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Miso pays disputed $10k referral bonus to ex-engineer, apologizes

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Re: Miso pays disputed $10k referral bonus to ex-engineer, apologizes

#41

Post by silentscope »

They were both wrong. Any employee who leaves 10k behind didn't care enough about it in the first place. The fact that he forgot is huge.

A company that talks about bonuses of that size with no legal contract didn't care enough about it to start with.

The developer will pay with his reputation. Any employer who knows what happened will never fully trust him, except after a long working relationship.

Miso will pay by losing potential hires.

Each side loses more than 10,000 dollars worth. Justin's professional rep is worth a lot more than 10k, Miso's hiring future is worth more than one bonus. They should have worked this out in private.

They couldn't, and they both lost.

Re: Miso pays disputed $10k referral bonus to ex-engineer, apologizes

#42

Post by veemjeem »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #23
rdl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They paid him. They admitted they were wrong and apologized. They clarified their policy so people won't dispute it in the future. I'm not sure exactly what more you'd expect them to do. I'm sure they wish they'd handled this differently, but once he posted it, they seem to have handled things reasonably well. Plus, of course, you've only seen one side of the story. Even if the company has other facts, they can't pre…

When they thought they had all the power, they saw no reason to pay him. Once it was clear that the power wasn't imbalanced, they went for damage control. That reads pretty transparently to anyone who's been around the block a few times. The loudest expression of your morals is what you do when you have all the power. If you act poorly, later rationalizations do little to convince anyone otherwise.

The best damage control would have been to admit the mistake and move on, not try to blame it on the "unclear" company policy. The founder tries to make it look like it wasn't his fault, but ends up looking even worse.

There is a silver lining for all of this -- future company founders will know what NOT to do when presented with bad PR.

Re: Miso pays disputed $10k referral bonus to ex-engineer, apologizes

#43

Post by c0mpute »

As I see it, they just patched up the situation. My beef with them is not that they screwed up on the policy front. It is about the underlying ethics.

It was ok if they said they did not want to pay him as he is no longer and employee and later correct themselves saying that it was a mistake on their part as he was an employee after 6 months. What is not ok is that they used an emotional line of defense. Saying he doesn't deserve it 'cos of a screw up, tells me that both Somrat and Tim are kinda characters that would bail out when push comes to shove. Its the question of integrity and you just have to stand by the right in a startup. To me, this is the exact warning sign I need before thinking of a startup.

I hope employees of Miso read into this and take home something. Many might not care, but its their opinion.

Re: Miso pays disputed $10k referral bonus to ex-engineer, apologizes

#44

Post by veemjeem »

tantalor wrote: post #15
rdl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They paid him. They admitted they were wrong and apologized. They clarified their policy so people won't dispute it in the future. I'm not sure exactly what more you'd expect them to do. I'm sure they wish they'd handled this differently, but once he posted it, they seem to have handled things reasonably well. Plus, of course, you've only seen one side of the story. Even if the company has other facts, they can't pre…

I don't think they did admit they were wrong, because they weren't necessarily wrong. They admitted they made a mistake in not clearly documenting their policy, which was ambiguous. As part of correcting that mistake, they recompensed an employee who was wronged by the ambiguity. They did this not because they were obligated by a policy or contract, but by ethics. I think it's debatable whether he was entitled to the…

Yes, but the public doesn't know, or care what the actual company policy reads. Even if the company was 90% in the right, they should still accept all the blame, just to appease the pitchforks.

Remember that incident with Airbnb where a woman's house was trashed? I'm sure Airbnb had all the proper fine print to prevent them from liability, but they still went out of their way to make sure the woman was properly compensated. I'm sure Airbnb was never at fault here, but they were able to turn a case of bad press into good press.

The Miso founder simply took a case of bad press, and turned into worse press.

Re: Miso pays disputed $10k referral bonus to ex-engineer, apologizes

#46

Post by HowardRoark »

tantalor wrote: post #37
creamyhorror wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They admitted they made a mistake in not clearly documenting their policy, which was ambiguous. As part of correcting that mistake, they recompensed an employee who was wronged by the ambiguity. They did this not because they were obligated by a policy or contract, but by ethics. This is not a matter of a simple "ambiguity in policy", is it? This is a contract they made with their employees that failed to specify t…

I see your point, which is very persuasive, but this case is ambiguous because it could be interpreted in either way. As an agreement between the employer and employee, the agreement might be interpreted to apply only to active employees, and on resignation vanishes. Suppose a company's expense report policy does not clarify whether they will fulfill expenses incurred during employment but filed after resignation. Th…

"Everything stupid in life has a legal or accounting reason behind it." -Unknown

Re: Miso pays disputed $10k referral bonus to ex-engineer, apologizes

#47

Post by waiwai933 »

heretohelp wrote: post #45
xtiy wrote: post #3

Miso was 100% in the wrong. Small claims and labor board actions would have cost them far more than 10k.

10k isn't small claims in any jurisdiction I'm aware of.

"In general, a natural person (an individual) cannot ask for more than $10,000 in a claim."

From http://www.courts.ca.gov/1256.htm, which is the small claims court which would have jurisdiction over this particular case.

Re: Miso pays disputed $10k referral bonus to ex-engineer, apologizes

#48

Post by veemjeem »

silentscope wrote: post #41

They were both wrong. Any employee who leaves 10k behind didn't care enough about it in the first place. The fact that he forgot is huge. A company that talks about bonuses of that size with no legal contract didn't care enough about it to start with. The developer will pay with his reputation. Any employer who knows what happened will never fully trust him, except after a long working relationship. Miso will pay by…

I think Joshua's rep broke even, or possibly slightly ahead. It shows that he's a passionate employee, and will go out of his way to make things right. In a work setting, he'll probably fix up that copy-pasta code instead of just leaving it there. Passionate employees always win over passive employees.

Additionally, his name is so damn generic, it might as well be john lee. There might be 10 serial killers with his name too, but I doubt future employers would really be able pinpoint this incident with his name.

Re: Miso pays disputed $10k referral bonus to ex-engineer, apologizes

#49

Post by veemjeem »

c0mpute wrote: post #43

As I see it, they just patched up the situation. My beef with them is not that they screwed up on the policy front. It is about the underlying ethics. It was ok if they said they did not want to pay him as he is no longer and employee and later correct themselves saying that it was a mistake on their part as he was an employee after 6 months. What is not ok is that they used an emotional line of defense. Saying he do…

It's also the type of founder that would dilute the employee options pool first, before touching their own.

"it's okay to screw employees because they'll leave anyway"

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