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

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

#191

Post by mgkimsal » Thu, May 10, 2012, 10:09 PM UTC

droithomme wrote: post #129

mgkimsal wrote: post #50

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, h…

Thanks for sharing your personal experience with this, I've also been through similar things. On the "take it down and he'd get paid" issue, one has to be very careful. There have been a few news stories where this has happened, the ex-employee agrees, and then the company goes public with a "employee was attempting to extort $10,000 from us" angle, painting the employee they cheated as some sort of criminal. The spi…

Yeah that would suck, and I wouldn't have put it past that individual in question.

In my particular case, I had all my documentation in a row, but still didn't choose to 'go public', tho in retrospect I somewhat wish I had.

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

#192

Post by temphn » Thu, May 10, 2012, 10:12 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #128

MartinCron wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone might not want to hire him because they see his behavior as vindictive and immature. Not that I agree with that analysis, but there is a risk of that perception.

How big of a risk, do you think? The point I'm driving at is that this is (obviously) seen to be taboo behavior, but I'm not sure that anybody would find this and visit repercussions upon the author. Additionally, a lot of the taboo might be based on "word getting around." Well, how many times have you heard of management badmouthing people to other companies? Ever? I'm not sure the blacklist implied in some of these…

Absolutely a huge risk. This is a signal for litigious behavior. Who knows what could set this guy off? This time it's $10k. Maybe next time it's something else. There are a lot of smart people out there, many of whom are more reliable than this guy. Pass for sure.

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

#193

Post by jacquesm » Thu, May 10, 2012, 10:12 PM UTC

adgar wrote: post #148

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…

> Josh, let me talk to Tim. > After you lost our data and caused our entire company to scramble for 3 days, I am hesitant. Extremely professional. They blew me away with that one.

Only 'a' has nothing to do with 'b'. Those things are independent.

Also, any company that allows a single person to 'lose their data and cause the entire company to scramble for 3 days' has some issues with separation of duties.

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

#194

Post by mikeash » Thu, May 10, 2012, 10:13 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #186

temphn wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 This guy Joshua Z.H. Wu does not come out looking good in this blog post. He doesn't realize it, but he just lost a lot more than $10k in lifetime earnings too. Someone willing to nuke something that their friends/coworkers built in this fashion is just not someone you ever want to hire. You find this kind of crap on Google, and you just don't call him back or offer an interview. After all employers are human too,…

I find the reactions here fascinating. There's a hugely bimodal distribution here between people who sympathize with the employee (I'm in that set: the guy's out ten thousand dollars, who cares about feelings or "employers being human" at that scale?) and the employer. I'd guess the latter are mostly founders, or people lurking here in the hope of someday being founders. And that makes me sad that so many of you thin…

I agree. I'm having a really hard time understanding the people who are defending the company here.

I can understand, if not sympathize with, the guys at the company doing what they did. Emotions get in the way, and it sounds like they were kind of angry. In that situation, it's only human, even if not right, to decide the answer first ("no") and then rationalize it.

But I can't understand why you'd defend them without any skin in the game. Maybe people don't think that an exchange which isn't written out in legalese and signed doesn't constitute an obligation? Maybe they're trying to approach it from some sort of karmic perspective, where somehow fucking up the database makes him no longer deserve the money he was promised for something completely unrelated?

It's bizarre. And troubling. Personally, I would say that this is about as cut and dried as it comes.

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

#195

Post by teyc » Thu, May 10, 2012, 10:14 PM UTC

10k for a start up looking for a revenue model is a lot of money. It is effectively another month's runway.

If an offer has been made, and the person is still with the company, then it is not only a contract, but a business necessity.

Obviously, from an ethical perspective 10k promised is 10k owed, and regardless of how unhappy the CEO is with gaining one employee only to lose another one, we all recognize the value of keeping our word. The CEO should chalk it up to be more careful about these type of terms in the future.

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

#196

Post by mikeash » Thu, May 10, 2012, 10:15 PM UTC

backspace wrote: post #132

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…

I disagree. Handling things professionally and keeping people honest are two different things. There is no "service to the SV community" that this guy is doing by airing dirty laundry. If you've been wronged by your former company, handle it on your own. Shaming the company is not going to help you, the company, or anyone else. What you're effectively suggesting is that your "service" is to warn everyone to stay away…

> Once you leave, you're not entitled to anything more from the company.

