Thread by @davidcelis

happy friday, everyone! i think i’ll celebrate by finally telling you all about how i was this close 🤏🏽 to returning to @HashiCorp and how ridiculously shitty they were to me at the end of my re-application process.

it all started in early May, and ended not even two weeks later

i was deeply unhappy at Stripe and looking to leave. a friend of mine at @HashiCorp who was on the Terraform Cloud team with me was eager to have me back; my job at @HashiCorp was the first one i’d walked away from while still happy so it was the first option i wanted to explore

as far as i could tell, i left hashicorp on good terms, but there were two things making me nervous about re-applying.

first: in 2019, an internal letter was sent to asking @HashiCorp execs to drop a contract with @PalantirTech. many people signed.

and i’m the one who sent it.

i signed the letter because i loved my time at @HashiCorp and the people i worked with. a big cohort of us wanted to see change and to be heard. i had already given notice and was heading to Stripe (i thought it was a good opportunity at the time 😞) so… i volunteered as tribute

the letter was a group effort and lots of us signed it, but being the person to actually send it was scary. i didn’t want any of my coworkers to be putting their jobs at risk. better me, a white-passing man on his way out, than them. i still believe this and i have no regrets.

the second thing was that i started a #TalkPay channel in the company slack. basically anyone who wasn’t a white man was worried about pay disparity because of how wide @HashiCorp’s pay bands are. for the same reasons i shared the letter, i started that channel and shared my pay.

anyway, i hear back from my friend and @HashiCorp is open to talking; they really need skilled devs and could use someone who already knows their product and code. makes sense. but they want me to talk to Terraform’s director of engineering first. “i know what’s coming,” i think.

except… i didn’t! i was expecting something like “if you come back, how can we be sure you won’t just make more trouble?” but what i got was “we’d love to have you back but you seemed unhappy when you left and i’m worried that not enough has changed.” i was surprised.

we had a frank chat about why i signed and shared the letter, about how, yes, i was unhappy with the decision to keep selling to @PalantirTech, but that it wasn’t the reason i left. i was generally happy and i’m not under the illusion that there’s a perfect employer out there.

he also talked about how desperately Terraform Cloud needed good engineers and how they were hiring a lot at all levels. i heard this and felt like i could make a big impact and be really helpful if i returned. that’s a good feeling! overall, that chat went really well.

i spoke with their recruiter later that week, and that also went really well. i said i’d been close to a promotion and wanted to be brought in at that level, especially after my time at Stripe. i expressed salary hopes. nothing sounded like a problem. things were feeling real.

then, i had a chat with the team’s new manager, which ALSO went well! i liked him a lot and felt even more eager to rejoin the team. like the director, he mentioned how much hiring they were trying to do for Terraform Cloud and how much of an asset I’d be. i was feeling valued.

after that, @HashiCorp had apparently heard enough: i got a call from the recruiter with a verbal offer better than i’d hoped for. y’all… i was ECSTATIC. i missed the people i worked with, i was looking forward to being on my friend’s team, and upcoming work sounded interesting

i said “hell yeah” and there was nothing left to do but wait for a written offer to sign. i got a call from the recruiter the very next morning but, to my surprise, it wasn’t to send me a written offer. it was to tell me “oops, sorry, but actually we can’t!” WHAT THE FUCK.

he fed me a story about me being an “opportunity hire” with headcount borrowed from elsewhere at @HashiCorp, but that headcount had suddenly been needed back and there was nothing they could do. i was devastated enough that all i could do was say “that sucks” and hang up.

it took me a few hours before i could set aside that heavy disappointment and start putting two and two together. “opportunity hire”? everybody i spoke to, INCLUDING the recruiter, told me the same thing: TF Cloud was hiring a LOT, and at ALL levels. so, again… what the fuck?

it didn’t help their story that @HashiCorp’s jobs page had multiple FRESH listings for Terraform Cloud, including senior engineers. i emailed the recruiter back to poke at what was now feeling like a poorly thought-out lie, basically saying the above (albeit much more calmly).

the letter and slack channel re-entered my thoughts. i said i was open to a frank conversation if what was actually happening was hesitancy on @HashiCorp’s part. ultimately it seemed very much like i had an offer heading my way and it was blocked at the last minute. but by who?

everyone i spoke to, all the way up to the director of engineering, was extremely on board and eager to have me back, so i feel sure it came from above. it’s also hard for me to believe it was either of the founders; the company is big at this point. they’re not paying attention.

so at this point, my best guess is that it was their VP of Engineering, and that it was because of the Palantir letter and #TalkPay. i think she decided, regardless of what the Terraform org wanted to do and without giving me the opportunity to talk, to just kill the process.

oh, and my email to the recruiter? unanswered. dude ghosted me.

this whole saga only took a week. i’m still mad, but it was over a month ago. and tbh, i feel like i dodged a bullet, especially the more i hear that they’re absolutely BLEEDING talent

@HashiCorp could have had a great engineer come back to the team 🤷🏽‍♂️ but after that experience, i’m glad i’m not back there. and i love the job i did get.