The world has slowly become spineless, and when someone like Josh Hwu shows a spine and stands up for what's right a rather large fraction of fellow programmers jump on him. Shameful! The CEO of Miso is an unethical egotistical person who doesn't even have the self-awareness to admit to his knee-jerk abuse of power (a mistake that many a young manager has made, myself included).
The real story here is that fighting on principle is the rational thing to do. If you don't fight on principle then the predators feel empowered, and everyone suffers. People like Josh are heroes. Those who try to take away from his accomplishment by either convincing him that it would be "smarter" to be spineless or that somehow it's wrong to have a spine, are even more despicable than Josh's abusive ex-boss.
> The CEO of Miso is an unethical egotistical person who doesn't even have the self-awareness to admit to his knee-jerk abuse of power
Unless you have information not available in the original post or reply, you're making that judgement off of a severely limited set of (largely one-sided) data.
If you read the email stream, the CEO wanted to withhold the referral bonus as a punitive measure for a work-related mistake. His subsequent "apology" in the comments tried to unring that bell, instead blaming an "unclear" referral policy for the "misunderstanding". The first act was unethical, the second was egotistical, and both judgements are based on the CEO's own choice of words, not Josh's.
One concern that I have is that the Miso CEO (and people like him) will take away the wrong lesson, along the lines of "be careful what you say to employees in email". But the real lesson is that you should keep your promises, and if you have a moment of weakness and try to reneg on a promise, don't be proud: admit the mistake and keep the promise. People make mistakes, even twenty-something CEOs of tech startups (shocking, I know).
Hi javajosh, I just had to leave this comment here to say thank you. Your comment was possibly one of the best comments I have ever read on HN, and possibly the internet at large. Thank you for restoring my faith in humanity somewhat.
If I could sit here all day clicking the upvote button I would!
Let me tell you my perspective, which may be interesting. The company Miso has good points about the reason for the program. In the original exchange the points were brought up.
To me, the points were brought up one email too late. The moment the first response was Josh, let me talk to Tim. After you lost our data and caused our entire company to scramble for 3 days, I am hesitant,
I saw this as. "Let me think of how I can not pay you."
Even though the next email was perfectly cogent, it wasn't the first. (The next email read Spoke with Somrat about this. You're right that the trouble that you caused has nothing to do with a referral bonus. However, we only pay bonuses to employees. The bonuses are discretionary and not contractual. You and Miso never signed a contract that mentions bonuses. As a policy, referral bonuses are meant to help build a stronger team based on existing relationships. Employees bringing on employees that they've worked with in the past builds a stronger team. This bonus is not simply about hiring. For example, we don't pay people outside of Miso when they refer us candidates that we hire. Because you are no longer employed by Miso, you are not eligible for this bonus.).
After the first email bringing up something irrelevant that I passed summary judgment on Miso: if you don't pay, everything else is irrelevant, no matter what you think of it's just excuses, since your first excuse was to just say, "Fuck you, I don't need to string you along anymore. Here's the first thing I could think of. You dropped a one week old database on a product we didn't have backups on." Of COURSE that has nothing to do with a referral, except if you're saying, "you know I pull the strings around here and it's my decision to make. I'm not all that happy with you."
Sorry, Miso, you lost in that sentence. The question is only whether you owe the employee a referral bonus you promised. You don't get to do what you promised if you had a good experience with the the guy or not otherwise.
There's this great founder I always have in mind when I read stuff like this. Boy did that guy have a philosophy! I've always thought of drawing a caricature of him sitting down at a restaurant with his wife and looking at the menu, and his wife saying that they really can't afford these prices. So he says, "It's okay honey order whatever you want. There is no way I'm paying for any of this shit."
I don't know what the culture is like at Miso but I would take
"After you lost our data and caused our entire company to scramble for 3 days, I am hesitant."
as
"How do I justify to the rest of the team paying you an exorbitant bonus for team building after you trashed a production system that cost the team 3 days of work, then quit."
Not that this changes the fact that they should have paid.
The thing that stood out for me is the part where they said, "You and Miso never signed a contract that mentions bonuses", which means he has no "legal proof" a bonus was even offered in the first place.
I saw this as. "Let me think of how I can not pay you."
It's a (thinly) veiled threat. Of course, it's irrelevant to what's being discussed, but it's a way of saying "I can embarrass you with this irrelevant issue if you press this" without actually saying it. Classic extortion tactic.
Since Josh printed the exchange in full, they no longer have this on him. Still, I don't know if it's a smart move on his part. He could have left that out entirely, and if they brought it into the public, he'd have more than $10,000 to talk about.
Actually, I'm sure there are two sides to the database story. He could have been poorly trained, or working 80 hours per week-- at which point mistakes are inevitable-- or given bad tools. These kinds of fuckups rarely have only one person at fault, especially in the sloppier startups where management is thinly-spread and incompetent and there are too many moving parts (startups are hard to keep track of when well-run, and many aren't). I'm surprised he didn't get into detail of what happened there.
