First off, Screw those guys. Anyone who holds back money like that is someone you dont want to work for anyways.
Employees make mistakes and to punish them for it is insane. If you were purposely trying to screw things up and were fired for that, of course thats a different story- but it sounds like you were just trying to do your job and made a mistake, it happens. Also, seeing as you were supposed to have been paid the bonus while you were there, it makes it twice as awkward.
This should be a lesson to other founders- Treat people good and they will speak highly of you and may stay with you forever, to your next startup or company. Dont and they will do the opposite. That alone is worth more than the 10k you save.
Last I checked, humans do mistake all the time. Not related to systems, or anything really. It's all about being prepared for those and attempting to make as few as possible.
In order to avoid mistakes, you have to know they exist. So either they didn't know backups were important or they declined to prioritize and implement them in anticipation of their launch.
However, I sense you're taking issue with my "bad mistake worse" comment. I don't think anybody is going to argue that dropping a production database is a real mistake. Mistakes happen, and companies (i.e. management) should work to ensure that all the bases are covered, which weren't in this case.
Don't feel bad about this. The decision to launch without backups was a legitimate business gamble. Blaming an engineer for the outcome of a business decision is plain bad management.
This is part of risk management of a company. The company had decided to risk the production setup without a backup at the time. Obviously the downtime of the database is an acceptable risk to them. They could bear the consequence when luck turned against them. It should not be on your shoulder.
People make mistakes all the times. What's important is how they recover and be better. I remember a story where a guy was resigning after screwing up a million dollar venture. His boss told him, you have just learned a million-dollar lesson on the company's dime and you are quitting? The guy stayed on and flourished.
No one is blaming your co-workers - but when your founders take investment money and insist on keeping themselves in charge, they also take on responsibility for the performance of the company and its technology. Just because their legal liability is limited, they aren't off the hook for what we think of them running their product this way.
Blowing the production database is bad, yes - but a LOT of bad days for top shelf programmers start with "rm". It sounds like you owned up to your mistake and put in the late nights to fix it in a way that your bosses didn't...best of luck to you.
Everyone has plans to backup data... it isn't until they actually lose data before they think about a backup. This also means that anyone that actually has backups, has probably lost data in the past...
Something similar has happened to me twice (different scenarios), and the only commiseration I can offer is that they are life's learning experiences. Now you know a little more to get everything mentioned down on paper before you sign. I find it hard to believe that the referral bonus wasn't mentioned in an email or other notification-level policy statement, but aside from that you're probably just going to have to eat it.
They certainly did weasel out of it, though. Obviously they were looking for ways not to pay it rather than to avoid bad blood. That's fine, karma, they stepped on you on the way up the ladder, etc. Not a lot you can do about it, probably (but I'll be watching the thread ;).
Email is the property of his employer, the courts would not expect him to be able to produce it. His lawyer could however ask the court to obtain the email on his behalf, and the company would be compeled to provide it.
For $10,000? Lawyers aren't cheap and, honestly, typically aren't worth it for amounts under $25k, especially if the other side can lawyer up faster and better than you can. Take it to small claims and get as much as you can.
You can certainly talk to a lawyer for much less than $10k. The lawyer will either (a) tell you to forget about it (b) tell you that it's not worth using a lawyer, but that you might be able to pursue it in small claims court or (c) send a letter, which is probably all this would take, if he has any standing at all.
If the other side lawyers up faster and better they're also paying more, and with a $100 letter it might be easy to convince them that lawyers typically aren't worth it for amounts under $25k.
I agree, yes public shaming is free but he also just told the world he blew up a production database. That said I'll paraphrase Tom Watson when an employee of his made a $100,000 mistake "Are you kidding? We just spent $100,000 on your training".
Docking wages for employee mistakes unless (and perhaps even if) wilfully negligent is /highly illegal/ in every state in the US, and will have the Labor Board all over your company and slapping you hard with fines and punishment.
He also told the world that Miso doesn't have great engineering practices. Deleting a few thousand rows is easy if you forget a "from" clause in your sql statement. Would you consider working at Miso if you knew about their poor moral standards and bad engineering practices?
I feel like more people should be publicly shaming companies so that companies realize they can't pull shit without consequences. I bet you there's a whole list of companies that fire people right before they're eligible for pension benefits, and there's little employees can do.
While this is unfortunate and it sounds like you deserve better (I'd like to hear the other side of the story first), I would discourage against taking this public. This is an issue between you and the founders, and no one else. "Warning" your former Miso coworkers should happen privately -- this post brings them the wrong kind of attention, but they did nothing to deserve it.
Future employers who read this post will think twice about hiring you -- frankly, this is rather unprofessional. Yes, the Miso founders might be in the wrong, but you can still take the high road.
Agreed. Regardless of how you were wronged, threatening to take something like this public (instead of just doing so, or even better instead of talking to your lawyer first) can come back to bite you, in a number of ways.
However, by taking it public, there's a chance that Miso will try to fix the situation, and he will get the full $10,000 bonus, rather than paying a lawyer.
I dont agree. 99% of this time this type of stuff stays private because the employee is fearful of repercussions and as a result, new employees never get warned about the mess they are walking into. Thats why I upvoted this- It takes balls to air this publicly and thats the only thing you can do to stop shit behavior like this from happening and scare other companys into treating people right.
So long as companys think they can get away with treating you like shit, most of them will. Stuff like this stops that.
If your threat is to tell your side of the story I don't see a problem with it. Ivehad customers do that with me and it's usually because their experience with my company sucked.
I've had customers "threaten" me with the same. Some people get really unlucky(had a customer receive two defective products in a row and the third time we were OOS). I've never begrudged a customer for sharing their experience with others as long as its a factual account. In fact with that customer I confirmed his account of events and apologized publicly.
Employees are scared to burn bridges or take it public, because it will affect them when it comes to future job prospects. Unless your new potential employers really know your rep, HR will stay far away from you.
It's also up to the new employees to stay vigilant and find out as much as they can on their new employers – LinkedIn makes it so easy to track down ex employees of companies, just shoot them an email, introduce yourself (even easier with connections) and hopefully they can give on some valuable feedback (and hopefully they're honest!)
I wish companies thought beyond this "unprofessional" thing - is it not unprofessional for them to withhold the money that rightfully belongs to him (assuming the story is factually correct)? Sadly, so many times people don't come forward for fear of losing future opportunities, and bad employers take advantage of it.
Hmm. I disagree. It's a small community built on trust. The cautionary tails I read on HN have changed the way I do business. I don't see anything unprofessional about going public. Think of it as a bug report :-)
If there's a code of silence about this, what levers do employees have? Are lawyers the only recourse? If anything, I think it's admirable to go public; the ecosystem is hurt without honest reporting. And the author pays the cost, of course, because future employers will have a look at this...
Tough call. I have to think would I hire somebody who did something like this - probably on a case by case basis.
In this case, it does seem (from his side of the story) that he was in the right & gave Miso plenty of time/warning.
All that being said, though, I would probably have to do the due diligence were I to know this about a candidate, that by itself is a negative regardless of the merits of the issue.
OTOH, an incident such as this might actually be a positive in a candidate where you are looking for someone who isn't a pushover.
So (IMO) it is hard to characterize it as objectively good or bad to a potential employer, at least this one, other than it is a flag that may need to be checked. It certainly is a good point of departure for getting a candidate to talk about himself.
In general, before going public w/something like this, one always has to consider "Never argue with an idiot because the people watching may not be able to tell the difference".
I agree. It sounds like the OP wants some attention, even if he claims he's doing it for the public service. His ego is bruised, he just wants to recover from it.
Yes. I do want some attention. But really, I think anyone here can see that I have a lot more to lose here than to gain. If this was a matter of pride I'd leave it as a Facebook post for my friends and call it a day. To me, this is the right thing to do, not the smart thing. Unfortunately the two don't necessary come in pairs.
How is this the right thing? I don't imagine that your former coworkers are having a good day today with this kind of publicity. They had nothing to do with this matter, and did nothing to deserve the bad attention.
I understand that it's important to get the word out, but for me, I'd put the people I care about above anything else. All I'm saying is that this could have been handled more professionally.
I see this as doing your former coworkers a favor actually. They might not even know what type of person their boss is behind the scenes. The former coworkers might actually be happy that their boss was called out on shenanigans, to prevent future sleazy behavior.
i think you did the right thing to go public. As an employer i would have no problem with this.
But you shouldn't haven gone into details about their non-existent back-up strategy. This clearly shows their incompetance. This may fear future employers.
I'm in two minds about this. If I were hiring someone and came across something like this, I would certainly have questions.
On the one hand, he might do this to me. What if he's lying or twisting the truth in some way, or there's more to the story.
On the other hand, fair play for sticking up for his rights. I'd like that mindset on my team.
I think it would come down to the interview, and how he came across. We once interviewed a guy who came across like an asshole online. We asked him about it in the interview, and he did a poor job of defending himself. I think the same approach would work here.
Well in this case, it looks like the employee was in the right. Just a few minutes ago, the founder (Somrat) admitted his mistake and paid Joshua the full $10k.
Later on when future employers see this, they'll realize that the employee has proper morals, and is a "do-er". I think most employees would suck it up if they lost out on 10k, but this person stuck it out and rode the storm.
Would you hire a passive employee, or a passionate one? Sometimes passion will cause people to do things that may backfire, but at least they gave it a shot. Passive employees wouldn't even bother with the 10k loss.
Seems to me like he's bringing this unethical decision to attention so that employers and employees know that it's not okay. I disagree with you. It's not petty, and certainly not childish.
Maybe not, but it's definitely the action of someone lacking experience. Anyone who has been around the block knows that companies can be very petty. Just because a work environment is 'friendly' and 'family-like' doesn't mean you can count on that kind of behaviour when you exit. Companies turn petty very quickly. Very quickly.
An experienced person would have made sure all the money he/she had coming was collected before even handing in the resignation letter. Once you've signalled that you are leaving, things can go south very fast.
I just look at this whole situation and what the OP did and think "what a rookie".
It's always better to say positive things in public than to post something like this. However, it also sounds petty and childish on Miso's behalf. They are the ones who hired the author, and they're the ones who set the stage for what constitutes appropriate behaviour, so the whole episode just looks ... bad.
It serves to inform potential employees of what they should pay attention to when negotiating with this company. Is it that it puts some tiny bit of negotiating power into the hands of potential employees that makes it distasteful for you?
> During my last 2 weeks at Miso I accidentally blew away one of the production DBs for a service that was launched 2 weeks prior. No, we didn't have a backup.
Step 1) Make bad engineering decisions that make accidents like this possible
Step 2) Blame employees who knock over your fragile infrastructure
This is a good illustration of the integrity of the company's founders. You should feel lucky to have gotten out. Hopefully your referral is planning on leaving too.
