I've had a similar story happen in the past.<p>I was living in Japan looking for remote jobs and came across Couchbase. Interviewed well with the team who all seemed excited to get someone with my experience on board, however, the hiring manager said he wasn't sure he wanted to manage someone in my timezone. He pulled me into a separate call at the end of the rounds and asked some weird questions, which in hindsight were documentation.<p>When the HR person handling me called to congratulate me and sent the offer letter I was pretty excited. It seemed the timezone thing wasn't a problem then. I put my notice in with my other job, and then waited for a week. Two weeks. Three. HR person didn't know what was going on when I called them back.<p>Then I got any email from Couchbase's lawyers with a document stating they would hire me for 10 days total and no longer. Fuck you very much, hiring manager Larry. If you didn't want to hire me so bad why the dog and pony show?<p>I scrambled to see if my old position was open, but the CEO said he had closed it because, well, I put my notice in right at the end of the budget year and he moved that money.<p>I went unemployed for 5 months as I hunted for jobs, both local and remote. It put a massive amount of strain on my marriage, my mental health, and everything in between. Thankfully it didn't include a move as it sounds like the blog author did.
Time to learn about a relocation clause in the general employee agreement:<p>Clause [X]: Relocation Expenses and Redundancy Protection<p>The Company agrees to reimburse the Employee for reasonable and necessary relocation expenses incurred by the Employee in connection with the Employee's relocation to the work location specified in this Agreement, subject to the terms and conditions set forth herein ("Relocation Expenses").<p>The Relocation Expenses shall include, but not be limited to, the actual costs of moving the Employee's personal property, temporary housing expenses for up to [number] days, transportation costs for the Employee and their immediate family members, and any other reasonable and necessary expenses incurred as a direct result of the relocation, up to a maximum amount of $[amount].<p>The Employee shall provide the Company with receipts or other documentation evidencing the Relocation Expenses within [number] days of incurring such expenses. The Company shall reimburse the Employee for the Relocation Expenses within [number] days of receiving satisfactory documentation from the Employee.<p>In the event the Employee's role is made redundant before the Employee's start date, the Company shall still be liable for the reimbursement of the Relocation Expenses incurred by the Employee, provided that such expenses were incurred within [one (1) month] prior to the date the role is made redundant (the "Cut-Off Date").<p>The Company's obligation to reimburse the Employee's Relocation Expenses shall survive the termination of this Agreement for any reason, including but not limited to the Employee's role being made redundant before the Employee's start date.<p>If the Employee voluntarily terminates their employment with the Company within [one (1) year] of the Employee's start date, the Employee shall be required to repay to the Company, within [number] days of the termination date, a prorated portion of the Relocation Expenses reimbursed by the Company, calculated based on the percentage of the [one (1) year] period not completed by the Employee.
I've heard several stories about companies rescinding offers in a timeframe where it's obvious the candidate would have already made irreversible decisions.<p>Funny thing is that the same HR people will tell their own stories about candidates backing out with huge eyerolls, distain, etc.<p>I suppose the more common it becomes, the less the "offer" process will mean in practice. Candidates will hedge their bets.<p>Edit: If it becomes really common, that will probably also destroy the "2 week notice" thing. Why out myself if I'm not 100% sure I have my new job?
There’s no great solution to this apart from the economy and company doing well so that this doesnt happen. I’ll lay out the reasons below:<p>1. Let’s say we pass a law that prevents offers from being revoked. This will make hiring much harder and increase 5 rounds to like 10 and involve many more committees and even then most candidates other than sureshots getting rejected.<p>2. Ban revoking offers only for overseas employees (who are hurt most by this). This will ensure that the hiring bar for overseas employees is set sky high and it will already be harder for them to compete since they likely won’t have prestigious firms on their resume already compared to FAANG that American Employees would have.<p>Open to policy suggestions but I don’t see any good methods that prevents new candidates from being unfairly disadvantaged and stops months of preparation being put to waste due to offers being revoked
Advice about what to do after you've already done something else isn't very useful, but when my wife and I moved internationally for her new job, we made sure to have it be a slow process. First she went, rented a short term apartment, while I moved all of our belongings into a storage facility, then once she felt good about the position she found us a nicer more permanent home, then I sold our home in the US, the car, and moved to meet her in the other country. Yes, it was more expensive, and we certainly wasted some money, but my feeling was if the company can't compensate us appropriately to take this risk, it's not worth the risk. They helped with moving expenses and apartment selection and the first two month's rent.<p>If something had gone wrong, or she'd felt like it was a bait and switch, we had months of buffer to fall back on.
