Negotiating With An Exploding Offer

An exploding offer is an offer that must be accepted within a time limit (potentially as short as a few hours), otherwise it will expire.

Exploding offers are often fake and you can take longer than the supposed deadline. However, you should protect yourself in the small chance that the explosion is real by having backup options.

If you face an exploding offer, the first step is to understand where the urgency is coming from:

What’s the timing constraint? I’ve dedicated 3 weeks interviewing here and enjoyed meeting the team, but I'm curious why there's such an urgency at this point in the process?

A few options for how to request more time:

• (less effective) Explain that you’re still collecting data and wrapping up the process so you’d like another week. Something like: "I’m in the last round with the company so I’m confident I can get back to you by Monday."
• (more effective) Ask for more information. "One thing I heard in the interview is that many of the mobile developers have transitioned to work on dev infra, which is interesting for me. Could I chat with someone who does made that transition?"
  • In a similar way, you can also request to chat with folks in the management chain, e.g. the director or VP.
  • When Rahul was at Meta, he’d do calls with people who got offers coming from Pinterest

Worst case scenario, you have to renege or quit shortly after joining. You should avoid this if possible (there is potential reputational damage), but we'll talk about this scenario in the next video.