$10K is an amount that sounds like a lot to many folks but it's nothing you can ever recover. If you engage a lawyer it'll all go to his fees even if you "win." Move on.
Even if it's not, you just ask for the limit of the small claims court. $5k is still better than a kick at the table leg, and it's probably more than you'd get were you to hire a lawyer and sue for the full amount.
This part sounds dubious:
"For example, we don't pay people outside of Miso when they refer us candidates that we hire."
Any recruiter worth their salt is getting a minimum of 15% on first years salary right now, and many are getting 20%. On a typical $150K Salary that would be $30K if the same candidate comes through a recruiter.
Perhaps it's just the case that Miso doesn't use external recruiters, and so the statement is accurate - but to suggest that bonuses are paid for good referrals as part of "Team Building" and not to get the lead on great talent would not be consistent with current market conditions.
I know lots of startups that use recruiters, including some YC-backed ones. Recruiting can take a lot of time, particularly if you're expanding rapidly. If you're the CTO it may not necessarily be the best use of your time to look through hundreds (and yes, you'll get hundreds) of CVs from a post on StackOverflow or HackerNews...
Of course, there are some that don't, but it's certainly not unusual for startups to use recruiters.
I've worked at three startups in the valley since 1999, and all three used recruiters. Typically they have 1-3 internal recruiters, and do try to avoid external staffing agencies, but, in tight employment conditions (right now) - hiring managers tend to working with staffing agencies to get some acceleration in hiring. One of the tasks of HR, in fact, is in the growth phase from 30 to 300 employees, is to run interference and keep costs from external staffing agencies down and use the internal recruiters as much as possible.
Well, shows how much I know. I guess the fact that most recruiters I've interacted with have been terrible might be coloring my opinion of their value. How does one go about finding a good recruiter?
I also know of a recruiting agency in Japan that specializes in startups. Some companies have the too-many-resumes problem, but many startups have the converse problem. If nobody knows about you then you'll have a hard time finding qualified people.
Thank you for posting this. As a community of entrepreneurs and hackers it helps all of us know what happens behind the scenes. Some people may view it as airing their dirty laundry but I see it as a way to keep people honest.
The fact that you dropped the production database sucks. However you stayed around and fixed it. I can't really say anything more. My bet is we all handle lots of sensitive data around here. Our worst nightmare is to drop that data by accident. Stuff happens...fix it and move on.
I understand we are a litigious society but if your knee jerk reaction is to bring in lawyers something is wrong. My hope is this post will make it around to Somrat and Tim (I've never met either of them) and you two will resolve it amicably. Maybe I am delusional but good character still counts for something.
Unless you're just generally curious of the company's internal process the details of his action/inaction to resolve a DB issue are completely unrelated to the dispute on wage.
Irrelevant, and completely inappropriate for you to ask. The article writer disclosed that something bad happened for which he is to blame, which is a good thing ethically. He has no duty to tell a complete stranger what happened. Not only that, if he does then he may disclose confidential information.
I disagree. Handling things professionally and keeping people honest are two different things.
There is no "service to the SV community" that this guy is doing by airing dirty laundry. If you've been wronged by your former company, handle it on your own. Shaming the company is not going to help you, the company, or anyone else. What you're effectively suggesting is that your "service" is to warn everyone to stay away from Miso.
Unfortunately, as a hiring manager, I'm going to stay away from you. While I wholeheartedly agree that you should have gotten your $10K referral bonus, I also believe it should have been while you were still an employee there. Once you leave, you're not entitled to anything more from the company.
> Once you leave, you're not entitled to anything more from the company.
Can you explain how this works, exactly? How does quitting one's job wipe clean any debt from the company to the now-former employee? Can they refuse to send him his last paycheck too?
No they cannot refuse to send him his last paycheck.
I can't speak for the paperwork involved when leaving Miso, but most companies make you sign an agreement (often in the exit interview) that you are not entitled to/owed anything more than X, Y, Z items that are explicitly stated (which usually included the last paycheck and any unpaid vacation days).
Usual practice in most companies. It protects them from exactly these sorts of things.
Most companies that have this agreement in place also have a similar agreement when joining the company that if you forego signing the exit agreement, you forego any outstanding debts owed to you by the company.
Can an agreement signed when you start working really erase debt from agreement made after you started working? Seems like the second one would take precedence there.
There's also the question of labor laws. I bet this is considered wages under the law and probably impossible to sign away.
So, basically, the company can dictate the exact debts in its exit agreement? And if you disagree, you forego all claims anyway?
This sounds a bit illogical, but I'm not a lawyer. Another poster said it wasn't the practice at all in his years of experience, so maybe your experience does not generalize well.
You're also making an assumption that such a contract was made in this case - and it clearly wasn't, since the Miso people acknowledged their mistake here. So the guy absolutely deserves the bonus payout, even if he didn't submit the administrative form to claim it while he was still there.
I argue that if he didn't do it -- it would be a dis-service to the community. I look at it like if it were simple assault involving you and an assailant. Since you were not really injured you decide not to press charges against them.
Let's say the assailant does this again in the future -- hurting somebody marginally. And they do press charges.
To the court this looks like a first offense and they let the assailant off gently.
Now suppose the assailant attacks again and this time causes significant injuries.
Had you originally reported your attack, then it is reasonable that the court would see a second minor attack more seriously and could bring more severe charges, deterring the assailant from subsequent assaults and improving the not only the assailant's life, but also the community (as a whole).
This is a specific instance of the more data a deciding entity has, the better chances their making the right choice.
I agree with your central theme that more data is better. That's why as I suggested, he should have handled it on his own and taken legal action against them, so that there was a clear legal record of such behavior by Miso.
Whether or not he should have taken legal action against them, the important thing is to get the data out on a wide public forum like HN. Information benefits us when it's widely distributed, not when it's only confined to a private lawsuit.
Honestly, the answers that the Miso founders gave seemed very professional and I think am a bit on their side in this one.
If OP had asked for the bonus while still being at Miso, it seems like he would simply have gotten it.
Seeing as a non-contractual bonus is an investment in the employee that the company does in addition to the usual compensation, and seeing as OP quit on his own and doesn't have a compensation anymore, I can see that this would seem like a strange investment.
These informal bonuses shouldn't be seen as something you're entitled to, but rather as a nice extra that might disappear any second. If you really want something, it should be in the contract. If it isn't in the contract, you apparently can also live without it.
edit: Oh, downvotes. I really should stop posting my opinion if it might be controversial.
As long as the email isn't as fully formulated as an actual contract I usually tend to see them more as a declaration of an intent that isn't 100% fixed yet and is missing some of the details. (such as: you won't get it after you decided to quit and work somewhere else).
That's usually the nice thing about startups, you don't have to fill out gobs of paperwork and have hours of meetings to get these small perks figured out, it's more of a "good will" thing imho.
But I guess I just have a different opinion when it comes to things that don't have 2 signatures at the bottom of them.
My understanding, rb2k_, is that if I make an offer for compensation in return for a service, and you then go perform that service, then we've made a contract. I "signed" my name by making the offer. You "signed" your name by accepting and completing the service. We've both acted out of free will and we've had a "meeting of the minds." If I back out and try to avoid paying you, then I have broken this contract.
Think how many things in our society would break down if this wasn't the case.
There are four elements of a contract:
Offer - "Have $10k for referring employees."
Acceptance - "Here is an employee."
Intent - "Have $10k"
Consideration - "$10k" -> "refer employee"
The OP's case is even stronger if he sent an email back saying "Thanks for offering $10k! I have a friend who would be interested!" as that is clear acceptance.
Signatures aren't needed (there's plenty of case law around). Courts are more likely to get involved where money is involved, as that shows firm commitment to a contract.
I am not a lawyer, this isn't legal advice, of course.
I agree that a lot of this stuff is informal, especially in the startup world. However, as far as actual legal implications go, this counts as a contract. It would even count as a contract if it were spoken; verbal contracts hold as much legal weight as paper contracts. I think we all value the relaxed atmosphere in smaller tech companies, but it's very much worth remembering, I think, that emails like this have weight, and promises are promises even when the company is small. There's a certain level on which we have to maintain professionalism even if we're small and dynamic.
> As long as the email isn't as fully formulated as an actual contract I usually tend to see them more as a declaration of an intent that isn't 100% fixed yet and is missing some of the details.
Does this mean I can ignore these four e-mails from my boss that formulates his intent for me to work on X and Y, and skip on off to work on Z instead?
Most contracts in practice are informal. When you buy an ice cream from a street vendor, there's an informal contract - you give him money, he gives you ice cream. If you take ice cream, eat it and then say "I'm not feeling like giving you money now" - it would be stealing, and you can't claim "I did not sign anything, so I am entitled to think that was just a gift".
If you tell employee "do this and get $10K" and he does and you say "well, I'm not feeling like keeping my end of the bargain now" - it is no different. It is harder to enforce, but that's only difference that lets all kinds of sleazy characters get away with it. If you don't mean to give $10K - don't promise it. Nobody forces anybody to promise it. If you do promise - fulfill your promise. It's very simple, I wonder how people can have trouble with it - unless they meant to cheat at the first place.
> But I guess I just have a different opinion when it comes to things that don't have 2 signatures at the bottom of them.
Well, your opinion is certainly different than the judiciary's opinion of what constitutes a contract, for sure.
A contract need not be written (usually, some exceptions apply). It need only be clear and agreed to by both sides, have some consideration involved and not be against public policy.
If you as a startup owner promise people even verbally that referrals get a bonus, you're creating a binding contract if anyone accepts it. In this case it appears it was written down, which is pretty much a slam dunk for the employee.
what you don't realise is that this sort of thing jeopardises the very "nice thing about startups" that you are (rightly) approving here. if the idea that you couldn't rely on someone's word seeped into the startup culture, people would start getting a lot more insistent on i-dotting and t-crossing, and pretty much no one would benefit from the concomitant rise in hostility.
Do you realize how diametrically opposed your two points are? If an agreement is legally worthless unless it is formally stated, then all agreements will quickly become formally stated, and will devolve into "gobs of paperwork and hours of meetings."
If informal agreements are considered contracts (which they legally are), then the startup (or whatever) won't need all that formal processing.
According to this legal source, the only way to prevent your email from being a contract is to "recite in the e-mail that there is no intention to create a contract, except pursuant to a separate written agreement."
Also, you better change that opinion of yours, or else you might get caught in hot water yourself!
the email could have said 10k for _current_ employees or something to that effect. i am also leaning towards siding with the founders here, not knowing all the facts. how much time and productivity did it cost the company when this employee lost the data? more or less than 10k? either side of it, does it really make sense to hand someone a 10k bonus after they made a major mistake and then quit shortly after?
If they file a lawsuit against an employee for losing a database that they neglected to backup, I would love to hear a follow up story.
