I have to say I admire your courage in writing this. I've been put in a not dissimilar situation in the recent past. I said nothing. I'm hoping one day the situation will resolve itself, but I doubt it, and I suffered a lot for it. Thankfully I'm out of immediate danger now.
I hope this leads to a positive conclusion for you, as I have a lot of respect for the difficulty of startup life, but none for those who behave dishonestly rather than face the consequences of their actions.
Thanks. At this point this isn't about me anymore, it's about transparency and telling both sides of the story. In my opinion Unbabel behaved like total jerks and were getting away with it. I'm getting to old to let stuff like that slip anymore.
Not knowing the details of your contract I can't say for sure, but with the recent changes in employment law in Portugal, I think legally (not ethically) they maybe in the right. I can put you in contact with a lawyer that specialises in this kind of situations, but honestly, for 1.5 months salary, it isn't probably worth it for you (justice system in PT is very very slow, though they do tend to stick with the employee in these situations, even when the law isn't on their side).
If you don't mind me asking, what made you move from Sweden to Portugal to work at this startup? Was it Portugal that attracted you? Knowing the salaries and economic situation of the country, specially compared to Sweden, it confuses me a bit why you would do it, but if it is Portugal as a country that interests you, shoot me an email, I maybe able to help you out.
I only learned about the loop hole in Portuguese employment law from this discussion. That's one thing I really hated about Portugal, they just don't offer any information in English, even the signs in the museums are in Portuguese, it's no mystery to me that a lot of the translation startups are based there.
The thing is, were I come from, if you have a contract for three months, you have a contract for three months. And I was treated like royalty up until the exact moment when I didn't agree with their practices. Live and learn, I guess.
Unbabel is unique in that it's based in SF and offer compensation on that level in Portugal. Landing a job in SF is pretty much impossible as a European so this seemed like a nice compromise.
Thanks, but from the experience I had with both my employer and my landlord in Portugal I'd rather not do business with any Portuguese people ever again. Sorry.
What loophole? It's not something missing in the law, it is very well detailed in the law (see links in a previous post of mine, or from some other posters as well). Swedish contract law also seems to have trial periods, BTW:
http://www.business-sweden.se/PageFiles/10381/Employing%20st...
In Sweden it seems that the employer must always give two weeks of notice, that's not the case here. But on the other hand you were paid two extra weeks of wage.
I know for a fact that Luxembourg, UK, and Bulgaria at least have trial periods as well and they are typical in these countries. I don't know about other EU countries, nor do I know whether they are typical in Sweden. But they are certainly not loopholes.
(BTW my apologies if I sound blunt, I love my country and don't like seeing false statements posted which make it seem that working here is very bad, when the truth is quite the opposite -- after the trial period is over, you are very well protected and can expect a job for life unless the company goes bust, goes through a major layoff, or fires you illegally, in which case courts and unions will defend you)
BTW here in Portugal you can also have a 3-month contract. They are uncommon in the IT world, but they exist especially in less well-paid positions (supermarkets, call centers, etc). In that case the trial period cannot exceed 15 days. If your contract says "com termo certo" (meaning "with predetermined duration"), then you did have a 3 month contract and are entitled to legal action.
Have you tried translating the contract on Google or Bing to understand what it says?
I'm sure there are two sides to every story, but you can guarantee that if they did this to you they'll do it to someone else. I'm consistently amazed by people and companies who operate without integrity. I think about Paul Graham talking about startup founder factors as people who break the rules. I'm fairly certain this is not what he's talking about.
After one month of insanity and abuse I was called to a Friday afternoon meeting with the founders. They told me that they felt that we had a difference in style and that they didn't want me to work there anymore. Just like that, no further explanation.
A bit curd perhaps, but following the rest of the story I suppose it makes sense? This sounds very much like a culture misfit to me.
(To be clear: I am not passing any judgement on the handling of the matter here. Or on who to blame on the misfitting)
Or maybe he wants his story to sound more dramatic
>So here I am, back where I started with barely enough money to eat.
Come on, you're 37 years old Java professional from Sweden (which is not Nigeria or something). Even unemployed people there get more money which I used to make being programmer.
> When I informed my landlord that I wouldn't be able to stay as long as planned she kicked me out of the apartment
What, she kicked you even before your paid period? Obviously you're loosing your deposit but she is not supposed to kick you out.
This story made to sound dramatic, but in reality, I believe, he just wants unbabel's managers to follow contract rules.
Unbabel is wrong, but it's not a reason to say you're starving and it's their fault. You're a grown up man, be responsible for your life.
Yes, we should all toughen up and so on. But shit still does happen and it does not always happen to the right people.
I've seen people be treated in a very coarse manner by their employers and this story does not read 'off the scale' in any way to me, it could very easily have happened as described. I've seen far worse than this.
Yes, the poster has a partial responsibility in how this all happened and turned out, I'm certainly not denying that. But as an employer, before asking someone to move halfway across Europe (which I would cover with a signing bonus) I'd be much more critical about fit before letting them commit to the move. Maybe a few weeks trial staying in a hotel before finalizing things.
Another possibility - if practical for the position - is to do some remote work for a month or so first. No location costs and it gives a good idea of the work culture and codebase.
I read a lot of burning bridges. Quite unnecessary.
Author calls his former job a mind-numbingly boring Java consulting gig.
Then calls his new job at Unbabel insane and abusive.
As the author does not explain how working for 30 days at Unbabel was abusive, this only reflects poorly on the author. He seems impossible to satisfy.
That code at start-ups is messy is the norm, not the exception. Highlighting this as: "a tangled mess of mindless duplication, half-implemented features and misleading comments" again reflect poorly only on the author. What did he expect as an experienced coder? Why air this "dirty" laundry? How do the people (your former and future colleagues) writing that code feel now?
Then continues to describe the horrible experience: "The team lead was the only one who knew anything about the system". Then seems surprised at that Friday afternoon meeting with the founders.
This may negatively influence hiring practices of YC companies. Want to avoid such culture fit disasters? Do no hire anyone over 30. Do not want fire and brimstone blog posts when you fire someone? Hire someone local or remotely outsource. Taking a chance on someone works both ways.
Yes, I imagine it sucks for the author and I wish such an experience on no one. But I also wouldn't want to be the startup to read this on the frontpage of HN, see yourself be misrepresented and having to consult with legal before you can even think of replying. A bad hire is unfortunate for the employee, but very expensive for the startup too: Too many of these and the company will go down. EU labour laws are far more protective of employees than US labour laws. If this was within the law, it may not have been too nice, but remember: This is (a) serious business.
There is probably a grain of truth in this story, and perhaps Unbabel made a poor business decision, but these stories can never be taken at face value, they are closer to hit pieces. Drama-bait.
A really big problem for startups lies in attracting high quality coding talent. There aren't many experienced developers who're in a position to take the necessary risk joining a startup and working for a reduced income for a while. Consequently any startup that screws over a developer isn't just hurting their own rep, but they're damaging the chance of success of every other startup by reducing the size of the talent pool.
Whether or not Unbabel did something wrong here is a matter of speculation without more details, but there's still a lesson in it for every startup founder - developers are necessary and important to your success so being nice (especially if the relationship isn't going well) is a Good Idea.
> there's still a lesson in it for every startup founder - developers are necessary and important to your success so being nice (especially if the relationship isn't going well) is a Good Idea.
If a founder is only being nice to someone because it's a good idea and in their interest, they are an asshole. It's not a lesson you should need to teach anyone.
The lesson is that it's hard to find good developers.
More generally, it's quite hard to find good <anythings>. People assume that available talent fits some sort of bell curve, with lots of 'average' people out there, but really it's more like an inverse square curve - there's a lot more people at the bottom end than the top. When you find the good ones you're nice to them because it's in everyone's interest.
Maybe its a "when you don't have much left, whats left is more important".
Like the discussion of employee talent vs qty graph shape, there exists a similar graph of employer quality vs qty of some shape. And if you know as an employer you're at a very low point of that graph, unable to execute, unable to meet deadlines, unable to pay contracts in full, all you may really have left is nice personal charisma, making it all the more crucial.
You can behave like IBM or Google if you're IBM or Google. Little startup, maybe not.
If all you've got left is the ability to be nice because everything else is lost, then being nice is becomes more important than at Accenture or insert any other large company.
Its similar to the concept of "grace under fire" which used to mean something other than a sitcom or a martial arts TV show.
You should be as nice as you can to everyone, but pragmatically speaking you can't. There isn't enough time, money, or energy available. There are a good reasons to prioritise certain people though - I was suggesting that people who will have an impact on the startup industry are such people.
> You should be as nice as you can to everyone, but pragmatically speaking you can't. There isn't enough time, money, or energy available.
Being nice to someone isn't the sum of all time, money and energy expended on someone. It's just treating them with respect and dignity when your path crosses with theirs.