Seems Google treats its employees like they treat their customers. My experience with Google as a customer is just as frustrating (have had corporate accounts locked out with no avenue for recourse except sending emails over weeks, to simply be denied again because their bots think I'm doing something strange, and products my company was relying on and using simply stop being supported one day).<p>I stopped using or supporting Google related products, and declined moving forwards on an interview offer as a result. This story just reinforces this view.
Having an offer rescinded for 'business reasons' is unbelievably annoying, and the author has my sympathy. That said, it's kind of understandable too. Things happen. The landscape changes. Some people will be affected. You kind of have to roll with it sometimes. I wish the author the best of luck finding something else quickly.<p>What I find truly incredible though is that it took <i>a full year</i> to go from application to having a start date. That's glacially slow even for a giant company. How can any team get anything done if it takes that long to bring additional resources in?
<i>...asking to connect with me regarding “an update on my Google offer”. I chose to connect the following day.</i><p>It's nice to know that Google is consistent in the use of the phrase "An update on...". If you see this, it's dead.
I'm not sure why anyone hasn't brought up the elephant in the room. OP, you're now an unemployed male of draftable age living in Russia, which is doing poorly in a war with your neighbor. Depending on how the anticipated Ukranian spring offensive fares, extremely bad things could happen to you very soon.<p>You already made yourself mobile. This would be a good time to take a six-month vacation anywhere outside Russia. Look for remote work after you cross the border.
Is your visa still valid? If so, move to London anyways. You've already quit your job and sold your stuff. Chances are if you qualified for Google, you'll find work there. In for a penny, in for a pound, as the Brits say.
Entities with massive wealth, such as Google, should always use money to soften the blow of their mistakes.<p>Giving this person a small chunk of cash would make me respect Google so much more than just screwing this person's life up and saying "Whoops, you're fired, lol!"<p>But it's been a long time since Google was a cool company.
Remember in the hot 2021 hiring market when Coinbase revoked offers because of a layoff? I remember deciding they were on my blacklist after that. I thought their leadership and recruiting were too disorganized to trust with my career.<p>Of course you can lose your job at any time, but letting a candidate quit their old job and relocate and then get laid off is not something that should ever happen.<p>And now it's layoff season, and every big company has recently done this to huge numbers of people.<p>So as a labor force, what do we do about this? How to we protect ourselves now that the deal between employers and employees has broken down even further?
Worked at a startup, hired a guy - we got bought his first week, they closed our office.<p>So on one check he got his hiring bonus, relocation expenses, first paycheck and severance.
Probably not, but I wonder if it would be prudent to try to ask for pre-hiring retention agreements. If you make me an offer and I accept, if you retract or downsize between that signature and 90 days after starting - then you pay me some amount?<p>But... few would probably agree to it for non-executive positions. Executives of course, play by different rules and can have all sorts of special things negotiated.
It was enlightening to me when I started applying to jobs to find out that the companies which were renowned for their innovation and productivity had a several week, 5-stage+, committee-based hiring process that made you feel like a sow getting its haunches graded before slaughter
This is why I suggest not giving two weeks notice when leaving a job for another.<p>Instead send a resignation email the morning you start at the new company.<p>This seems fair and reasonable given that companies are willing to pull offers.
Russia has enacted a law today that basically says that you can't leave the country from the moment they decide to draft/mobilize you. So good thing you already have your belongings sold. Time to jump on a plane to Tbilisi.
Treat yourself like your own mega Corp. Don’t give notice until you’ve already basically started at your new job (nowadays easier than ever), passed your background check. You don’t owe anyone anything, you have to look out for yourself, just like mega Corp is looking out for themselves. You can still be polite about it, but put yourself first always. Even if you sign and are employed at a Corp for one day and you find something better, never think twice about taking the better opportunity. Remember you are labor being exploited to provide the mega Corp with their multiples
That sucks. I moved first, then started looking for a job, because I was afraid of this exact scenario. I am not Russian but I imagine that for Russians it is likely very difficult to immigrate into a western country without a job offer in the current geopolitical situation. Good luck.<p>The current SI job market definitely made me reconsider my previous approach of finding greener pastures every 2-3 years. Being the newest person in a company during mass layoffs would be butt-clenching. A good reminder to all of us that we are not special and good times don't last.