I'm sure that after it gets out how they deal with routine mistakes they'll have highly qualified database engineers lining up at their door to work there because of the excitement of working in such a high stakes environment.
and they very well might owe him the 10k. i was simply trying to consider the other side, which we don't know as much about, and i am assuming they made the best decision considering all the circumstances. maybe not. really, the employee should have collected this bonus prior to quitting his job. this could have been avoided if he was paying attention. i'd have a calendar appointment set for the date i was to receive that bonus, if i was that employee.
The engineer communicated very professionally too. Just because you don't HAVE to not be an asshole, doesn't mean you SHOULD be an asshole. I agree with the engineer here since really this is something they promised at least informally and not delivering on it out of spite is just douchey.
Yea, I agree that his blogpost was more colorful, but his emails to the company seemed totally fine. He's basically just asking them for more or less a favor that they are not obliged to honor (like you pointed out), but is all this really worth the bad PR?
The part that really bothers me is that one of the reasons they give for denying him this is a recent engineering mistake. It just feels like this is all out of spite, and it's more of a childish move more than anything.
What "professional" means here? The person is being cheated out of $10K, how one is being professional about it? I do not know any profession that has "being cheated out of $10K" as part of its definition, and engineering professionalism definitely does not help you here. What a true professional would do in such case? Politely ask, get "screw you, we didn't sign anything" and go away? How would that be helpful?
Really, for a professional engineer - which professional way of handling such situation would you recommend, providing that the law road is probably infeasible (you'll spend more in time and money on the lawsuit than you ever have a chance to recover)? As far as I know, there's no app for that and no python module for that, so which professional option should one take?
I tend to agree with @rb2k. There are payments you are entitled to by law (salary, vacation, personal expense reimbursement) and payments that companies do out of the goodness of their hearts (annual bonuses, lieu days, extra days off, referral bonuses). Don't quit under bad circumstances and expect to get money you're not by law entitled to. Should have gotten the money first.
That's not how the law works. The company advertised and promised a bonus. The fact that it didn't become a signed contract doesn't make it non-binding. It was payment for a service which was rendered.
Obviously, yes: you should get the money before quitting. But Miso doesn't have a leg to stand on here unless they're hoping that pursuing the money isn't worth the poster's time (which might be a good bet, given that he didn't ask for the money originally).
2) It no longer becomes optional once you make the offer to your employees. At this point you have established intent; especially if it is provided in writing. You cannot take it back once the other party involved has upheld their end of the arrangement.
If you are explicitly promised annual bonuses, lieu days, extra days off, or referral bonuses, and then they decide not to give them to you, then you most definitely are entitled to them.
Just about everything in your first category is not an entitlement unless it's explicitly stated up front. If I get no promise of vacation days, then come back and demand them, I have no real standing. I can request them, but I'm not entitled to them.
Likewise, everything in your second category is an entitlement if it's stated up front. If they say, "We're giving you a $X bonus this year to anyone who does Y" and then they don't, they are completely in the wrong.
It doesn't matter which category the payment falls into. If the amount was specified in an email from a stakeholder, with specific guidelines, it's cash due. When lawyers make a decision, they're not going to decide which bucket this amount is supposed to fall into.
> Seeing as a non-contractual bonus is an investment in the employee that the company does in addition to the usual compensation
A bonus isn't a gift or an investment: it's paid to compensate for going above and beyond the call of duty. In this case, he did so by delivering a referral. He should be paid, plain and simple.
A bonus is a contractual obligation, just like sales bonus salesperson get or revenue target bonus management get. In this case it's a payment for the recruitment service. It's not an informal bonus.
Technical recruiters typically got 1/4 of yearly salary as payment. $10K recruitment bonus is cheap.
This is really an interesting case, IMO. Verbal, informal contracts are still contracts, although they are a pain to enforce. A standing policy of a $10k referral bonus might be construed as a contract between the employer and employee. At the 6-month point the employee fulfilled his end of the contract, and was owed the $10k.
What if the employee had come back two years later to say "hey, guys. Remember that $10k you owed me?" I'm no lawyer, but I believe that a judge would consider that a form of forfeiture. Where is that line drawn?
I agree the tone seems to favor the employer, but tone doesn't make them right.
This is really an interesting case, IMO. Verbal, informal contracts are still contracts, although they are a pain to enforce. A standing policy of a $10k referral bonus might be construed as a contract between the employer and employee. At the 6-month point the employee fulfilled his end of the contract, and was owed the $10k.
What if the employee had come back two years later to say "hey, guys. Remember that $10k you owed me?" I'm no lawyer, but I believe that a judge would consider that a form of forfeiture. Where is that line drawn?
I agree the tone seems to favor the employer, but tone doesn't make them right.
Only 'a' has nothing to do with 'b'. Those things are independent.
Also, any company that allows a single person to 'lose their data and cause the entire company to scramble for 3 days' has some issues with separation of duties.
That doesn't make sense. A "nice extra that might disappear any second?" That's worth as much as a hole in my pocket. If giving referral bonuses is company policy, nobody would imagine that it might "disappear" retroactively if the management didn't happen to feel like paying you that day.
Regardless of whether it's legal, it's totally unethical to behave that way.
You are under absolutely no obligation to do or say this, but if that's where you want it to go, good for you. I would be equally supportive if you promised to buy a hot tub with the money. You earned that cash.
> You may want to consider putting the $10K towards a good cause (if Miso eventually steps up), to show it was never about the money.
Why in god's name shouldn't it be about the money? He delivered incredible value by finding the company some talent in a talent-scarce environment. $10k seems like a pittance – but definitely one he earned.
Well, I think if it were about the money he would have lawyered up, and not gone public. My understanding of his post was that the decision to go public meant he cared most about warning others.
Who made the rule that it has to be about one thing, and one thing only? He can care about the public good and his own good all the same time. I know I do.
But it is about the money - and it should be. It sounds like the underlying premise is that to claim the money one is due is somehow unethical and should be beneath a truly moral person. Nothing is father from the truth. If one was promised some compensation for something, he is due that compensation, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with asking for this money and absolutely no obligation to show "it was never about the money" - the money is part of the deal and it should be about it as well as about any other thing. If one is hired to do work for pay, one does it for the money, it is about the money (maybe not only, but also) and always was. Otherwise it is volunteering - which many of us also do, but Miso is not a volunteer organisation, as far as I know. So asking them to pay their debts is completely fine even if it's 100% "about the money".
Why wouldn't it be about the money? Getting paid for one's work is pretty freaking important. The sum in question is more than enough to actually care about.
I had someone not pay me $9k, and have filed a lawsuit. We're closing in on 4 years now (aug 2008) and still no court date. Courts take time.
I wrestled with 'name and shame', and in some respect, wish I had named. I found out that this company/person had done this to others, and one of the guys 'named' him publicly on a blog. He got a threatening call, telling him to take it down and he'd get paid. Of course, he took it down and didn't get paid - that was < $1k from what I remember.
I hear this a lot - "don't go public with these sorts of things, you'll get a bad reputation, blah blah blah". I'm really torn. I get it, but... if more people started doing this - going public when BS like this is perpetrated - there'd be far less resistance to hiring/contracting with people who have air this sort of stuff.
I've been self-employed for 5 years, have contracted on dozens of projects, and have 2 instances where I got shafted out of money owed. If I was to publicize those, but also have, say 25 other projects under my belt with fine referrals, wouldn't that say more about the 2 shafters vs me? And again, if everyone was doing this, it would seem a lot more normal.
Yeah, if I publicly trashed every company I worked with, my 'trashing score' would be pretty high, and people would want to stay away from me. But really, I'd prefer people know that I publicly praise good clients and trash bad ones, and if they think they're going to be a bad client, to not bother reaching out. I'd rather there be a filter there which keeps crap clients away in the first place.
The thing is, we all have to start doing this at the same time. I do agree that legal proceedings are worthwhile in some cases, in many cases, people are getting shafted out of hundreds or thousands, and it's often not worth the time to 'go legal'. The habitual scumbags know this and take advantage of it, continually rolling through contractors. They know most of them will just leave and won't make a public fuss, because they want to be 'employable' and not be known as a 'troublemaker'. Someone who doesn't pay me for contractual work done is the troublemaker, but somehow that seems to get lost.
Thanks for sharing your personal experience with this, I've also been through similar things.
On the "take it down and he'd get paid" issue, one has to be very careful. There have been a few news stories where this has happened, the ex-employee agrees, and then the company goes public with a "employee was attempting to extort $10,000 from us" angle, painting the employee they cheated as some sort of criminal. The spin is they try to make it seem like the bad report was false and the employee was extorting money to take it down as some kind of protection racket.
Taking this "public" seems like a lose-lose. Miso doesn't come off super awesome obviously, but as a disgruntled employee, you're not setting yourself up for success either.
For example, should some future employer decide to Google your name before making an offer, they're likely to come up with an old spat between you and your employer. Even if you're in the right, it will make them think twice about hiring you. This disagreement may follow you forever (Google doesn't forget) and cost much more than $10k.
A better tactic may be to try and leverage your relationship with your friend who is still employed there. If this quarrel is detrimental to his morale, they may be willing to come to an agreement.
Otherwise what you are saying is to be afraid of the status quo because they have many ways of monitoring your past so you should behave, isn't it? If your 'future employer' gets biased by this kind of stuff then it would make sense to reconsider applying for work there, and whether it is really worth it to keep on supporting such kinds of disciplinary systems. What he is claiming sounds reasonable, and there should be no lose-lose when facts are facts.
I respect what you're saying, but it's a bit naive. First of all, how do you know that the facts that were mentioned were facts? Were you CC'ed on any of the emails? For all we know, the author made the conversation up.
Secondly, nobody really likes hiring someone who speaks negatively about a former employer. Especially when there's no way to verify whether what they are saying is true.
Don't bother. Hacker News is very likely to raise a cacophony about getting to see "original emails" and "screenshots" because those are dramatic, and people here like drama. You don't owe anyone more drama.
I personally could care less whether you posted screenshots or not. But if you were considering employing someone and found that they had posted something like this (with little to no evidence), what would your reaction be? Heck, what would your reaction be if it did have screenshots?
It's "could NOT care less", unless you actually care a little and in fact could care less if not for that bit of care in your heart. If that is case, accept my sincere apologies.
Pardon my pet peeve.
To answer your question: if it were me hiring a person, absence or presence of screenshots would not make any difference. A contract is a contract and the person is owed $10k.
It's called sarcasm. It's like how I say "Nice catch!" even though someone dropped the ball. Or like how someone who says "I could give a damn" probably doesn't.
If your 'future employer' gets biased by this kind of stuff then it would make sense to reconsider applying for work there, and whether it is really worth it to keep on supporting such kinds of disciplinary systems
I would have second thoughts about hiring this guy, not just because he took his dispute with an earlier employer public, but also because he apparently blew up a production server and screwed everything up for several days.