Utter crap. Rewriting history after you get called out is just pathetic.
They owed him money and either through mistake or malice didn't pay him. When he contacted them to correct it they tried to legalize their way out of it. If I wouldn't have anything to do with them before, I'm doubly unimpressed now.
They paid him. They admitted they were wrong and apologized. They clarified their policy so people won't dispute it in the future.
I'm not sure exactly what more you'd expect them to do. I'm sure they wish they'd handled this differently, but once he posted it, they seem to have handled things reasonably well.
Plus, of course, you've only seen one side of the story. Even if the company has other facts, they can't present them publicly, because then they'd potentially be open to a lawsuit. Similar reasons why people don't give honest feedback after interviews, or referrals other than "yes, he worked at this company on those dates".
When they thought they had all the power, they saw no reason to pay him. Once it was clear that the power wasn't imbalanced, they went for damage control. That reads pretty transparently to anyone who's been around the block a few times.
The loudest expression of your morals is what you do when you have all the power. If you act poorly, later rationalizations do little to convince anyone otherwise.
They didn't admit they were wrong for not paying him though. They apologized for not having a "clear and complete policy."
If you look at the sequence of emails he was first denied the bonus on the grounds of his own job performance, then on the grounds of not having a written contract, then finally because he didn't meet their ad hoc policy requirements.
I guess nobody actually expects them to apologize like human beings, but it would be nice if they said something like, "We're sorry for fighting you on the referral bonus. You deserved it after the 6 months was up and we should have given it to you then. We've put a structure in place at the company so this doesn't happen again. "
if you read the email, they did not admit they were wrong. they held that in the light of their policy they were correct not to pay him, and their only mistake was in not making that policy clearer, and therefore they'd pay out this once.
I don't think they did admit they were wrong, because they weren't necessarily wrong.
They admitted they made a mistake in not clearly documenting their policy, which was ambiguous. As part of correcting that mistake, they recompensed an employee who was wronged by the ambiguity. They did this not because they were obligated by a policy or contract, but by ethics.
I think it's debatable whether he was entitled to the bonus, that's why I say they weren't "necessarily" wrong. Obviously Miso felt he was not entitled to it, since under their clarified policy he would not be.
They are also legally bound to pay the referral bonus, unless they can provide evidence that they informed Joshua before he referred his buddy that there were any exceptions to the rule.
Moving forward, we have established the following clear criteria to explain
how employees will be eligible for the $10K referral bonus:
- The employee must provide a referral for a full-time hire.
- The referred employee must work at Miso for 6 full months after hire date
(excluding any leaves of absence)
- The referring employee must be employed at Miso and not have given notice
to depart the company prior to the date of the bonus payment.
I don't understand the point of the third rule. Why isn't that 6 months too? This way they have an incentive to delay payment if they think an employee might leave.
The third rule sucks, in my opinion. Referral bonuses are a good deal for the company: they help the company to (1) recruit good employees and (2) save money on recruiting, since these bonuses are usually much less than the hefty fraction of an employee's salary that they'd have to pay to a headhunter. If you leave a company after referring somebody, it doesn't change the fact that you found the company a good employee and saved them money, so it would seem unfair to refuse to pay you the bonus, even if you're no longer an employee -- in that case, they'd be able to profit from your connections without giving you anything in return.
They wouldn't be able to get away with not paying a headhunter just because he sent his invoice in after the company decided to not renew their contract with him. The fact that they can legally get away with stiffing an ex-employee doesn't make it any more ethical.
The "after you gave notice" part in particular is quite stupid. It will simply encourage people to wait longer to give notice, or not give notice at all.
Were I leaving a company amicably and had no other constraint on my time (say I'm planning to start my own company, or even just take a couple years off), I'd give several weeks, if not a few months' notice, to maximize flexibility for everyone. If I knew it was going to screw me out of $10,000, however, I definitely would not extend that courtesy.
the third rule is there so that they can say that they were right to not pay this guy.
that's all.
they don't think they've done wrong here. in the same situation they want to be able to do the same and get away with it. these aren't people who have learnt something about keeping their word - they're paying because it's the best way to manage the crisis. the third rule is to justify their actions: they don't feel wrong; they regret that they were caught without a good excuse.
they have come out of this looking appalling. worst of all, they don't get the idea that people - good, committed engineers - don't stay or leave because of salaries and bonuses. they leave because management sucks.
Perhaps he is trying to suggest that Joshua gave notice before his 6 months were up, therefore shift the blame back to the ex-employee. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.
That's exactly what he's trying to do. This isn't an apology or an admission of any wrongdoing, it's an obvious attempt to reshape perception of their original actions by pretending their motives were different than they really were. Motives that were utterly self-evident from their very first reply:
> After you lost our data and caused our entire company to scramble for 3 days, I am hesitant.