>It's not a lesson you should need to teach anyone.
Perhaps most of us (the non-assholes?) learn this at such a young age that we don't even remember learning it. But I do believe, because I've seen it happen and done it myself, to varying degrees, that people CAN learn this later in life and change bad behavior (even if it's initially for superficial reasons like a desire to see a venture succeed).
There's being nice, which -- you're right -- everyone should do, and then there's going beyond ordinary courtesy to outright generosity. I think onion2k's point is that startups should try to do the latter.
Actually, this is only a problem for un-founded startups - but if you don't have the money, you should at least have the technical expertise necessary to create the software for your start-up for the next 6 months or so (before you get to a Proof-Of-Concept stage, and can get investors). When you get the money, it's almost always a problem of just offering enough money to offset the risk of a startup failing/the team not working out.
That's typically not done because it means your burning cash at a rate that adds "unnecessary" risk to the business. This is why early employees are paid $75k instead of $150k and are given equity in the business. It greatly increases the probability of a successful outcome. Paying $150k will most often lead to a 12 month run then winding down the company. That's not really in anyone's interest.
That's a very good idea... as long as there's enough equity (there usually isn't). For 75k/year, I want at least 10%, and even better, co-founder status. While 75k and 1% is in the founders' interest, it certainly isn't in the employees'.
You can never make claims like that before the fact. Every company, group of founders, group of investors, and opportunity is different. I'm certain there's a startup out there who you would take 75k and 1% from because you really believed the business would change the world and exit for Facebook money. You'd be crazy not to.
Hi I think they are legally able to do this from my understanding of EU law. It sucks especially if you have had to relocate for the job but you obviously were not enjoying working for them. It sounds as if the lead dev might be feeling overprotective of his own work and does not want to let go.
I am sure you will find another job easily enough as good devs are in demand. Hopefully at a place where you are valued and can contribute your skills
If the contract has a minimum period, then they have to show ' cause' when firing someone.
Not being a good fit won't be good enough. If it was, the minimum period in a contract wouldn't be worth anything as that's easy for an employer to say with no backup.
This issue is a major difference between typical contracts in the EU and the at will employment status which is typical in the US. It makes it 'easier' for startups to operate in the US, and means that international companies will hire slower in the EU, but are more likely to let US staff go if they have to change staffing levels quickly.
Depending on the rental contract - if it's anything like the UK, the author may have a cause of action against the landlord as well - normally there's a minimum notice period.
> Depending on the rental contract - if it's anything like the UK, the author may have a cause of action against the landlord as well - normally there's a minimum notice period.
"kicked out" could include "followed all the legal procedures and evicted me".
That's not really what happened though. I had a contract for a minimum of four months on the apartment. Which wouldn't have been a problem for me even if I quit after three months.
I deposited the last months rent when I signed the contract. When I informed the landlord that I could only stay two months, she kept the deposit and forced me to leave the apartment in the middle of the second month.
I don't really think my landlord was treating me illegally, unethical perhaps considering the situation. Unbabel helped me set up the contract for the apartment. They knew that I was stuck with it for four months when they fired me.
It seems that given Andreas' move to join the startup - if his explanation is accurate and complete - the level of responsibility of the founders does increase. I've been a founder asking people to move before and I've always felt that it adds a significant extra responsibility. You need to be quite a lot more certain it'll be a good fit before asking someone to move to join your company.
In my mind "culture fit" is the responsibility of the founder. If you're recruiting someone, you need to make the call if they fit into your culture. You can't really blame the person you're recruiting for not fitting in. You can (and should) fire them if they're not a fit, but it's still your hiring mistake, and you need to take the responsibility for it.
If a mudslinging contest can somehow be avoided, it'll be great to have a response from the Unbabel founders. There are probably some good lessons for both coders and founders here.
> I've been a founder asking people to move before and I've always felt that it adds a significant extra responsibility.
Exactly. If you ask people to do things outside the normal employment environment then you are partly responsible to make them whole if thing do not work out.
And if you can't do that then don't get people to move halfway across the continent for you, especially not without doing more work to see if there is a good fit or not.
If I was hiring developers, I wouldn't care much where they come from - if someone from Sweden wants to come to Portugal, I wouldn't stop them, but on the other hand I wouldn't give them extra assistance/benefits just because they're relocating (assuming that (1) there was enough local talent available, and (2) the company was a startup, not an established company with loads of cash).
On the other hand, if I was hiring developers, I would stick to the contract.
As a company founder, I have never had someone move to take a job at my company. The reasons are #1, it is a lot more expensive to hire because most people want you to cover moving costs, and #2, if the person doesn't work out during the three months probationary period (this is standard in Ontario, Canada) I would be screwing them over if I laid them off (and if I didn't lay them off, it would be screwing over the company.)
If we had more robust hiring practices, and more money, maybe it would be better. But for now hiring out of town while requiring them to move (as opposed to working remotely, which has worked for employees) is horribly risky for all involved.
Moving across continents to work for a company which you're not sure it'll work well with them is a too big risk to take to be honest.
I'm a founder of a startup and I would only move someone across the continents after working with him for a while. For example I would fly him over for a month to work for us to see if there's a fit (without asking him to leave everything yet), covering his expenses, flights and anything other expense he would incur.
I understand if the startup is paying for relocating you but you're still taking a big risk, there's always the chance that you would be let go if you're not a good fit.
How other are mitigating this risk? Is working remotely for a couple of weeks/months with occasional flying viable and moving only after you spent some time with the company viable for others here?
Depends on where you are. Developers are in demand in major US tech hubs (read: SFBay, NYC, Seattle, Austin), they are not nearly as hotly fought over everywhere else, particularly in Europe and Asia.
It's important to remember that the "companies prostrating themselves at your front door offering you bonuses and perks and lavishing dining you" is an American Tech Hub phenomenon. While I doubt UK coders are doing badly, I doubt they are as in-demand as they would be in SF or NYC.
I went to Waterloo and still have friends there - the job market may be pretty good for Canada, but it's a far, far cry from what you'd see in an American tech hub.
Trying out at a company for a month isn't really that bad when the demand is so intense you can literally line up 3-4 competing offers in under a week if things don't work out. There is sadly no place in Canada where the demand is that high.
That's a legit question and I don't know the answer. However how is it different from hiring someone and letting him go after a month if you think he's not a good fit? The mention of a month of bootcamp or "orientation" is mainly to set expectations.
You should always hire the best candidate which you think will work out but that month allow you to set the right phase, this is a month where you both give the best to make that relationship work - orientation, pairing, documentation, short meetings to discuss potential roadblocks or issues.
All startups usually do this - I just consider it's a good practice to say it out loud that there's a period where we both find out if we want to keep working together.
That is why I said I wasn't interested in moving to my current company unless I had some sort of guarantee about being able to find a new job, since it would be horrible if I got dropped a month later.
They said I would be able to stick around for a few months until I found another job, which they would be sure I would be able to find very quickly in SV. Now I've been working with them for 3 years.
The details were actually written down, so it wasn't an informal contract, but it's been 3 years.
Also remote trial work should be an option for these kinds of workers. Making your company remote worker compatible will force many best practices from the start at your company.
Exactly! It's just a bit of common sense mixed with having some managerial balls and take responsibility of when it was your mistake to hire someone or not. The worst part is the contract agreement, he should really follow through with the process and see what he can get, odds are in his favor, and at this point there doesn't seem to be much more he can lose. The whole 'we will end your career' part sounds like a baby mobster threat to me.
There is a 60 day period in which you can be let go without further notice ('trial period') so legally they are in the right, but morally, after letting you move from one country to another and without in any way assisting you in cushioning the blow they are jerks (assuming this one-sided view is the unvarnished truth).
But better that you are out of there now than a year down the line, if they are like this then that saved you a bunch of time and a lot more hardship.
I feel for you too. It wasn't a startup and the job was local, but I took a salary drop and swapped a cosy-but-unrewarding role with a global corporate to join a 40-strong SaaS development company that wanted someone to come in and sort out their internal and customer support infrastructure - they had no strategy, procedures or hierarchy and were constantly firefighting - shuffling resources between projects according to which customer complained the loudest.
It became clear very quickly that the two founders who brought me in wouldn't embrace any change that didn't come from them, and they had a total fear of empowering anyone else to make executive decisions - even about their own team members; I constantly found my guys being assigned to firefighting for other teams without my knowledge, so workload planning and scheduling knowledge sharing periods was impossible - we had information silos all over the place and if someone went on vacation they would often be called or emailed frequently because they were the only ones who knew about a specific part of a project or system. I wasn't allowed to attend support review meetings with the customers - the Directors went alone and told me what had been agreed, and they constantly dealt directly with one of my guys (the company 'guru'), assigning him work and making it impossible for me to grab his time so he could share his skills with the rest of the team - I highlighted it as a serious business risk that this guy was the only person who knew some of the tricks with some of our internal and customer infrastructures, and that he wasn't encouraged to document or share his knowledge, but they dismissed my concerns.
