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

111–120 of 176 posts

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

#111

Post by michaelochurch »

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 saw this as. "Let me think of how I can not pay you."

It's a (thinly) veiled threat. Of course, it's irrelevant to what's being discussed, but it's a way of saying "I can embarrass you with this irrelevant issue if you press this" without actually saying it. Classic extortion tactic.

Since Josh printed the exchange in full, they no longer have this on him. Still, I don't know if it's a smart move on his part. He could have left that out entirely, and if they brought it into the public, he'd have more than $10,000 to talk about.

Actually, I'm sure there are two sides to the database story. He could have been poorly trained, or working 80 hours per week-- at which point mistakes are inevitable-- or given bad tools. These kinds of fuckups rarely have only one person at fault, especially in the sloppier startups where management is thinly-spread and incompetent and there are too many moving parts (startups are hard to keep track of when well-run, and many aren't). I'm surprised he didn't get into detail of what happened there.

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

#112

Post by michaelochurch »

dlokshin wrote: post #11

I'm not sure that the 10k was worth it for J Wu. Employers Google potential employees, and this blog post will definitely show up. Even though I feel he's in the right this type of public shaming would make me think twice about hiring him. Just doesn't seem like it's worth the hassle even though I don't plan on doing anything terrible to my employees (criminal in this case!) To be clear, I feel that Miso is in the wr…

There are other avenues like trying to pressure VC / board members, court, probably more.

The problem is that lawsuits often take years. These startups are likely going to be (a) 10 times their current size, or (b) out of business, by then. So they can take a "we'll worry about it then" approach, in which case they collect interest on what they should have paid, and offload the risk.

These kinds of unethical startup executives don't fear lawsuits. Not in the least. The suit will be against the company, not the person-- it's very hard to pierce the corporate veil on this sort of issue-- and the individual executive will either be no longer with the company, or very wealthy and successful by then (in which case it's a hired attorney's PITA). Either way, it's not going to hurt him much.

The small-claim lawsuit doesn't have an incentive effect on such a startup because of this binary payoff. The advantage of a PR hit, as a punitive measure, is that it actually reduces the probability of success (rather than trivially reducing the amount of payoff in event of success).

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

#113

Post by ericb »

michaelochurch wrote: post #111
its_so_on wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 saw this as. "Let me think of how I can not pay you." It's a (thinly) veiled threat. Of course, it's irrelevant to what's being discussed, but it's a way of saying "I can embarrass you with this irrelevant issue if you press this" without actually saying it. Classic extortion tactic. Since Josh printed the exchange in full, they no longer have this on him. Still, I don't know if it's a smart move on his part. He co…

> These kinds of fuckups rarely have only one person at fault

Fat fingering an rm -rf or corrupting a DB, if you have good backup policies, should generally not cause End of Days.

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

#114

Post by andrewcooke »

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 is there so that they can say that they were right to not pay this guy.

that's all.

they don't think they've done wrong here. in the same situation they want to be able to do the same and get away with it. these aren't people who have learnt something about keeping their word - they're paying because it's the best way to manage the crisis. the third rule is to justify their actions: they don't feel wrong; they regret that they were caught without a good excuse.

they have come out of this looking appalling. worst of all, they don't get the idea that people - good, committed engineers - don't stay or leave because of salaries and bonuses. they leave because management sucks.

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

#115

Post by ericb »

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…

> Any employee who leaves 10k behind didn't care enough about it in the first place.

Or he was working 80 hour weeks and had a lot on his mind. But hey, blame the victim--he had it coming! Come work for me, I will try and stiff you at every turn, and if I manage to, hey you just didn't want it bad enough.

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

#116

Post by bricestacey »

eric-hu wrote: post #96
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…

What I learned earlier this year is that tech recruiters get paid a flat fee for their services, plus a percentage of the recruitee's salary after some vesting period, usually 6 months. From what I heard, that percentage was between 15-25 percent. Consider that the average programmer's salary is above 60k. 15% of that is 9k, plus the flat fee. The company has already gotten roughly 10k out of this referral transactio…

I think your numbers might be conservative. 60k is a low intro-level salary for most metro areas and many recruiters wouldn't bother. Finding intro-level programmers is relatively easy so the burden of proof and stakes are high for the recruiter. It's a gamble and generally not worth his or her reputation.

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

#117

Post by alecco »

ahelwer wrote: post #21
dlokshin wrote: post #11

I'm not sure that the 10k was worth it for J Wu. Employers Google potential employees, and this blog post will definitely show up. Even though I feel he's in the right this type of public shaming would make me think twice about hiring him. Just doesn't seem like it's worth the hassle even though I don't plan on doing anything terrible to my employees (criminal in this case!) To be clear, I feel that Miso is in the wr…

Josh made a comment under the other story stating he would donate any money he gets to charity.

It's sad he is forced to give it away to save face.

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

#120

Post by scott_s »

ww520 wrote: post #100
lkrubner wrote: post #50

People just now checking Hacker News might have missed the earlier conversation, so here is the URL: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3955391

Was that post deleted? How come it doesn't show up on the front page, the next page, or the 3rd page anymore?

If it was deleted, it would say [deleted] and not have a link to the article. It's possible that people flagged it, which will decrease its ranking.
Post reply on HN