Interviewed with 5 individuals for an Electrical Protection/Power Control role. Interviewed with everyone from the recruiter, hiring Director, then the Senior Director (the hiring manager's boss), then followed by the typical engineering and sales leadership interviews. The interviews themselves were typical questions asked and nothing surprising. The interviews themselves were good and very positive in my opinion and felt strongly about the opportunity. The problems came when they made a job offer. They made me an offer for $120K base + 10% target bonus which was a slap in the face given my extensive Product Management experience and technology background directly tied to their products and industries. In all, their offer was a "typical low ball target" and more suited for early career product management folks at large organizations.
I wrote up a thankful and respectful counteroffer to their initial offer and countered with a $40-45K base salary increase, a signing bonus that was aligned with what I would lose at my current role, and a 5-10% increase on the target bonus--quite reasonable and in line with industry and market standards. The counter was submitted with the full intent to negotiate further.
After not hearing back at all regarding my initial counter offer for 3 days straight, I reached out to the recruiter for follow-up. The recruiter's response was simply "I don't have a timeline on a response" which was odd. I followed up with the decision maker (the Senior Director) next and her response was again simply "we don't have a timeline on a response" with no other words or information. In order to attempt to further engage in negotiations, I blindly revised my counter offer two times over the next week lowering my ask each time and removing some features of my counteroffer. I did not receive any email response from the recruiter or the Senior Director who was making the overall financial decisions. Quite disappointing to say the least. After one or two more emails to the recruiter guy over the next two weeks, he replied with a one-line response "we appreciate your time and interest and wish you luck in your future endeavors".
What is quite surprising is there was a collective effort to try to "ghost" me based on my initial counter offer. The most disappointing part is that there was a clear agreement between more than one person in the organization (recruiter, Senior Director & possibly the hiring Director) to not reply to my counter offer or engage--even after making an initial official written offer to me. Quite disgusting after telling me to my face how much they like my background and can see me in multiple places within their organization. During my initial interview with the Senior Director, I called her out for bragging on her linkedIn accomplishments about leading restructuring efforts at her previous organizations. When I mentioned this, she was a little defensive and tried to laugh it off awkwardly by saying "it wasn't me who wanted this". But bragging about it in multiple accomplishments was quite eye opening and was the first time I have seen something like this written in their list of accomplishments. In the end, I knew the kind of person I was dealing with from the very start of the process and the outcome of my interview and job offer situation was completely reflective of the person who boasts on the misfortunes of others. Not my kind of company if two or more people agree that the best approach after providing a job offer is "yes, we shouldn't respond to him" ...or "we should ghost him" after putting people through this much time and stress over multiple weeks. Quite amazing.