Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

jzhwu.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 176 posts

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

#51

Post by greenyoda »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #32

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 da…

The third rule sucks, in my opinion. Referral bonuses are a good deal for the company: they help the company to (1) recruit good employees and (2) save money on recruiting, since these bonuses are usually much less than the hefty fraction of an employee's salary that they'd have to pay to a headhunter. If you leave a company after referring somebody, it doesn't change the fact that you found the company a good employee and saved them money, so it would seem unfair to refuse to pay you the bonus, even if you're no longer an employee -- in that case, they'd be able to profit from your connections without giving you anything in return.

They wouldn't be able to get away with not paying a headhunter just because he sent his invoice in after the company decided to not renew their contract with him. The fact that they can legally get away with stiffing an ex-employee doesn't make it any more ethical.

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

#52

Post by Confusion »

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.

There is a huge problem with this attitude: it doesn't leave room for someone to honestly realize they were wrong and be believed when they express they learned something. If someone thinks you're not going to believe him anyway, you remove part of the incentive for someone to learn.

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

#53

Post by nknight »

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…

It's not ambiguous, it's fact-specific, and a court in such a situation would look to questions of fairness and reasonableness under the circumstances. Absent an extended delay that caused meaningful harm to the company, the employee would almost certainly get his reimbursement.

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

#54

Post by jvdh »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #32

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 da…

How about you sign up someone for your own job?

I'm not sure whether this should be rewarded or not, but it seems a situation that he's alluding to in that rule.

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

#55

Post by javajosh »

The world has slowly become spineless, and when someone like Josh Hwu shows a spine and stands up for what's right a rather large fraction of fellow programmers jump on him. Shameful! The CEO of Miso is an unethical egotistical person who doesn't even have the self-awareness to admit to his knee-jerk abuse of power (a mistake that many a young manager has made, myself included).

The real story here is that fighting on principle is the rational thing to do. If you don't fight on principle then the predators feel empowered, and everyone suffers. People like Josh are heroes. Those who try to take away from his accomplishment by either convincing him that it would be "smarter" to be spineless or that somehow it's wrong to have a spine, are even more despicable than Josh's abusive ex-boss.

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

#56

Post by rdl »

veemjeem wrote: post #49
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"

Fucking with employee options pool is about whether previous investors (including founders and earlier employees) take all the dilution of new hires, vs. the new investors sharing equally in that. It's fairly independent of how much equity hires actually receive (you can always bump the pool up later, when you "unexpectedly" run out of equity and need to make more hires -- after 30-50 hires, the only way an individual hire makes a huge difference in the option pool is if you're bringing in a CEO to replace a founder, or maybe a Sheryl-level COO or super-accomplished VP.)

It's an unrelated issue, really. I think "founder has one type of expense policy for founders and execs, and another for employees" would be more apt.

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

#57

Post by E14n »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #32

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 da…

This benefit scheme appears to be designed to encourage team building. The cost of replacing a good employee is greater then the benefit gained from introducing a new hire. I guess they don't want to reward someone for team building when they are actually a net loss in this area. I think they should have read this[1] and thought about this a bit more.

1. http://blog.fogcreek.com/why-do-we-pay-sales-commissions/

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

#58

Post by nknight »

greenyoda wrote: post #51
Dylan16807 wrote: post #32

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 da…

The third rule sucks, in my opinion. Referral bonuses are a good deal for the company: they help the company to (1) recruit good employees and (2) save money on recruiting, since these bonuses are usually much less than the hefty fraction of an employee's salary that they'd have to pay to a headhunter. If you leave a company after referring somebody, it doesn't change the fact that you found the company a good employ…

The "after you gave notice" part in particular is quite stupid. It will simply encourage people to wait longer to give notice, or not give notice at all.

Were I leaving a company amicably and had no other constraint on my time (say I'm planning to start my own company, or even just take a couple years off), I'd give several weeks, if not a few months' notice, to maximize flexibility for everyone. If I knew it was going to screw me out of $10,000, however, I definitely would not extend that courtesy.

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

#59

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

Confusion wrote: post #52
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a huge problem with this attitude: it doesn't leave room for someone to honestly realize they were wrong and be believed when they express they learned something. If someone thinks you're not going to believe him anyway, you remove part of the incentive for someone to learn.

I disagree. I've come to this point of view via self awareness of when I've failed this test. You can understand how others might make this mistake quite easily.

But I also think the employer's behavior here fails your own test. There's no expression of learning that a poor choice was made, just expression of plausible deniability.

In some sense, me calling my perspective out as I see it, is a hope that it does affect such change.

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

#60

Post by rogerjin »

javajosh wrote: post #55

The world has slowly become spineless, and when someone like Josh Hwu shows a spine and stands up for what's right a rather large fraction of fellow programmers jump on him. Shameful! The CEO of Miso is an unethical egotistical person who doesn't even have the self-awareness to admit to his knee-jerk abuse of power (a mistake that many a young manager has made, myself included). The real story here is that fighting o…

Agreed. One of the best comments I've seen on HN yet.
Post reply on HN