When we had that Friday afternoon talk after 9 months of trying to bring in some best practices and semblance of organisation, I left the office for the last time with a sense of great relief that I was out of the clusterfuck.
It only took me a few weeks to find a much better role and I hope things work out for you too.
Edit: Looking back at what I wrote, it might be that the OPs circumstances just offered the opportunity for a bit of a personal rant, which was not the intention. My main point was based on the fact (not explained at all by me in my post) that when I met the two Directors (twice), prior to joining, the setup and opportunity for me looked very positive, and I was convinced I was going to be empowered to fulfil the role. Things turned out very differently, and I clearly did not fit in with the company culture the founders wanted to both leave and stick with simultaneously (it was their comfort zone, and although they knew is was not the best was to run a business, they ultimately couldn't leave it). Moral: Shit happens, despite due dilligence, but that doesn't make it right.
Yikes most all of that applies to my current role... But at the end of the day, a chaotic process IS a process. And if the company is pulling in money the process is successful by at least one measure.
I think the trick is to grow past the 'whatever it takes' phase and get to the long term, steady, maturation phase. Which is what we are trying to do.
That was my stance at that final meeting (which was very matter of fact and calm): "I feel you could run this business in a way that's much better organised to grow further, but at the end of the day it's your business, not mine..."
Stories like this (and my own experience) kind of sum up why I don't intend to work for another startup unless it's one I've founded. Too many people out there are taking roles with <= 1% of equity and thinking that they're going to be part of something big. Instead, they have no power to make decisions and make less money than they should. Working for a startup because it's a startup is always a bad idea.
That doesn't excuse certain behaviors like breaking a contract early (we haven't seen the contract, but it's reasonable to assume there's some provision)
After seeing this and similar situations like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8152933 involving YC companies, it's hard not to conclude that there may be something culturally broken at the accelerator level.
It's called inexperience and immaturity - people seriously expect a bunch of twenty something's who've never operated a business to get things right in 3 months? Or better yet, can you imagine the abuse if you worked for a startup led by 28 year old Steve Jobs today?
Absolutely, but that doesn't excuse the behavior, and that's an important thing to keep in mind. If anything, it needs to be emphasized. If we, as an industry, truly believe that talent is our best competitive advantage, then we should act accordingly.
My biggest concern about Steve Jobs's legacy is that people can all too easily draw the wrong lessons from it, or use it to justify bad managerial practices. Steve Jobs's managerial style was as much of a hindrance as it was a benefit.
Obviously I'm not saying you're one of those "Steve Jobs was an asshole, so I can be" types of people, or that you're condoning them as such. But a lot of people do think that way, and a lot of people condone thinking that way. On the whole, it's an influential and problematic narrative.
It might not be broken, but definitely overlooked. YC is supposed to provide the experience part of the business for these companies, and they are obviously not doing it if there are so many cases like this one.
But to be fair, I don't think any other accelerator focuses on this part. Most, if not all, accelerator only focus on growth and momentum, because that is what ultimately that is what gives the best ROI.
But in most cases, problems like in this particular case become obstacles for growth. I think YC should add provision of experience to the YC formula. What is the point of having so many experienced investors and founders in the accelerator if their companies are so bad at doing real business not only growth.
This is obviously all speculation, since I am not part of the program. Just commenting on the fact there are so many cases like this one in YC companies. So take my comments with a grain of salt.
I can say you also see the "perpetual clusterfuck" antipattern in organizations that don't fit the traditional "startup" mold.
You can definitely see it in government, non-profits as well as existing businesses. It's the end result of a culture that values "getting shit done" and ends up with nothing but "shit".
When I was a few years out of school I went to my second job and inherited a huge code base with 4000 line java files, no tests, no one who worked on the code still around, etc, at a big non-tech company. I was young and stupid to think I was a bad programmer that I couldn't fix it all in a few weeks by myself.
I know it's in the past now, but try to avoid situations like this. If you can't, talk to your boss about what can reasonably be done in what time frame. Now I would try to figure out which parts can realistically be refactored and which can be isolated and rewritten iteratively make things better. I wouldn't take on new features unless I was confident I could deliver with spaghetti around.
If you read between the lines, it seems like this job definitely wasn't the right fit. Hence, they were probably in the right for letting you go.
But they're definitely in the wrong for how they handled it. In particular, knowing that you moved to Portugal for the job, they should have given you severance sufficient to cover relocation back to Sweden.
Again, without knowing the contract, I can't say for sure, but what most likely happened was he was hired with a fixed term contract (Contrato Termo Certo), which is a kind of employment contract very common in Portugal. This doesn't mean he can't be fired for 3 months. There are various provisions for the company to do so (from probation period to lack of productivity or unfit for the job) but they do require some process (the employee has to be informed by writing, is entitled to some severance, etc). On this, and if the account is true is where the company maybe in more trouble. If he worked for 1 month and got 1.5 months of pay, that .5 maybe the severance he is entitled to (not sure about the values so I can't specify if that is correct or not)
As for the generality of the Portuguese employment law, you usually have 3 kinds of contracts:
- independent contractor/recibos verdes: This is usually a business to business contract, where the 'employee' has little rights regarding employment law except the ones provisioned in the contract itself. Employee also has to pay all taxes/social security. There has been some crack down on these as employers were abusing employees and avoiding paying taxes. There are similar provisions to this in the UK for example with their IR35, which means even if the contract is of this nature, they will be taxed as full-time employees.
- fixed term contract: An employment contract with a set end date (can be renewed for a certain amount of times). The usual rules apply regarding vacation, pay, firing processed etc. These regulations are law and while there is some margin to tweak the amounts, they can't be modified or you can't sign of your rights away.
- non-fixed term contract: This is what most countries have as standard employment contract but in Portugal it is a bit harder to come by. While things changed recently, up until a few years back, most employers didn't want to do this contracts since firing an employee in this cases is next to impossible without paying a huge settlement amount. So employers usually did fixed term contract with new employees, renew them for the allowed number (usually in total used to be no more than 18 months) and then either let them go (with no severance) or move them to this kind of contract.
I see a clear lack of management, communication and leadership skills here. For how meaningless those words might seem here on HN, it really shows when startup founders do not have them. And it's not even a culture fit issue, dealing with people that are not a 100% fit is part of the challenge of managing a business.
Part of the benefit, you mean. Although we're only hearing one side, sounds like the culture there is pretty screwed up, so bringing in a guy with higher standards is obviously an epic culture fit fail but possibly the only way to repair the companies culture.
Although "pretty screwed up" sounds subjective, there are objective observations, and if they're not fulfilling contracts that's a rather objective measure (did a bank deposit occur or not?)
If you have a screwed up situation, and hire a guy who fits right into it as a perfect cultural fit, you haven't solved "the" problem, you now have two problems.
Ok. I have been hacking in startups for 10 years or so. A few rules to note.
1) Startups almost always fail. Pretty much assume at any point you can be let go for any reason. If you can't afford to blow 3 months of salary and be paid in "promise" - don't do it.
2) Startups are not for everyone. Enjoy good code? Like a peaceful atmosphere? Need comments? Love structure and strategy? Welp - you will fail at a startup. In my 10 years: startups are trench warfare with company ending deadlines. As an exercise: Try borrowing money from your best friend and not paying it back.
3) Legal. You are going to sue a former employer? What a great way of ruining your future. Future employers will avoid you like the plague. Try starting a board meeting with: "Our newest employee is in a legal battle with their former employer...".
"Legal. You are going to sue a former employer? What a great way of ruining your future."
Could say the same thing to Unbabel if this story is as OP has written it up. Not going to pay out the contract? What a great way of ruining your future. Future employees will avoid you like the plague.
> Could say the same thing to Unbabel if this story is as OP has written it up. Not going to pay out the contract? What a great way of ruining your future. Future employees will avoid you like the plague.
Yup. Neither party comes out looking good from this.
Depends how you're defining work. There's work (production at the desk) and there's work (moving to take up a job, social life with colleagues, all the decisions that come with employment).
As a very small scale employer, I feel responsible for my employee(s). They depend on me for rent payments, mortgages, savings and so on. I think that responsibility extends further for someone moving country to join your company.
I think retaining enough savings to stay fed is on the employee and don't buy that likely exaggeration, but with early termination like this, I think an employer should be looking to accommodate a foreign employee where they can, at least provide a bit more warning or mediation.
"Legal. You are going to sue a former employer? What a great way of ruining your future. Future employers will avoid you like the plague. "
And that leads to contracts not being worth the paper they're printed on unless you're independently wealthy, and without any rule of law or justice, the system goes down the tubes.
Exactly, this is more about not wanting to live in a world where corporations can get away with behaving like this. I'm not worried, I know my shit and I'm sure there are others out there like me.