I ended up in London (moving from Melbourne Australia) after a similar (but not quite the same) situation with Facebook in 2008.<p>At the time, I worked for IBM's dedicated Linux division, and before then had worked for Red Hat. Facebook wanted an SRE, and I had 10 interviews between Melbourne and Palo Alto all about SRE topics - Linux, iptables, sockets, systemtap, VLANs, DNS, python, etc. They were tough questions which I loved, and I tried my best to answer, always getting to the next round. Interviews were often at unsociable hours but I didn't mind.<p>The final stage was to leave Australia, travel to London, and "meet the SRE team and start work". This was a cursory check to make sure I was a good fit, but they were already ordering a machine - did I want Mac or PC? - and a big monitor.<p>The "meet the team" interview with the other "SREs" consisted of"<p>- Why don't you have a CS degree (I have a business degree obtained in my teens)<p>- We mainly fix badly written PHP? Do you code PHP?<p>- Here's some maths, convert it to code (I didn't know what a particular symbol meant)<p>Literally nothing SRE related, and nothing like the Palo Alto folk (which were actually much harder interviews) were looking for.<p>I ended up in London in September 2008 with no job and no life in Australia to go home to. I ended up making it and I hope this person does too.
Sorry for your loss. Been there, kinda.<p>I got a job at IBM in the mid 90s. They sold the division to Loral before I started but I decided to stay in the position. Then congress cancelled the 2billion dollar contract.<p>I was laid off before I started.<p>They had the decency to send me two weeks pay in return for signing something that I wouldn’t sue them. So at least I got paid a little bit.
The emergent behavior from devs now is going to be overlapping employment between jobs to safeguard themselves from this kind of shenanigans.
Your first day on the new job should be the day you put in your two weeks notice at your old job. Ramp down and ramp up accordingly.
This advice only applies to USA though.
It seems in UK your role can be put redundancy but you are not technically fired. It is the position that needs to be decided and they need to compensate you accordingly to the law.
They chose you because most of the factors are time dependent, so as you had not start it was cheaper to cancel the contract.<p>I think the worst part is that probably they knew about this 2 or 3 months ago but held the information because they "cannot" speak openly about layoffs because of inside trading rules and etc.<p>For me, they should have told you that months earlier and compensate for, at least, the financial loss you had.<p>And never send a notice to quit before having anything triple checked.you can condition your move to their speed in sending the contract and offer, out of any contracts, to start preparing for the change.
Sorry to hear this story and hope the author finds a new job soon.<p>I had a similar (but significantly lower stakes) experience with an internship which was canceled. At the end of the day, thanks to the generosity of the company's severance-for-zero-days-worked and the help of a stranger to find new roles for us, I think I came out ahead. The experience profoundly shaped my career and I wrote about it here: <a href="https://bobbiechen.com/blog/2021/11/5/the-layoff-the-landing" rel="nofollow">https://bobbiechen.com/blog/2021/11/5/the-layoff-the-landing</a> , and I hope the situation works out for the author as well.
The last time I saw this happen regularly was in Spring 2002. Tech had a big wave of layoffs after 9/11, and a lot of college hires got their offers and then had them rescinded before starting. Some of them even got their sign on bonuses.<p>But the best story was the guy who got both his sign on bonus and full severance, and never showed up for a day of work.<p>Between the bonus and severance, he ended up with almost a full year's salary, all up front. He decided to fly to the southern hemisphere to extend the ski season through August.
Something similar almost happened to me. Took months to interview, matched with a team that was working on a very interesting product and passed the hiring committee. Apparently the whole product was axed before they sent me an offer, so no hire this time. Probably a good thing in this climate, as this was just at the time the hiring freezes began.<p>I wouldn't have relocated at least, but would have of course quit my current job and probably had a bad time in the present job market.
We’re had ~15 years of a booming global economy.<p>Many people haven’t experienced economic slowdowns.<p>While my heart goes out to this person, you have to look at this also from the companies perceptive - it’s way easier to “layoff” someone who hasn’t started their job yet vs. someone who’s been with the company for sometime.<p>I’m not saying that makes it ok what happened. It’s just that during a slowing economy, there’s no good way to prevent innocent people from getting impacted.
