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Mar 7 at 4:45 comment added Mars Downvoted because I don't want to promote crappy behavior in the world, even if it is pragmatic. Bad employee behavior leads to bad company behavior which leads to more bad employee behavior. You don't make things better by riding the downward spiral. Also, mainly because as others have said, this is a bad idea in some countries, industries and/or positions.
Mar 6 at 23:04 comment added Simon Geard @Steve Because as I said, people in the industry talk to each other. It's not that the competitor will be calling the ex-employer... it's that co-workers at your new company may have friends at the old company (and may previously have worked there themselves). That's not hypothetical... as I said in my earlier comment, I'm in regular contact with people all over my industry, and when someone moves from one company to another, people do talk.
Mar 6 at 20:22 comment added Steve And indeed, if employers are looking for a candidate who won't leave for a substantially better job when offered one (even though they are offering supreme wages which must be designed to cause precisely this, with them at the benefitting end of the process), then although a "fast leaver" is provably not such a candidate, it's very implausible to assume the other candidates are of generally any better character - the others probably just haven't been offered any other jobs yet, or aren't quite feeling the squeeze of unemployment yet. (2/2)
Mar 6 at 20:21 comment added Steve @SimonGeard, the question is why the competitor who just hired them for say £10k more, would be calling the employer they've just poached from, and relying on their opinion of someone who they only had for say 4 weeks - especially when the bad employer is, like you say, likely to be raw and annoyed and therefore completely unreliable. You cannot rule out that people think in all kinds of strange ways, but I can't see much rationale for why an employer paying wages enough to poach from his competitors, should be offended when he successfully poaches from his competitors! (1/2)
Mar 6 at 19:48 comment added Simon Geard @Steve Yes, and if you've joined a company, allowed them to invest a bunch of effort teaching you everything you need to know to work productively for them, then immediately left... you've wasted a lot of their time and resources, and they have good reason to resent you. And if they then get a call from their friends at your new employer, they're unlikely to have anything good to say about you...
Mar 6 at 7:57 comment added Steve @NotThatGuy, I'm not quite sure what your point is. My answer is fully general in the sense it acknowledges the existence of both good and bad employers, with good and bad jobs. Obviously I'm saying bad employers flood the market, but that's because they constantly have to backfill, so these employers may have many vacancies but few jobs, making candidates likely to encounter them (whereas good employers may provide many jobs but have few vacancies and are less frequently in the market to recruit). I'm surprised this seems controversial with you.
Mar 6 at 7:43 comment added NotThatGuy This seems like an over-generalised and biased view of employment, but I don't think a full critique would fit in a comment. Suffice to say that some professionals are in high demand (while others are in low demand). Some can afford to be picky (while others can't). So at best I can say what you've said is true for some professions, or some people in some situations. But even those in high demand can certainly still be "lowballed" by a greedy employer.
Mar 6 at 5:43 comment added Steve @SimonGeard, the only "bad terms" here is that you've left soon for a better job. And you're probably not the first, or the last, to do so.
Mar 6 at 1:36 comment added Jiří Baum While the employers may or may not talk, certainly immediate colleagues and supervisors will; depending on the size of your field, you may well meet them again (and potentially again and again). Which is not necessarily a complete bar, but you might want to take care that if you do leave, there aren't hard feelings personally.
Mar 6 at 1:18 comment added Paŭlo Ebermann "It is also state economic policy" – which state/country you are talking about? (There was no location mentioned in the question, neither is it in your answer, and I'd think this is location specific.)
Mar 5 at 23:04 comment added Simon Geard @Steve - you might be surprised. People move around different employers in a given industry, and they keep in contact. More than once, I've had friends or former colleagues at other companies mention that they've just picked up someone else who used to work with me... so if they've left on bad terms, there's a good chance that a bad rep will follow them.
Mar 5 at 21:13 comment added Steve @DavidS, I doubt when employers meet to influence each other, the topic of conversation is the guy who was there 4 weeks before leaving for a better offer. And I also doubt good employers care how fast people turn over at their awful competitors.
Mar 5 at 21:05 comment added David S I would recommend adding a word of caution to this. Depending on the industry and position, this may damage your reputation. While a company may be a bad employer, it may still have influence with other employers in the industry. In some fields reputation matters more than others. So while this approach is certainly viable, it can still have risks.
Mar 5 at 11:24 history answered Steve CC BY-SA 4.0