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Tell us your naughty stories

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Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#181
post #50
post #43

I am a 25% partner of website X, which earns in the low six-figures. The 75% partner has a majority rules attitude, and all accounts and passwords, and when he decided unilaterally to take a nice salary, and then reneg on a buyout agreement, I could see things turning wrong. Having built the site (technical cofounder, translated as: free coder) I have a backend to all of the user's email addresses (10,000 or so, havi…

Even as a minority stakeholder you have rights. It's possible a lawyer could help you achieve a settlement of some kind. By doing something illegal (like stealing proprietary information) you're severely decreasing your chances things working out well.

It is a gray area. A cost of inexperience too--I have learned a lot about partnership contracts and operating agreements. The other party choked off my profit share to the point where a lawyer is a heavy expense for me right now.

Next time they will be settled from the outset :)

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#182

I used to work as a salaried employee for a consulting firm. I'd record my hours on a timesheet so that they could bill the right clients, but anything over 40 hours a week was ignored on my paycheck. The understanding was that if ever your hours dropped below 40, you could bill an overhead number to make up for the difference, thus the fairness of not getting paid for overtime. So a year in, I only managed to find 3…

What about benefits? Did you still have them? Billing hourly doesn't usually include benefits like healthcare and thus isn't as profitable as it may appear.

Btw I learned from a high-up exec at a consulting firm that they make a good chunk of their money from the hours you work above 40. In his words: "that is pure profit"...because like you said, you only get paid for 40 as full-time employee. The consulting firm, though, bills by the hour.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#183
post #43

I am a 25% partner of website X, which earns in the low six-figures. The 75% partner has a majority rules attitude, and all accounts and passwords, and when he decided unilaterally to take a nice salary, and then reneg on a buyout agreement, I could see things turning wrong. Having built the site (technical cofounder, translated as: free coder) I have a backend to all of the user's email addresses (10,000 or so, havi…

Why oh why would you agree to become the technical cofounder for 25% of the company when the other cofounder takes 75%? Was there a bunch of infrastructure, technical or otherwise already in place so that your portion of the work was that negligible? In any case, yeah you still have right with your 25% contact a lawyer.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#184
post #161
post #67

Six years ago my brother rented out a beach house in another state for the summer and would let me stay there with some friends. One fun summer week a good friend and I were enjoying the house to ourselves and decided to make a 7-11 run to pick up some much needed snacks and other provisions. When we got back from our adventure my key wouldn't open the door. Unbeknownst to us, this was the one time that closing the d…

Reminds me of one summer day when it was about 32°C outside, I came home in the afternoon and decided to kick back and placed my wallet, keys and phone on my desk. Though a while later I went to put something in the recycling bin just outside our backdoor and just before it slammed shut I realised it was locked though it was too late. I definitely didn't want to be stuck outside waiting for someone else to come home.…

When locked out of a very used (435,000 eventually miles maxed it out) Toyota pickup I had just bought, I sacrificed a windshield wiper for a thin strip of steel, bent a hook in it and fished my keychain from the driver's seat. Got in, drove to WalMart and got new wiper blades.

Wait a second. This isn't naughty, just sort of boasting.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#185
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not the best course of action for a girl you've only known for a few months though. The crux was finding a way to live together for long enough to decide whether we wanted to do so for good. Spoiler Alert: We did.

Ignoring emotional issues, a proper pre-nup would basically let you treat a marriage as a simple way around those restrictions without large long-term ramifications if you decide to change course.

Acck, pre-nup contracts in many countries can be easily overturned, even if it's done all properly with plenty of time and so on.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#186

Free College Hack: In high school, I had a rough time with family stuff and my grades started to slack. I knew that getting a scholarship would be crucial if I wanted to go to college in the future. However, my grades simply weren't going to cut it for the Florida Lottery Bright Futures scholarship. I needed a 3.5+ GPA, a 1250+ SAT score, and 60 hours of community service in order to get their best 100% scholarship.…

Geez, awesome story. How was the rain forest? Motivation for moving there? Do you regret turning down the scholarship?

Rain forest was incredible. Howler monkeys put me to sleep every night, and I never had such vivid of dreams as I did when living there.

Motivation for moving there: Just something I felt like I needed to do. I kind of developed my own alternative college course, which consisted of traveling the world a bit and learning a few salable skills along the way.

Do I regret turning down the scholarship: Long story short, no. I knew I wanted to eventually be in business for myself, and I knew the field I was interested in (programming) wasn't being adapted quickly enough by higher education. I figured I'd be much better off coding my own projects and learning from there.

Basically, I had a realization that there were two types of people in the world: those who expected the world to act a certain way, (ie going to school, getting educated == guaranteed success) and those who supposed the world was open to influence (ie create your own reality).

I decided that I would rather take responsibility for creating my own world. It was definitely a painful experience at times, but has been worth it.

Now I'm working at a company I love doing incredibly challenging work with people who are incredible. So no, I don't regret it.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#187

Free College Hack: In high school, I had a rough time with family stuff and my grades started to slack. I knew that getting a scholarship would be crucial if I wanted to go to college in the future. However, my grades simply weren't going to cut it for the Florida Lottery Bright Futures scholarship. I needed a 3.5+ GPA, a 1250+ SAT score, and 60 hours of community service in order to get their best 100% scholarship.…

I did something similar - I'd already dropped out of high school, so I went to an adult education high school, told them I was emancipated from my parents and thus legally an adult, and could I get an adult degree? I took some tests, filled out some packets, and got almost a 4.0 GPA in the span of around two months. I then scored in the 1200's on the SAT (near perfect verbal, quite bad math since I never got above algebra before dropping out), and got an almost full ride scholarship to UMass (needed to take some loans).

I dropped out my Sophomore year when I realized college was as lame as high school, and worked full time on entrepreneurship. Luckily I'd met an older guy who thought I was bright and a hard worker, so we business partnered and built a company that went through some iterations, and that paid my way through life. Later I went and paid cash to study business.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the occasion, but yes, bonus if you appear to work there. My favorite place to go is the women's bathroom. They always have soap, paper towels and usually something like hair gel or other amenities. Men's bathrooms have nothing , plus women are cool about it.

And the reverse is that if there is a line to the women's bathroom, use the men's. I never understood the segregated bathroom idea.

Indeed, although I'm not sure if the women would like to use the men's bathrooms. I should compare toilets next time I visit the women's (I mostly only go there to wash my hands).

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#189

Sold instructions on ebay about how to beat a little known tax law [it's now plugged]. A friend went to work for the tax man and in training they were told about me and how it's so important to not let these tricks get out, as it could cost the country lots of money. I promptly stopped as I didn't realize I was on their radar! Reverse engineered an algorithm from a huge international company who kept it under lock an…

Aren't those little known tax laws usually easy for them to give you a ton of crap about, disregard and have you go through courts to actually get the benefit?
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