A few months ago I got a Sr. SWE an offer at a top 5 bank in NYC. We pretty much got him everything he wanted: • TC a couple thousand off his number, still the high end of his range • 5 days in office down to 3x • A line of business he actually wanted, finally moving into front office work at the level he was looking for A week before his start date he tells me his current company countered. They “magically” found the budget for a raise and a promotion he’d been pushing for over a year. I told him counters usually don’t work out long term. They’re a bandaid so they don’t lose you this week. He took it anyway. He let me know today he got laid off. When you take a counter, the trust is already gone. They weren’t planning to pay you that. They just needed time to figure out a longer term solution.