Right now these are the exactly two things I know about this dude, and put together they don't give a strong first impression.
I disagree. Companies that do this need to outed. There are companies that do this all the time to "old" employees who are just about ready to receive their pension benefits. They'll fire said employee on dubious grounds to save 30 grand or so.
If more people did this so that it would become a more accepted practice, companies would be less likely to pull these kinds of stunts.
* So you can tell me the exact backup times of everything at Facebook for your machine right? You're an engineer at Facebook therefore under your broad assumption you should be performing the exact same of your statement. If tomorrow everything was to fail at Facebook & there was no data recovery you're saying that everyone in the company should come blame you because well, hell, you're an engineer there after all...
The more reasonable point is that he's an engineer not a sysadmin or ops guy this isn't his responsibility directly & more so this falls on the CTO shoulders of failing to assign someone to this task.
* If they point directly to production this really isn't unheard of.
* Why are we making any assumptions if the guy is fired or not; This has nothing to do with the fact of the bonus not being paid out on time while he was an employee.
* You're going to argue that the company failing to perform backups is confidential information about infrastructure and operations especially after the company mentions it in an email after his employment :|?
* These are emails after his employment & the company is or should be well aware that these emails from that point on can publicly be posted because he's not bound by anything to keep them confidential any more. This is why most companies follow strict HR policies of no further communication & very strict emails to former employees.
Come on, I expect a bit more from an engineer working at Facebook other than broad assumptions & statements.
According to their site Miso have four engineers. At that scale there each and every engineer is responsibility for how things are run. If you want to only do what is assigned to you then you shouldn't be working at a startup. I've worked at small companies who'd punted on revision control and backups, and I made sure those things were put in place. When I haven't had the knowledge or access I've bought up the issue with those who did.
I wasn't trying to ad hominem the guy by suggesting he was fired. For all I know he may have got a better offer elsewhere. I was pointing out that in his attack on Miso he's made himself look bad. If a future potential employer reads this his comments are vague enough they could draw the conclusion I suggested. The same applies to publishing the emails. He may be within the law but to me it's a major red flag.
I shouldn't have to have a disclaimer; this is very obviously my personal opinion. I don't see how my employer is relevant to the discussion. Am I supposed to refrain from commenting at all in case someone tries to tie my professional life to my personal opinion?
Just so you're aware it didn't make him look bad at all & if he was up here in Canada I'd be hiring him but he's not.
He did exactly what any person who got screwed over by any company should do...make it public and call them out on their bullshit.
Thanks to this fellow I will NOT be recommending Miso for their future series C round & this is why no company should screw over their employees it can cost you millions down the road.
I have to say he's handled the attention and criticism really well. His updated posts have addressed a lot of the points I bought up in my original comment.
Notice that Miso is not actually denying that they pay the money: "However, we only pay bonuses to employees." They are being hard-nosed about paying someone that is not employed at the current time, even though he was eligible when he was employed.
No, he fulfilled the minimum requirements for the bonus before he left the company, however the company did not specify at what point the bonus was due to him. For example, my company rewards annual bonuses based on the calendar year, however they do not pay out the bonuses until April. If you leave the company between Jan 1, and April, you do not receive the bonus. While it might not be the most moral practice, it is a well established practice.
however the company did not specify at what point the bonus was due to him.
Of course it did.
Quote from the article:
the payout was contingent on said employee staying for a minimum of a 6 month period at the position
If that's the really the full text of the agreement (which seems plausible to me, I've seen similar e-mails) then there is nothing unclear about that. Even if he had quit immediately after referring that other guy he'd still get the bonus. Period.
My wife left BigCo in January one year. At the end of February she got a prorated annual bonus. Maybe you shouldn't expect it from every company, but there are some that do it exactly that way.
I've received a bonus for similar circumstances as in this case six months after I left a job (for a patent application reaching a certain milestone, informally announced bonus scheme, no contract in place). I wasn't expecting to ever see that money, so it was a very pleasant surprise.
(The company was Google, which should qualify as an American company even though this happened in Europe. I can't imagine there being any particular Swiss legislation that would have affected this case.)
If you were promised an annual bonus, and it was due before Dec 31, you had bet your ass you should expect a check. At that point they owe you money. It doesn't matter that you later quit. I can't fathom how people think it does. Can you explain it?
1. They promised you would get the bonus at 6 months, and THEY did not deliver (their fault for not keeping their written agreement).
-- They were in the red before you left. You are just collecting on their past dues.
2. They didn't have a backup before production and you happened to blow it up. You woked hard and recovered most of the data. (their fault for not having a backup)
-- Kudos to you for fessing up that you screwed up, but everyone does that and it is their fault for not having a backup
3. You confronted them about their debt, and they tried to find "sneaky language" that sounds like a solid reason to not pay you for your service. (their fault for shady business)
Sounds to me like they are trying to kill two birds with one stone by using a made up on the spot loophole to save $10k and bury a mistake they made in not fulfilling their pledge.
I'm pretty sure the OP is smart enough to know this move could cost him dearly in the future. He's basically setting himself at the 'stake', next to Miso, with his post.
This is why we have to pay a bit more attention than just dismissing his claim and label him childish. Doesn't matter who's right/wrong, the OP felt this was an issue worth risking his rep for (just by posting, he's already a blip on HR's radar). The tech startup circle is pretty small, made smaller by internet and LinkedIn. Definitely a big decision to take something like this public.
I'm surprised at his move taking it public so quickly, and more surprised at Miso going back on their words and expect no repercussions/fallout.
Even saying that it could cost him seems like empty threats from the peanut gallery. On what basis, that someone might not want to hire him because they plan to rip him off?
Someone might not want to hire him because they see his behavior as vindictive and immature. Not that I agree with that analysis, but there is a risk of that perception.
The point I'm driving at is that this is (obviously) seen to be taboo behavior, but I'm not sure that anybody would find this and visit repercussions upon the author.
Additionally, a lot of the taboo might be based on "word getting around." Well, how many times have you heard of management badmouthing people to other companies? Ever? I'm not sure the blacklist implied in some of these responses actually exists.
Furthermore, there has been plenty of bad management to go around, and publicizing their faults has not affected hardly any of their careers. In fact, it can be seen as a badge of experience to have presided over a failure. Experience is experience, after all, and might you want to hire a developer who has learned the hard lesson of not keeping backups? A lot of companies (including Miso, apparently) could use talent like that.
It's impossible to know how big the risk may be. Maybe he'll impress the hell out of whoever Googles him in the future. Maybe they'll run screaming.
My instinct based on incomplete understanding of the information is that the risk/reward was too high for my comfort level. In any case, I wish the author the best of luck in getting his bonus and in getting better about backups :)
Absolutely a huge risk. This is a signal for litigious behavior. Who knows what could set this guy off? This time it's $10k. Maybe next time it's something else. There are a lot of smart people out there, many of whom are more reliable than this guy. Pass for sure.
Interesting bunch of inferences and extrapolations there.
"Signal for litigious behavior" - because we all know if you promise something, you shouldn't have to follow through on it unless it really works for you, and you're not upset about something else entirely. That whole "after the DB damage, I'm hesitant" implies both admission of situation, and vidictive behavior on the part of the company. Why shouldn't he be feeling litigious? Is part of your recruitment process "Must be spineless and / or company man"?
While we found your CV to be the best of the bunch, and you are the most well suited applicant, we have decided to decline your request to work here at _____.
Upon discovering your blog, we found it in our best interests to not hire someone who does not like it when they are not paid.
as someone who has been in charge of tech hiring for a startup, this would definitely not be a red flag for me. as you say, it's not like we would be planning on ripping him off, and blacklisting him for what is after all nothing more than human disgruntlement over getting screwed would be petty and childish.
It has less to do with planning to rip off a prospective hire than determining whether the hire has a sense of discretion.
Do I think he's in the wrong with Miso, absolutely not. He has, on the surface at least, a legitimate grievance. He should have, however, handled this matter with a legal mechanism vs. a blog post.
When I hire, I have to look at the risk that a prospect is the type of person who will air his/her beefs in a blog post after he/she leaves the company. Which is why I spend time doing searches of everyone who makes my short list.
While I do think the OP has a legitimate beef, the outcome was predictable and preventable. If the OP was smart and had any work experience, he would have known to make any claims to any outstanding money before even signalling that he was going to leave. Companies, especially small ones, tend to be petty about dealing with former employees.
"Sense of discretion?" Why is this the first time I've ever heard that phrase used in the context of startups? Because it's never a concern and is only a matter of common sense when someone is defensive.
Nobody hiring is ever preoccupied with how a prospective employee will "air his/her beefs" with the company after leaving its employ. Quite the opposite, companies tend to hire for the long term since onboarding new hires is such an expensive process.
This thread has caught fire, to say the least, so I'm thinking the taboo against airing his/her "beefs" has long been an empty threat holding back a lot of pent-up frustration.
Stop calling it a bonus, it isn't, it's payment for your services of recruitment. The offer came as part of a written agreement from an officer of the company in relation to the duties required by employees (adding the optional duty of recruitment) and their remuneration for performing said services (your payment for recruitment). Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck.
Bonuses are when you receive additional pay for performing your required duties as an employee. eg. you were hired as a programmer, you've doing great work, here's an extra 10K.
Not only did they fail to pay your wages within X days of termination, an egregious violation of the labour code but now they are misrepresenting the employment agreement as not including written amendments made by officers of the company.
Furthermore this policy they speak of has altered the employment agreement with out consent from the employed, and failure to disclose the policy at the time the offer was made constitutes negligent misrepresentation of the contract. I'm sure if you had known that you would have only received payment while still an employee, the offer would not have induced you to perform said services for the company. Failure to inform employees of changes to the employment agreement is also likely a violation of labour law.
File with your local labour board for unpaid wages, dealing with this should cost them easily more than $10K. The last thing they want is bureaucrats around their business.
Then file in small claims court for lost wages and breach of contract.
Attach the directors of the corporation personally to the suit as directors are liable for unpaid wages. (This may not be true in your jurisdiction)
Find the statute that says that all unpaid wages must be paid within X days of quitting / termination, add damages.
Add up all your time spend dealing with the recovery of this money, as well as reporting this to the authorities, add costs.
Hopefully after this you've reached the max allowable for a small claims suit.
I've probably missed a bunch of stuff, a real lawyer would have no problem getting that $10K with a letter. They fucked up big time by tying it to the db deletion.
i really liked this response. your last sentence about your legal advice is priceless ;) i did not know all these options were available either, so thanks!
It actually /is/ a bonus – because you're already employed, and salaried, there's no obligation for your employeer to pay you more for services rendered. I'm no lawyer either, but Google seems to think "Referral Bonus" is a common thing.
Following that logic, a sales guy get paid with the minimum wage should not be paid with his sales commission and bonus for his additional service in getting additional sales.