Can you explain how this works, exactly? How does quitting one's job wipe clean any debt from the company to the now-former employee? Can they refuse to send him his last paycheck too?

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

#197

Post by calinet6 » Thu, May 10, 2012, 10:16 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #158

cletus wrote: post #130

"Name and shame" is a thorny issue. Opponents are right in the same way you shouldn't badmouth former employers in job interviewers. It's not fair but it makes you look worse. You just kind of have to suck it up and move on. When companies screw you out of money, you should name and shame them (IMHO). Trust me, over the years I've probably lost out on all told $50,000 or more that people never paid. In some cases it…

I just don't understand the mentality behind looking for reasons not to pay out bonuses. I see it all the time. It baffles me. When people have credible claims to incentive compensation, just freaking pay them. Almost by definition, we're talking about sums of money with very little marginal impact on the company; those same sums often have unpredictably huge impacts on employees. Forward-looking, employees-only, wha…

> Almost by definition, we're talking about sums of money with very little marginal impact on the company; those same sums often have unpredictably huge impacts on employees.

This should be the way every employer sees bonuses. The have huge potential negative and positive impacts, with most of the negative being mitigated by adhering to the rule, "don't be a dick." When in doubt, pay them anyway. The complex positive effects you can't ever fully predict will almost always outweigh the minor negative and predictable impact to your bottom line.

Same goes for not giving refunds to customers, and using the right-hand lane to attempt to pass on the highway. It might seem like the best thing to do at the time, but some unpredictable event out of left field will put you three miles back and cursing your short-sighted decisions before you can say "Oldsmobile."

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

#198

Post by bitops » Thu, May 10, 2012, 10:16 PM UTC

Regardless of whether or not this person is in the right, and it seems like there's some controversy, the Miso founders emails could be seen as typical for someone who wants to keep their money. It may be that the OP is entitled to the money legally, but the reasons many people get away with stiffing others is that once you say "I'll sue" it takes a lot to really follow up on that. Sadly, I speak from personal experience.

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

#199

Post by thaumaturgy » Thu, May 10, 2012, 10:18 PM UTC

MartinCron wrote: post #182

thaumaturgy wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to do with the relatedness of those incidents. Again, since apparently people missed it: 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. You hire a plumber to do a major job. You're in a hurry. You tell the plumber, I'll pay you a bonus if you finish this by (date). The plumber accidentally floods a downstairs room in the…

How excited are you to give it to him? The scenario implies that the impact of the production db nuke was equal or greater than the bonus. Depending on the context, the impact could range from trivial to catastrophic. The fact that it wasn't backed up only makes it worse. Sometimes I joke that correctly working yet poorly-written code is "conceptually broken". Similarly, any important data that isn't backed up is alr…

Sure, but it doesn't take a development team two to three days to recover "conceptually lost" data (as according to the post).

If you're about to touch the production database in a way that could potentially end catastrophically, and there aren't backups, you really should stop and consider the meaning of life before proceeding. Preferably, you decide that backups are the meaning of life, and even if it's an imperfect backup, you decide to manually export the table(s) you're working on. Or something.

He didn't do that. It's a rookie mistake. It cost the company two to three days of development team time to recover from it.

For a community that seems to pride itself on being the best of the bunch at this stuff, I am super surprised that the response here wasn't, "You touched prod without a backup first?! Are you daft?", but was instead, "Miso is a bad company, you need to lawyer up and get what they owe you."

Or, to put it another way: if there were any justice at all, this story would follow rremoncake around for just as long as it follows Miso around.

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

#200

Post by menocchio » Thu, May 10, 2012, 10:18 PM UTC

The comments are really interesting on this story. They break out into a few types:

- this is a good/bad way to get your $10K

- this is a good/bad way to have a job in the future

- this guy who's out $10K is a douche/everyday hero

- this is really/really not a bonus, and that is relevant because [ ]

- bonuses are forward/backward looking and therefore [ ]

I also see some, but not enough, in my opinion, of the following:

keep your promises, whether they are tacit or formal, expensive or cheap, connected or not connected to some other issue, defensible or not defensible in court. Just keep your promises. Regardless of spin, regardless of how you feel emotionally, regardless of how busy or distracted you are. If you forget, or lag, and then are reminded, apologize and pay up. You can still say the guy is a douche if you want to, or scold him for his bad taste, or bad skills, or whatever. That's really a separate deal.