After 15 years helping his company generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, Jay — not his real name — left his job as a copywriter for a private tech firm in 2023. But a year later, his old department head called.
“She seemed a little sheepish at first, but finally admitted that things weren’t going great,” Jay said. She was hoping he would return in some way that worked for him, and made it clear she’d already okayed the move with the company’s finance department.
They settled on a month-long project, and the company asked for his rate. “I’m terrible at asking for money or knowing my value,” Jay said, so he settled on a simple method. “I thought it most logical to add up my former salary plus benefits, etc., divide that by 12, and make that the number I gave back to them.”
Days of radio silence followed. At last, a curt email arrived. “We don’t have the budget for that,” it read. “But maybe if things change down the road, we can reconnect.” No counteroffer. No negotiation.
Still, it wasn’t the last Jay heard from his old employer. Eighteen months later, another former colleague reached out, saying the business was still struggling. Would Jay come back in a training capacity, working with junior staff to improve their performance? They could offer one-third of what he used to make, paid hourly, with no benefits.
This time, Jay countered with a higher rate, yet one still below his old salary. Then that offer evaporated, too.
Stories like Jay’s are surfacing across industries. Creative professionals including writers, designers, PR staff, and marketing executives — even some public-sector staff — describe a pattern of former employers reaching out with familiar work, only at sharply reduced rates. HR workers on Reddit say they’re seeing the same thing. Call them “boomerang offers.”
Amanda Augustine, a certified career coach and resident expert at TopResume , says she’s seeing an increase in these offers, calling them “a sign of the times” and part of a larger “white-collar recession.” She notes that employers sometimes use the rise of generative AI as a license to squeeze creative roles, assuming the tools can handle the rote tasks, and that a current or former employee can be rehired just to do the “really creative part.”
In all, today’s version looks different from those that emerged in the Great Resignation era, she said. Until recently, employers often tried to coax former colleagues back with more advantageous, flexible terms. Nowadays, many offers include downgraded titles, few or no benefits, and half the money.
For Sam, a wellness director at a Colorado school district, the reversal was sudden. “I had no idea my position was being eliminated, that there was a quote-unquote reorg happening,” she said.
Instead, she was let go during an “EOY Check-in” meeting in May, in which she was shown a new job description for a “wellness specialist” but told that administrators did not yet know the precise compensation. Soon after, however, HR posted the job online. The pay was slashed by $50,000 versus her salary, the position reclassified as hourly.
Instead of applying for the role, she sent an email that ricocheted through the organization. “For a district that often speaks to the importance of whole-child education, it is deeply disappointing to watch the infrastructure that supports the well-being of the adults doing this work be diminished in both value and visibility,” she wrote.
She went on to list more than a dozen initiatives she’d built, before closing with a final HR tip: “Consider waiting to send an exit survey until after an employee’s last day and potentially don’t bully them to clean out their cubicle six weeks before their position end date.”
From the employer side, the trend isn’t about disrespect, said Chris Mitchell, founder of Intelus , a firm that helps U.S. companies build remote creative and administrative teams. It’s about numbers.
“The lower boomerang offer is usually a budget story, not a talent story,” Mitchell told Quartz. “Leaders feel pressure to show savings fast, so they reopen a familiar seat at a discount instead of rescoping the work.”
Like Augustine, Mitchell noted the profound impact of generative AI. “Some managers assume tools will cut production hours in half, then they price to that assumption,” he said. “The result is a mismatch between the real deliverables and the rate.”
Mitchell said the smartest negotiations happen when both sides get specific: write down deliverables, revisions, formats, and usage terms. “Boomerang offers get accepted when both sides price the scope, not the nostalgia,” he concluded.
Augustine had similar advice for people receiving such offers: Evaluate the offer on its own merits. Don’t automatically say yes. Because rates may have changed, research what current salaries are, rather than relying on dated numbers. Finally, consider whether a contract role might become a stepping-stone to a long-term role, within the old company or with a new one. The glut of laid-off federal employees won’t help improve the market through the end of the year and into 2026, she added, making “bridge” roles more important than ever.
When Sam, the wellness director in Colorado, was let go, she reached out to an employment lawyer. The lawyer wanted $300-$500 for a consultation, so she demurred.
But this points to the risk for companies extending boomerang offers. It’s one that Michael Weiss, a Los Angeles-based employment lawyer who has defended firms for four decades, is all too familiar with. He’s seen cut-rate boomerang offers “backfire spectacularly,” bringing not savings but expensive litigation.
“Companies think rehiring former employees at reduced pay saves money, but it creates massive legal exposure under California wage laws,” he said. In one case, a former manager offered their old role back at 15% less pay filed a retaliation claim. The demand hit $117,250.
“The employee documented everything and claimed retaliation under Labor Code provisions,” he said. “We knocked it down to $1,000, but only because we caught the discriminatory intent early.”
“The real issue isn’t the lower offer itself,” he explained. “It’s what employers say during these conversations. I’ve seen companies admit they’re ‘testing the waters’ or assume someone will work for less because they’re desperate. Those statements become smoking guns.”
Whether downgraded boomerang offers are merely insulting or potentially unlawful depends a lot on where you work. California’s laws, for example, give employees more leverage than in many other states. Federal contractors face an additional layer of scrutiny, while private employers in right-to-work states can often make the same moves with little consequence beyond the hit to morale.
This patchwork leaves American workers navigating a murky landscape where the same conversation could be brushed off in one jurisdiction, yet spark a lawsuit in another.
What seems clear is that the era of cushy boomerang offers may be over. In their place is something more precarious: a labor market where past contributions seem untethered from present values, and where both sides remain unsure of the new rules.