Then they should stop creating an expectation of pay in relation to the referral and make it clear that the company pays these in capricious manner which will depend on how much the CEO likes you that day instead of relating it to the performance of your job.
If the CEO sent an email about new "Capricious and Arbitrary Referral Bonus" then I'd tend to agree with you that the OP should have expected to be treated in a capricious and arbitrary manner in regard to the payment of the bonus.
For example in my options contract with my last employer it stated that the options were part of an employee retention program and should not be construed as remuneration.
After reading those lines I knew the options were a ploy to retain employees and not to actually expect to make a cent from the options. Upon quitting and being offered to buy out my options I said "The options contract states that it's for retention and not remuneration, why would I buy something that you've warranted as worthless?"
It's no different than an employer offering a 'bonus' for hitting a certain date for code. If I quit day after delivery it should make no difference as to whether I'm paid.
Sorry but you need to take responsibility for forgetting to ask for the bonus at the end of six months while you were still employed by Miso. If you had remembered in all likelihood you would have been paid in full and all would have been well.
As it is, you left the company on bad terms and decide to publicly shame them. You will have trouble getting future employment as a result. Your future earnings has just potentially decreased by substantially more than $10k. How would you feel if after someone fired you they blogged about all the mistakes you made on the job publicly referring to you by name? You just don't do this. It's bad for business.
> How would you feel if after someone fired you they blogged about all the mistakes you made on the job publicly referring to you by name?
Totally not the same thing. If you make mistakes on the job you have not broken any contract. In this case, Miso (almost) broke a contract. That's why the public naming is justified. Releasing details of an employee's performance is not (unless there's an expectation that the company will do so).
Also, this guy has won a fair amount of approbation from many posters here and a few hirers. There will be certain employers who would be more willing to hire him because of his principled stance, even if there are more who are hesitant because they believe unethical practice should not be outed publicly. It's a fair risk to take if he thinks it'll filter out dodgy employers in future and is worth the benefit to the community.
We should be applauding this guy, not criticizing his choice.
It looks like I'm the only one here that's stunned by the chutzpah of asking for a referral bonus after accidentally nuking the production DB, and costing the company a lot of time and effort to recover it, while on your way out the door for a better opportunity.
Regardless of whether or not Miso is right to evade their promise of a bonus, I'm not so quick to heap sympathy upon rremoncake.
This certainly isn't the kind of dirty laundry that belongs on HN.
It has nothing to do with the relatedness of those incidents. Again, since apparently people missed it:
Regardless of whether or not Miso is right to evade their promise of a bonus, I'm not so quick to heap sympathy upon rremoncake.
You hire a plumber to do a major job. You're in a hurry. You tell the plumber, I'll pay you a bonus if you finish this by (date). The plumber accidentally floods a downstairs room in the process of doing the job, but he finishes the work by the date you asked for. The flooding costs you an amount equal to or greater than his bonus. Weeks after the job is over, he asks for the bonus.
How excited are you to give it to him?
Clearly Miso owes him the money. Clearly it would be right for them to just pay him and move on. But if I were rremoncake, I would have been so embarrassed by my screw-up that I wouldn't have ever even asked for it in the first place.
The scenario implies that the impact of the production db nuke was equal or greater than the bonus. Depending on the context, the impact could range from trivial to catastrophic.
The fact that it wasn't backed up only makes it worse. Sometimes I joke that correctly working yet poorly-written code is "conceptually broken". Similarly, any important data that isn't backed up is already "conceptually lost".
Sure, but it doesn't take a development team two to three days to recover "conceptually lost" data (as according to the post).
If you're about to touch the production database in a way that could potentially end catastrophically, and there aren't backups, you really should stop and consider the meaning of life before proceeding. Preferably, you decide that backups are the meaning of life, and even if it's an imperfect backup, you decide to manually export the table(s) you're working on. Or something.
He didn't do that. It's a rookie mistake. It cost the company two to three days of development team time to recover from it.
For a community that seems to pride itself on being the best of the bunch at this stuff, I am super surprised that the response here wasn't, "You touched prod without a backup first?! Are you daft?", but was instead, "Miso is a bad company, you need to lawyer up and get what they owe you."
Or, to put it another way: if there were any justice at all, this story would follow rremoncake around for just as long as it follows Miso around.
It's a mistake I've seen people with 20 years of experience make. If you haven't done it already, you will eventually. When that day comes, I hope, but don't expect, you'll remember to apologize to this guy.
> For a community that seems to pride itself on being the best of the bunch at this stuff
How you get from "Hacker News" to "infallible operations engineers" is beyond me. Operations is a rare skill to begin with, and even those who are best at it will make these mistakes.
Insulting him and telling him he shouldn't ask for money he is clearly owed because of a mistake we've all made. Actually, that second part is an insult, too. So, really, just being incredibly insulting.
That you wouldn't ask for the money is irrelevant. We're not required by any law, moral, or ethic to go through life as a doormat. At this point, money has been stolen from him, just as if they'd taken it from his bank account. He is owed that money, and entitled to ask for it without you attacking him for it.
The flaw in this argument is that it assumes rremoncake was solely responsible for the decision to not back up prod. I think that responsibility falls on the CTO/CEO, and so yeah, Miso is a bad company for that, and that whole incident should have no relevance to the bonus debacle.
Everybody screws up something sometime. It is embarrassing and bad, but the fact of life is that nobody is perfect, and everybody can and will screw up sometimes. To own what you have done, however bad it is, is not shameful (however shameful was the original screwup by itself) and is not the reason to abandon all your rights and not get what you are due.
The two events in this case aren't linked like your plumber events are. A disaster in the course of doing the job the bonus was promised for is substantially different.
This case is more like the plumber rear-ending you on the highway in a freakishly coincidental accident, then you refusing to pay him the bonus after he finishes on time because you're still upset that he screwed up your car.
I'm kind of amazed that most of your contributions to this thread have been about telling people that they're wrong for feeling a certain way. That's like me telling you you're wrong for liking code. You agreed that Miso clearly owes him money. That is why people are sympathetic to this guy. He is owed a lot of money.
Alright. Since people keep arguing to things I haven't actually said, I am going to start posting a "Comment Bounty" (working title). After all, money seems to be the one thing that everyone on HN can understand.
If you can find any comment of mine in this thread where I told someone "they were wrong for feeling a certain way", I will pay you $100.
"Because you are no longer employed by Miso, you are not eligible for this bonus."
I must say, I completely agree. This is how it works. Your referral bonus is a perk, and nothing more. You didn't claim it. They weren't on top of it. You both failed here. But then you quit. And you left without it. That sucks for you, but they owe you nothing.
When my girlfriend broke up with me, we had a lot of shared stuff in my apartment we had purchased together. I gave her back everything she wanted and more.
Why? I didn't owe her anything. We'd purchased things together, lived together, ownership was undefined, and hell, she left me. Oh wait - human decency. That's what it is.
I guess since HN is full of armchair CEOs, dismissing respectful business relationships is in vogue here.
It makes perfect sense if you don't think about it too much, which I suspect you are. Here's the general pattern:
You don't have to do X to help Y, even though you said you would, and it'd be nice. But nobody would blame you if you didn't do X.
Indignant, you make a big deal about how you don't have to do X and it's Y's fault for not taking care of things earlier. Unsurprisingly you look like a selfish shithead in the eyes of decent people.
At my company, it's a perk. And I love paying it out. And my loyalty is to my employees. I would bleed for them. But it's not to my former employees. As I approach 100 employees, many who have been with me for 4+ years, I find my stance to be entirely in their favor.
Your loyalty to your employees should include respect for contracts and the law. This man satisfied the conditions for payment of the bonus before he left the company, he is entitled to the money. That you would not give it to him makes you little better than a thief.
Fortunately, we all now know that OpenDNS and anything else David Ulevitch is involved with in the future is a company to avoid.
Again, a wild and broad conclusion based on my perspective that perks for employees are valid for actual employees, and not former employees. The company should have paid it out when he earned it. The employee should have requested it before quitting. Neither event happened. It doesn't matter if the employee quit two days ago, two weeks ago or two decades ago. He's not an employee now and should just move on with his life.
Do you always come to these conclusions so quickly? I'm sharing my opinion, based on my experiences. I also explained that at my company perks are for employees, a status that the OP no longer maintains at Miso. Neither of us know the specifics of their deal.
I think you've jumped a few steps ahead of where you ought to be at this juncture. Perhaps you simply disagree with my point of view. I think HN is often one-sided, so I sometimes delude myself into thinking I should contribute. But now you have resorted to calling me a thief and encouraging others (along with Google indexes) to never do business with me. I think you've stepped a bit over the line.
You have announced to the world, entirely of your own accord, that you will flout the law and steal money from your employees. This is your doing, not mine. Is it also your habit to blame others for your own shortcomings?
I agree with davidu that you crossed the line. I certainly had a bad opinion about davidu and his company before your comment, but I didn't know who davidu was, or what his company was. So now I have a bad opinion about real life stuff, based off one comment with little context (perhaps it was hastily written, etc).
Taking one comment and trying to tie it to google juice about real life is a dickish move, IMO.
I don't think this relates to the discussion at all. Based on the article, it sounds like it was not merely a perk at Miso. If you say you are going to pay it (in writing, etc), you must pay it.
At your company, I'm sure you've done the correct legal things to make sure that it's defined as a perk. But I don't see any evidence that that's how Miso has done it.
BTW, showing no loyalty to your former employees is a black mark in my book. I would urge you to reconsider your attitude.
I'm not so sure that his actions would be considered "disloyal" to his former employees. If anything, his former employees might be happy that their founder was called out on a mistake, to prevent the founder from doing other sleazy tactics on current employees.
I'm not going to defend my boss if he did something morally deficient, and I would be happy if my coworkers has the cajones to call him out.
You are seriously saying in public that if somebody forgot to ask for the bonus at the 6 month mark you'd just pocket it if they left at any point before remembering to ask for it?
At my company, it's a perk. And I love paying it out. And my loyalty is to my employees. I would bleed for them. But it's not to my former employees. As I approach 100 employees, many who have been with me for 4+ years, I find my stance to be entirely in their favor.
Bonuses can be considered either contractual or discretionary. If there was any mention or implication that the referral bonus was discretionary, then the company can withhold payment for any reason, such as poor employee performance or low revenue/profits.
At my company, all bonuses are considered discretionary. They plainly and clearly lay out the parameters of the bonus structure, but they also reserve the right to withhold the bonus for any reason. They rarely reign in on their promise as it significantly hurts morale. However it is well known that if you leave the company before a bonus is paid out, that you will not receive the money, regardless of whether or not you have already fulfilled the parameters for the bonus.
390 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 271 ms ] threadEmployees make mistakes and to punish them for it is insane. If you were purposely trying to screw things up and were fired for that, of course thats a different story- but it sounds like you were just trying to do your job and made a mistake, it happens. Also, seeing as you were supposed to have been paid the bonus while you were there, it makes it twice as awkward.
