Five interview rounds. A case study. Office visits. Several rounds of discussion. By the end of it she had an offer letter in hand and a start date circled.
Two days before she was due to begin, the company withdrew it.
The reason given: the employee who was leaving had decided to stay.
She compared the whole exercise to speed dating — no alignment, no accountability — and pointed at the double standard underneath it. Candidates, she wrote, are expected to be available immediately, clear every round, and finish unpaid assignments on deadline. A company, meanwhile, can pull an offer forty-eight hours out and call it unfortunate circumstances.
Her line for the offer letter itself was the one that travelled: it is not a maybe, it is a commitment. People build plans around it. They turn down other jobs. They tell their families.
The post drew the usual split — sympathy, and the counter-argument that candidates renege too. Neither changes the arithmetic for the person who has to start looking again.