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

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

#91

Post by smsm42 »

rb2k_ wrote: post #57
jxi wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

His blogpost was quite questionable imho. Things like these really read as very professional, at least to me: - "Impeccable logic." - ' At this point. You might as well just tell me "fuck you. you didn't sign a contract. boohoo." ' - ' I was starting to feel like they were determined to screw me.' - 'No. I'm not proud of threatening, but I was pissed.' - ' The rest of this chain of emails consists of me double checki…

What "professional" means here? The person is being cheated out of $10K, how one is being professional about it? I do not know any profession that has "being cheated out of $10K" as part of its definition, and engineering professionalism definitely does not help you here. What a true professional would do in such case? Politely ask, get "screw you, we didn't sign anything" and go away? How would that be helpful?

Really, for a professional engineer - which professional way of handling such situation would you recommend, providing that the law road is probably infeasible (you'll spend more in time and money on the lawsuit than you ever have a chance to recover)? As far as I know, there's no app for that and no python module for that, so which professional option should one take?

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

#92

Post by moocow01 »

I applaud this.

I'm really tired of this one way street where employers get to be sleaze-balls behind the mask of a company name while an employee doing anything that skirts the line of not being upstanding is 'irresponsible.'

We need more of this IMHO in that there is way too much practicing of sleazy business techniques in SV if you ask me

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

#93

Post by zasz »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #81

It looks like I'm the only one here that's stunned by the chutzpah of asking for a referral bonus after accidentally nuking the production DB, and costing the company a lot of time and effort to recover it, while on your way out the door for a better opportunity. Regardless of whether or not Miso is right to evade their promise of a bonus, I'm not so quick to heap sympathy upon rremoncake. This certainly isn't the ki…

Aren't these separate incidents? Miso is benefiting from this employee referral, after all.

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

#94

Post by moe »

unreal37 wrote: post #69
SeanDav wrote: post #63

Notice that Miso is not actually denying that they pay the money: "However, we only pay bonuses to employees." They are being hard-nosed about paying someone that is not employed at the current time, even though he was eligible when he was employed. Fail for Miso.

To be fair, most companies in North America would not pay any sort of optional bonus after an employee has quit or been fired. If you quit Dec 31, and the company usually pays out annual bonuses on Jan 30, don't expect a check.

The bonus was due before he left the company.

Pretty clear cut for me. The conditions were met, they owe him $10k. Maybe not legally but certainly morally.

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

#95

Post by Iwaan »

I was an intern at a Startup in Silicon Valley and experienced something very similar. I got screwed over an even higher amount. The CEO argued, that the reward does not apply to interns. I took him to court and won. Emails are legally binding just as any other expression of intent.

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

#96

Post by yoav »

This is like deciding to leave a company and emailing them a month later to make sure their product roadmap is still the same.

The bonus was an incentive, which you clearly didn't care about because: a) you forgot about it, and b) you referred your friend who you would have referred anyway

Making it "public" now is just vindictive. If you forgetting about your own bonus for months, and then another month after leaving the company still leaves you eligible for said non-contractual bonus, then what _is_ the statute of limitations? Would you email them 10 years later and ask for the bonus?

If Steve Jobs promised you a company trip to Hawaii if you got the Macintosh shipped on time, and EVERYONE forgot and didn't care, or Steve took everyone out for sushi instead, would you email Apple inc. tomorrow and insist they send you to Hawaii??

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

#97

Post by ditojim »

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.

the email could have said 10k for _current_ employees or something to that effect. i am also leaning towards siding with the founders here, not knowing all the facts. how much time and productivity did it cost the company when this employee lost the data? more or less than 10k? either side of it, does it really make sense to hand someone a 10k bonus after they made a major mistake and then quit shortly after?

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

#98

Post by silentscope »

this same shit happened with me when I worked retail, but I didn't quit until they told me I would never get the money. I never quit and then went back to get it. If memory serves, the phrase is "take the money and run" not "run and then try to go back for the money." seriously dude, you forgot about 10k? who does that?

now that I'm reading more though, if they didn't stipulate "you have to be a current employee to redeem your bonus" from the get go, they probably should have and it was asking for trouble not to do so. if they're casually going to toss around 10k in informal emails it clearly didn't mean that much to them anyway. unless there's more to the story, ie an employee contract with a bonus clause in it. which there probably is because we've only read on side of this story.

miso has way more to lose here than one engineer, if I was miso, I would've met immediately with legal counsel and him and hammered out a solution, not fired emailed back n forth.

dumb moves all around.

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

#99

Post by sbisker »

rremoncake wrote: post #7
rhizome wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also don't have any systems people who know to run backups.

To my coworkers defense the service was very new and we had plans to put in a backup system. Bad timing I guess.

"With great power comes great responsibility."

No one is blaming your co-workers - but when your founders take investment money and insist on keeping themselves in charge, they also take on responsibility for the performance of the company and its technology. Just because their legal liability is limited, they aren't off the hook for what we think of them running their product this way.

Blowing the production database is bad, yes - but a LOT of bad days for top shelf programmers start with "rm". It sounds like you owned up to your mistake and put in the late nights to fix it in a way that your bosses didn't...best of luck to you.

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

#100

Post by raylu »

jtchang wrote: post #32

Thank you for posting this. As a community of entrepreneurs and hackers it helps all of us know what happens behind the scenes. Some people may view it as airing their dirty laundry but I see it as a way to keep people honest. The fact that you dropped the production database sucks. However you stayed around and fixed it. I can't really say anything more. My bet is we all handle lots of sensitive data around here. Ou…

Based on the post, it doesn't sound like he stuck around and fixed it.
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