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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

#341

Post by abhaga »

justinhj wrote: post #305
calinet6 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's really not the same as giving refunds to a customer. Keeping your customers happy is really important. Keeping your employees happy is also important. Keeping ex-employees happy is really not that important. Personally I might have paid it out, after all they got the referral so it's fair. But it's not MY company's money. In my experience as a games programmer bonuses were very rarely paid to people that left. T…

> It's really not the same as giving refunds to a customer. Keeping your customers happy is really important.

Reason for giving refunds is because it is the right thing to do. That is what should be the basis of decision. Otherwise you run into troubled waters as soon as you need to choose between 2 parties. Who should you make happy? Customer or the investor? Customer or the employee? employee or the investor? And such situations arise all the time.

> The soul reason for them is employee retention

But that is not the reason for referral bonus. Its aim is to encourage people to refer their friends for hiring. By doing this, do you think Miso has achieved the desired effect on the current employees? To put it more bluntly, do you want your employees, who have a possibility of leaving with in 6 months time frame to refer their friends? Given how difficult hiring is and if they are looking to hire, I would pay the referral bonus even if they left before it can be claimed.

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

#342

Post by rdl »

Somrat is actually a friend of mine (former coworker...), and I emailed him to point out the HN explosion over this, and ask if they'd consider paying the $10k.

Apparently he'd already done so, and commented on the blog:

http://jzhwu.blogspot.com/2012/05/im-former-miso-engineer-an...

Somrat NiyogiMay 10, 2012 9:37 PM I'm CEO of Miso. Let me start by saying, this was our mistake and we apologize. We reached out to Joshua Wu and we are paying his referral bonus.

Let me dig into this further. We have a policy in place where if a Miso employee refers a full-time hire to Miso, after the referred employee has worked at Miso for 6 full months, the referring Miso employee will receive a bonus. Pretty standard stuff. What we didn’t make clear is what the timing is and other requirements for receiving the referral bonus. We did not have a clear and complete policy and it was our responsibility to communicate fully with our employees. This is clearly our fault.

Our referral program is still in place and we will continue to encourage our team to refer the best candidates to Miso. Moving forward, we have established the following clear criteria to explain how employees will be eligible for the $10K referral bonus: - The employee must provide a referral for a full-time hire. - The referred employee must work at Miso for 6 full months after hire date (excluding any leaves of absence) - The referring employee must be employed at Miso and not have given notice to depart the company prior to the date of the bonus payment.

If the above has been met, the referring employee will be eligible to receive the referral bonus in the first full pay period following the 6-month anniversary of the referred employee.

We are human and we make mistakes. We’ve learned something from this.

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

#344

Post by delinka »

What's with all the jerks trying to say the only enforceable contract is a written and signed contract? U.S. Courts uphold verbal contracts all the time. "He said, she said" is quite a bit more iffy without witnesses, but commitments and agreements are still legally valid commitments and agreements. Email conversations are just about as good as a printed and signed contract.

And the employee has to remind the employer to pay up? Let's see how far that goes when employees have to remind the employer every payday that the paychecks are due. Why don't you just institute some asinine rebate-style process for obtaining your referral fee? 1) Clip the UPC code from the new hire and have it notarized on its date of hire; notarizing on any other date will void your claim to the fee 2) Hold the notarized code until the new hire has been employed with the company for at least six months 3) Mail the notarized original code to an address seven hundred miles away using a handwritten envelope and first class postage only; computer printed envelopes and postage in excess of first class postage will void your claim to the fee 4) Pray that the new hire is still with the company at the moment the claim department decides to process your claim. Claims may take six to eight months for processing.

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

#345

Post by orangecat »

arbales wrote: post #229

Really disappointed by this post. As a long time friend of Miso and the awesome people there – the people responsible for several awesome open source projects (Padrino, RABL, to name a few) – it makes me really bummed someone would choose to bring an issue up in this way. I've never heard of a former employee receiving a bonus – referral or otherwise. The idea of a referral bonus is rewarding someone for /growing/ th…

I've never heard of a former employee receiving a bonus – referral or otherwise.

Have you heard of former employees getting their final paychecks? That's all this is.

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

#346

Post by veemjeem »

unreal37 wrote: post #65
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…

I tend to agree with @rb2k. There are payments you are entitled to by law (salary, vacation, personal expense reimbursement) and payments that companies do out of the goodness of their hearts (annual bonuses, lieu days, extra days off, referral bonuses). Don't quit under bad circumstances and expect to get money you're not by law entitled to. Should have gotten the money first.

It doesn't matter which category the payment falls into. If the amount was specified in an email from a stakeholder, with specific guidelines, it's cash due. When lawyers make a decision, they're not going to decide which bucket this amount is supposed to fall into.

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

#347

Post by veemjeem »

pbiggar wrote: post #163
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…

I'm in two minds about this. If I were hiring someone and came across something like this, I would certainly have questions. On the one hand, he might do this to me. What if he's lying or twisting the truth in some way, or there's more to the story. On the other hand, fair play for sticking up for his rights. I'd like that mindset on my team. I think it would come down to the interview, and how he came across. We onc…

Well in this case, it looks like the employee was in the right. Just a few minutes ago, the founder (Somrat) admitted his mistake and paid Joshua the full $10k.

Later on when future employers see this, they'll realize that the employee has proper morals, and is a "do-er". I think most employees would suck it up if they lost out on 10k, but this person stuck it out and rode the storm.

Would you hire a passive employee, or a passionate one? Sometimes passion will cause people to do things that may backfire, but at least they gave it a shot. Passive employees wouldn't even bother with the 10k loss.

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

#349

Post by creamyhorror »

backspace wrote: post #242
mikeash wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. Why would anyone sign such a thing?

Usual practice in most companies. It protects them from exactly these sorts of things. Most companies that have this agreement in place also have a similar agreement when joining the company that if you forego signing the exit agreement, you forego any outstanding debts owed to you by the company.

So, basically, the company can dictate the exact debts in its exit agreement? And if you disagree, you forego all claims anyway?

This sounds a bit illogical, but I'm not a lawyer. Another poster said it wasn't the practice at all in his years of experience, so maybe your experience does not generalize well.

You're also making an assumption that such a contract was made in this case - and it clearly wasn't, since the Miso people acknowledged their mistake here. So the guy absolutely deserves the bonus payout, even if he didn't submit the administrative form to claim it while he was still there.

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

#350

Post by veemjeem »

ericdykstra wrote: post #20
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Regardless of how you were wronged, threatening to take something like this public (instead of just doing so, or even better instead of talking to your lawyer first) can come back to bite you, in a number of ways.

However, by taking it public, there's a chance that Miso will try to fix the situation, and he will get the full $10,000 bonus, rather than paying a lawyer.

looks like that's exactly what happened... Somrat just paid the employee $10k.
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