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Skype Fires Executives, Avoiding Payouts

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Re: Skype Fires Executives, Avoiding Payouts

#51

Post by gvnonor »

gaius wrote: post #46
Luyt wrote: post #43

"Microsoft announced the Skype acquisition on May 10 and plans to connect it to Outlook e-mail, Xbox game console, Windows mobile phones and corporate-phone software." This is phase #1 of Microsoft's usual "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy. Right now they embrace Skype and build it into some of their products. The next step will be to enhance the Skype protocol with extra Outlook and Windows Phone options; these…

FUD, FUD, FUD and that's easy to prove: Hotmail on the Mac works just fine.

Are you being sarcastic?

Re: Skype Fires Executives, Avoiding Payouts

#52

Post by lambda »

Luyt wrote: post #43

"Microsoft announced the Skype acquisition on May 10 and plans to connect it to Outlook e-mail, Xbox game console, Windows mobile phones and corporate-phone software." This is phase #1 of Microsoft's usual "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy. Right now they embrace Skype and build it into some of their products. The next step will be to enhance the Skype protocol with extra Outlook and Windows Phone options; these…

The Skype protocols are already proprietary and not published (I haven't checked if they're patented). It's not like Skype is an open standard or anything. This is one company that sells proprietary products buying another that sells proprietary products.

Microsoft would be stupid to kill Mac and Linux support for Skype (perhaps they may kill just Linux support). The value in a communication technology is in how many people can use it; the more people who are on it, the more it attracts. If they start cutting people off, it will become far less appealing for anyone to use, and very easy for a competitor without such restrictions on their network to steal customers.

Re: Skype Fires Executives, Avoiding Payouts

#53

Post by bediger »

shimon wrote: post #32
mrkurt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like it was explicitly to get around the trigger clauses in the contract. They likely had acceleration for change of control, and fired people before the "event" that would have triggered that acceleration.

Don't these contracts typically require termination with cause in order to interrupt vesting? Not that that's a perfect solution, but it should at least make these more blatant acts a bit easier to pursue in court.

I bet that the "with cause" part would be pretty easy to find. Every company I've worked for that had official policies wrote them so vaguely and all encompassing that every single employee was in violation. Some of the "don't introduce 3rd party software to the network" policies, when read strictly, make every single developer who writes a small automation script a violator of the policy.

Re: Skype Fires Executives, Avoiding Payouts

#54

Post by [deleted] »

pmjordan wrote: post #45
riffic wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OPEN STANDARDS are the alternative. XMPP and its sister protocol Jingle are all described in detail in either RFC or XEP documentation.

Are there any implementations of it that actually work well through NAT and which have a UI that non-technical people can use? We use Skype a lot - iChat would be fine, too, but seems to require port forwarding on both ends, which isn't going to happen anytime soon. Facetime forces you to use video, which isn't always what you want.

[deleted]

Re: Skype Fires Executives, Avoiding Payouts

#55

Post by scott_s »

ary wrote: post #5

Stay classy Skype. I wish there was an alternative that matched Skype's previous good qualities (or better). The obfuscation of the OS X Skype client UI, plus the fact that they're now owned by Microsoft has cast a shadow on what used to be a great service (to me at least). Surely there is room in the market for a serious competitor.

I use Gmail's video chat.

Re: Skype Fires Executives, Avoiding Payouts

#56

Post by meterplech »

Just when I (and everyone else) was saying how horrible this is, I was shocked to find out the Google did something very similar to a Director of Operations named Brian Reid. They fired him 9 days before the IPO- leaving him with 119,000 unvested options at $.30 strike price. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_(computer_scientist)

Re: Skype Fires Executives, Avoiding Payouts

#57

Post by nhangen »

I hate to get spiritual here, but this is a major dose of bad karma, and I won't be surprised when shit hits the fan and something happens to these companies during, or after the deal.

In the meantime, I'm looking for a way to get off of Skype. I wish Google would spend more time improving Google Voice and Google Chat. I wonder if Apple has plans to turn Facetime into a Skype alternative?

Re: Skype Fires Executives, Avoiding Payouts

#58

Post by euroclydon »

meterplech wrote: post #56

Just when I (and everyone else) was saying how horrible this is, I was shocked to find out the Google did something very similar to a Director of Operations named Brian Reid. They fired him 9 days before the IPO- leaving him with 119,000 unvested options at $.30 strike price. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_(computer_scientist)

If they're not vested, they're not vested. Maybe developers should strive for their delivery schedule to tightly coincide with their vesting schedule.

Re: Skype Fires Executives, Avoiding Payouts

#59

Post by cpeterso »

djcapelis wrote: post #28
r00fus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reduction of equity stake after negotiated compensation just reeks of pure theft. So what are good employees supposed to do? Doubtless the ones who did not get diluted were the big money while the workers get shafted (as usual). Kleptocracy at it's finest.

> So what are good employees supposed to do? Leave, if there's any justice in the world. This is how the market works. The reason you don't screw your employees like this is not just because you're a nice person, but because it costs you money in the long term.

> because it costs you money in the long term.

And makes lots more in the short term. The long term never seems to arrive for companies' current executives.

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