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I'm a former Miso engineer and the founders screwed me out of 10k

jzhwu.blogspot.com

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Re: I'm a former Miso engineer and the founders screwed me out of 10k

#41

Post by rhizome »

zobzu wrote: post #33
rhizome wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to defend people who made a bad mistake worse. It's nothing personal, competent systems people are in short supply these days.

Do you claim of never having made any mistake? Last I checked, humans do mistake all the time. Not related to systems, or anything really. It's all about being prepared for those and attempting to make as few as possible.

In order to avoid mistakes, you have to know they exist. So either they didn't know backups were important or they declined to prioritize and implement them in anticipation of their launch.

However, I sense you're taking issue with my "bad mistake worse" comment. I don't think anybody is going to argue that dropping a production database is a real mistake. Mistakes happen, and companies (i.e. management) should work to ensure that all the bases are covered, which weren't in this case.

Re: I'm a former Miso engineer and the founders screwed me out of 10k

#42

Post by eli »

ghshephard wrote: post #30

This part sounds dubious: "For example, we don't pay people outside of Miso when they refer us candidates that we hire." Any recruiter worth their salt is getting a minimum of 15% on first years salary right now, and many are getting 20%. On a typical $150K Salary that would be $30K if the same candidate comes through a recruiter. Perhaps it's just the case that Miso doesn't use external recruiters, and so the statem…

I would think very few startups use recruiters -- who has that much extra cash laying around?

Re: I'm a former Miso engineer and the founders screwed me out of 10k

#43

Post by ruggeri »

jasontan wrote: post #10

While this is unfortunate and it sounds like you deserve better (I'd like to hear the other side of the story first), I would discourage against taking this public. This is an issue between you and the founders, and no one else. "Warning" your former Miso coworkers should happen privately -- this post brings them the wrong kind of attention, but they did nothing to deserve it. Future employers who read this post will…

Hmm. I disagree. It's a small community built on trust. The cautionary tails I read on HN have changed the way I do business. I don't see anything unprofessional about going public. Think of it as a bug report :-)

If there's a code of silence about this, what levers do employees have? Are lawyers the only recourse? If anything, I think it's admirable to go public; the ecosystem is hurt without honest reporting. And the author pays the cost, of course, because future employers will have a look at this...

Re: I'm a former Miso engineer and the founders screwed me out of 10k

#45

Post by pudakai »

jasontan wrote: post #10

While this is unfortunate and it sounds like you deserve better (I'd like to hear the other side of the story first), I would discourage against taking this public. This is an issue between you and the founders, and no one else. "Warning" your former Miso coworkers should happen privately -- this post brings them the wrong kind of attention, but they did nothing to deserve it. Future employers who read this post will…

Tough call. I have to think would I hire somebody who did something like this - probably on a case by case basis.

In this case, it does seem (from his side of the story) that he was in the right & gave Miso plenty of time/warning.

All that being said, though, I would probably have to do the due diligence were I to know this about a candidate, that by itself is a negative regardless of the merits of the issue.

OTOH, an incident such as this might actually be a positive in a candidate where you are looking for someone who isn't a pushover.

So (IMO) it is hard to characterize it as objectively good or bad to a potential employer, at least this one, other than it is a flag that may need to be checked. It certainly is a good point of departure for getting a candidate to talk about himself.

In general, before going public w/something like this, one always has to consider "Never argue with an idiot because the people watching may not be able to tell the difference".

Re: I'm a former Miso engineer and the founders screwed me out of 10k

#46

Post by rb2k_ »

chasing wrote: post #39
rb2k_ wrote: post #35

Honestly, the answers that the Miso founders gave seemed very professional and I think am a bit on their side in this one. If OP had asked for the bonus while still being at Miso, it seems like he would simply have gotten it. Seeing as a non-contractual bonus is an investment in the employee that the company does in addition to the usual compensation, and seeing as OP quit on his own and doesn't have a compensation a…

That's not really how it works. If it's in an e-mail, it's a contract. Me: "Hey, if you do X I'll give you $10k." You: [Does X.] "Can I have my $10k?" Me: "Nah, the moment's passed. I'm not really feeling it anymore." Nope. That's sleazy behavior.

