageous to the company.

The third argument was that it would complicate the hiring process, by letting the company think the process was over and even possibly telling other candidates to look elsewhere. If one of the other candidates took another job, this could possibly deprive the company of a viable candidate and could lock the other candidate into his or her second job choice.

Usually, I resist doling out advice to people about their personal lives. There's enough of that going on these days on radio and television. And most of it is poorly done, probably because it's done as entertainment more than anything else. Also, it's so much easier to pontificate about these things when you're employed and the wolf isn't knocking at the door. I was unemployed during the last Iraq/War/Recession debacle and know full well the frustration of sending hundreds of resumes into some HR black hole, never to hear from anyone there again.

So I was relieved when the person wrote back a few minutes later to say that Firm #1 had just come through, and the problem had solved itself.

But then I began to question whether my off-the-cuff answer was realistic in view of today's corporate landscape, or whether it was mired in the past, where companies cared about employees and vice versa. In the case of my reader, Firm #2 (assuming it was a mega-corporation) would have had no qualms about laying him off before he started work, if a bean counter somewhere decided the company needed to purge X employees to "send a message to Wall Street." The bean counter wouldn't care -- nor would the corporation -- that the worker had quit his old job and maybe moved to a new state. The pink slip would have come just as surely.

The hiring managers may have been distressed about laying him off in that scenario -- my experience is that they usually are -- but "there is nothing they can do," "their hands are tied," and "the orders came down from above." It's the corporation that calls the shots, not the managers.

So, following my reasoning, we seem to be left with a lop-sided set of ethical concerns. The worker would feel a commitment that the corporation doesn't share. The worker would be concerned for the corporation's financial well-being, while the corporation has no such concerns for the worker, considering only its own position. The worker would worry about the ripple effect on other workers and other companies, while the corporation had no such qualms.

This leads me to wonder whether my advice was sound. Am I still rooted in a system that no longer exists, a world in which a deal is a deal and an agreement is an agreement? Have the amoral corporations moved us beyond that into a world where every person (or corporate entity) does what is immediately best for his/her/its own financial position -- and everyone else be damned? I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.