Contractors, freelancers and businesses get stiffed on what they're owed on a semi-regular basis. You pretty much have to take legal action sometimes to get your money and there is no business worth working for that'll look negatively at you for going after monies owed.
That said, even if he had a "3 Months Contract" there's probably a release stipulation with a notice period. As long as he's got paid that, there's no legal recourse.
That's why I'm very suspicious when it comes to stories about "wonderful work environment" at startups. I'm sure there are quite few startups where people really like to work, but I've a feeling most startups are chaotic, unorganised and ego-driven by the founders. To me it's the extreme opposite of big corporations, where everything is over-managed and run by well-defined processes, whicih may be sometimes irritaing, but at least you (usually) know what you're standing on.
I started ignoring most of those "my workplace is so great!" posts after having had a few startups under my belt. It typically is a giant clusterfuck, but if you believe in the business, enjoy your responsibilities, and can handle the nonsense thrown at you, you'll be fine.
Every workplace has its ups and downs, would be weird if it were 100% perfect, eh?
I made a similar leap from an OK-paying regional job at an established niche cashcow to a London start-up. The perks: a coffee machine, senior pay cheque.
The reality: a shit coffee machine, low moral, no realistic prospect of a profit and no willingness to pivot. 80% of costs have been sunk on a Facebook clone 'with a spin' while the owners try to sell snake oil to investors. We operate like the bad slides of 'Good vs Bad Startup' are a blueprint for success. The owners, almost weekly, come up with an idea someone has to coach them away from - a long ironically drawn out confrontational meeting of: "we don't have the resources". The bit I expected to pay off (medical monitoring hardware) turn out to be crappy I2C/SPI bridges any e.eng graduate could whip out in a month :(
I've had long look at myself: how could I turn down other offers yet accept this?! I'm still unsure why. For a while I feared that I deserved this - I'm one of them, one of the guys who decided to create their own header based HTTP authentication system key by a timestamp: a crap programmer.
It's been 4 months. Poor tests are still committed despite my best efforts to teach the one doing it that they should test a result not implementation (only 1 test damn it!). We don't use any JS frameworks on the front-end (yet alone my other true love: Typescript) because the last lead dev couldn't understand the immeasurable benefits of model binding. I've done - by no means single handedly - an incremental rewrite of the entire code base (front, middle and back). Although they're paying me on time, they missed my post probation increase :( I could go on but this is probably not the right forum.
In short: it's not worked out for me either. Thankfully I've got an excellent track record so I'm off in 3 days to a proper PLC. I heard large companies, like the BBC have 15 (FIFTEEN) designers in their News division alone... I can't wait to have just one designer unencumbered, available and talented.
The whole saga has left me with the strong suspicion most startups are a joke (no I don't want to be a DBA/CSS/JS and C# guru who maintains the iOS codebase!).
Inept owners who're unwilling to pivot, often trapped by the sunk cost fallacy, or owners expect to create a market with their 'one true solution [to a problem you no-one has]' plague the startup scene. No product should ever be a Facebook clone :(
For what it's worth, if I was hiring now I'd interview you solely on your written language skills (which are better than most native English speakers, myself included).
... the last lead dev couldn't understand the immeasurable benefits of model binding
So if the benefits can't be measured, you're suggesting that the front-end should be rewritten as a matter of pure faith in model binding?
(Honestly, that's my impression of how most people decide to adopt a JavaScript framework. "Yeah, we don't really understand the whole, and there are all these edge cases where you have to work against the framework, but overall it's immeasurably better because of philosophy and purity.")
I can't wait to have just one designer unencumbered, available and talented.
Good luck with that at a large corporation, I guess... :)
I think, in this instance, the 'immeasurable benefits' should probably read as 'measurable benefits so great they break the scale (but measurably better than the mess imperative JS creates)'.
Recently, especially at a startup I've felt the need to use libraries and frameworks more and more just to hit deadlines and meet the desired user experience.
Model binding is a prime example of this: on the web today everything has to be dynamic and reactive. Rather than do something (i.e. animate) and tightly couple the onComplete handler to N other things to do afterwards (via callbacks/promises etc) I prefer to compose my code around n-event subscriptions and react to changes.
Thanks to things like model binding (and their frameworks/libraries that offer this) the 'immeasurable benefits' of decoupled and composable functions trump the spaghetti soup reactive Javascript requires.
Not to change topics, but FINALLY a note of sanity in the cacophony of JS framework fandom! Could you tell me what you recommend?
What I find is that each framework works really well for about 80% of a project, and then the last 20% get really painful. I haven't found anything that's elegant, flexible, simple, and native.
Facebook has a market cap of nearly 200 billion, some of the most talented engineers in the industry, a world-class AI lab, nearly unlimited perks and over a billion users.
So unless this startup can start where FB is right now, no one will "clone" FB.
You'd be surprised. FB is large and that often means conservative and ossified. How long does it take for new ideas to end up on the web page? I don't see that happening much, certainly not daily. The back-end I can't see but I wonder if anybody cares; its not part of what makes FB attractive to users.
So replacing FB means recruiting some niche of customers, and providing something fresh and useful. That can be done without unlimited perks.
But that's not "cloning" it. I was in a similar position years ago when my employer decided that they wanted a piece of what AirBnb was doing - the design specs they sent me were almost exactly AirBnb, only with the logo changed.
With thinking like that you will never displace the #1 company, because you're not thinking ahead of them, you're only ever trying to catch up.
I hate to say this but whenever you relocate that is your decision. The company isn't really in any obligations to keep you or pay your move back unless you pre-negotiate that either with a signing bonus or as a clause in your contract. Generally a relocation is offset with a signing bonus and higher salary which is why the risk is worth it, but never doubt that it's a risk you have to take. I know because I've done it myself before, moving countries and all.
OP had a 3 month contract which was not honored (according to this side of the story). That's why he lost his deposit on the apartment that he'd let for 3 months.
Kind of hard to tell when the entire fcking contract is in Portuguese and you depend on someone else to explain it to you. I still have no idea if the clause is in there or not.
What I can't get through my head is why you'd write a contract at all if both parties are free to do whatever the fck they want anyway...
No, the contract was presented and explained to me by the founders, at the time they treated me like royalty so it didn't even cross my mind to question them or waste money on a Portuguese lawyer. And where I come from, having a contract means you need a good reason to break it.
I fear that if the OP was portuguese, what happened would probably look kinda normal.
In the last 10/15 years or so most labour laws have been destroyed or made irrelevant and the crysis just made it even worse. With the scarcity of money it appears to have grown a culture of chaos. To me this story is just another one.
This is a bit of a cliché but I wonder if there are some cultural differences at play there. Like the hectic and chaotic pace for a Swede, would be business as usual for a Portuguese. This is likely not the root cause, but it probably did not help the miscommunication, maybe even during the recruiting phase. I also assume that if OP is not a native Portuguese speaker, it was harder to fit in, and it was easier to miss a critical info you're colleague could be discussing. I expect UnBabel to answer that OP was not communicating enough, etc. which could only be due to cultural differences.
From having lived most of my life in Sweden and three months in Portugal I'd say it's mostly the opposite. The further south you go the more things slows down.
But I agree, some of the parameters that got us here are probably cultural. One thing I did notice was that a lot of the communication in the office was in Portuguese, which obviously means I didn't get that information.
As terrible as this experience was, what's most alarming is that you're 37, have been working for nearly 20 years in this field, and don't have enough savings to tide you over even two months without work. You really need to learn to save your income and cut your lifestyle.
I hope that if it turns out your story is true, that these guys are in some way brought to justice, karmic or otherwise. Best of luck.
I think this critique is meant mostly for us, readers. Anyway the author decided this is related information so i don't see why it should not be discussed
What do you know about his life? Could he have lost all his savings due to a a divorce, or an accident, or some other type of tragedy? What if he always had to support others?
I hope he didn't take the decision to leave a good job in a country with one of the best economies in Europe for a start-up job in a country with one of the worst economies in Europe - while having no savings and/or having to support others.
This guy is a symptom of an alarming trend I've seen in the field. We're all riding high, spending every $ we make because we think the end will never come. I think it will, and a lot of us are going to be bankrupt.
I don't care what financial disasters may occur - I very much doubt they'd occur in such frequency that over 20 years of working in a high income job this guy wouldn't have 15,000$ handy for something like this. If he made 80k per year for 20 years, that's 1.6M dollars. Let's say 800k after taxes. You're telling me in 20 years, he couldn't save 15k out of 800k? Less than one half of one percent of all money made?
Also, I'd expect if he didn't have that much handy, he wouldn't have been naive enough to relocate without any kind of backup funds in case things went south with a startup, which often happens.
It all points to a certain ignorance when it comes to financial matters with this guy - the fact he relocated without enough funding to fall back on suggests not that he has weathered several storms over a 20 year period, one every year wiping out all his savings, but that he has a pattern of monetary mismanagement stretching back to the beginnings of his career.
