Article · Both sectors

Why the counter offer is usually the wrong answer

You resign, and suddenly there is money on the table that was not there at your last review. Before you take it, ask why it took a resignation to find it.

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A counter offer answers one question, pay, and leaves every other reason you started looking untouched. The partner who does not share credit, the structure that will not change, the promotion that keeps slipping a cycle. Those are still there on Monday.

It also changes how the firm sees you. You have shown you will leave. In my experience most people who accept a counter offer are looking again within a year, and this time the market knows it.

If the money matters, it should have been there before you resigned. A pay benchmark will tell you what the role pays elsewhere, so you can have that conversation early, from a position of knowledge, rather than at the door.

Take the counter offer if the only thing wrong was pay and the firm has fixed it properly. Otherwise, leave well, and keep the relationship.

Leaving well matters more than people think. Professional services is a small market, and the partner you resign from this year will be a client, a referee or a colleague again within a few years. Give proper notice, hand over cleanly, and do not use the counter offer as leverage with the new firm. Both sides will remember how it was done.

And if you are the firm making the counter offer, the honest question is why the money is suddenly available now. If the person was underpaid, that was known before they resigned. Fixing pay at the door buys a year at most. Fixing it at the review buys loyalty, and it is cheaper.

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