This post is an outcome of an incident from the recent past.

A friend of mine had put in his papers after years of work in a company which quite didn’t value his contributions.  For him it reached a tipping point after delivering results year on year, his promotion was always kept in abeyance and the increments were as he wished to call it “pittance”.  Call it office politics if you may.

He got a great offer from another company which was willing to pay twice as much for his expertise with a position which matched his expectations.

The MD of current employer then had a 1:1 with him and understood his position, claiming that he was ignorant of the injustice meted out to him and blah! blah! and made a counter-offer which not just matched the offer from the competitor but also gave him a position.  Assuring him that the mistakes of the past will be corrected and stating how much the organization values his contribution.

The poor guy fell for this game of great ‘deception’ and rejected the offer he got from the competitor.  I call this deception as after about 6 months he was fired from his job for non-performance and also alleging that he has passed on sensitive information about the organization to the competitor during his interactions with them.

Now he is jobless for the last 6 months and feeling depressed over this alleged deceit.  He had found out that they had only bought time to groom another understudy before letting this guy go.

I realized that this is not an isolated incident.  I’ve been myself through these games of deceit attempted on me in the past.  Fortunately, I didn’t succumb.  I stuck to my guns when such counter-offers came.  My point was if they felt that I was worth the offer being made after I put in my papers, why didn’t they do that before?  Once you have put in your papers, mentally you have switched off and have already carried a lot of baggage which is difficult to offload easily.  Plus the additional factor that many organizational leaders do not like the fact that you are going on your terms.  There point is “how dare he go on his terms?  It’s me who decides the terms of employment and severance as well”  It’s an ‘ego’ trip.

Such employers also trouble you post leaving your job by delaying paperwork, amounts due etc., in one pretext or the other.  There are plenty around in this world.

Have you been a victim of such ‘deceit’?  How would you respond to a counter-offer?

What would you do if you are suckered into staying?