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Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup
231–240 of 619 posts
Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup
#232I think the title should be changed back. The author glosses over the single, real biggest red flag: She never received any paystubs and the company was late on payroll as of before she was hired I have never, ever been paid without either a paystub (as an employee) or generating an invoice which the business then paid (as a freelancer). The outright refusal to share how they arrived at the figure on her cashier's ch…
This is not a huge flag. When a company starts up, it's difficult for them to get the money operating as per regular. He got paid - that's what matters. The paystub is a minor thing/
Startup or not, you don't offload the risks of making payroll onto your employees.
Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup
#233"About a month in, our interim leader returned to Korea, and a woman was brought in who had worked at several video game companies. She used to know our CEO’s in college. She was kind, thoughtful, and attentive. I knew the company would eat her alive. After our boss departed, I took over a few of his duties. One of them was “viral marketer.” I was now creating ad campaigns on Facebook in an attempt to bring monthly a…
CAREFUL! That link has a boobytrapped payload that roots Android devices and installs malware (latest Android 6.0 device). Probably a dodgy ad network injecting it.
Best visit with noscript enabled.
Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just look at the blog too. I'm not sure who thought that a blog post entitled "10 WAYS TO SURVIVE AT WORK WITHOUT SLEEP" would be a hit with job seekers. (Not to mention that 100% of their blog content -- 7 posts -- was posted 3 days ago)
The content to it was horrendous. Just scanned the 10 points out of morbid curiosity, and the last one is "see a doctor."
Seems like they think its normal to work tirelessly through out the day and night.
Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup
#235Red Flag 4.5: The high percentage of H1Bs with little experience. This visa is meant to be for people with irreplaceable skills, not cheap labour.
How is it that an "H1B with little experience" is even possible, then?
Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup
#236Has there ever been an instance of late payroll (as opposed to eg sales commission checks being calculated wrong) where the company actually pulled out of the nosedive? It seems like it's almost always the death knell.
Absolutely yes, though it depends on the transparency of the rest of the team really. I have been involved with three companies in my career which pulled out of this seeming nosedive. One of the companies was going through a really horrible time. They had just got done releasing software that was horribly behind schedule which relieved their customers, but it was still stressful. They were working on settling two law…
These are great stories, thank you! What about the third company..?
Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup
#237It was done in an afternoon according to its creator:
https://mobile.twitter.com/WrkRiot/status/769357556762324992
https://mobile.twitter.com/tessstevens/status/76935690644803...
Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
Outside of the edit window for my comment, but wanted to add: the H1B situation sounds fishy as hell. 8 H1Bs costs a lot of money, which the company does not seem to abound with. It seems like something weird might be going on here - if the founders are willing to forge receipts and lie about the company, it might not be beyond them to hold on to passports or some such for "immigration reasons", which would then expl…
I want to add that with the H1b lottery being around 20-30% for the past couple of years, being able to hire 8 H1Bs mean that they applied for ~30-40 people. I definitely would lean toward the other comments here that the situation is extremely phony
You can bet that those were transfers from some outsourcing company.
Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup
#239I found the bit about the negotiated salary of particular note. I have never included severance in my negotiations, mostly because i have always left my jobs willingly. Is that something more common than i know of? What is a reasonable target to aim for?
In a recent discussion, someone looking into a VP role said he was pushing for 6 months. Someone else pointed out that some wage laws dictate a specific amount of severance that usually depends on the amount of time that you work there. Most companies go above this though (e.g. the law says 1 week severance per year at the company, but some large companies peg that at 1 month/year instead). If you negotiate for a har…
One would hope that after 10 years they'd been promoted and renegotiated contracts
Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it still libel or defamation if it's all true?
No, but that's not the point. Not everyone has $50k and the time to fight a libel/defamation suit.
California has a broad anti-SLAPP law that would keep this from costing $50K. She would likely win attorney fees as well. IANAL.