As long as the email isn't as fully formulated as an actual contract I usually tend to see them more as a declaration of an intent that isn't 100% fixed yet and is missing some of the details. (such as: you won't get it after you decided to quit and work somewhere else).

That's usually the nice thing about startups, you don't have to fill out gobs of paperwork and have hours of meetings to get these small perks figured out, it's more of a "good will" thing imho.

But I guess I just have a different opinion when it comes to things that don't have 2 signatures at the bottom of them.

Re: I'm a former Miso engineer and the founders screwed me out of 10k

#47

Post by inuhj »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #19
DanBlake wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont agree. 99% of this time this type of stuff stays private because the employee is fearful of repercussions and as a result, new employees never get warned about the mess they are walking into. Thats why I upvoted this- It takes balls to air this publicly and thats the only thing you can do to stop shit behavior like this from happening and scare other companys into treating people right. So long as companys thi…

I think it's worthwhile taking stuff like this public but threatening beforehand is a big no-no.

I've had customers "threaten" me with the same. Some people get really unlucky(had a customer receive two defective products in a row and the third time we were OOS). I've never begrudged a customer for sharing their experience with others as long as its a factual account. In fact with that customer I confirmed his account of events and apologized publicly.

Re: I'm a former Miso engineer and the founders screwed me out of 10k

#48

Post by jxi »

rb2k_ wrote: post #35

Honestly, the answers that the Miso founders gave seemed very professional and I think am a bit on their side in this one. If OP had asked for the bonus while still being at Miso, it seems like he would simply have gotten it. Seeing as a non-contractual bonus is an investment in the employee that the company does in addition to the usual compensation, and seeing as OP quit on his own and doesn't have a compensation a…

The engineer communicated very professionally too. Just because you don't HAVE to not be an asshole, doesn't mean you SHOULD be an asshole. I agree with the engineer here since really this is something they promised at least informally and not delivering on it out of spite is just douchey.

Re: I'm a former Miso engineer and the founders screwed me out of 10k

#49

Post by rhizome »

mrbill wrote: post #13

Taking it public like this comes across as really petty and childish.

It serves to inform potential employees of what they should pay attention to when negotiating with this company. Is it that it puts some tiny bit of negotiating power into the hands of potential employees that makes it distasteful for you?

Re: I'm a former Miso engineer and the founders screwed me out of 10k

#50

Post by mgkimsal »

Ugh.

I had someone not pay me $9k, and have filed a lawsuit. We're closing in on 4 years now (aug 2008) and still no court date. Courts take time.

I wrestled with 'name and shame', and in some respect, wish I had named. I found out that this company/person had done this to others, and one of the guys 'named' him publicly on a blog. He got a threatening call, telling him to take it down and he'd get paid. Of course, he took it down and didn't get paid - that was I hear this a lot - "don't go public with these sorts of things, you'll get a bad reputation, blah blah blah". I'm really torn. I get it, but... if more people started doing this - going public when BS like this is perpetrated - there'd be far less resistance to hiring/contracting with people who have air this sort of stuff.

I've been self-employed for 5 years, have contracted on dozens of projects, and have 2 instances where I got shafted out of money owed. If I was to publicize those, but also have, say 25 other projects under my belt with fine referrals, wouldn't that say more about the 2 shafters vs me? And again, if everyone was doing this, it would seem a lot more normal.

Yeah, if I publicly trashed every company I worked with, my 'trashing score' would be pretty high, and people would want to stay away from me. But really, I'd prefer people know that I publicly praise good clients and trash bad ones, and if they think they're going to be a bad client, to not bother reaching out. I'd rather there be a filter there which keeps crap clients away in the first place.

The thing is, we all have to start doing this at the same time. I do agree that legal proceedings are worthwhile in some cases, in many cases, people are getting shafted out of hundreds or thousands, and it's often not worth the time to 'go legal'. The habitual scumbags know this and take advantage of it, continually rolling through contractors. They know most of them will just leave and won't make a public fuss, because they want to be 'employable' and not be known as a 'troublemaker'. Someone who doesn't pay me for contractual work done is the troublemaker, but somehow that seems to get lost.

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