Short version: If you have a stable job, then please, for the love of god, STAY THE HELL AWAY AT ALL COSTS I was a little worried about going into too much detail regarding my experience because I think my experience was somewhat unique and I feared that I would be identified, but as far as I'm concerned if anyone associated with my application thinks this was an acceptable way to treat a candidate and that making this public is "unprofessional" or "immoral" and would hold it against me then I'm not really interested in working with that person. I was approached by a recruiter on LinkedIn for a job opportunity as a Senior Data Analyst it seemed good so I decided to go ahead with the interviews. I had 2 interviews, the first was simply to understand my experiences to see if I would be a good fit, the second was a technical interview, the questions were really easy and I got through them without any difficulty. A few days later they contact me telling me "you did really in your interviews but there's someone else they interviewed who is a slightly better fit and they can only hire one person, but they're constantly expanding the team and will contact me again if they have another opening. Disappointed with the result but pleased with the feedback I moved on. About a month later they tell me that they have another opening and would like to interview me, as I've already passed the previous rounds I will go straight to the final interview, I accepted that. During that interview, the interviewer mentioned there was a mix up, that they should have hired me but got the names mixed up. This should have set alarm bells ringing but when I saw the salary they were offering me I stupidly ignored all the warning signs and wanted to go ahead with the offer. I was sent an email telling me that I'm being offered a role at FRA, there was roughly 1 week of negotiation going on until we agreed on the final financial compensation (which was very slightly more than the original offer), I then asked about the WFH arrangements. I was told that they want me in the office at least 4 days a week. I responded with a very polite pushback, explaining that I work more efficiently from home, that I would be happy to go to the office for the first few months to get to know the team but hope we can come to an arrangement whereby I would spend most of my time working from home in the long term. They respond telling me "oh no I guess that's that and you can't work with us, such a shame we really wanted to work with you" I reply swiftly explaining that this by no means a deal breaker, I still really want to work for FRA and will be happy to accommodate. They respond thanking me for my confirmation and will tell me of the next steps shortly. 11 days later I hadn't heard back, so I sent an email asking for an update, they respond telling me "sorry but we're putting data analytics recruitment on hold and can't offer you a job anymore" Fortunately I didn't resign from my current job, I shudder to think what would have happened if I did, if I'd have had to explain to my leadership team that after trying to leave my job to join a competitor I actually want to keep my job. after doing some digging around it seems that it's common practice for the company to suddenly have mass layoffs to give the leadership team huge bonuses then rehire a few months/weeks later under slightly different job titles to avoid legal issues. Judging by the ease in which they retracted my offer, seemingly fired the other person within a month of him joining (if this person even existed and wasn't a lie they told me to stall for another month) I'm not surprised. I wonder how long that person stayed jobless after FRA, whether he was forced to leave the country due to visa and/or financial issues. Anyway it's clear they have no respect for their employees or candidates and just want to exploit them then completely screw them over leaving them jobless once they're done. They're not worth your time and certainly not worth sacrificing a steady job for.