EDIT: Accidentally replied to my own comment but meant it to be to the "you dont know me, you don't know my problems" naysayers below.
The thing you have to understand, 80k USD is a very very very high salary for most people (even developers) in Europe. And the ones that make that can most likely see 1/2 of that go away in taxes/social security. Cost of living will probably be higher than the equivalent salary in the USA.
On the other hand, people should get unemployment benefits when situations like this occur, unfortunately for him, the moving countries may have prevented that (for Sweden employment agency, he quit his Swedish job, not fired, and for Portuguese one, he didn't work enough months to qualify. I'm sure there are some international provisions for these situations but they are beyond me).
$80K is not so much at it might seem when you're living in the Bay Area. Rent for a small apartment $24K a year living outside of San Francisco, and up to $30K+ inside the city. Everything is very expensive. When I lived in another city I could get by at $500 a month for a similar apartment.
That is an excellent point, and very fitting. If you take in account 80k is current salary, and most likely started at 40k and over 20 years raised it (lets say linearly), making an average of 60k over those 20 years, and paying high taxes, I doubt many would be able to save much as well unless your partner also worked. Also, Stockholm has quite high rents, looking at [1], studios start at around 1000 usd and small apartments at 1600 or so (not in central Stockholm, but suburbs)
Whether or not you can live comfortably is not in question. If you're only making enough in your city to live comfortably if you use all of your money to do so, then you need to live uncomfortably. There are plenty of poor living in all of these major cities and they get by on less than 80k, or even 60k, so it stands to reason if you're making that much and you can't afford a burn-fund then you're probably making bad choices.
It's not a new trend with engineers. It's been around since the mid-20th century if not earlier. On the other hand, you still also have a lot of engineers living like college students with a lot of savings and investments.
Good point. To add to that, I must say that something is odd with this story.
Honestly, if I hired a 37-year old, that started programming at the age of 8, I would have thought that I was hiring a “senior developer” (or hopefully a “wizard”).
Salary would be, appropriately, much higher than that for a beginner, or an intermediate.
What I would expect is, that the “senior developer” will look at our code, understand what is right, and wrong, and tell us what to do to fix it.
What I would not expect is, is that the “senior developer” is twiddling his thumbs waiting for a “guidance”. And is bitching about the quality of the code. Well, you were hired to tell us what to do, and to make things happen. What we expect is advice and leadership. If all you can offer is bitching & random complaints, thanks, but “this is not a perfect fit”.
To me, being employed as a senior developer doesn't imply being able to figure out the whole system and assigning tasks by yourself from day one. I didn't bitch and complain, or twiddle my thumbs for that matter. I asked for help, told them what I thought didn't work and how we could improve it, and here we are.
Before you started working together, did you discus what would happen if things did not work well? Was your salary closer to that of the norm in Sweden, or that of the Portuguese? The difference is substantial. Did they think you where amazing at first and had too high an expectation? If you salary was closer to the Swedish norm then they may have thought that 2 weeks pay was a very substantial amount.
In Portugal, I believe, that unless you let people go before the trial period is over, then a whole lot of protective measures kick in.
For anybody looking to hire anybody abroad it is having the conversation about what happens when things don't go well.
It would be good to hear the Unbabel side of the story.
[Disclosure] Two of the founders are what I would call acquaintances of mine.
The truth of it is that the startup life isn't for every engineer. Startup code is messy. You don't have architects who draw UMLs for you, you don't have the luxury of time to do things right. At a small startup everything is often falling apart at the seams. Morale can rise and crash, repeatedly, like a roller coaster. Small startups often have to visit the iron bank of technical debt and take out a huge loan to put in that feature a very important customer wants right that second. Tests are very important, but spending too much on them can waste precious time. You're always flying low to the ground. You're looking at the short term: days and weeks, not months and years. That said, technical debt sucks and should be avoided at all cost, but priorities aren't the same when you're a three or four person team with about a year's worth of runway.
If code is particularly messy, unplanned, and untested you might be feature searching as opposed to having a vitamin or medicine feature that a customer will pay for.
Release early, get feedback often. Choose a core competency.
>At a small startup everything is often falling apart at the seams...
>Morale can rise and crash, repeatedly, like a roller coaster...
>You're looking at the short term: days and weeks, not months and years...
None of this rings true to me. Not at any startup I've worked at/founded at least(6 in total over the last 12 years). In reality good startups are relatively even keel.
Hell I would argue that startups, almost by definition, think MORE in the long-term than their larger counterparts. In a startup you are always progressing towards a long-term goal, constantly taking in feedback and making adjustments.
It's much like sailing to a small island thousands of miles away. A mistake in navigation in the beginning that goes uncaught will put you farther off course than one farther along on your journey (although sometimes that mistake means you discover North America and then pretend like you meant to do that all along).
The point being, if your startup is constantly in panic mode or is constantly trading long-term stability for short-term satisfaction then you should probably be thinking about leaving. At least from my point of view.
Did you ever work for a “non-startup”? Like, you are a car manufacturer, have to create some telemetrics software that has to work reliably in all kind of conditions, and hopefully not kill people, and has to be supported for the next 12 years minimum?
Compare to the startup that can just “pivot” at will and/or just end it with one of those “it was an amazing ride” blog posts.
Not trying to be smart, just presenting some perspective.
While that is absolutely true, I don't follow how that relates to my post? There is nothing inherent about the flexibility of a startup that means it has to be the frenetic roller-coaster that the thread starter referenced.
But startup code doesn't have to be messy. I don't write messier code (to be used in a company that pays me), just because I'm in a hurry, and neither should anyone.
In the Portuguese labour law the default "experimental" period lasts a minimum of 90 days (for both employer and employee).
During the experimental period any of the parties may void the contract without any compensation (except for the time already worked) unless noted otherwise in your contract ...
Also there is no notice period required.
As a disclaimer, I note that I am friends with one of the founders of Unbabel. I don't know their side of the story and I am sad this happened to you.
Still, from what you say, as far as I can tell, they acted within the boundaries of the portuguese labour code.
This highlights one of the risks with going and working in another country - what seems fair, reasonable and legal to you may be very different in another country.
As someone who lives in Europe I find American hire / fire at will contracts terrifying (getting rid of someone in the UK can be a torturous process, in other European countries even worse) but obviously in most states (?) in the US they're the norm.
Lesson to learn - before you agree to work somewhere else, understand the culture and legal framework you're going to be working in if at all possible and set your expectations accordingly.
> You have the right to ask for a written statement from your employer giving the reasons why you’ve been dismissed if you’re an employee and have completed 2 years’ service (1 year if you started before 6 April 2012).
It really isn't, trust me, I've been through it a few times (as an employer).
There is a lot of detail hidden behind this:
"If you’re dismissed, your employer must show they’ve:
* a valid reason that they can justify
* acted reasonably in the circumstances
They must also:
* be consistent - eg not dismiss you for doing something that they let other employees do
* have investigated the situation fully before dismissing you - eg if a complaint was made about you"
There actually aren't that many valid reasons. Cultural fit certainly isn't one (and has the potential to get you in all sorts of equalities issues if there is any possibility that age, religion or anything else can be seen as a proxy for the way you didn't fit).
If you want to claim someone isn't good at their job you need to be able to back it up and show you gave them every opportunity to turn it around (including having given them all the relevant support and training). Generally speaking that would be a performance management exercise (several weeks of monitored performance) which is time consuming and rubbish for all involved.
And that's before you even get into the whole performance is hard to accurately measure in IT issues.
The investigated fully part is also important. If you diverge from your stated policy (or a reasonable policy if there isn't one stated - the ACAS one is usually the template) then you can be found against at a tribunal even if you reasons and evidence were sound.
Obviously people do ignore all this and get away with it (particularly in IT where people can often get new jobs relatively easily) but that doesn't mean you will or that what you did was legal.
Your best shot is if the contract has a defined probation period (3 to 6 months) during which you can pretty much get rid of people at will but after that, even before 2 years is up, it's going to take some work. It's not impossible but it's an exercise which will take a lot of your time and likely have a significant impact on team morale.
240 comments
[ 25.9 ms ] story [ 1118 ms ] threadI hope this leads to a positive conclusion for you, as I have a lot of respect for the difficulty of startup life, but none for those who behave dishonestly rather than face the consequences of their actions.
Not knowing the details of your contract I can't say for sure, but with the recent changes in employment law in Portugal, I think legally (not ethically) they maybe in the right. I can put you in contact with a lawyer that specialises in this kind of situations, but honestly, for 1.5 months salary, it isn't probably worth it for you (justice system in PT is very very slow, though they do tend to stick with the employee in these situations, even when the law isn't on their side).