Everything since then has been trying to unring the bell.
The thing about contracts is that you can't just put any old unfair term in there, because both parties have the right to a fair contract, and a court can rule that particular terms are unfair. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some employment law which is being broken by that 3rd term already, because it allows the company to withhold the bonus for an arbitrary amount of time: they could avoid ever having to pay it by simply waiting until an employee gives notice, then saying "oh we can't pay that anymore" - no way is that a fair term. These guys are cowboys.
What I learned earlier this year is that tech recruiters get paid a flat fee for their services, plus a percentage of the recruitee's salary after some vesting period, usually 6 months. From what I heard, that percentage was between 15-25 percent.
Consider that the average programmer's salary is above 60k. 15% of that is 9k, plus the flat fee. The company has already gotten roughly 10k out of this referral transaction. It's not just an incentive to build a strong team...it's how much they'd have to pay if there were no employee referral program at all.
I think your numbers might be conservative. 60k is a low intro-level salary for most metro areas and many recruiters wouldn't bother. Finding intro-level programmers is relatively easy so the burden of proof and stakes are high for the recruiter. It's a gamble and generally not worth his or her reputation.
This benefit scheme appears to be designed to encourage team building. The cost of replacing a good employee is greater then the benefit gained from introducing a new hire. I guess they don't want to reward someone for team building when they are actually a net loss in this area. I think they should have read this[1] and thought about this a bit more.
The point of the third rule is to alert their investors that they're making sure that any people who leave will not be part of the process to hire their replacements.
That doesn't make any sense. The rule says 'prior to payment' and the payment doesn't happen until after the new hire is there for 6 months. So if I recommend a friend, then leave 5 months later, I don't get the bonus. How does this mean that I am hiring my replacement?
They were both wrong. Any employee who leaves 10k behind didn't care enough about it in the first place. The fact that he forgot is huge.
A company that talks about bonuses of that size with no legal contract didn't care enough about it to start with.
The developer will pay with his reputation. Any employer who knows what happened will never fully trust him, except after a long working relationship.
Miso will pay by losing potential hires.
Each side loses more than 10,000 dollars worth. Justin's professional rep is worth a lot more than 10k, Miso's hiring future is worth more than one bonus. They should have worked this out in private.
I think Joshua's rep broke even, or possibly slightly ahead. It shows that he's a passionate employee, and will go out of his way to make things right. In a work setting, he'll probably fix up that copy-pasta code instead of just leaving it there. Passionate employees always win over passive employees.
Additionally, his name is so damn generic, it might as well be john lee. There might be 10 serial killers with his name too, but I doubt future employers would really be able pinpoint this incident with his name.
I doubt that. What you perceive as passion, I perceived as whiny. Whiny as in how a 4 year old REALLY wants a toy when his parents won't buy it for him. Is a child throwing a tantrum passionate about that toy? Is that a good thing?
Will this potential employee throw a fit when we don't use the libraries he wants? Probably not (like I would assume of most professionals), but this new found infamy would make me as a recruiting company think twice.
I think the situation could and should have been resolved in private. I know there are more clarifying emails, but we don't get to see them. If I were considering hiring this guy, I would be much more comfortable if I could see all of the emails with each side clearly stating their case, and then the developer's calm and rational ultimatum to go to the public. Even then, I would (as a potential employer) be even more comforted if the post itself had a calm and rational voice. (I believe the voice is mixed at best.)
I base my claim that this could have been resolved in private on the fact that Miso resolved everything so quickly. If the case and ultimatum were clearly communicated, Miso would have been prepared for the negative PR by releasing their version of events. Instead, the company payed up not even 12 hours after the story is published. This leads me to believe that communication was poor between the parties.
> Any employee who leaves 10k behind didn't care enough about it in the first place.
Or he was working 80 hour weeks and had a lot on his mind.
But hey, blame the victim--he had it coming! Come work for me, I will try and stiff you at every turn, and if I manage to, hey you just didn't want it bad enough.
Oh come on. Anybody who has any amount of experience would have had all of his/her ducks in a row before quitting. They should also know that any company expecting you to work 80 hours a week doesn't have your best interests in mind.
You should always work with the assumption that your employer is a douche even though he doesn't act like it. Cynical, yes, but this is a business relationship, and when money is involved, you'll often see the ugly side of people turn up.
The original employer is at fault, but this type of behaviour is common, and people, especially young people, need to be aware that your relationship with your employer is not a friendship. It's a business relationship.
Limit your trust of them, and make sure you get everything you are owed by them before you quit. When you resign, assume that you'll get walked out, so make sure you've got all of your stuff ready to go. I could go on, but you should get the idea.
I don't think the developer paid with his reputation. He actually gains reputation as someone who would stand up to injustice and unethical behavior. Of course unethical employers would hesitate to trust him but do you want to work for unethical employers?