This should be a lesson to other founders- Treat people good and they will speak highly of you and may stay with you forever, to your next startup or company. Dont and they will do the opposite. That alone is worth more than the 10k you save.
Penny wise but pound foolish, as the saying goes.
Last I checked, humans do mistake all the time. Not related to systems, or anything really. It's all about being prepared for those and attempting to make as few as possible.
However, I sense you're taking issue with my "bad mistake worse" comment. I don't think anybody is going to argue that dropping a production database is a real mistake. Mistakes happen, and companies (i.e. management) should work to ensure that all the bases are covered, which weren't in this case.
People make mistakes all the times. What's important is how they recover and be better. I remember a story where a guy was resigning after screwing up a million dollar venture. His boss told him, you have just learned a million-dollar lesson on the company's dime and you are quitting? The guy stayed on and flourished.
No one is blaming your co-workers - but when your founders take investment money and insist on keeping themselves in charge, they also take on responsibility for the performance of the company and its technology. Just because their legal liability is limited, they aren't off the hook for what we think of them running their product this way.
Blowing the production database is bad, yes - but a LOT of bad days for top shelf programmers start with "rm". It sounds like you owned up to your mistake and put in the late nights to fix it in a way that your bosses didn't...best of luck to you.
They certainly did weasel out of it, though. Obviously they were looking for ways not to pay it rather than to avoid bad blood. That's fine, karma, they stepped on you on the way up the ladder, etc. Not a lot you can do about it, probably (but I'll be watching the thread ;).
One of my life lessons was that I didn't save email from one of the scenarios, email in which the CEO had asked me how old I was.
Can you produce this email? (IANAL)If so you may actually have legal grounds for taking action against Miso ...
Just incase there are others like me wondering what the heck that acronym stood for…
On a bumper sticker, it means something completely different...
Also, it's 10k. For that kind of money, it's much cheaper to go public than to go legal.
I feel like more people should be publicly shaming companies so that companies realize they can't pull shit without consequences. I bet you there's a whole list of companies that fire people right before they're eligible for pension benefits, and there's little employees can do.
Future employers who read this post will think twice about hiring you -- frankly, this is rather unprofessional. Yes, the Miso founders might be in the wrong, but you can still take the high road.
So long as companys think they can get away with treating you like shit, most of them will. Stuff like this stops that.
It's also up to the new employees to stay vigilant and find out as much as they can on their new employers – LinkedIn makes it so easy to track down ex employees of companies, just shoot them an email, introduce yourself (even easier with connections) and hopefully they can give on some valuable feedback (and hopefully they're honest!)
If there's a code of silence about this, what levers do employees have? Are lawyers the only recourse? If anything, I think it's admirable to go public; the ecosystem is hurt without honest reporting. And the author pays the cost, of course, because future employers will have a look at this...
In this case, it does seem (from his side of the story) that he was in the right & gave Miso plenty of time/warning.
All that being said, though, I would probably have to do the due diligence were I to know this about a candidate, that by itself is a negative regardless of the merits of the issue.
OTOH, an incident such as this might actually be a positive in a candidate where you are looking for someone who isn't a pushover.
So (IMO) it is hard to characterize it as objectively good or bad to a potential employer, at least this one, other than it is a flag that may need to be checked. It certainly is a good point of departure for getting a candidate to talk about himself.
In general, before going public w/something like this, one always has to consider "Never argue with an idiot because the people watching may not be able to tell the difference".
I understand that it's important to get the word out, but for me, I'd put the people I care about above anything else. All I'm saying is that this could have been handled more professionally.
But you shouldn't haven gone into details about their non-existent back-up strategy. This clearly shows their incompetance. This may fear future employers.
On the one hand, he might do this to me. What if he's lying or twisting the truth in some way, or there's more to the story.
On the other hand, fair play for sticking up for his rights. I'd like that mindset on my team.
I think it would come down to the interview, and how he came across. We once interviewed a guy who came across like an asshole online. We asked him about it in the interview, and he did a poor job of defending himself. I think the same approach would work here.
Later on when future employers see this, they'll realize that the employee has proper morals, and is a "do-er". I think most employees would suck it up if they lost out on 10k, but this person stuck it out and rode the storm.
Would you hire a passive employee, or a passionate one? Sometimes passion will cause people to do things that may backfire, but at least they gave it a shot. Passive employees wouldn't even bother with the 10k loss.
Maybe not, but it's definitely the action of someone lacking experience. Anyone who has been around the block knows that companies can be very petty. Just because a work environment is 'friendly' and 'family-like' doesn't mean you can count on that kind of behaviour when you exit. Companies turn petty very quickly. Very quickly.
An experienced person would have made sure all the money he/she had coming was collected before even handing in the resignation letter. Once you've signalled that you are leaving, things can go south very fast.
I just look at this whole situation and what the OP did and think "what a rookie".
Worse for Miso, though.
I'm sure that everyone who would screw an engineer out of $10k agrees with this.
Step 1) Make bad engineering decisions that make accidents like this possible
Step 2) Blame employees who knock over your fragile infrastructure
Great strategy, Miso!
$10K is an amount that sounds like a lot to many folks but it's nothing you can ever recover. If you engage a lawyer it'll all go to his fees even if you "win." Move on.
Any recruiter worth their salt is getting a minimum of 15% on first years salary right now, and many are getting 20%. On a typical $150K Salary that would be $30K if the same candidate comes through a recruiter.
Perhaps it's just the case that Miso doesn't use external recruiters, and so the statement is accurate - but to suggest that bonuses are paid for good referrals as part of "Team Building" and not to get the lead on great talent would not be consistent with current market conditions.
Of course, there are some that don't, but it's certainly not unusual for startups to use recruiters.
http://hackruiter.com
I also know of a recruiting agency in Japan that specializes in startups. Some companies have the too-many-resumes problem, but many startups have the converse problem. If nobody knows about you then you'll have a hard time finding qualified people.
The fact that you dropped the production database sucks. However you stayed around and fixed it. I can't really say anything more. My bet is we all handle lots of sensitive data around here. Our worst nightmare is to drop that data by accident. Stuff happens...fix it and move on.
I understand we are a litigious society but if your knee jerk reaction is to bring in lawyers something is wrong. My hope is this post will make it around to Somrat and Tim (I've never met either of them) and you two will resolve it amicably. Maybe I am delusional but good character still counts for something.
Bottom line: don't answer this question.
There is no "service to the SV community" that this guy is doing by airing dirty laundry. If you've been wronged by your former company, handle it on your own. Shaming the company is not going to help you, the company, or anyone else. What you're effectively suggesting is that your "service" is to warn everyone to stay away from Miso.
Unfortunately, as a hiring manager, I'm going to stay away from you. While I wholeheartedly agree that you should have gotten your $10K referral bonus, I also believe it should have been while you were still an employee there. Once you leave, you're not entitled to anything more from the company.
Can you explain how this works, exactly? How does quitting one's job wipe clean any debt from the company to the now-former employee? Can they refuse to send him his last paycheck too?
I can't speak for the paperwork involved when leaving Miso, but most companies make you sign an agreement (often in the exit interview) that you are not entitled to/owed anything more than X, Y, Z items that are explicitly stated (which usually included the last paycheck and any unpaid vacation days).
Most companies that have this agreement in place also have a similar agreement when joining the company that if you forego signing the exit agreement, you forego any outstanding debts owed to you by the company.
There's also the question of labor laws. I bet this is considered wages under the law and probably impossible to sign away.
This sounds a bit illogical, but I'm not a lawyer. Another poster said it wasn't the practice at all in his years of experience, so maybe your experience does not generalize well.
You're also making an assumption that such a contract was made in this case - and it clearly wasn't, since the Miso people acknowledged their mistake here. So the guy absolutely deserves the bonus payout, even if he didn't submit the administrative form to claim it while he was still there.
Let's say the assailant does this again in the future -- hurting somebody marginally. And they do press charges.
To the court this looks like a first offense and they let the assailant off gently.
Now suppose the assailant attacks again and this time causes significant injuries.
Had you originally reported your attack, then it is reasonable that the court would see a second minor attack more seriously and could bring more severe charges, deterring the assailant from subsequent assaults and improving the not only the assailant's life, but also the community (as a whole).
This is a specific instance of the more data a deciding entity has, the better chances their making the right choice.
If OP had asked for the bonus while still being at Miso, it seems like he would simply have gotten it. Seeing as a non-contractual bonus is an investment in the employee that the company does in addition to the usual compensation, and seeing as OP quit on his own and doesn't have a compensation anymore, I can see that this would seem like a strange investment.
These informal bonuses shouldn't be seen as something you're entitled to, but rather as a nice extra that might disappear any second. If you really want something, it should be in the contract. If it isn't in the contract, you apparently can also live without it.
edit: Oh, downvotes. I really should stop posting my opinion if it might be controversial.
Me: "Hey, if you do X I'll give you $10k."
You: [Does X.] "Can I have my $10k?"
Me: "Nah, the moment's passed. I'm not really feeling it anymore."
Nope. That's sleazy behavior.
That's usually the nice thing about startups, you don't have to fill out gobs of paperwork and have hours of meetings to get these small perks figured out, it's more of a "good will" thing imho.
But I guess I just have a different opinion when it comes to things that don't have 2 signatures at the bottom of them.
Think how many things in our society would break down if this wasn't the case.
The OP's case is even stronger if he sent an email back saying "Thanks for offering $10k! I have a friend who would be interested!" as that is clear acceptance.
Signatures aren't needed (there's plenty of case law around). Courts are more likely to get involved where money is involved, as that shows firm commitment to a contract.
I am not a lawyer, this isn't legal advice, of course.
Does this mean I can ignore these four e-mails from my boss that formulates his intent for me to work on X and Y, and skip on off to work on Z instead?
If you tell employee "do this and get $10K" and he does and you say "well, I'm not feeling like keeping my end of the bargain now" - it is no different. It is harder to enforce, but that's only difference that lets all kinds of sleazy characters get away with it. If you don't mean to give $10K - don't promise it. Nobody forces anybody to promise it. If you do promise - fulfill your promise. It's very simple, I wonder how people can have trouble with it - unless they meant to cheat at the first place.
Well, your opinion is certainly different than the judiciary's opinion of what constitutes a contract, for sure.
A contract need not be written (usually, some exceptions apply). It need only be clear and agreed to by both sides, have some consideration involved and not be against public policy.
If you as a startup owner promise people even verbally that referrals get a bonus, you're creating a binding contract if anyone accepts it. In this case it appears it was written down, which is pretty much a slam dunk for the employee.
If informal agreements are considered contracts (which they legally are), then the startup (or whatever) won't need all that formal processing.
According to this legal source, the only way to prevent your email from being a contract is to "recite in the e-mail that there is no intention to create a contract, except pursuant to a separate written agreement."
