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> I am shocked. Don’t you mean “Shocked, shocked to find shady business going on in here?” Your winnings, sir.
It's surely a testament to the quality of Casablanca's writing that its resulting cliches are still so satisfying after all this time.
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> I am shocked. Don’t you mean “Shocked, shocked to find shady business going on in here?” Your winnings, sir.
It's surely a testament to the quality of Casablanca's writing that its resulting cliches are still so satisfying after all this time.
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Just because California is an "at will" state doesn't mean a company cannot be sued for wrongful termination or constructive dismissal.
Constructive dismissal is legal in California.
I think this is just Pincus being a nerd and over rationalizing the situation, instead of just decisively 'pulling the trigger'.
On the other hand, these people were given an offer of X% of the company in exchange for taking lots of risk early on. They took the risk, and now that the value of the company is greater, Pincus is taking the incentive back. So Pincus offloaded personal risk (paying lower salaries + stock instead of just paying market salaries) and then when the risk was gone he is canceling his agreement. I would never trust this man.
Regret has never been a good enough reason in the eyes of a judge to annul a contract. If Zynga agreed to the terms as described they haven't got a leg to stand on. The time to negotiate a contract is before it is signed, not retroactively. If they use the threat of termination then they will lose even more, not only will they not get their stock back, they will also have to pay excessive severance pay due to wrongfu…
...but I'm sure Zynga has some good ones. I don't think they're trying to annul the contract. Essentially, they're saying that these employees are underperforming, and thus they have the right to fire them "with cause". If they straight up fired the employees, those employees would lose out on their unvested shares. They would have nothing. Instead, Zynga is saying, "Give some back and you can stay."
Low and shady. Should we expect anything less from this company? The bright side is, they avoided a mass-firing (likely because engineering talent is still tough to find).
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They aren't being fired for being overpaid, they're being threatened with termination unless they surrender their equity in a privately owned company. Definiton of extortion (from wikipedia): Extortion (also called shakedown, outwresting, and exaction) is a criminal offence which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person(s), entity, or institution, through coercion. What…
That is an inaccurate view of the situation. Unvested shares are not equity. You are acting as if they are being asked to give away something that they own; they are being asked to give up future compensation. I put this in another comment: "However the problem with your math (and most others in this thread) is this: lets say Zynga values me at 4 shares, and I get 1 vested per year. However after two years, and a few…
With the unvested shares, the executives believed they could attract more top talent with the promise of stock. Not anymore they won't.
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The company didn't hire you to work as a 4-share employee, they hired you to work as a 4-share employee with significant upside potential . That is how early startup employees are compensated for the increased risk and lesser salary they take on.
Yes, you and your sibling threads are all correct, but it's not extortion. It's immoral and will certainly hurt them in the future, but it's not extortion. I am simply trying to explain why this is a moral issue and not a legal issue. This is the equivalent of saying: 'your gonna have to take a pay cut or were gonna have to let you go'. It is morally repugnant and goes against everything we believe in the startup com…
Seriously, it's bullshit. It makes me mad not just for the people getting screwed, but for the whole industry. The whole point of giving somebody early equity is that it's a gamble. Sometimes it's worth nothing; sometimes tons. If companies start doing it in a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose fashion, then that really reduces the value of the equity as an incentive.
Zynga isn't just hurting their employees; they're hurting every early-stage startup that comes after them.
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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 slea…
I would fault the Startup School organizers for this. They are creating a community that is catering largely to people who are young, talented, but not experienced. They need to be educating people about how to avoid the pitfalls and scams of the startup world as well as about how to succeed. Instead, they bring scummy fast talkers and put these people up on the stage as ideals. Not only is that teaching the next gen…