I was offered a job, and when finalizing the offer they asked if I could start earlier than I originally had agreed. I figured I could quit my current job earlier than planned, and I said yes. Everything was finalized, including background checks, assigning an employee ID, and sending me a company laptop. However, this decision only left me with 1 week between jobs, and by the end of that week I realized I needed more time to rejuvenate before starting somewhere new (2020 as people know was a particularly hard year). So I reached out to ask the recruiter what was possible to push out my start date back to the original date I had agreed to. Rather than responding with a "no we can't" Illumina chose to rescind my offer on the basis they had "concerns around my commitment to join the team". I was dumbfounded, I was only asking a question. I had already quit my job (which meant I did not qualify for unemployment), and since we are in the middle of a pandemic I was then left jobless without an income or health insurance, and all of this took place a week before Thanksgiving (job hunting during the holidays as anyone knows is almost non-existent). This sort of scenario is unheard of, and shows a deep lack of compassion or understanding. And to top it all off, after a month had gone by and they still hadn't inquired about the laptop sitting in my living room, I reached out to them because I wanted it gone, and they threatened me with LEGAL ACTION claiming I refused to return the laptop! I was merely requesting they pick it up or at least send a return box and label so that I didn't have to waste any of my time or money trying to package it up to send back. Talk about salt in the wound. I would NEVER recommend working at this company to anyone.
In retrospect, I suspect something else was going on and I ended up being a casualty of a business decision for the team. It's sad that my livelihood was not something that crossed their mind when they chose to make such a drastic decision.
