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

jzhwu.blogspot.com

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

#71

Post by creamyhorror »

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…

> As an agreement between the employer and employee, the agreement might be interpreted to apply only to active employees, and on resignation vanishes.

The agreement was fulfilled when the referee completed his 6 months, no? At that point it became a debt that the company owed jzhwu, and he only quit a month after. I don't think debts immediately disappear when you quit a company (unless you sign some sort of agreement to that effect). So by default I'd guess that the debt cannot "vanish on resignation".

> Must the company compensate you? It's ambiguous.

It's probably a problem long settled by the courts and labor regulations, actually. Not ambiguous at all.

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

#72

Post by cncool »

relaunched wrote: post #5

I'm really glad Miso did the right thing. However, they should have done something extra, either monetary or otherwise. What's the tech equivalent of punitive damages?

They did not do the right thing. They only paid because they got caught, and paying was probably in their best interests financially going forward.

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

#73

Post by b094i2d0n »

cypherpunks01 wrote: post #66

> The 10k I'll be getting will be going to charity to celebrate the integrity, compassion and passion demonstrated by the community at large. I want to especially thank the Hacker News community... As an award, Josh should let us decide the charity recipient..via HN poll!

+1 to this!

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

#74

Post by ekianjo »

mturmon wrote: post #34
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.

Usually attributed to Lincoln: "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

If this is attributed to Lincoln, that kind of phrase does not play to his own advantage. (hint: read "The Real Lincoln" if you are interested).

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

#75

Post by [deleted] »

veemjeem wrote: post #42
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.

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.

[deleted]

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

#76

Post by creamyhorror »

sliverstorm wrote: post #62
nknight wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The fact that you mention a court might review such a situation, strongly suggests it is in fact somewhat ambiguous.

I don't see your logic. A court would review it if one of the sides brought it to court. It doesn't suggest that the issue is 'ambiguous', or that the company has a leg to stand on once they're actually in court.

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

#77

Post by nknight »

sliverstorm wrote: post #62
nknight wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The fact that you mention a court might review such a situation, strongly suggests it is in fact somewhat ambiguous.

Many things end up in court that are not ambiguous, which is why summary judgement[1] exists.

Although it is usually impossible to predict the outcome of a vaguely-defined case (I hit and killed you with my car, am I liable?), a case where all relevant facts are known (I hit and killed you with my car while you were legally crossing at a crosswalk, my light was red, and I was speeding) is utterly unambiguous, but will still end up in court if one side refuses to settle, no matter why they refuse.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summary_judgement

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

#78

Post by zem »

rdl wrote: post #7
spitfire wrote: post #6

Utter crap. Rewriting history after you get called out is just pathetic. They owed him money and either through mistake or malice didn't pay him. When he contacted them to correct it they tried to legalize their way out of it. If I wouldn't have anything to do with them before, I'm doubly unimpressed now.

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…

if you read the email, they did not admit they were wrong. they held that in the light of their policy they were correct not to pay him, and their only mistake was in not making that policy clearer, and therefore they'd pay out this once.

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

#79

Post by zem »

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 fail to see what you are pointing out as untrustworthy on josh's part, let alone what forgetting about the $10k has to do with it.

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

#80

Post by E14n »

its_so_on wrote: post #70
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…

Let me tell you my perspective, which may be interesting. The company Miso has good points about the reason for the program. In the original exchange the points were brought up. To me, the points were brought up one email too late. The moment the first response was Josh, let me talk to Tim. After you lost our data and caused our entire company to scramble for 3 days, I am hesitant , I saw this as. "Let me think of ho…

I don't know what the culture is like at Miso but I would take

"After you lost our data and caused our entire company to scramble for 3 days, I am hesitant."

as

"How do I justify to the rest of the team paying you an exorbitant bonus for team building after you trashed a production system that cost the team 3 days of work, then quit."

Not that this changes the fact that they should have paid.

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