Today I saw a post with what I consider an unfortunate comparison about the difference in ethics between:
A company "hiring" an employee and then canceling the offer after they've left their previous company.
An employee "accepting" a position with a company and announcing they've changed their mind days before the start date.
This reminded me of something that happened to me a little over a year ago.
The Story
It was 2019, the first week of the year to be exact. I received and accepted an interesting offer from a large investment company.
I spoke with the company I was working for at the time, which happened to be foreign and had a very favorable currency conversion rate at the time, and I waited for the start of the "new job."
A few days before the anticipated first day, I received an email notification that the hiring had been canceled, along with a brief "We're sorry to have to give you this news."
My Response
I had just moved to a new house with my wife and daughter who had just turned 1 year old. That's when I found myself in this situation, and surprisingly, I wasn't worried for even a minute. Besides having a recent reserve for this type of unforeseen event, I had always invested in and believed in myself. In the end, it was easy to reap the fruits of that investment, and I quickly found a new position at a company where I had the happiness of learning how to solve some new technical challenges. I also learned a lot about people and, most importantly, I learned a lot about myself.
Many people said: "Wow, I wouldn't let that slide, sue them, blah blah blah..." and honestly, that was never an option.
Was it fair?
Definitely not. This wasn't the behavior I expected, but problems happen regardless of what the reason was or whose fault it was. At the end of the day, it's always you with yourself and the difficult task of deciding how you're going to deal with the things that happen to you daily, whether they're good or bad.
Reflection
I confess it's impressive how some companies are much more beautiful "from the outside looking in" than "from the inside looking out." This was a company I viewed favorably, and in the end, the mess was so big that even the CTO couldn't explain to me what actually happened. And surprisingly, the same HR department came to talk to me again twice as if nothing had happened—they didn't even know it had happened.
The Takeaway
The fact is that how well you know yourself and how you deal with this type of situation will help you a lot to evolve as a person and as a professional.
And you? How do you deal with life's frustrations?