If you don't mind me asking, what made you move from Sweden to Portugal to work at this startup? Was it Portugal that attracted you? Knowing the salaries and economic situation of the country, specially compared to Sweden, it confuses me a bit why you would do it, but if it is Portugal as a country that interests you, shoot me an email, I maybe able to help you out.
Best of luck
The thing is, were I come from, if you have a contract for three months, you have a contract for three months. And I was treated like royalty up until the exact moment when I didn't agree with their practices. Live and learn, I guess.
Unbabel is unique in that it's based in SF and offer compensation on that level in Portugal. Landing a job in SF is pretty much impossible as a European so this seemed like a nice compromise.
Thanks, but from the experience I had with both my employer and my landlord in Portugal I'd rather not do business with any Portuguese people ever again. Sorry.
Thanks!
In Sweden it seems that the employer must always give two weeks of notice, that's not the case here. But on the other hand you were paid two extra weeks of wage.
I know for a fact that Luxembourg, UK, and Bulgaria at least have trial periods as well and they are typical in these countries. I don't know about other EU countries, nor do I know whether they are typical in Sweden. But they are certainly not loopholes.
(BTW my apologies if I sound blunt, I love my country and don't like seeing false statements posted which make it seem that working here is very bad, when the truth is quite the opposite -- after the trial period is over, you are very well protected and can expect a job for life unless the company goes bust, goes through a major layoff, or fires you illegally, in which case courts and unions will defend you)
BTW here in Portugal you can also have a 3-month contract. They are uncommon in the IT world, but they exist especially in less well-paid positions (supermarkets, call centers, etc). In that case the trial period cannot exceed 15 days. If your contract says "com termo certo" (meaning "with predetermined duration"), then you did have a 3 month contract and are entitled to legal action.
Have you tried translating the contract on Google or Bing to understand what it says?
A bit curd perhaps, but following the rest of the story I suppose it makes sense? This sounds very much like a culture misfit to me.
(To be clear: I am not passing any judgement on the handling of the matter here. Or on who to blame on the misfitting)
>So here I am, back where I started with barely enough money to eat.
Come on, you're 37 years old Java professional from Sweden (which is not Nigeria or something). Even unemployed people there get more money which I used to make being programmer.
> When I informed my landlord that I wouldn't be able to stay as long as planned she kicked me out of the apartment
What, she kicked you even before your paid period? Obviously you're loosing your deposit but she is not supposed to kick you out.
This story made to sound dramatic, but in reality, I believe, he just wants unbabel's managers to follow contract rules.
Unbabel is wrong, but it's not a reason to say you're starving and it's their fault. You're a grown up man, be responsible for your life.
I've seen people be treated in a very coarse manner by their employers and this story does not read 'off the scale' in any way to me, it could very easily have happened as described. I've seen far worse than this.
Yes, the poster has a partial responsibility in how this all happened and turned out, I'm certainly not denying that. But as an employer, before asking someone to move halfway across Europe (which I would cover with a signing bonus) I'd be much more critical about fit before letting them commit to the move. Maybe a few weeks trial staying in a hotel before finalizing things.
Author calls his former job a mind-numbingly boring Java consulting gig.
Then calls his new job at Unbabel insane and abusive.
As the author does not explain how working for 30 days at Unbabel was abusive, this only reflects poorly on the author. He seems impossible to satisfy.
That code at start-ups is messy is the norm, not the exception. Highlighting this as: "a tangled mess of mindless duplication, half-implemented features and misleading comments" again reflect poorly only on the author. What did he expect as an experienced coder? Why air this "dirty" laundry? How do the people (your former and future colleagues) writing that code feel now?
Then continues to describe the horrible experience: "The team lead was the only one who knew anything about the system". Then seems surprised at that Friday afternoon meeting with the founders.
This may negatively influence hiring practices of YC companies. Want to avoid such culture fit disasters? Do no hire anyone over 30. Do not want fire and brimstone blog posts when you fire someone? Hire someone local or remotely outsource. Taking a chance on someone works both ways.
Yes, I imagine it sucks for the author and I wish such an experience on no one. But I also wouldn't want to be the startup to read this on the frontpage of HN, see yourself be misrepresented and having to consult with legal before you can even think of replying. A bad hire is unfortunate for the employee, but very expensive for the startup too: Too many of these and the company will go down. EU labour laws are far more protective of employees than US labour laws. If this was within the law, it may not have been too nice, but remember: This is (a) serious business.
There is probably a grain of truth in this story, and perhaps Unbabel made a poor business decision, but these stories can never be taken at face value, they are closer to hit pieces. Drama-bait.
my money stopped here
Whether or not Unbabel did something wrong here is a matter of speculation without more details, but there's still a lesson in it for every startup founder - developers are necessary and important to your success so being nice (especially if the relationship isn't going well) is a Good Idea.
If a founder is only being nice to someone because it's a good idea and in their interest, they are an asshole. It's not a lesson you should need to teach anyone.
More generally, it's quite hard to find good <anythings>. People assume that available talent fits some sort of bell curve, with lots of 'average' people out there, but really it's more like an inverse square curve - there's a lot more people at the bottom end than the top. When you find the good ones you're nice to them because it's in everyone's interest.
Why do you have to differentiate being nice to people based on their abilities in any way at all?
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point?
Like the discussion of employee talent vs qty graph shape, there exists a similar graph of employer quality vs qty of some shape. And if you know as an employer you're at a very low point of that graph, unable to execute, unable to meet deadlines, unable to pay contracts in full, all you may really have left is nice personal charisma, making it all the more crucial.
You can behave like IBM or Google if you're IBM or Google. Little startup, maybe not.
If all you've got left is the ability to be nice because everything else is lost, then being nice is becomes more important than at Accenture or insert any other large company.
Its similar to the concept of "grace under fire" which used to mean something other than a sitcom or a martial arts TV show.
Being nice to someone isn't the sum of all time, money and energy expended on someone. It's just treating them with respect and dignity when your path crosses with theirs.
I am sure you will find another job easily enough as good devs are in demand. Hopefully at a place where you are valued and can contribute your skills
Not being a good fit won't be good enough. If it was, the minimum period in a contract wouldn't be worth anything as that's easy for an employer to say with no backup.
This issue is a major difference between typical contracts in the EU and the at will employment status which is typical in the US. It makes it 'easier' for startups to operate in the US, and means that international companies will hire slower in the EU, but are more likely to let US staff go if they have to change staffing levels quickly.
Depending on the rental contract - if it's anything like the UK, the author may have a cause of action against the landlord as well - normally there's a minimum notice period.
"kicked out" could include "followed all the legal procedures and evicted me".
Did you seek help from Portuguese legal system for your landlord problem?
In my mind "culture fit" is the responsibility of the founder. If you're recruiting someone, you need to make the call if they fit into your culture. You can't really blame the person you're recruiting for not fitting in. You can (and should) fire them if they're not a fit, but it's still your hiring mistake, and you need to take the responsibility for it.
If a mudslinging contest can somehow be avoided, it'll be great to have a response from the Unbabel founders. There are probably some good lessons for both coders and founders here.
Exactly. If you ask people to do things outside the normal employment environment then you are partly responsible to make them whole if thing do not work out.
And if you can't do that then don't get people to move halfway across the continent for you, especially not without doing more work to see if there is a good fit or not.
On the other hand, if I was hiring developers, I would stick to the contract.
If we had more robust hiring practices, and more money, maybe it would be better. But for now hiring out of town while requiring them to move (as opposed to working remotely, which has worked for employees) is horribly risky for all involved.
I'm a founder of a startup and I would only move someone across the continents after working with him for a while. For example I would fly him over for a month to work for us to see if there's a fit (without asking him to leave everything yet), covering his expenses, flights and anything other expense he would incur.
I understand if the startup is paying for relocating you but you're still taking a big risk, there's always the chance that you would be let go if you're not a good fit.
How other are mitigating this risk? Is working remotely for a couple of weeks/months with occasional flying viable and moving only after you spent some time with the company viable for others here?
It's important to remember that the "companies prostrating themselves at your front door offering you bonuses and perks and lavishing dining you" is an American Tech Hub phenomenon. While I doubt UK coders are doing badly, I doubt they are as in-demand as they would be in SF or NYC.
That said, I'm "old" (36), and have family responsibilities. If I were a naive recent grad I might have entertained doing this.
Trying out at a company for a month isn't really that bad when the demand is so intense you can literally line up 3-4 competing offers in under a week if things don't work out. There is sadly no place in Canada where the demand is that high.
You should always hire the best candidate which you think will work out but that month allow you to set the right phase, this is a month where you both give the best to make that relationship work - orientation, pairing, documentation, short meetings to discuss potential roadblocks or issues.
All startups usually do this - I just consider it's a good practice to say it out loud that there's a period where we both find out if we want to keep working together.
They said I would be able to stick around for a few months until I found another job, which they would be sure I would be able to find very quickly in SV. Now I've been working with them for 3 years.