He actually gains reputation as someone who would stand up to injustice and unethical behavior.
I wish you were right, but you're not. For all the press about the "war for talent", there's never a good time to be a whistle-blower. Sometimes it is worth doing, because these kinds of stories are extremely common (read: there are a lot of bubble startups with shitty, unethical management) right now, but it's generally a risky move.
Our perspective: Josh is a hero who exposed a crappy, sloppily-managed startup after the executives moved to deprive him of a promised bonus.
Stereotypical HR perspective: Josh is a risk. He exposed an employer's "dirty laundry" over a trivial amount of money and "professionals just don't do that". Oh, and there's this thing about losing data in the last 2 weeks. Sounds like he fucked something up and was fired.
Sane, reasonable counterpoints: Josh was right to do what he did, because he probably prevented other people from getting screwed by this company. Also, we have no idea why the database problem occurred. Maybe he was working 14-hour days (it's common for shitbag startups to push people to put in 80 hours per week, and later use the low quality-- on account of the overtime and deadline pressure-- of what is produced as justification for canning them once the equity is worth something). Maybe he was badly trained. Who knows? It's just as likely that it's not his fault, and regarding the manner of his termination, who cares?
Not-unreasonable (but unfortunate) HR counterpoint: Sure, sure, but he's still riskier than this other guy who didn't expose an ex-employer and has identical credentials.
Of course unethical employers would hesitate to trust him but do you want to work for unethical employers?
I don't see this division as being as firm as one might like. Corporate "culture" is largely a fiction. Most companies have a mix of ethical and unethical people. Saying you wouldn't want to work for a 100-person company because there's one unethical person (or, for your example, a "sympathizer" with unethical people) in HR is short-sighted. No company is perfect, and if you insist only on working in companies where everyone is ethical and good, well... you'll have a hard time working for companies larger than about 10 people, including your own.
> Any employee who leaves 10k behind didn't care enough about it in the first place. The fact that he forgot is huge.
No, it's not huge. As I said in another comment, it's always awkward for me to have to go to a 'manager' and ask for money so I procrastinate on such issues. Maybe it was similar for him.
This is all sorts of wrong. Miso should have paid the referral fee (let's stop calling it a bonus as another commenter pointed out) as soon as the referred employee hit 6 months. Why are employees forced to beg for their money? For most of us, it's awkward to have to go to 'the man' and ask for our money. So we procrastinate and 'forget' about asking for the money, all while working hard anyway.
Switching jobs is an excellent time to have $10k handy.
And for them to say "no sorry, you screwed up at the end" shows just how much they valued that employee's contribution to the team for an entire year.
This reeks of Big Co. incompetent management mentality. Sad to see startup founders power tripping and not realize it.
As I see it, they just patched up the situation. My beef with them is not that they screwed up on the policy front. It is about the underlying ethics.
It was ok if they said they did not want to pay him as he is no longer and employee and later correct themselves saying that it was a mistake on their part as he was an employee after 6 months.
What is not ok is that they used an emotional line of defense. Saying he doesn't deserve it 'cos of a screw up, tells me that both Somrat and Tim are kinda characters that would bail out when push comes to shove. Its the question of integrity and you just have to stand by the right in a startup. To me, this is the exact warning sign I need before thinking of a startup.
I hope employees of Miso read into this and take home something. Many might not care, but its their opinion.
Fucking with employee options pool is about whether previous investors (including founders and earlier employees) take all the dilution of new hires, vs. the new investors sharing equally in that. It's fairly independent of how much equity hires actually receive (you can always bump the pool up later, when you "unexpectedly" run out of equity and need to make more hires -- after 30-50 hires, the only way an individual hire makes a huge difference in the option pool is if you're bringing in a CEO to replace a founder, or maybe a Sheryl-level COO or super-accomplished VP.)
It's an unrelated issue, really. I think "founder has one type of expense policy for founders and execs, and another for employees" would be more apt.
I'm not sure that the 10k was worth it for J Wu. Employers Google potential employees, and this blog post will definitely show up. Even though I feel he's in the right this type of public shaming would make me think twice about hiring him. Just doesn't seem like it's worth the hassle even though I don't plan on doing anything terrible to my employees (criminal in this case!)
To be clear, I feel that Miso is in the wrong on this. Just probably wasn't worth 10k on calling them out.
EDIT: From the comments it feels like the consensus is either a public shaming or hiding and forgetting about the money. There are other avenues like trying to pressure VC / board members, court, probably more. I wouldn't want this accessible on the internet for the next 50+ years.
You are probably right. It's really not worth the trouble and potential backlash it might cause in the future. I personally wouldn't do it.
However, I want to thank J Wu for doing this. What he did was commendable.
