Would you be ok if they let recruiters have similar tools on linkedin, to filter out candidates who rescinded offers before? I am not trying to elicit some sympathy for coinbase here, I absolutely don't care about them or companies in general, but I don't think you've thought this proposal through.
Let's imagine the issue i mentioned above doesn't exist. Linkedin figured out a perfect way to figure out and filter out companies that rescinded offers. If that became a problem for companies, then a company would just hire someone and then lay them off immediately. Same result, but larger administrative/accounting overhead, so no severences for rescinded people, most likely. How would Linkedin track that? What's the time period cutoff for which laying someone off/firing them is considered "just a loophole around rescinding an offer"? A week? A month? How will you be able tell the difference between an instance of someone being fired within a short period of time after starting as a loophole around rescinding an offer vs. someone genuinely being fired within a month for whatever legitimate reason?
Imo i dont see how the current situation with coinbase/meta is a reason for such a major outrage. I could have understood it, if they were habitually known for rescinding offers as a part of their regular practice. But they don't, they all did it exactly once, at the same time, due to a very legitimate reason of a strong economic downturn affecting their survival/livelihood very badly. Imagine your spouse was having serious health problems, and you just found out you will need to take care of them for a year, right after you just accepted an offer from a company a few days ago. I think it is more than reasonable for that person to rescind their offer and tell the company they have something that's more important and that matters to their survival.
And that's not even mentioning that coinbase is paying severance worth 2 months of work (as well as provides job search assistance services, whatever that means) to those whose offers they rescinded. So those people essentially are paid for 2 months of job searching. Still sucks to deal with job search, don't get me wrong. But that severance package wasn't expected and feels pretty fair.
Would I be OK if LinkedIn gave similar tools to recruiters? No, because an applicant has a lot less power than a company. But I can see that recruiters would want that. So why wouldn't we want that on our side?
The "hire for a day, then fire" issue is interesting. Companies would tread more carefully there, though. Once you've hired someone, then you have a legal relationship with them. In the US, employment is at-will, but protections for firing due to race, gender, etc. still apply. So there's a lawsuit threat that would make this a dangerous game for companies to play.
Other threads claim that Meta did not actually rescind - those were more visa issues. Why is this such a big outrage? Because it's a breach in the norms of how job markets work. Re your analogy - Coinbase would certainly prefer not to have all these people in a downturn. But it certainly has options that the person with a spouse with health problems doesn't have. For example, executives could reduce their compensation temporarily to deal with this. The entering cohort of employees would make Coinbase less profitable, but won't by itself cause it to fail.
Do I really think that the CEO of Coinbase would take a 10% pay cut rather than rescind several offers? No. But the point is that Coinbase has options that mean it can do the ethical thing.
Let's imagine the issue i mentioned above doesn't exist. Linkedin figured out a perfect way to figure out and filter out companies that rescinded offers. If that became a problem for companies, then a company would just hire someone and then lay them off immediately. Same result, but larger administrative/accounting overhead, so no severences for rescinded people, most likely. How would Linkedin track that? What's the time period cutoff for which laying someone off/firing them is considered "just a loophole around rescinding an offer"? A week? A month? How will you be able tell the difference between an instance of someone being fired within a short period of time after starting as a loophole around rescinding an offer vs. someone genuinely being fired within a month for whatever legitimate reason?
Imo i dont see how the current situation with coinbase/meta is a reason for such a major outrage. I could have understood it, if they were habitually known for rescinding offers as a part of their regular practice. But they don't, they all did it exactly once, at the same time, due to a very legitimate reason of a strong economic downturn affecting their survival/livelihood very badly. Imagine your spouse was having serious health problems, and you just found out you will need to take care of them for a year, right after you just accepted an offer from a company a few days ago. I think it is more than reasonable for that person to rescind their offer and tell the company they have something that's more important and that matters to their survival.
And that's not even mentioning that coinbase is paying severance worth 2 months of work (as well as provides job search assistance services, whatever that means) to those whose offers they rescinded. So those people essentially are paid for 2 months of job searching. Still sucks to deal with job search, don't get me wrong. But that severance package wasn't expected and feels pretty fair.