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Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

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Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#101

Post by goatforce5 »

api wrote: post #24
saalweachter wrote: post #15

I wonder if any early Google employees begrudge Charlie (he's the "early Google chef", right?) his millions. An army travels on its stomach. Google's chefs helped make Google the company it is today. Why is it so wrong that they be rewarded?

There is risk associated with working for a startup. Risk that you will suddenly lose your job. Risk that you will lose your health insurance two days before one of your kids requires an operation. It's a level of risk that doesn't exist if you work for the government or some big mega-corp. There's also a level of buy-in that startups demand. You're asked to make it more than "just a job." Even the guy mopping the da…

> Even the guy mopping the damn floor is asked to mop it until it shines, just because "we're all in this together."

Guy I used to work for said one of his proudest moments was hearing the receptionist at the company he had founded was able to buy a house outright with cash from the proceeds of her stock options.

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#102

Post by forensic »

api wrote: post #24
saalweachter wrote: post #15

I wonder if any early Google employees begrudge Charlie (he's the "early Google chef", right?) his millions. An army travels on its stomach. Google's chefs helped make Google the company it is today. Why is it so wrong that they be rewarded?

There is risk associated with working for a startup. Risk that you will suddenly lose your job. Risk that you will lose your health insurance two days before one of your kids requires an operation. It's a level of risk that doesn't exist if you work for the government or some big mega-corp. There's also a level of buy-in that startups demand. You're asked to make it more than "just a job." Even the guy mopping the da…

The elitism openly displayed by Zynga blows my mind. Chefs are somehow too lowly to have their contracts honoured? It's somehow morally wrong that Chefs should make millions?

Only soulless suits and maybe a few key nerd-slaves deserve lots of money! If anyone else gets money, it's a crime against humanity and we must take bold action to rectify it!

Runaway sociopathy is the only way to describe this behaviour.

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#103

Post by Androsynth »

lemming wrote: post #80
ohyes wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is totally true. Your employer is not there to do you any favors. Most likely, they will knife you in the back the minute they get the chance.

This is utter bullshit. And if it's not, anyone reading HN has better options. Let's stop with the all-employers-are-out-to-screw-you rhetoric because it's clearly not true.

Most companies will never be in this position though. What if you were an executive and you suddenly found yourself in a position to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars simply by firing a few employees. At the very least, that's a moral dilemma. It would be very easy to go from 'upstanding and moral' to going flat out existential in that situation. It's a scummy thing to do, but the human brain can justify a lot of crap in those types of situations.

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#104

Post by ggchappell »

One of the paragraphs in this article is mysterious:

> The Journal cited two employees--one who has left Zynga and another that still works with the company--who hired attorneys to reach a settlement that saw them give up some, but not all, of the unvested shares.

Why would a former employee give up shares? Current employees were threatened with firing. But I don't see what hold Zynga has over this person. Why not just keep all the shares?

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#105

Post by ajg1977 »

thezilch wrote: post #59
mmaunder wrote: post #33

Sometimes you just have to sue to enforce a contract and your rights. Many employees either don't realize this or they don't have the stomach for it. If you find yourself in this position, my advice is to play the game and see it through. 1. Don't resign, don't capitulate and hire a good lawyer immediately. If you don't have the cashflow, but are defending a huge pile of stock about to IPO you'll probably find a lawy…

IANAL. Considering the employees are going to be challenging California's "at will" employment laws and the fact that the charges against the employees is performance based, how likely is #2 to have a fighting chance?

Just because California is an "at will" state doesn't mean a company cannot be sued for wrongful termination or constructive dismissal.

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#106

Post by api »

lemming wrote: post #80
ohyes wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is totally true. Your employer is not there to do you any favors. Most likely, they will knife you in the back the minute they get the chance.

This is utter bullshit. And if it's not, anyone reading HN has better options. Let's stop with the all-employers-are-out-to-screw-you rhetoric because it's clearly not true.

If that's true, then the business world needs to do a better job internally policing itself. Behavior like this (and worse... honestly this story is like a 4 on a 1-10 scale) creates exactly this impression.

Clean your own house, or it'll be cleaned for you.

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#107

Post by samstave »

cheald wrote: post #62
joshAg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as an executive, do you think that zynga's executive team gave any thought to the bad press this might generate and the talent that this might scare away? From my perspective, this sort of thing scares me away from companies, because they might do it again in the future.

Honestly? I think this is the execs trying to grab as much stock as possible for themselves pre-IPO, so they can dump it and run. There's no way that this actually turns out to be a net positive for the Company. It's going to make it significantly harder to hire actual talent, it's going to cause morale decay and revolt from within the company, and it erodes Zynga's brand. Literally the only benefit here is that the…

>I think this is the execs trying to grab as much stock as possible for themselves pre-IPO, so they can dump it and run.

This is EXACTLY what is happening - anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded or plain stupid.

When Lockheed bought Savi technology, the RFID company, there were massive stock bonuses given out to the the Savi execs just prior to the sale.

Then they told all the employees who had been there less than 18 months they would get NOTHING for the shares they were hired on with as incentive.

All the other employees were given 15% of what the company had been claiming the street price of the options were.

PLUS they held some significant % of the stock value in an escrow account for some number of months should there be a legal backlash and Lockheed were sues - they were to use the escrow share money on that case...

Pincus is a very very VERY shady character.

Yet another IPO that I would never touch purely on principal alone.

Who wants to be Goldman will be taking this IPO?

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#108

Post by raganwald »

danilocampos wrote: post #76

Wait a minute. What just a damn minute, here. Are you telling me that a company that cheerfully built itself on shady shit like un-removable browser toolbars might continue screwing anyone it wants in the furtherance of its leaders' avarice? I am shocked. Look, it's endearing when people have scrappy stories about their origins. We all act out of desperate vigor when we're up against the wall and far from our goals.…

> I am shocked.

Don’t you mean “Shocked, shocked to find shady business going on in here?”

Your winnings, sir.

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#109

Post by philwelch »

cageface wrote: post #9

Is it just me or is tech particularly sleazy right now?

I went to Startup School in 2009 and 2010, but not this year. In 2009, Mark Pincus was one of the speakers. In 2010, Andrew Mason was one of the speakers. It looks like Pincus spoke again this year.

If a seemingly honest man like pg can't arrange a nice little startup conference without having at least one speaker every year who turns out to be some sort of con man, then yes, I'd have to say tech is particularly sleazy right now. I'm not faulting the Startup School organizers for this, but it's an interesting observation.

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#110

Post by api »

ohyes wrote: post #97
api wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll do a quick summary. Episode 1: (this is the one that most directly affected me) I was working on a very interesting but somewhat far-off technology. I did some tech talks about it, and put them on Google Video. Was approached by a guy who said he was a wealthy early-stage technology investor. He showed me a lot of stuff that indicated that this was the case, had a lot of real people vouching for him, etc. He mad…

> Do they actually teach this s--t in business school? What the hell? I had a friend when I was much younger who got into some shady stuff including drug trafficking, and he told me a lot of stories. None of them approached what I experienced in the "legitimate" business world. I have to ponder that if one made a habit of screwing people over in the drug trafficking and/or shady business, the individual might end up…

Yeah. An armed society is a polite society.
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