Also, you better change that opinion of yours, or else you might get caught in hot water yourself!
If they also want to pursue a lawsuit over his data screw-up, they should. But that's unrelated.
(I think such a suit would be tossed, given his screw-up seems to be based upon Miso not having suitable back-ups, which: The fuck?)
I'm sure that after it gets out how they deal with routine mistakes they'll have highly qualified database engineers lining up at their door to work there because of the excitement of working in such a high stakes environment.
- "Impeccable logic."
- ' At this point. You might as well just tell me "fuck you. you didn't sign a contract. boohoo." '
- ' I was starting to feel like they were determined to screw me.'
- 'No. I'm not proud of threatening, but I was pissed.'
- ' The rest of this chain of emails consists of me double checking if he understood what I was saying, and him giving me some more BS.'
- 'This is unethical practice. Period.'
- 'Somrat. Tim. Was this worth the 10k?'
The part that really bothers me is that one of the reasons they give for denying him this is a recent engineering mistake. It just feels like this is all out of spite, and it's more of a childish move more than anything.
Really, for a professional engineer - which professional way of handling such situation would you recommend, providing that the law road is probably infeasible (you'll spend more in time and money on the lawsuit than you ever have a chance to recover)? As far as I know, there's no app for that and no python module for that, so which professional option should one take?
It's a blog post, not a New York Times article. It has a pissed-off tone, understandable given the circumstances, but isn't venomous.
Obviously, yes: you should get the money before quitting. But Miso doesn't have a leg to stand on here unless they're hoping that pursuing the money isn't worth the poster's time (which might be a good bet, given that he didn't ask for the money originally).
1) Yes, a referral bonus is optional
2) It no longer becomes optional once you make the offer to your employees. At this point you have established intent; especially if it is provided in writing. You cannot take it back once the other party involved has upheld their end of the arrangement.
Just about everything in your first category is not an entitlement unless it's explicitly stated up front. If I get no promise of vacation days, then come back and demand them, I have no real standing. I can request them, but I'm not entitled to them.
Likewise, everything in your second category is an entitlement if it's stated up front. If they say, "We're giving you a $X bonus this year to anyone who does Y" and then they don't, they are completely in the wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promissory_estoppel
A bonus isn't a gift or an investment: it's paid to compensate for going above and beyond the call of duty. In this case, he did so by delivering a referral. He should be paid, plain and simple.
Technical recruiters typically got 1/4 of yearly salary as payment. $10K recruitment bonus is cheap.
What if the employee had come back two years later to say "hey, guys. Remember that $10k you owed me?" I'm no lawyer, but I believe that a judge would consider that a form of forfeiture. Where is that line drawn?
I agree the tone seems to favor the employer, but tone doesn't make them right.
What if the employee had come back two years later to say "hey, guys. Remember that $10k you owed me?" I'm no lawyer, but I believe that a judge would consider that a form of forfeiture. Where is that line drawn?
I agree the tone seems to favor the employer, but tone doesn't make them right.
> After you lost our data and caused our entire company to scramble for 3 days, I am hesitant.
Extremely professional. They blew me away with that one.
Also, any company that allows a single person to 'lose their data and cause the entire company to scramble for 3 days' has some issues with separation of duties.
Regardless of whether it's legal, it's totally unethical to behave that way.
Thanks for sharing. Sounds like Miso may have made a business decision, and you are reminding them of the cost side of that equation.
And there is nothing bad or evil about going to work for the money and expect others to hold up their end of the bargin.
It is what allows us to have the society we have today.
Why wouldn't it be about the money?
Why is this guy under any obligation to give away money he EARNED by making a referral?
Why in god's name shouldn't it be about the money? He delivered incredible value by finding the company some talent in a talent-scarce environment. $10k seems like a pittance – but definitely one he earned.
I had someone not pay me $9k, and have filed a lawsuit. We're closing in on 4 years now (aug 2008) and still no court date. Courts take time.
I wrestled with 'name and shame', and in some respect, wish I had named. I found out that this company/person had done this to others, and one of the guys 'named' him publicly on a blog. He got a threatening call, telling him to take it down and he'd get paid. Of course, he took it down and didn't get paid - that was < $1k from what I remember.
I hear this a lot - "don't go public with these sorts of things, you'll get a bad reputation, blah blah blah". I'm really torn. I get it, but... if more people started doing this - going public when BS like this is perpetrated - there'd be far less resistance to hiring/contracting with people who have air this sort of stuff.
I've been self-employed for 5 years, have contracted on dozens of projects, and have 2 instances where I got shafted out of money owed. If I was to publicize those, but also have, say 25 other projects under my belt with fine referrals, wouldn't that say more about the 2 shafters vs me? And again, if everyone was doing this, it would seem a lot more normal.
Yeah, if I publicly trashed every company I worked with, my 'trashing score' would be pretty high, and people would want to stay away from me. But really, I'd prefer people know that I publicly praise good clients and trash bad ones, and if they think they're going to be a bad client, to not bother reaching out. I'd rather there be a filter there which keeps crap clients away in the first place.
The thing is, we all have to start doing this at the same time. I do agree that legal proceedings are worthwhile in some cases, in many cases, people are getting shafted out of hundreds or thousands, and it's often not worth the time to 'go legal'. The habitual scumbags know this and take advantage of it, continually rolling through contractors. They know most of them will just leave and won't make a public fuss, because they want to be 'employable' and not be known as a 'troublemaker'. Someone who doesn't pay me for contractual work done is the troublemaker, but somehow that seems to get lost.
On the "take it down and he'd get paid" issue, one has to be very careful. There have been a few news stories where this has happened, the ex-employee agrees, and then the company goes public with a "employee was attempting to extort $10,000 from us" angle, painting the employee they cheated as some sort of criminal. The spin is they try to make it seem like the bad report was false and the employee was extorting money to take it down as some kind of protection racket.
In my particular case, I had all my documentation in a row, but still didn't choose to 'go public', tho in retrospect I somewhat wish I had.
For example, should some future employer decide to Google your name before making an offer, they're likely to come up with an old spat between you and your employer. Even if you're in the right, it will make them think twice about hiring you. This disagreement may follow you forever (Google doesn't forget) and cost much more than $10k.
A better tactic may be to try and leverage your relationship with your friend who is still employed there. If this quarrel is detrimental to his morale, they may be willing to come to an agreement.
Secondly, nobody really likes hiring someone who speaks negatively about a former employer. Especially when there's no way to verify whether what they are saying is true.
I personally could care less whether you posted screenshots or not. But if you were considering employing someone and found that they had posted something like this (with little to no evidence), what would your reaction be? Heck, what would your reaction be if it did have screenshots?
Pardon my pet peeve.
To answer your question: if it were me hiring a person, absence or presence of screenshots would not make any difference. A contract is a contract and the person is owed $10k.
Pardon my pet peeve.
Here's a link to "could care less" in The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, http://books.google.com/books?id=9re1vfFh04sC&pg=PA137&#...
I would have second thoughts about hiring this guy, not just because he took his dispute with an earlier employer public, but also because he apparently blew up a production server and screwed everything up for several days.
Right now these are the exactly two things I know about this dude, and put together they don't give a strong first impression.
If more people did this so that it would become a more accepted practice, companies would be less likely to pull these kinds of stunts.
* The lack of backups is partly your fault. You were an engineer there after all.
* Nuking a production database can happen, but the default assumption is that you are sloppy.
* Based on the timeframes one could assume you were fired from Miso.
* You have no problem revealing confidential information about your former employer's infrastructure and operations.
* You publicly post private emails between you and your former employer.
The more reasonable point is that he's an engineer not a sysadmin or ops guy this isn't his responsibility directly & more so this falls on the CTO shoulders of failing to assign someone to this task.
* If they point directly to production this really isn't unheard of.
* Why are we making any assumptions if the guy is fired or not; This has nothing to do with the fact of the bonus not being paid out on time while he was an employee.
* You're going to argue that the company failing to perform backups is confidential information about infrastructure and operations especially after the company mentions it in an email after his employment :|?
* These are emails after his employment & the company is or should be well aware that these emails from that point on can publicly be posted because he's not bound by anything to keep them confidential any more. This is why most companies follow strict HR policies of no further communication & very strict emails to former employees.
Come on, I expect a bit more from an engineer working at Facebook other than broad assumptions & statements.
I wasn't trying to ad hominem the guy by suggesting he was fired. For all I know he may have got a better offer elsewhere. I was pointing out that in his attack on Miso he's made himself look bad. If a future potential employer reads this his comments are vague enough they could draw the conclusion I suggested. The same applies to publishing the emails. He may be within the law but to me it's a major red flag.
I shouldn't have to have a disclaimer; this is very obviously my personal opinion. I don't see how my employer is relevant to the discussion. Am I supposed to refrain from commenting at all in case someone tries to tie my professional life to my personal opinion?
He did exactly what any person who got screwed over by any company should do...make it public and call them out on their bullshit.
Thanks to this fellow I will NOT be recommending Miso for their future series C round & this is why no company should screw over their employees it can cost you millions down the road.
I have to say he's handled the attention and criticism really well. His updated posts have addressed a lot of the points I bought up in my original comment.
Fail for Miso.
If you quit Dec 31, and the company usually pays out annual bonuses on Jan 30, don't expect a check.
Pretty clear cut for me. The conditions were met, they owe him $10k. Maybe not legally but certainly morally.
Of course it did. Quote from the article:
the payout was contingent on said employee staying for a minimum of a 6 month period at the position
If that's the really the full text of the agreement (which seems plausible to me, I've seen similar e-mails) then there is nothing unclear about that. Even if he had quit immediately after referring that other guy he'd still get the bonus. Period.
well established practice.
Certainly not around here.
It's more like that you had a personal bonus scheduled for Dec 31, and your last day was the next Jan 30, and they never paid you.
(The company was Google, which should qualify as an American company even though this happened in Europe. I can't imagine there being any particular Swiss legislation that would have affected this case.)
1. They promised you would get the bonus at 6 months, and THEY did not deliver (their fault for not keeping their written agreement). -- They were in the red before you left. You are just collecting on their past dues.
2. They didn't have a backup before production and you happened to blow it up. You woked hard and recovered most of the data. (their fault for not having a backup) -- Kudos to you for fessing up that you screwed up, but everyone does that and it is their fault for not having a backup
3. You confronted them about their debt, and they tried to find "sneaky language" that sounds like a solid reason to not pay you for your service. (their fault for shady business)
Sounds to me like they are trying to kill two birds with one stone by using a made up on the spot loophole to save $10k and bury a mistake they made in not fulfilling their pledge.
I'm pretty sure the OP is smart enough to know this move could cost him dearly in the future. He's basically setting himself at the 'stake', next to Miso, with his post.
