This is sadly a lot more common than people realize. It's drilled in your head that as an employee you should never ever renege on a job offer or accept a better one too soon because you are "burning bridges" and that is very bad, but it never works the same the other way around.<p>Budgets change all the time. Departments go through reorgs. Projects get cancelled. "Hey but we have an open job offer" is never going to be a concern for management when making these decisions, nor should it for you.
The two times I started a new job it seems the position I was interviewed for, and the team I ended up joining was somewhat different... Because of shifting priorities, etc. such is life in a living organization.<p>But neither employer rescinded their offer. Retracting a job offer is not normal.<p>Stories like this will discourage people from joining Tesla. And in reality Tesla could easily find a position for an extra engineer.
The same thing happened to me in late 2018.<p>I was hired to write a compiler for deep learning (training) on Tesla's in-house hardware, under Peter Bannon.<p>I resigned from the job I had at the time, and Tesla backed out of the contract shortly before my start date.<p>Tesla is ruthless.
If he wanted to, he could probably sue Tesla for tortious interference of his previous job, since he gave notice at the previous job because of them.<p>Also, it really sucks that Tesla didn't offer him severance given that he was effectively laid off. Hopefully he can at least get unemployment.
From the post it's unclear whether Tesla made a signed offer, or just sent the offer without signature. If the latter, there's probably not much that can be done about it. That kind of thing actually happened A LOT last year, and LinkedIn was full of people warning you to make sure you get a signed offer before you give notice in your current job. In the middle of the pandemic, many people went unemployed because of this.<p>Now, if the offer was signed, I'd imagine the contract had some terms and both the employer and the employee have to abide by the terms of the contract. As a candidate, you can reject an offer in the last minute, even if you accepted it, as long as you didn't sign it. But once you sign the piece of paper, you've got liabilities. There'll be a notice period and other things. And the same goes for the employer. I guess even in the US companies have liabilities towards their employees?<p>I'd think if this candidate passed an interview with Tesla, he won't have much trouble finding another role. It's always more difficult when you're unemployed, but you can always build leverage by applying to multiple companies, get multiple offers, and let them compete for you. Then again, NEVER turn an offer down until you're all signed with one of the potential employers and ready to start. If you can, don't even turn the other offers down until you've already started the new job. And when you decline the offer, do so in good terms making it clear that you'd like to consider working for them in the future (you can be fired anytime).
This happened to me in college in the fall of 2008. I accepted a software development position with a local consulting firm and quit my on-campus job, only to find out that my new position no longer existed a few days later.<p>I ended up finding another job with a competitor before my two weeks ran out, but it was a worrisome time.<p>Later I reviewed a spec from a new customer's previous consulting firm, with whom they had just parted ways due to no progress on the application. That previous firm was the one that had hired-me-but-not-really. It was a brief moment of vindication.
I am unfamiliar with the US employment law, but isn't the job offer a contract? Therefore I am assuming you would still be compensated, and its simply a matter of finding your next gig?<p>Or is this as simple as the offer could be modified and therefore your shafted?
At the very least, Tesla should pay the author for the time between the hire date through until two weeks after the notice the position was eliminated.<p>Also, it's not like they couldn't use another SWE. Unless the applicant was a specialist, I see no reason they couldn't just train for another position doing similar work, unless the application would prefer not to.<p>From now on, employees should feel very comfortable leaving Tesla with zero notice.
This is an interesting comment on the Linkedin page:<p>In my experience, This is actually not that surprising, don’t find yourself cornered by such situations, always get offers more than one and then keep them on their edge until you have joined. Such is corporate life.
If he were let go on first day of new job, would he be happy? It is an at will employment, got to just accept it and move on.<p>Tesla doesn't care why you took up the job. May be you wanted to follow your passion or may be you wanted to feed your family. Musk doesn't care. That is the beauty of capitalism. Without everybody else worrying about why you took up a job, we have built an economic system that doesn't let anyone starve but infact has higher standard of living than non capitalist companies.