Guys, this will absolutely kill your chances to hire any good developers in the future. This is the kind of thing that you should not respond to publicly and pay your lawyers for instead. The number of technical mistakes you made in your post paints you in an even worse light, but at the end of the day it's a "he said, she said" situation, where we can't compare code bases on what was done, what the quality is, and how the code is currently used.
From the startup who allegedly stole software and raised $2M with it
101–110 of 114 posts
Re: From the startup who allegedly stole software and raised $2M with it
#102NOTE to developers: This is why you shouldn't accept PayPal!
Or why you should get your money out of there as quickly as humanly possible. I never leave more than ~25 bucks on there.
No, you just shouldn't accept paypal. As k3oni states, it doesn't matter how much money you have in your paypal account. When a chargeback happens paypal will take whatever small amount of money you do have in there, and your account will go negative for the remaining balance... and then the bill collectors start calling.
Re: From the startup who allegedly stole software and raised $2M with it
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Poor quality code" is a matter of opinion. You can't decide not to pay someone because they've delivered what you consider poor quality code. The best defense from that is to track development (with milestone deliverables), and evaluate code quality (or pay someone to evaluate code quality) as you go along, so you can end the relationship early before you've wasted too much money. Waiting until they're done and deci…
True, but it's like lemon laws for cars. If your new car isn't reliable, you're entitled to a refund. Yeah, there's no law that applies in this instance, but I do sympathize with the company if the code really was subpar. There are a lot of bad developers out there, and for someone who doesn't program it's very difficult to avoid them.
I also sympathize, but when you start employing people, a risk you take is that they're horrible at the job. A way of mitigating that risk is by being careful who you hire and monitoring their progress. If you're hiring a programmer, make sure somebody you trust knows something about programming and is available to you.
I'm into firing quickly, too. It's a kindness.
You don't hire someone to work the fryer at your McDonald's, and when they completely blow it and wreck your fryer completely, decide not to pay them for the day. Pay them, let them go. Reevaluate your hiring process.
Re: From the startup who allegedly stole software and raised $2M with it
#104I worked as a contract engineer for several years and here is my take: Typically in a contract relationship you have alot less obligations than hiring a salaried employee. At the same time, this person is using their valuable time towards your project. As a result of this, they usually ask for compensation which is agreed upon beforehand. You agreed to a certain amount of compensation, and than chose not to pay. Some…
You mean as an employer I can't just use 'contractor' as a way to skirt paying payroll taxes, unemployment, workers comp, etc and then hire the cheapest dev I can find and refuse payment if the work isn't top notch? As far as I've been able to determine, as an employer I am entitled to software. I am entitled to workers who produce things that amplify the earnings of my company by an order of magnitude while paying just enough to keep the workers complacent. This is America, is it not?
(note: This post has been sarcasm.)
Re: From the startup who allegedly stole software and raised $2M with it
#105This post makes your company look considerably less professional than it otherwise would have, even leaving allegations about code theft unanswered. I might have been unsure if you were running copyrighted code, but now I know for sure you stiffed a programmer and are trying to cover your ass after the fact. As a professional consideration, I won't be using any of your services. Failing to pay an appropriate invoice…
> As a professional consideration, I won't be using any of your services Considering their product is to help prison inmates communicate -- I hope none of us get to use their services!
From their website, they appear to both provide services to talk to inmates (of which I have a few friends from my time growing up in a poor, crime infested neighborhood) and to act as a data broker about the prison system and inmates, something I've had a long interest in and is related (tangentially) to my professional work in data analytics.
I won't be using their services either, neither as a communication method nor as a data supplier, and will try to steer any companies I work on data analysis at away from using their data.
Re: From the startup who allegedly stole software and raised $2M with it
#106This is a shit storm. You had a D level agency write the code, then you consulted (apparently) B level players in technology field about this code. Obviously they will find issues with it. Hell I will find issues with anything if I really wanted to during a code audit. Without details it's all bull. Now, you are claiming you rewrote the code internally. Your LinkedIn shows a CTO that does not seem to have A level bac…
> Now, you are claiming you rewrote the code internally.