I know tons of freelancers who worked with companies or individuals, and end up not getting paid properly. They often fear loss of potential customer and do not take it public, even though they are fully on the right. Legal battle is often not an option for them. The cost can be hefty and even more importantly, it's a total waste of time. Legal battle breaks concentration on your work and drains you out.
I hope that this kind of dispute settling becomes normalized. Fulfilling one's responsibility is done most effectively when your accountability is tested publicly.
I disagree. His post stands as a public review of his previous employer, which-- in giving him the bonus after they previously denied it-- admit that they have two very different personalities. In the public, they are good people and agree with the morals of the multitudes (doing the right thing). In private, they abuse their power and finger point when things don't go their way (he "lost their data and mangled their company).
It wasn't worth 10K to Miso. Potential employees are going to google their name and want nothing to do with them. I sure wouldn't.
Their might be some employers that deny J Wu a job based on an honest post like this, but are they really working for in the first place?
Any employer who would have a beef with this is probably not worth working for anyway. Honest people have little to fear from public disclosure of their behavior.
In the current job market, you can basically be anything but actually in prison and get a job, assuming you can do the work. (I suppose work-release could be accommodated for designers if they can also code).
In normal times/contexts, something like this would probably be at least slightly prejudicial to a hiring manager. 1) He appears to have at least somewhat screwed up at the job, in a way which wouldn't have been disclosed otherwise 2) He goes to the public vs. normal legal channels when there is a dispute. While you may not intend to have a dispute, it's always worth knowing how disagreements will be handled.
Josh didn't do anything wrong. Someone tried to screw him out of some money. He wrote about it on his blog. The problem got solved -- rather efficiently, I might add. Sounds like no lawyers got involved and no taxpayer money had to be wasted in court.
It doesn't really reflect on him one way or another. It's an interesting story, but the only part that has anything to do with hiring him would be to ask him what went wrong with that data loss and how he learned to minimize the chances of something like that happening in the future.
When someone does you wrong, you can't go off in secret and appeal for justice. Public shame is often all these people understand.
The fact that someone tried to get an injustice doesn't make less employable. Well, maybe to people who like to take advantage of others. Sounds like a good thing to discourage them.
It's not really even $10k, it's the $100-300 it would have cost to have gotten an employment lawyer to accomplish the same thing.
Maybe worth $10k (clearly worth going nuclear for SOME amount of money or injustice -- $100mm? crimes?), but IMO not worth $300. Especially since "$10k + $300/hr for my costs related to this matter" would be totally reasonable too.
In the other threads there was the widespread opinion that lawyers would be a waste of time and costing a big chunk of the $10k. That few people adviced that he even counsel one hour with one lawyer is sad.
I suppose I would make sure I actually planned to pay him things I promised him. That's as far as second-guessing goes. The call-out was quite fair. It was also inexpensive for Miso since they didn't have to go to court, which also would have been fair.
Most of the heroes of our time do things that are probably not worth it financially, but do it to set things right for future generations. I'm sure Martin Luther King was well aware that he'd probably be assassinated for attempting to bring equality to the african americans, but he stood up for what he believed in. I feel like most people these days would rather live a happy passive life, than rock the boat to help future generations.
I doubt employers would even notice. He's got a pretty generic name so unless you're really doing some hard core sleuthing, I doubt this blog post would appear in a search for "Josh Wu".
And in today's crazy bubble market, if you know what a web browser is, you'll probably get hired.
There are other avenues like trying to pressure VC / board members, court, probably more.
The problem is that lawsuits often take years. These startups are likely going to be (a) 10 times their current size, or (b) out of business, by then. So they can take a "we'll worry about it then" approach, in which case they collect interest on what they should have paid, and offload the risk.
These kinds of unethical startup executives don't fear lawsuits. Not in the least. The suit will be against the company, not the person-- it's very hard to pierce the corporate veil on this sort of issue-- and the individual executive will either be no longer with the company, or very wealthy and successful by then (in which case it's a hired attorney's PITA). Either way, it's not going to hurt him much.
The small-claim lawsuit doesn't have an incentive effect on such a startup because of this binary payoff. The advantage of a PR hit, as a punitive measure, is that it actually reduces the probability of success (rather than trivially reducing the amount of payoff in event of success).
They asked themselves what almost every businessman asks himself: "what is it going to cost me not to write this check?" They didn't expect their former employee to go to the Internet. They were exposing themselves to ever increasing liability by publicly posting in their former employee's blog. The cost in legal fees and additional negative publicity wasn't worth it to them not to pay after that.
Readit News
The real story here is that fighting on principle is the rational thing to do. If you don't fight on principle then the predators feel empowered, and everyone suffers. People like Josh are heroes. Those who try to take away from his accomplishment by either convincing him that it would be "smarter" to be spineless or that somehow it's wrong to have a spine, are even more despicable than Josh's abusive ex-boss.
