I do a lot of recruiting and have given maybe 50 offers in my career. Although many companies do, I never put a deadline on any of them. Unfortunately, I've often ended up competing with other companies who do, and I feel really bad that this usually tricks younger developers into signing offers.

Erik Bernhardsson

Exploding job offers — those with artificially short deadlines — are a manipulative recruiting tactic that harms candidates, especially junior developers who are least confident navigating the hiring process. They are effectively a bluff since companies have no real leverage after investing thousands in sourcing and interviews. Research supports that exploding offers lower matching quality and often result in lower payoffs for the companies issuing them. The advice: always ask for more time, because the deadline is almost never real, and having more options is always better.

Exploding offers are bullshit