Trending Topic: Worker Gets A New Job, Old Company Counter Offers With Less Pay

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Feb 23, 2022 3:00 PM EST

When Redditor u/VincentVegatheHorse gave his notice for his old position, his old company asked if they could counter.

The practice is commonplace in many industries when the existing employer is eager to keep the departing staff. This can often work to the benefit of both parties when they have an excellent current relationship. The employee gets higher pay and often more responsibility and progression in their career, and the employer gets to save the incurred costs of hiring and training new blood. The society of Human Resource Management estimated in 2016 that companies "spend an average of 42 days to fill a position and $4,129 per hire."₁That's not even including the cost of the reduced efficiency and possible service downtime.

It would be best for an employee not even to consider a counteroffer from an employer when there is a likelihood that the employer is just trying to retain the employee as a stop-gap while they try to find, or train up, cheaper and "more loyal."

The thing about this whole this is that, usually, such a counteroffer would involve, well, countering the offer.

Since this employer seems to be confused about what the word counter means, here's what Merriam-Webster has to say on the subject.₂

counter
verb
coun·ter | \ ˈkau̇n-tər \
countered; countering\ ˈkau̇n-t(ə-)riŋ \
transitive verb
1a: to act in opposition - to: OPPOSE
b: OFFSET, NULLIFY
tried to counter the trend toward depersonalization
2: to assert in answer.
We countered that our warnings had been ignored.
intransitive verb
: to meet attacks or arguments with defensive or retaliatory steps

(It's not very effective!) via: serebii.net

To u/VincentVegatheHorse's complete and utter bewilderment, his company returned with a lower offer than the minimum he had provided them. He couldn't help but laugh.

And I f**king laughed. It's hilarious when companies are so out of touch with the current hiring environment that they don't even understand how countering a job offer works.

Commenters were quick to side with u/VincentVegatheHorse showing their support and rebuke the company.

For more stories like this that are emerging from the r/antiwork subreddit and similar forums check out this collection of posts on the subject.

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Got a new job offer that pays substantially more, old company asked if they can counter…

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