Unless you have information not available in the original post or reply, you're making that judgement off of a severely limited set of (largely one-sided) data.
One concern that I have is that the Miso CEO (and people like him) will take away the wrong lesson, along the lines of "be careful what you say to employees in email". But the real lesson is that you should keep your promises, and if you have a moment of weakness and try to reneg on a promise, don't be proud: admit the mistake and keep the promise. People make mistakes, even twenty-something CEOs of tech startups (shocking, I know).
If I could sit here all day clicking the upvote button I would!
To me, the points were brought up one email too late. The moment the first response was Josh, let me talk to Tim. After you lost our data and caused our entire company to scramble for 3 days, I am hesitant,
I saw this as. "Let me think of how I can not pay you."
Even though the next email was perfectly cogent, it wasn't the first. (The next email read Spoke with Somrat about this. You're right that the trouble that you caused has nothing to do with a referral bonus. However, we only pay bonuses to employees. The bonuses are discretionary and not contractual. You and Miso never signed a contract that mentions bonuses. As a policy, referral bonuses are meant to help build a stronger team based on existing relationships. Employees bringing on employees that they've worked with in the past builds a stronger team. This bonus is not simply about hiring. For example, we don't pay people outside of Miso when they refer us candidates that we hire. Because you are no longer employed by Miso, you are not eligible for this bonus.).
After the first email bringing up something irrelevant that I passed summary judgment on Miso: if you don't pay, everything else is irrelevant, no matter what you think of it's just excuses, since your first excuse was to just say, "Fuck you, I don't need to string you along anymore. Here's the first thing I could think of. You dropped a one week old database on a product we didn't have backups on." Of COURSE that has nothing to do with a referral, except if you're saying, "you know I pull the strings around here and it's my decision to make. I'm not all that happy with you."
Sorry, Miso, you lost in that sentence. The question is only whether you owe the employee a referral bonus you promised. You don't get to do what you promised if you had a good experience with the the guy or not otherwise.
There's this great founder I always have in mind when I read stuff like this. Boy did that guy have a philosophy! I've always thought of drawing a caricature of him sitting down at a restaurant with his wife and looking at the menu, and his wife saying that they really can't afford these prices. So he says, "It's okay honey order whatever you want. There is no way I'm paying for any of this shit."
"After you lost our data and caused our entire company to scramble for 3 days, I am hesitant."
as
"How do I justify to the rest of the team paying you an exorbitant bonus for team building after you trashed a production system that cost the team 3 days of work, then quit."
Not that this changes the fact that they should have paid.
It's a (thinly) veiled threat. Of course, it's irrelevant to what's being discussed, but it's a way of saying "I can embarrass you with this irrelevant issue if you press this" without actually saying it. Classic extortion tactic.
Since Josh printed the exchange in full, they no longer have this on him. Still, I don't know if it's a smart move on his part. He could have left that out entirely, and if they brought it into the public, he'd have more than $10,000 to talk about.
Actually, I'm sure there are two sides to the database story. He could have been poorly trained, or working 80 hours per week-- at which point mistakes are inevitable-- or given bad tools. These kinds of fuckups rarely have only one person at fault, especially in the sloppier startups where management is thinly-spread and incompetent and there are too many moving parts (startups are hard to keep track of when well-run, and many aren't). I'm surprised he didn't get into detail of what happened there.
Dead Comment
They owed him money and either through mistake or malice didn't pay him. When he contacted them to correct it they tried to legalize their way out of it. If I wouldn't have anything to do with them before, I'm doubly unimpressed now.
I'm not sure exactly what more you'd expect them to do. I'm sure they wish they'd handled this differently, but once he posted it, they seem to have handled things reasonably well.
Plus, of course, you've only seen one side of the story. Even if the company has other facts, they can't present them publicly, because then they'd potentially be open to a lawsuit. Similar reasons why people don't give honest feedback after interviews, or referrals other than "yes, he worked at this company on those dates".
The loudest expression of your morals is what you do when you have all the power. If you act poorly, later rationalizations do little to convince anyone otherwise.
If you look at the sequence of emails he was first denied the bonus on the grounds of his own job performance, then on the grounds of not having a written contract, then finally because he didn't meet their ad hoc policy requirements.
I guess nobody actually expects them to apologize like human beings, but it would be nice if they said something like, "We're sorry for fighting you on the referral bonus. You deserved it after the 6 months was up and we should have given it to you then. We've put a structure in place at the company so this doesn't happen again. "
There's not a lot more that they can do. They've advertised themselves as a company that willingly screws their employees and goes back on their word.
Whatever the details of the case, anybody who is thinking of joining their team will now think "they might do something like this to me".
They admitted they made a mistake in not clearly documenting their policy, which was ambiguous. As part of correcting that mistake, they recompensed an employee who was wronged by the ambiguity. They did this not because they were obligated by a policy or contract, but by ethics.
