Team matches and accepting/reneging offer

Question

So, in the past, whenever a job switch happened, it was comparatively easier to align all the interviews and get the offer timing synced up to some extent. But with team matches now, especially with the big companies, how do you manage the timeline for offers, and also, how long should one wait on any of the offers, given there is no assurance of a team match?

I am wondering if there is a strategy that can be applied in this scenario. Let's say one accepts an offer at company A, and there is a lengthy team match process with company B. At what time is it okay to let go of company A? To make things clear, this means you have already started at company A and less than a month to a year into working there, you leave it for company B.

This is assuming that the candidate is joining in a senior role and both companies A & B are big Tech firms.

Alex Chiou · Accepted Answer

There's only so much you can do to align offers, especially in this brutal market. I have seen exploding offers left and right, and team match is a nightmare because there's simply too many talented engineers and not enough headcount. My little brother got stuck in Google team match for literally an entire year and just gave up.

Overall, just try to stack your onsites concurrently, ask for wiggle room to extend exploding offers, and hope for the best 🙏

Also, if one accepts an offer at company A, and there is a team match with company B, at what time is it okay to let go of company A (accepted offer, joined the company but less than a month, joined a company less than a year).

When it comes to instantly bailing out of a job, I think 1 month or less of tenure there is okay, max 1.5 months. Your tolerance will go up depending on the delta between company B and company A. If company B offers you double for example, then it's probably worth jumping ship no matter what.

Here are some other things to keep in mind there there:

If your stint at company A was very short (<1.5 months), just leave it off your resume/LinkedIn and pretend you never did it. It will look really bad if you keep it on.
You will almost certainly be blacklisted from company A forever. So keep that in mind, especially if it's a top company.

Anyways, once you figure out whatever your next role is on a more permanent basis, check out our onboarding course: [Course] The Complete Onboarding Guide For Software Engineers: Succeeding When You're New

Team matches and accepting/reneging offer

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