How to deal with a professor who delayed my contract signature until I received better postdoc offers?

Question

I just got my PhD 2 weeks ago. Last April I discussed with a professor about an offer to join her team. However, this offer was pending a certain project acceptance (I was supposed to work mainly on that project).

The project got accepted on July and I accepted to start working beginning of December. Since September I sent 3 emails asking when can we start with the official procedures of preparing and signing the contract. I always received the same answer 'whenever you want', I would reply that I need to start it early so I can settle and finish the boring paperwork, then I receive nothing back.

Until 2 days before my PhD defense when she suggested to start the procedures of preparing a contract (these procedures would take at least 3 weeks). Meanwhile this professor asked me to do minor tasks for the project, I did it. But when she kept delaying the official procedures, I felt worried. I thought maybe she is not sure yet about hiring me, so I made other interviews and already received two much better offers and I'm comparing between the three offers now.

My question is, how rude, professional-wise, my situation is? I already talked to her by phone and described that I'm deciding between various offers and that I will finally decide in two days but she wasn't ok with that at all. She said you are already committed with me (even without a contract). I really don't want to burn bridges.

Answer 1

In my opinion neither party has behaved very well. You received an offer and accepted it. Then you asked for a contract and it was not provided in a timely manner. However, from your descriptions it doesn't sound like you conveyed how important it was to you to sign the contract at a certain time.

I would reply that I need to start it early so I can settle and finish the boring paperwork

This is not very clear: early and late are entirely subjective terms. It is plausible that the professor thought she was acting early. You should have said "I need to sign the contract by Date X, or I will have to consider other offers." Yes, this is a somewhat strongly worded statement, but step back and took a look at the situation: is being firm about getting a contract on a job that has been offered and accepted going to place the job in any jeopardy? Almost certainly not, and if it does then perhaps you're dodging a bullet by not taking this job. Also, interviewing for other jobs after you've accepted a job offer is a significantly more precipitous action. It is understandable but only ethically watertight if you made best efforts to nail down the job you've accepted, and it's not clear that you did. Moreover, having the professor find out that you interviewed elsewhere -- which is extremely likely in most academic communities, by the way -- risks annoying her much more than a "Please stop dragging your feet" email.

Moreover, doing work for a job before you've signed a contract is a very bad idea. How do you signal more interest in a job than actually starting the job? If you pull out after doing work then the professor is almost certainly going to be surprised and a bit miffed (unless she has been playing games with you all along). On the other hand, if you end up never signing the contract and not taking the job, the work that you've done goes down the drain. Good luck getting paid for it, and good luck maintaining an academic collaboration with the professor. But for the record, I blame the employer more: a wizard professor should know better. She is not behaving professionally.

In my opinion this is not the start of a beautiful friendship. If you have another job offer that you think is significantly better, in my opinion yes, you can take it. You haven't signed anything, and you made inquiries about signing which were not handled in a timely manner. You should expect that if you pull out of this, the professor will be displeased with you. But that happens sometimes, and it should not stop you from acting in your own professional best interests. Still, you should be thinking about how not to get into this same situation in the future.

Answer 2

I sent 3 emails asking when can we start with the official procedures of preparing and signing the contract. I always received the same answer 'whenever you want', I would reply that I need to start it early so I can settle and finish the boring paperwork, then I receive nothing back.

Based on what you've written here, it sounds like one possible explanation for these event is simple miscommunication: the professor told you that she was willing to start the procedures any time you wanted, but you never replied with a specific date, so she just assumed that you weren't quite ready yet, and that you'd tell her when you were.

If you did, in fact, want to start immediately, you should have told her so; instead, you used vague expressions like "early", which the professor may have interpreted as "soon, but not yet".

That said, even if this is the real explanation, I wouldn't call it entirely your fault; the professor should have become concerned when you told her that you wanted to start the procedures early, and then never followed up with a "let's start now", and she should have written back to you sooner to explicitly ask you whether you still need it done early, and if so, to name a specific deadline. Still, it's quite possible and understandable that she may have been distracted by other, more pressing matters, especially if you weren't in frequent communication and if there was no particular deadline involved for her.

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Regarding what you should do now, I agree with the other answers that the damage is basically done already. One option, if you want to take it, is to simply walk away and take one of the other offers. You may be leaving a burned bridge behind you if you do so — but that bridge is already aflame, and there's no guarantee that you can put it out at this point.

If you do want to try and mend your relationship with this professor, what you need to do is sit down and talk with her. Explain what you believe has happened, from your viewpoint, and ask her to explain how she sees the situation, and be willing to accept that those two viewpoints might look very different, and that the misunderstanding may not be entirely her fault.

Before you do that, it may be a good idea to make up your mind on which postdoc position you want to choose, and make that clear to her from the beginning. If you're going to take one of the other offers, make that clear from the start, and say you're sorry — don't give the impression that you're trying to make the professor bargain to make you stay. And conversely, if you do want to stay and work with her, also let her know that from the start. Either way, make it clear that this isn't a negotiation, but that you just want to figure out what went wrong and how you can avoid making the same mistakes again.

(That's not to say that you should irrevocably commit to a particular choice before the discussion; it is, after all, possible that some new information might come up during or after the discussion that could legitimately make you re-evaluate your choices. But do at least make a definite choice first, and make it clear that you're not expecting to change your mind unless something truly unexpected comes up. The point is that you're not sitting down to bargain, but to clear the air and figure out how to move on.)

Answer 3

It boils down to how sure are you that it was she who delayed the procedures, and why. Did she delay by lack of organisation or intentionally? Some people are not intentionally delaying procedures, but just disorganised. Or it may be possible that she didn't think you would finish at a certain time and the procedures require a completed defense.

If you have grounds to believe, however, that she may have done that intentionally, then you probably will have a snapshot of how your collaboration may look in the future when even more critical issues are at stake (publications, credit, funding, references).

What you need to make sure is that it was not you that, somehow, by negligence, caused the delays. If you are confident that this is not the case (BTW, nothing in your mail indicates this, I am just suggesting to make sure), then it is necessary to identify her responsibility in the situation. "Burning bridges" is not the right term to use here, but rather whether the fair and justified interest of the parties involved was respected. Did you keep your side of the bargain? Do you feel the other side upheld their side of the bargain?

The whole appearance of the story is that she wanted to be in control of the situation, and now circumstances (and your talent) put you in control instead.

You ask how rude you would be to take advantage of that. Yes, you may be "rude" (in some sense), and end up happy or be polite and end up unhappy. It is your life, and, unless in your country spoken agreements count as contracts (there are places where this is the case), you can legally pull back. Even if it is an agreement, you could make the point that she didn't uphold her part of the bargain.

In any case, if you decide to go for the original offer, after all, don't let yourself be tempted to turn down the other, better, offers until you have got your contract in hand, though.