I think their HR culture may be a little toxic. When I told them their offer was not enough, they got very irate. They said if I only care about money I’m not a good fit for their culture of builders, and that I should watch out because there are lots of lay offs happening. It all left me with a very poor impression of them.
This is the type of toxicity I experienced at most companies in a top third world country (that shall not be named).
I worked there for about 3-4 years and people would try to make you feel bad or guilty for all kinds of things. Sharing you got laid off was an automatic disqualification from any interview. Lying your way through was the only way. Now I think it could have been systemic or cultural.
My advice to OP, you really dodged a bullet. This isn’t a healthy workplace culture that values you as a human being. Pat yourself on the back and move onwards and upwards.
A "little toxic?". This is a nuclear bridge burning option from them, for absolutely no reason at all.
Instead: "Mr. Cochne, we're sorry that we can't match your salary expectations this time. We do find you a good fit for the company, so please think about us in the future."
There. No hard feelings. No burning bridges. Professional. People come and go.
I met Reynold a few years ago about a job and also withdrew because he frankly got too self-righteous and made me feel uncomfortable. Cloudera was a bit warmer but was missing a lot of productive energy. I think the founding Databricks team are just very analytical and system-oriented, even when it comes to people. It's reasonable to expect the early team to have adapted to people management by now, but some of the potential champions of that have left, and the product remains primarily B2B.
> They said that I should watch out because there are lots of lay offs happening.
They should display some more empathy and should read the situation correctly. A significant portion of the recently laid off people are from HR and recruiting.
If money isn't that important, why are they regularly getting VC money for 10 years at something like 40 Billion valuation?
The sad reality is this industry is full of assholes, I don't even mean they trying to pay as little as possible, that's "business", I mean unprofessional people who play "good cop, bad cop" and all the childish games they learn on TV movies.
Some of them really think they are the "new Steve Jobs", and act like one.
These are just recruiters, though. It’s a sales job and they have quotas and incentives. Many of them were not in the industry a short time ago and many are now leaving the industry on a rail.
Do you expect your car sales guy to be professional? I’d love for that to be the case, but the reality is usually not so.
I'm not defending it as a good idea, but where's the dishonesty? It honestly seems more like just a waste of your time unless you really need the job NOW
If you dont stick to a bad job and leave within a few months… just don’t put that short term job on your CV. The CV doesn’t need to include anything that’d make you look bad.
Depends on how the rest of your CV looks like. If you just have short term jobs, sure it’s a red flag. If you have one ones in a while, everyone will understand that it just didn’t work out.
I've got two <1y permanent jobs in a row on my CV - first one was running out of money and I quit to save them a salary (I didn't believe in the holy grail pivot or new tech lead - company folded 2 months later anyway); second one "let me go" after they got a new tech lead that didn't agree with my approach. Neither is a red flag, both are just bad timing / luck.
