Just got off a call with a engineer I have known for three years.
He called me six weeks ago to tell me he had accepted a counteroffer. His company came back with a fifteen percent bump and a title change. He turned down an external offer to stay. He seemed settled.
He called me again this week. He is ready to leave.
What happened in eight weeks is what almost always happens. The raise fixed the number but not the reason he was looking in the first place. His manager did not change. The projects did not get more interesting. The culture did not shift. The only thing that changed was his paycheck, and the moment he accepted the counteroffer, he became the person who had to be bought to stay.
That is a hard position to recover from.
We talked for a while about how he had framed the original decision, and I realized I had not been clear enough with him before he made it. I talk to candidates about counteroffers regularly, but I have not always been direct enough about what accepting one actually costs.
Here is what I tell people now.
The counteroffer solves the symptom. The raise, the title, the extra vacation days, those are real, but they are reactions to the threat of you leaving, not genuine respect for you or assessments of your value. If you were worth fifteen percent more, you were worth it before you had an offer in hand.
The relationship changes. Your manager now knows you were shopping. That is not forgotten, even if no one says anything. You will feel it.
The clock resets but the reasons do not. Most people who accept counteroffers leave within a year anyway. Not because they are disloyal, but because the underlying reasons for looking were real, and a paycheck adjustment did not fix them.
When comp is the only reason you are looking, a counteroffer can make sense. But if you are honest about why you started taking calls in the first place, it is usually not the only reason.
He knows that now. We are talking again.