The details were actually written down, so it wasn't an informal contract, but it's been 3 years.
Also remote trial work should be an option for these kinds of workers. Making your company remote worker compatible will force many best practices from the start at your company.
But better that you are out of there now than a year down the line, if they are like this then that saved you a bunch of time and a lot more hardship.
It became clear very quickly that the two founders who brought me in wouldn't embrace any change that didn't come from them, and they had a total fear of empowering anyone else to make executive decisions - even about their own team members; I constantly found my guys being assigned to firefighting for other teams without my knowledge, so workload planning and scheduling knowledge sharing periods was impossible - we had information silos all over the place and if someone went on vacation they would often be called or emailed frequently because they were the only ones who knew about a specific part of a project or system. I wasn't allowed to attend support review meetings with the customers - the Directors went alone and told me what had been agreed, and they constantly dealt directly with one of my guys (the company 'guru'), assigning him work and making it impossible for me to grab his time so he could share his skills with the rest of the team - I highlighted it as a serious business risk that this guy was the only person who knew some of the tricks with some of our internal and customer infrastructures, and that he wasn't encouraged to document or share his knowledge, but they dismissed my concerns.
When we had that Friday afternoon talk after 9 months of trying to bring in some best practices and semblance of organisation, I left the office for the last time with a sense of great relief that I was out of the clusterfuck.
It only took me a few weeks to find a much better role and I hope things work out for you too.
Edit: Looking back at what I wrote, it might be that the OPs circumstances just offered the opportunity for a bit of a personal rant, which was not the intention. My main point was based on the fact (not explained at all by me in my post) that when I met the two Directors (twice), prior to joining, the setup and opportunity for me looked very positive, and I was convinced I was going to be empowered to fulfil the role. Things turned out very differently, and I clearly did not fit in with the company culture the founders wanted to both leave and stick with simultaneously (it was their comfort zone, and although they knew is was not the best was to run a business, they ultimately couldn't leave it). Moral: Shit happens, despite due dilligence, but that doesn't make it right.
I think the trick is to grow past the 'whatever it takes' phase and get to the long term, steady, maturation phase. Which is what we are trying to do.
After seeing this and similar situations like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8152933 involving YC companies, it's hard not to conclude that there may be something culturally broken at the accelerator level.
My biggest concern about Steve Jobs's legacy is that people can all too easily draw the wrong lessons from it, or use it to justify bad managerial practices. Steve Jobs's managerial style was as much of a hindrance as it was a benefit.
Obviously I'm not saying you're one of those "Steve Jobs was an asshole, so I can be" types of people, or that you're condoning them as such. But a lot of people do think that way, and a lot of people condone thinking that way. On the whole, it's an influential and problematic narrative.
But to be fair, I don't think any other accelerator focuses on this part. Most, if not all, accelerator only focus on growth and momentum, because that is what ultimately that is what gives the best ROI.
But in most cases, problems like in this particular case become obstacles for growth. I think YC should add provision of experience to the YC formula. What is the point of having so many experienced investors and founders in the accelerator if their companies are so bad at doing real business not only growth.
This is obviously all speculation, since I am not part of the program. Just commenting on the fact there are so many cases like this one in YC companies. So take my comments with a grain of salt.
You can definitely see it in government, non-profits as well as existing businesses. It's the end result of a culture that values "getting shit done" and ends up with nothing but "shit".
* Paying a contact manufacturer to design and build electronic hardware, then not getting any sources for the software.
* Selling R&D prototypes.
* Mistaking being customer-driven for waiting for customer orders before developing a product.
* Promising customers 3 month lead times on products that exist only as R&D prototypes.
* Not documenting what was built until product is shipping.
* Not documenting design decisions.
These are all real things that happened at a 20 year old company that I used to work for. This is also a short list of the many reasons I left.
I know it's in the past now, but try to avoid situations like this. If you can't, talk to your boss about what can reasonably be done in what time frame. Now I would try to figure out which parts can realistically be refactored and which can be isolated and rewritten iteratively make things better. I wouldn't take on new features unless I was confident I could deliver with spaghetti around.
But they're definitely in the wrong for how they handled it. In particular, knowing that you moved to Portugal for the job, they should have given you severance sufficient to cover relocation back to Sweden.
They violated his three month contract. They are not just morally wrong, but legally so as well.
If anything it sounds like they're pushing him around because they don't think he'll make the legal effort to get 1.5 months of pay.
Again, without knowing the contract, I can't say for sure, but what most likely happened was he was hired with a fixed term contract (Contrato Termo Certo), which is a kind of employment contract very common in Portugal. This doesn't mean he can't be fired for 3 months. There are various provisions for the company to do so (from probation period to lack of productivity or unfit for the job) but they do require some process (the employee has to be informed by writing, is entitled to some severance, etc). On this, and if the account is true is where the company maybe in more trouble. If he worked for 1 month and got 1.5 months of pay, that .5 maybe the severance he is entitled to (not sure about the values so I can't specify if that is correct or not)
As for the generality of the Portuguese employment law, you usually have 3 kinds of contracts:
- independent contractor/recibos verdes: This is usually a business to business contract, where the 'employee' has little rights regarding employment law except the ones provisioned in the contract itself. Employee also has to pay all taxes/social security. There has been some crack down on these as employers were abusing employees and avoiding paying taxes. There are similar provisions to this in the UK for example with their IR35, which means even if the contract is of this nature, they will be taxed as full-time employees.
- fixed term contract: An employment contract with a set end date (can be renewed for a certain amount of times). The usual rules apply regarding vacation, pay, firing processed etc. These regulations are law and while there is some margin to tweak the amounts, they can't be modified or you can't sign of your rights away.
- non-fixed term contract: This is what most countries have as standard employment contract but in Portugal it is a bit harder to come by. While things changed recently, up until a few years back, most employers didn't want to do this contracts since firing an employee in this cases is next to impossible without paying a huge settlement amount. So employers usually did fixed term contract with new employees, renew them for the allowed number (usually in total used to be no more than 18 months) and then either let them go (with no severance) or move them to this kind of contract.
Part of the benefit, you mean. Although we're only hearing one side, sounds like the culture there is pretty screwed up, so bringing in a guy with higher standards is obviously an epic culture fit fail but possibly the only way to repair the companies culture.
Although "pretty screwed up" sounds subjective, there are objective observations, and if they're not fulfilling contracts that's a rather objective measure (did a bank deposit occur or not?)
If you have a screwed up situation, and hire a guy who fits right into it as a perfect cultural fit, you haven't solved "the" problem, you now have two problems.
What do they know about it, outside of cases that actually end up in the news?
Could say the same thing to Unbabel if this story is as OP has written it up. Not going to pay out the contract? What a great way of ruining your future. Future employees will avoid you like the plague.
Yup. Neither party comes out looking good from this.
Also, informing the community that a company doesn't seem to value the work of its employees should be valued.
I agree, but in what way is Unbabel not compensating for the work actually done? They just prematurely said no more work would be done for them.
As a very small scale employer, I feel responsible for my employee(s). They depend on me for rent payments, mortgages, savings and so on. I think that responsibility extends further for someone moving country to join your company.
I think retaining enough savings to stay fed is on the employee and don't buy that likely exaggeration, but with early termination like this, I think an employer should be looking to accommodate a foreign employee where they can, at least provide a bit more warning or mediation.
That's weird.
I would have thought that firms would prefer ex-employees to use the courts appropriately to settle disputes, rathar than using blog posts.
And that leads to contracts not being worth the paper they're printed on unless you're independently wealthy, and without any rule of law or justice, the system goes down the tubes.
That said, even if he had a "3 Months Contract" there's probably a release stipulation with a notice period. As long as he's got paid that, there's no legal recourse.
Every workplace has its ups and downs, would be weird if it were 100% perfect, eh?
I made a similar leap from an OK-paying regional job at an established niche cashcow to a London start-up. The perks: a coffee machine, senior pay cheque.
The reality: a shit coffee machine, low moral, no realistic prospect of a profit and no willingness to pivot. 80% of costs have been sunk on a Facebook clone 'with a spin' while the owners try to sell snake oil to investors. We operate like the bad slides of 'Good vs Bad Startup' are a blueprint for success. The owners, almost weekly, come up with an idea someone has to coach them away from - a long ironically drawn out confrontational meeting of: "we don't have the resources". The bit I expected to pay off (medical monitoring hardware) turn out to be crappy I2C/SPI bridges any e.eng graduate could whip out in a month :(
I've had long look at myself: how could I turn down other offers yet accept this?! I'm still unsure why. For a while I feared that I deserved this - I'm one of them, one of the guys who decided to create their own header based HTTP authentication system key by a timestamp: a crap programmer.