It's a little ambiguous, but by "start from scratch with a new developer", I interpreted that to mean they dumped the first contractor and hired a new contractor, not that they rewrote it internally.
Re: From the startup who allegedly stole software and raised $2M with it
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think you're going to have a hard time here trying to convince a developer community that a "refund" is something a client is entitled to in a work for hire situation. Depends entirely on the contract. Many contracts include terms giving the client recourse in the case where unsatisfactory work product is delivered, especially if it's a pay-for-deliverable rather than pay-for-hours-worked contract. (But some don'…
> That post claimed that Pigeon.ly is using stolen code to run their product, while Pigeon.ly claims they are not using the code in their product. Does it really makes a difference if the code is currently running or not? Let's say, hypothetically, the code was not production ready but used in an alpha version to pitch an investor ? It is impossible to prove one way or another, but I wonder, if you could sue someone,…
This is Frederick, I can speak to our specific case. The code the original poster provided to us was never used in investor presentations. We rebuilt the product from scratch almost a year before we had any real traction or investor meetings.
Re: From the startup who allegedly stole software and raised $2M with it
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Paypal nearly always sides with the buyer. If it's a service, even more so.
My limited experience of disputing a PayPal transaction was exactly the opposite (i.e. I was the buyer).
My extensive experience of being a PayPal seller is quite the contrary. People request a charge back, PayPal "encourages" them to contact you, which essentially is just an extra step in the charge back process that they can skip, then nearly every time the money is returned with nothing the seller can do about it.
Re: From the startup who allegedly stole software and raised $2M with it
#109Clueless clients like these are freelancer's worst nightmare.
I've turned down a number of freelance gigs just from getting this kind of "smell." It's not worth it. If I smell... umm... certain intimate hygiene products... I run away.
Red flags I've seen include:
* Smarmy-looking marketing materials. If I visit the site and think "hmm... would I be worried about downloading this app for fear it would infect my machine?" then that's a bad sign.
* Some advance-marketing and extreme-MVP tactics are okay, but if they take it too far I see it as a red flag.
* Intuition. If I could bottle it I would charge for it and be rich. Earned through school of hard knocks, which is as far as I know the only way to get this.
* No haggling at all on price... especially when combined with other red flags. This leads me to think they're not haggling because they'll just stiff me.
* No milestones or other metrics come up in discussion.
* They don't know what they want. I've seen the screwage go both ways in contracting arrangements where the hiring party kind of just wants "something cool" with only some extremely vague sense of what it looks like. In either case it's not something I want to be a part of.
* Shell company bingo... if I do a search on the founders and they have five dozen LLCs to their names it means they'll just fold the entity and stiff everyone if it doesn't work out. "Extend yourself on others' credit, test a market, and stiff people by busting out the shell if the market doesn't pan out" is a common sketchy business practice.
Re: From the startup who allegedly stole software and raised $2M with it
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Poor quality code" is a matter of opinion. You can't decide not to pay someone because they've delivered what you consider poor quality code. The best defense from that is to track development (with milestone deliverables), and evaluate code quality (or pay someone to evaluate code quality) as you go along, so you can end the relationship early before you've wasted too much money. Waiting until they're done and deci…
True, but it's like lemon laws for cars. If your new car isn't reliable, you're entitled to a refund. Yeah, there's no law that applies in this instance, but I do sympathize with the company if the code really was subpar. There are a lot of bad developers out there, and for someone who doesn't program it's very difficult to avoid them.
I sympathize with people who make hiring mistakes — and that's pretty much everyone who's ever made a hiring decision — but they still have to pay the people they mistakenly hire for the work they did. It is both the default mode of the law in most places I know, and also just basic professional ethics.