I think it's debatable whether he was entitled to the bonus, that's why I say they weren't "necessarily" wrong. Obviously Miso felt he was not entitled to it, since under their clarified policy he would not be.
They wouldn't be able to get away with not paying a headhunter just because he sent his invoice in after the company decided to not renew their contract with him. The fact that they can legally get away with stiffing an ex-employee doesn't make it any more ethical.
Were I leaving a company amicably and had no other constraint on my time (say I'm planning to start my own company, or even just take a couple years off), I'd give several weeks, if not a few months' notice, to maximize flexibility for everyone. If I knew it was going to screw me out of $10,000, however, I definitely would not extend that courtesy.
that's all.
they don't think they've done wrong here. in the same situation they want to be able to do the same and get away with it. these aren't people who have learnt something about keeping their word - they're paying because it's the best way to manage the crisis. the third rule is to justify their actions: they don't feel wrong; they regret that they were caught without a good excuse.
they have come out of this looking appalling. worst of all, they don't get the idea that people - good, committed engineers - don't stay or leave because of salaries and bonuses. they leave because management sucks.
> After you lost our data and caused our entire company to scramble for 3 days, I am hesitant.
Everything since then has been trying to unring the bell.
Consider that the average programmer's salary is above 60k. 15% of that is 9k, plus the flat fee. The company has already gotten roughly 10k out of this referral transaction. It's not just an incentive to build a strong team...it's how much they'd have to pay if there were no employee referral program at all.
1. http://blog.fogcreek.com/why-do-we-pay-sales-commissions/
I'm not sure whether this should be rewarded or not, but it seems a situation that he's alluding to in that rule.
A company that talks about bonuses of that size with no legal contract didn't care enough about it to start with.
The developer will pay with his reputation. Any employer who knows what happened will never fully trust him, except after a long working relationship.
Miso will pay by losing potential hires.
Each side loses more than 10,000 dollars worth. Justin's professional rep is worth a lot more than 10k, Miso's hiring future is worth more than one bonus. They should have worked this out in private.
They couldn't, and they both lost.
Additionally, his name is so damn generic, it might as well be john lee. There might be 10 serial killers with his name too, but I doubt future employers would really be able pinpoint this incident with his name.
Will this potential employee throw a fit when we don't use the libraries he wants? Probably not (like I would assume of most professionals), but this new found infamy would make me as a recruiting company think twice.
I think the situation could and should have been resolved in private. I know there are more clarifying emails, but we don't get to see them. If I were considering hiring this guy, I would be much more comfortable if I could see all of the emails with each side clearly stating their case, and then the developer's calm and rational ultimatum to go to the public. Even then, I would (as a potential employer) be even more comforted if the post itself had a calm and rational voice. (I believe the voice is mixed at best.)
I base my claim that this could have been resolved in private on the fact that Miso resolved everything so quickly. If the case and ultimatum were clearly communicated, Miso would have been prepared for the negative PR by releasing their version of events. Instead, the company payed up not even 12 hours after the story is published. This leads me to believe that communication was poor between the parties.
Or he was working 80 hour weeks and had a lot on his mind. But hey, blame the victim--he had it coming! Come work for me, I will try and stiff you at every turn, and if I manage to, hey you just didn't want it bad enough.
You should always work with the assumption that your employer is a douche even though he doesn't act like it. Cynical, yes, but this is a business relationship, and when money is involved, you'll often see the ugly side of people turn up.
The original employer is at fault, but this type of behaviour is common, and people, especially young people, need to be aware that your relationship with your employer is not a friendship. It's a business relationship.
Limit your trust of them, and make sure you get everything you are owed by them before you quit. When you resign, assume that you'll get walked out, so make sure you've got all of your stuff ready to go. I could go on, but you should get the idea.
I wish you were right, but you're not. For all the press about the "war for talent", there's never a good time to be a whistle-blower. Sometimes it is worth doing, because these kinds of stories are extremely common (read: there are a lot of bubble startups with shitty, unethical management) right now, but it's generally a risky move.
Our perspective: Josh is a hero who exposed a crappy, sloppily-managed startup after the executives moved to deprive him of a promised bonus.
Stereotypical HR perspective: Josh is a risk. He exposed an employer's "dirty laundry" over a trivial amount of money and "professionals just don't do that". Oh, and there's this thing about losing data in the last 2 weeks. Sounds like he fucked something up and was fired.
Sane, reasonable counterpoints: Josh was right to do what he did, because he probably prevented other people from getting screwed by this company. Also, we have no idea why the database problem occurred. Maybe he was working 14-hour days (it's common for shitbag startups to push people to put in 80 hours per week, and later use the low quality-- on account of the overtime and deadline pressure-- of what is produced as justification for canning them once the equity is worth something). Maybe he was badly trained. Who knows? It's just as likely that it's not his fault, and regarding the manner of his termination, who cares?