Google surely pays well, and it must be that working there is a pleasure beyond understanding of a mere mortal, because I really am not seeing how waiting for 10 months to just to get an offer is otherwise making any sense. Unless you're independently rich, you'd have to work in the meantime. So, if you're not currently employed, considering Google as your next option is impossible - you need to apply for another job, and hold it for about a year while knowing you may have to quit at any moment, maybe next week, maybe in a year. Which I don't think is fair to the "substitute" employer. So, basically, to apply to Google you have to have a steady secure job first. Is that how it's supposed to work?
Sounds like there should be a legally mandated escrow for this kind of hiring. The employer should guarantee 2/3 months of employment if they’re asking someone to move across the world. This really shouldn’t be an issue if companies actually fulfilled their duties.
It is interesting how much Google's reputation has been damaged by how they did layoffs despite being one of the best paying and highest ranked workplaces in the world. So much multi-year effort ruined in a few months.
Sorry this happened to you. I’d obviously not your fault. I want to give general advice for people changing jobs in the future.<p>Don’t quit your first job until you’ve physically started your second job. Take sick leave. Take vacations. Just don’t show up if you have no other option.<p>This is particularly the case if your immigration status is dependent on employment but it applies generally.<p>Companies will not hesitate to get rid of you or rescind an offer based on market whims if nothing at all. It’s of no consequence to them. They’ll be fine if you just don’t show up. It is an asymmetrical relationship with a severe power imbalance.
Working for Google was a big dream of me when I was just starting out in my career. If I were offered a position today, I would most likely decline it.
Right before the dotcom bust, Alcatel had the Go USA program, where European employees could apply for US jobs. I applied and was in the process of relocating as well, but ultimately joined a different US company.<p>The program was abruptly cancelled when the economy went south. There were stories about families who sold their house and everything, and discovered at the airport that their tickets has been cancelled.
This happened to me too. After I got an offer letter from Google, I was ghosted and notified that the position was deprioritized a week after I was supposed to have started.<p>I signed a lease in the intervening period expecting a 50% raise compared to my previous job. Bad move lol. Took forever to find a different job.
> I held a “garage sale” (in Russian) and sold most of my belongings.<p>Does this mean the Russian term is garage sale?<p>I’m amused that in the US we use that term too.
It is difficult to have confidence in companies.
In recent job changes, I did something different: I started at a new company before quitting my previous job. In the old 8 hours, in the new 4 hours a day. Both companies know this.
It is, for me, the only way to change jobs today.
This is the purpose of a signing + relocation bonus. And if the contract is well written it will be yours regardless if you start, and also if the company chooses to terminate you before 1yr. Unfortunately it's hard to negotiate with $BIGTECH .
Bad risk management. Should have relocated to a hotel first, made it through the first three months, then think about relocating permanently. Why sell stuff, there are storage facilities everywhere.
Rescinding offers due to layoffs is the biggest dick-move in corporate hiring. Laying off before first year vest without acceleration is the second biggest dick-move.
Seems to have received the HN kiss of death...<p>Archive: <a href="https://archive.ph/xdoVH" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/xdoVH</a>
The "business reasons" by Google are probably completely fake, but we have some pointers from OP who give us the real reason :<p>- OP is russian<p>- OP was working at Yandex (who had an history of "strange" relationships with the russian government)<p>- in December 2022 Vladimir Poutine take over the russian subsidiaries of Yandex (through Alexeï Koudrine) -> more "strange" relationships<p>- OP received an official offer in December 2022<p>- Russia invade Ukraine in february 2023<p>- OP was terminated by Google in the following days in march<p>I am not Google, but i also would have avoided to hire a russian, just after the start of the war. I bet than all russian potential hire had been terminated the same way during the same period.<p>Too much red flags to take the risk to hire a potential FSB agent.
Surely by law you've not "worked" anywhere until one complete business day under contract?<p>This "minus 10 days" is another way of saying "My employer & I had a contract which they legally revoked before my first day of employment"<p>The blog entry reads like SEO spam to tell potential employers "Hey, I was smart enough to get offered a job at FAANG!" without _actually_ working there.