So I just spent three weeks jumping through hoops for this mid-sized tech firm. Four rounds of interviews including a grueling four-hour technical assessment that felt more like free consultancy than an evaluation. Yesterday the recruiter finally calls me all excited saying the team loved me and they want to move forward with an offer. I am thinking finally the grind is over. Then the email hits my inbox and it is a total disaster.

The PDF attachment is addressed to a guy named Ricardo. My name is definitely not Ricardo. Not even close. But it gets better. About halfway through the document it switches and starts referring to a Sarah in the relocation clause. It is like they just took a template from three different failed hires and mashed them together without even hitting ctrl-f once. The funniest part is the salary. During the initial screening I was very clear about my minimum and they said it was within range. This offer for Ricardo/Sarah was 20k less than what we discussed.

I pointed it out to the recruiter in a polite but firm email. Her response was just a single sentence saying “Oops , sent the wrong draft!” followed by a new PDF five minutes later. The new one had my name but the lowball salary stayed the same. When I called her out on the money she tried to gaslight me saying the market shifted in the last two weeks and this was the “final approved budget” for the role. It is amazing how the market shifts exactly the moment they realize they can just try to lowball whoever is next in the pipeline. I am honestly tempted to just reply and tell her to send it back to Ricardo since he clearly fits their budget better than I do. The absolute lack of effort in the most basic part of their job is staggering.