It's been 4 months. Poor tests are still committed despite my best efforts to teach the one doing it that they should test a result not implementation (only 1 test damn it!). We don't use any JS frameworks on the front-end (yet alone my other true love: Typescript) because the last lead dev couldn't understand the immeasurable benefits of model binding. I've done - by no means single handedly - an incremental rewrite of the entire code base (front, middle and back). Although they're paying me on time, they missed my post probation increase :( I could go on but this is probably not the right forum.
In short: it's not worked out for me either. Thankfully I've got an excellent track record so I'm off in 3 days to a proper PLC. I heard large companies, like the BBC have 15 (FIFTEEN) designers in their News division alone... I can't wait to have just one designer unencumbered, available and talented.
The whole saga has left me with the strong suspicion most startups are a joke (no I don't want to be a DBA/CSS/JS and C# guru who maintains the iOS codebase!).
Inept owners who're unwilling to pivot, often trapped by the sunk cost fallacy, or owners expect to create a market with their 'one true solution [to a problem you no-one has]' plague the startup scene. No product should ever be a Facebook clone :(
For what it's worth, if I was hiring now I'd interview you solely on your written language skills (which are better than most native English speakers, myself included).
So if the benefits can't be measured, you're suggesting that the front-end should be rewritten as a matter of pure faith in model binding?
(Honestly, that's my impression of how most people decide to adopt a JavaScript framework. "Yeah, we don't really understand the whole, and there are all these edge cases where you have to work against the framework, but overall it's immeasurably better because of philosophy and purity.")
I can't wait to have just one designer unencumbered, available and talented.
Good luck with that at a large corporation, I guess... :)
Recently, especially at a startup I've felt the need to use libraries and frameworks more and more just to hit deadlines and meet the desired user experience.
Model binding is a prime example of this: on the web today everything has to be dynamic and reactive. Rather than do something (i.e. animate) and tightly couple the onComplete handler to N other things to do afterwards (via callbacks/promises etc) I prefer to compose my code around n-event subscriptions and react to changes.
Thanks to things like model binding (and their frameworks/libraries that offer this) the 'immeasurable benefits' of decoupled and composable functions trump the spaghetti soup reactive Javascript requires.
(P.S. one designer is a step up from none!)
What I find is that each framework works really well for about 80% of a project, and then the last 20% get really painful. I haven't found anything that's elegant, flexible, simple, and native.
So unless this startup can start where FB is right now, no one will "clone" FB.
So replacing FB means recruiting some niche of customers, and providing something fresh and useful. That can be done without unlimited perks.
With thinking like that you will never displace the #1 company, because you're not thinking ahead of them, you're only ever trying to catch up.
It's much more likely that they exploit some new thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_limited_company
What I can't get through my head is why you'd write a contract at all if both parties are free to do whatever the fck they want anyway...
Did you take the contract to someone outside Unbabel to check?
But I agree, some of the parameters that got us here are probably cultural. One thing I did notice was that a lot of the communication in the office was in Portuguese, which obviously means I didn't get that information.
I hope that if it turns out your story is true, that these guys are in some way brought to justice, karmic or otherwise. Best of luck.
What do you know about his life? Could he have lost all his savings due to a a divorce, or an accident, or some other type of tragedy? What if he always had to support others?
I don't care what financial disasters may occur - I very much doubt they'd occur in such frequency that over 20 years of working in a high income job this guy wouldn't have 15,000$ handy for something like this. If he made 80k per year for 20 years, that's 1.6M dollars. Let's say 800k after taxes. You're telling me in 20 years, he couldn't save 15k out of 800k? Less than one half of one percent of all money made?
Also, I'd expect if he didn't have that much handy, he wouldn't have been naive enough to relocate without any kind of backup funds in case things went south with a startup, which often happens.
It all points to a certain ignorance when it comes to financial matters with this guy - the fact he relocated without enough funding to fall back on suggests not that he has weathered several storms over a 20 year period, one every year wiping out all his savings, but that he has a pattern of monetary mismanagement stretching back to the beginnings of his career.
EDIT: Accidentally replied to my own comment but meant it to be to the "you dont know me, you don't know my problems" naysayers below.
On the other hand, people should get unemployment benefits when situations like this occur, unfortunately for him, the moving countries may have prevented that (for Sweden employment agency, he quit his Swedish job, not fired, and for Portuguese one, he didn't work enough months to qualify. I'm sure there are some international provisions for these situations but they are beyond me).
[1] http://www.bostaddirekt.com/Private/default.aspx?custType=0&...
Honestly, if I hired a 37-year old, that started programming at the age of 8, I would have thought that I was hiring a “senior developer” (or hopefully a “wizard”).
Salary would be, appropriately, much higher than that for a beginner, or an intermediate.
What I would expect is, that the “senior developer” will look at our code, understand what is right, and wrong, and tell us what to do to fix it.
What I would not expect is, is that the “senior developer” is twiddling his thumbs waiting for a “guidance”. And is bitching about the quality of the code. Well, you were hired to tell us what to do, and to make things happen. What we expect is advice and leadership. If all you can offer is bitching & random complaints, thanks, but “this is not a perfect fit”.
In Portugal, I believe, that unless you let people go before the trial period is over, then a whole lot of protective measures kick in.
For anybody looking to hire anybody abroad it is having the conversation about what happens when things don't go well.
It would be good to hear the Unbabel side of the story.
[Disclosure] Two of the founders are what I would call acquaintances of mine.
If code is particularly messy, unplanned, and untested you might be feature searching as opposed to having a vitamin or medicine feature that a customer will pay for.
Release early, get feedback often. Choose a core competency.
None of this rings true to me. Not at any startup I've worked at/founded at least(6 in total over the last 12 years). In reality good startups are relatively even keel.
Hell I would argue that startups, almost by definition, think MORE in the long-term than their larger counterparts. In a startup you are always progressing towards a long-term goal, constantly taking in feedback and making adjustments.
It's much like sailing to a small island thousands of miles away. A mistake in navigation in the beginning that goes uncaught will put you farther off course than one farther along on your journey (although sometimes that mistake means you discover North America and then pretend like you meant to do that all along).
The point being, if your startup is constantly in panic mode or is constantly trading long-term stability for short-term satisfaction then you should probably be thinking about leaving. At least from my point of view.
Compare to the startup that can just “pivot” at will and/or just end it with one of those “it was an amazing ride” blog posts.
Not trying to be smart, just presenting some perspective.
You better not, who cares about UML diagrams?
But startup code doesn't have to be messy. I don't write messier code (to be used in a company that pays me), just because I'm in a hurry, and neither should anyone.
During the experimental period any of the parties may void the contract without any compensation (except for the time already worked) unless noted otherwise in your contract ...
Also there is no notice period required.
As a disclaimer, I note that I am friends with one of the founders of Unbabel. I don't know their side of the story and I am sad this happened to you.
Still, from what you say, as far as I can tell, they acted within the boundaries of the portuguese labour code.
As someone who lives in Europe I find American hire / fire at will contracts terrifying (getting rid of someone in the UK can be a torturous process, in other European countries even worse) but obviously in most states (?) in the US they're the norm.
Lesson to learn - before you agree to work somewhere else, understand the culture and legal framework you're going to be working in if at all possible and set your expectations accordingly.
It's really easy to get rid of employees in England. While it's not quite "at will" it's pretty close.
You don't even need to give a reason in writing if the person has been working for you for less than 2 years.
https://www.gov.uk/dismissal
> You have the right to ask for a written statement from your employer giving the reasons why you’ve been dismissed if you’re an employee and have completed 2 years’ service (1 year if you started before 6 April 2012).
There is a lot of detail hidden behind this:
"If you’re dismissed, your employer must show they’ve:
* a valid reason that they can justify * acted reasonably in the circumstances
They must also:
* be consistent - eg not dismiss you for doing something that they let other employees do * have investigated the situation fully before dismissing you - eg if a complaint was made about you"
There actually aren't that many valid reasons. Cultural fit certainly isn't one (and has the potential to get you in all sorts of equalities issues if there is any possibility that age, religion or anything else can be seen as a proxy for the way you didn't fit).
If you want to claim someone isn't good at their job you need to be able to back it up and show you gave them every opportunity to turn it around (including having given them all the relevant support and training). Generally speaking that would be a performance management exercise (several weeks of monitored performance) which is time consuming and rubbish for all involved.
And that's before you even get into the whole performance is hard to accurately measure in IT issues.
The investigated fully part is also important. If you diverge from your stated policy (or a reasonable policy if there isn't one stated - the ACAS one is usually the template) then you can be found against at a tribunal even if you reasons and evidence were sound.
Obviously people do ignore all this and get away with it (particularly in IT where people can often get new jobs relatively easily) but that doesn't mean you will or that what you did was legal.
Your best shot is if the contract has a defined probation period (3 to 6 months) during which you can pretty much get rid of people at will but after that, even before 2 years is up, it's going to take some work. It's not impossible but it's an exercise which will take a lot of your time and likely have a significant impact on team morale.