This is why we have to pay a bit more attention than just dismissing his claim and label him childish. Doesn't matter who's right/wrong, the OP felt this was an issue worth risking his rep for (just by posting, he's already a blip on HR's radar). The tech startup circle is pretty small, made smaller by internet and LinkedIn. Definitely a big decision to take something like this public.
I'm surprised at his move taking it public so quickly, and more surprised at Miso going back on their words and expect no repercussions/fallout.
The point I'm driving at is that this is (obviously) seen to be taboo behavior, but I'm not sure that anybody would find this and visit repercussions upon the author.
Additionally, a lot of the taboo might be based on "word getting around." Well, how many times have you heard of management badmouthing people to other companies? Ever? I'm not sure the blacklist implied in some of these responses actually exists.
Furthermore, there has been plenty of bad management to go around, and publicizing their faults has not affected hardly any of their careers. In fact, it can be seen as a badge of experience to have presided over a failure. Experience is experience, after all, and might you want to hire a developer who has learned the hard lesson of not keeping backups? A lot of companies (including Miso, apparently) could use talent like that.
My instinct based on incomplete understanding of the information is that the risk/reward was too high for my comfort level. In any case, I wish the author the best of luck in getting his bonus and in getting better about backups :)
"Signal for litigious behavior" - because we all know if you promise something, you shouldn't have to follow through on it unless it really works for you, and you're not upset about something else entirely. That whole "after the DB damage, I'm hesitant" implies both admission of situation, and vidictive behavior on the part of the company. Why shouldn't he be feeling litigious? Is part of your recruitment process "Must be spineless and / or company man"?
"many of whom are more reliable than this guy"?
How has he demonstrated lack of reliability?
Hirebots are always making inferences and extrapolations that are wrong. The OP's blog post just gives more fuel to any Hirebot's prejudices.
While we found your CV to be the best of the bunch, and you are the most well suited applicant, we have decided to decline your request to work here at _____.
Upon discovering your blog, we found it in our best interests to not hire someone who does not like it when they are not paid.
All the best, Miso.
Do I think he's in the wrong with Miso, absolutely not. He has, on the surface at least, a legitimate grievance. He should have, however, handled this matter with a legal mechanism vs. a blog post.
When I hire, I have to look at the risk that a prospect is the type of person who will air his/her beefs in a blog post after he/she leaves the company. Which is why I spend time doing searches of everyone who makes my short list.
While I do think the OP has a legitimate beef, the outcome was predictable and preventable. If the OP was smart and had any work experience, he would have known to make any claims to any outstanding money before even signalling that he was going to leave. Companies, especially small ones, tend to be petty about dealing with former employees.
Nobody hiring is ever preoccupied with how a prospective employee will "air his/her beefs" with the company after leaving its employ. Quite the opposite, companies tend to hire for the long term since onboarding new hires is such an expensive process.
This thread has caught fire, to say the least, so I'm thinking the taboo against airing his/her "beefs" has long been an empty threat holding back a lot of pent-up frustration.
Bonuses are when you receive additional pay for performing your required duties as an employee. eg. you were hired as a programmer, you've doing great work, here's an extra 10K.
Not only did they fail to pay your wages within X days of termination, an egregious violation of the labour code but now they are misrepresenting the employment agreement as not including written amendments made by officers of the company.
Furthermore this policy they speak of has altered the employment agreement with out consent from the employed, and failure to disclose the policy at the time the offer was made constitutes negligent misrepresentation of the contract. I'm sure if you had known that you would have only received payment while still an employee, the offer would not have induced you to perform said services for the company. Failure to inform employees of changes to the employment agreement is also likely a violation of labour law.
File with your local labour board for unpaid wages, dealing with this should cost them easily more than $10K. The last thing they want is bureaucrats around their business.
Then file in small claims court for lost wages and breach of contract.
Attach the directors of the corporation personally to the suit as directors are liable for unpaid wages. (This may not be true in your jurisdiction)
Find the statute that says that all unpaid wages must be paid within X days of quitting / termination, add damages.
Add up all your time spend dealing with the recovery of this money, as well as reporting this to the authorities, add costs.
Hopefully after this you've reached the max allowable for a small claims suit.
I am not a lawyer, this isn't legal advice.
If the CEO sent an email about new "Capricious and Arbitrary Referral Bonus" then I'd tend to agree with you that the OP should have expected to be treated in a capricious and arbitrary manner in regard to the payment of the bonus.
For example in my options contract with my last employer it stated that the options were part of an employee retention program and should not be construed as remuneration.
After reading those lines I knew the options were a ploy to retain employees and not to actually expect to make a cent from the options. Upon quitting and being offered to buy out my options I said "The options contract states that it's for retention and not remuneration, why would I buy something that you've warranted as worthless?"
It's no different than an employer offering a 'bonus' for hitting a certain date for code. If I quit day after delivery it should make no difference as to whether I'm paid.
As it is, you left the company on bad terms and decide to publicly shame them. You will have trouble getting future employment as a result. Your future earnings has just potentially decreased by substantially more than $10k. How would you feel if after someone fired you they blogged about all the mistakes you made on the job publicly referring to you by name? You just don't do this. It's bad for business.
Totally not the same thing. If you make mistakes on the job you have not broken any contract. In this case, Miso (almost) broke a contract. That's why the public naming is justified. Releasing details of an employee's performance is not (unless there's an expectation that the company will do so).
Also, this guy has won a fair amount of approbation from many posters here and a few hirers. There will be certain employers who would be more willing to hire him because of his principled stance, even if there are more who are hesitant because they believe unethical practice should not be outed publicly. It's a fair risk to take if he thinks it'll filter out dodgy employers in future and is worth the benefit to the community.
We should be applauding this guy, not criticizing his choice.
Regardless of whether or not Miso is right to evade their promise of a bonus, I'm not so quick to heap sympathy upon rremoncake.
This certainly isn't the kind of dirty laundry that belongs on HN.
Regardless of whether or not Miso is right to evade their promise of a bonus, I'm not so quick to heap sympathy upon rremoncake.
You hire a plumber to do a major job. You're in a hurry. You tell the plumber, I'll pay you a bonus if you finish this by (date). The plumber accidentally floods a downstairs room in the process of doing the job, but he finishes the work by the date you asked for. The flooding costs you an amount equal to or greater than his bonus. Weeks after the job is over, he asks for the bonus.
How excited are you to give it to him?
Clearly Miso owes him the money. Clearly it would be right for them to just pay him and move on. But if I were rremoncake, I would have been so embarrassed by my screw-up that I wouldn't have ever even asked for it in the first place.
The scenario implies that the impact of the production db nuke was equal or greater than the bonus. Depending on the context, the impact could range from trivial to catastrophic.
The fact that it wasn't backed up only makes it worse. Sometimes I joke that correctly working yet poorly-written code is "conceptually broken". Similarly, any important data that isn't backed up is already "conceptually lost".
If you're about to touch the production database in a way that could potentially end catastrophically, and there aren't backups, you really should stop and consider the meaning of life before proceeding. Preferably, you decide that backups are the meaning of life, and even if it's an imperfect backup, you decide to manually export the table(s) you're working on. Or something.
He didn't do that. It's a rookie mistake. It cost the company two to three days of development team time to recover from it.
For a community that seems to pride itself on being the best of the bunch at this stuff, I am super surprised that the response here wasn't, "You touched prod without a backup first?! Are you daft?", but was instead, "Miso is a bad company, you need to lawyer up and get what they owe you."
Or, to put it another way: if there were any justice at all, this story would follow rremoncake around for just as long as it follows Miso around.
It's a mistake I've seen people with 20 years of experience make. If you haven't done it already, you will eventually. When that day comes, I hope, but don't expect, you'll remember to apologize to this guy.
> For a community that seems to pride itself on being the best of the bunch at this stuff
How you get from "Hacker News" to "infallible operations engineers" is beyond me. Operations is a rare skill to begin with, and even those who are best at it will make these mistakes.
The difference between me and this guy is that I wouldn't've turned around and asked the company for a bunch of money afterward.
And what, exactly, do you think I owe him an apology for?
That you wouldn't ask for the money is irrelevant. We're not required by any law, moral, or ethic to go through life as a doormat. At this point, money has been stolen from him, just as if they'd taken it from his bank account. He is owed that money, and entitled to ask for it without you attacking him for it.
Whatever. This thread has been an idiotic waste of time. I do think I'll be saving it for future reference though.
This case is more like the plumber rear-ending you on the highway in a freakishly coincidental accident, then you refusing to pay him the bonus after he finishes on time because you're still upset that he screwed up your car.
If you can find any comment of mine in this thread where I told someone "they were wrong for feeling a certain way", I will pay you $100.
I am not kidding.
I must say, I completely agree. This is how it works. Your referral bonus is a perk, and nothing more. You didn't claim it. They weren't on top of it. You both failed here. But then you quit. And you left without it. That sucks for you, but they owe you nothing.
Why? I didn't owe her anything. We'd purchased things together, lived together, ownership was undefined, and hell, she left me. Oh wait - human decency. That's what it is.
I guess since HN is full of armchair CEOs, dismissing respectful business relationships is in vogue here.
You don't have to do X to help Y, even though you said you would, and it'd be nice. But nobody would blame you if you didn't do X.
Indignant, you make a big deal about how you don't have to do X and it's Y's fault for not taking care of things earlier. Unsurprisingly you look like a selfish shithead in the eyes of decent people.
It seems your argument centers on this point, which is conjecture on your part, at best. Can you explain how you came to this conclusion?
Fortunately, we all now know that OpenDNS and anything else David Ulevitch is involved with in the future is a company to avoid.
It seems that's true only if you value treating people with respect when you aren't legally obligated to.
That's not what's going on.
It's "Too bad we forgot and you forgot to remind us sucks for you."
I think you've jumped a few steps ahead of where you ought to be at this juncture. Perhaps you simply disagree with my point of view. I think HN is often one-sided, so I sometimes delude myself into thinking I should contribute. But now you have resorted to calling me a thief and encouraging others (along with Google indexes) to never do business with me. I think you've stepped a bit over the line.
Taking one comment and trying to tie it to google juice about real life is a dickish move, IMO.
At your company, I'm sure you've done the correct legal things to make sure that it's defined as a perk. But I don't see any evidence that that's how Miso has done it.
BTW, showing no loyalty to your former employees is a black mark in my book. I would urge you to reconsider your attitude.
I'm not going to defend my boss if he did something morally deficient, and I would be happy if my coworkers has the cajones to call him out.
At my company, all bonuses are considered discretionary. They plainly and clearly lay out the parameters of the bonus structure, but they also reserve the right to withhold the bonus for any reason. They rarely reign in on their promise as it significantly hurts morale. However it is well known that if you leave the company before a bonus is paid out, that you will not receive the money, regardless of whether or not you have already fulfilled the parameters for the bonus.
Good call, Miso.