Not-unreasonable (but unfortunate) HR counterpoint: Sure, sure, but he's still riskier than this other guy who didn't expose an ex-employer and has identical credentials.
Of course unethical employers would hesitate to trust him but do you want to work for unethical employers?
I don't see this division as being as firm as one might like. Corporate "culture" is largely a fiction. Most companies have a mix of ethical and unethical people. Saying you wouldn't want to work for a 100-person company because there's one unethical person (or, for your example, a "sympathizer" with unethical people) in HR is short-sighted. No company is perfect, and if you insist only on working in companies where everyone is ethical and good, well... you'll have a hard time working for companies larger than about 10 people, including your own.
No, it's not huge. As I said in another comment, it's always awkward for me to have to go to a 'manager' and ask for money so I procrastinate on such issues. Maybe it was similar for him.
and procrastinating is just fine. but you don't QUIT without getting that kind of dough.
Switching jobs is an excellent time to have $10k handy.
And for them to say "no sorry, you screwed up at the end" shows just how much they valued that employee's contribution to the team for an entire year.
This reeks of Big Co. incompetent management mentality. Sad to see startup founders power tripping and not realize it.
It was ok if they said they did not want to pay him as he is no longer and employee and later correct themselves saying that it was a mistake on their part as he was an employee after 6 months. What is not ok is that they used an emotional line of defense. Saying he doesn't deserve it 'cos of a screw up, tells me that both Somrat and Tim are kinda characters that would bail out when push comes to shove. Its the question of integrity and you just have to stand by the right in a startup. To me, this is the exact warning sign I need before thinking of a startup.
I hope employees of Miso read into this and take home something. Many might not care, but its their opinion.
"it's okay to screw employees because they'll leave anyway"
It's an unrelated issue, really. I think "founder has one type of expense policy for founders and execs, and another for employees" would be more apt.
To be clear, I feel that Miso is in the wrong on this. Just probably wasn't worth 10k on calling them out.
EDIT: From the comments it feels like the consensus is either a public shaming or hiding and forgetting about the money. There are other avenues like trying to pressure VC / board members, court, probably more. I wouldn't want this accessible on the internet for the next 50+ years.
However, I want to thank J Wu for doing this. What he did was commendable.
I know tons of freelancers who worked with companies or individuals, and end up not getting paid properly. They often fear loss of potential customer and do not take it public, even though they are fully on the right. Legal battle is often not an option for them. The cost can be hefty and even more importantly, it's a total waste of time. Legal battle breaks concentration on your work and drains you out.
I hope that this kind of dispute settling becomes normalized. Fulfilling one's responsibility is done most effectively when your accountability is tested publicly.
It wasn't worth 10K to Miso. Potential employees are going to google their name and want nothing to do with them. I sure wouldn't.
Their might be some employers that deny J Wu a job based on an honest post like this, but are they really working for in the first place?
Any employer who would have a beef with this is probably not worth working for anyway. Honest people have little to fear from public disclosure of their behavior.
In normal times/contexts, something like this would probably be at least slightly prejudicial to a hiring manager. 1) He appears to have at least somewhat screwed up at the job, in a way which wouldn't have been disclosed otherwise 2) He goes to the public vs. normal legal channels when there is a dispute. While you may not intend to have a dispute, it's always worth knowing how disagreements will be handled.
It doesn't really reflect on him one way or another. It's an interesting story, but the only part that has anything to do with hiring him would be to ask him what went wrong with that data loss and how he learned to minimize the chances of something like that happening in the future.
The fact that someone tried to get an injustice doesn't make less employable. Well, maybe to people who like to take advantage of others. Sounds like a good thing to discourage them.
Maybe worth $10k (clearly worth going nuclear for SOME amount of money or injustice -- $100mm? crimes?), but IMO not worth $300. Especially since "$10k + $300/hr for my costs related to this matter" would be totally reasonable too.
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And in today's crazy bubble market, if you know what a web browser is, you'll probably get hired.
I might not have handled this exactly like J, but I certainly wouldn't think twice about hiring him because of this.
The problem is that lawsuits often take years. These startups are likely going to be (a) 10 times their current size, or (b) out of business, by then. So they can take a "we'll worry about it then" approach, in which case they collect interest on what they should have paid, and offload the risk.
These kinds of unethical startup executives don't fear lawsuits. Not in the least. The suit will be against the company, not the person-- it's very hard to pierce the corporate veil on this sort of issue-- and the individual executive will either be no longer with the company, or very wealthy and successful by then (in which case it's a hired attorney's PITA). Either way, it's not going to hurt him much.
The small-claim lawsuit doesn't have an incentive effect on such a startup because of this binary payoff. The advantage of a PR hit, as a punitive measure, is that it actually reduces the probability of success (rather than trivially reducing the amount of payoff in event of success).