Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired • Hacker News Board

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#221

Post by rayiner » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 9:52 PM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #210

rayiner wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law student about to graduate, but not yet admitted to the bar/not giving legal advice/etc: The law does draw distinctions based on the circumstances surrounding a termination, even in an at-will state. The employee does not yet own the unvested shares, but they do have a contractual right to them. Terminating someone just to screw them out of a contractual right you agreed to in a contract is going to give someone a…

Interesting, in that case would it not be wise for all of the disgruntled employees who are about to be screwed over to just refuse to give back the stock, get themselves fired and then start a lawsuit and assuming they win use all the money from selling the IPOd stock to start a business that directly competes with their previous employer?

It really depends on the probabilities of settlement versus winning a suit versus the costs of litigation, etc. It's probably best for them to just lawyer up and take their advice. This sort of tactical strategy is what they're paid to do.

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#222

Post by muyuu » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 9:53 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #219

I am entirely in favor of this. Mainly because I'm four blocks away and am trying to hire engineers. Seriously, it's bullshit. It makes me mad not just for the people getting screwed, but for the whole industry. The whole point of giving somebody early equity is that it's a gamble. Sometimes it's worth nothing; sometimes tons. If companies start doing it in a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose fashion, then that really reduc…

This is exactly what I was thinking.

If Pincus succeeds with this, startups as a whole and this kind of compensation in particular will look much worse.

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#223

Post by davidtyleryork » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 9:54 PM UTC

api wrote: post #106

lemming wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is utter bullshit. And if it's not, anyone reading HN has better options. Let's stop with the all-employers-are-out-to-screw-you rhetoric because it's clearly not true.

If that's true, then the business world needs to do a better job internally policing itself. Behavior like this (and worse... honestly this story is like a 4 on a 1-10 scale) creates exactly this impression. Clean your own house, or it'll be cleaned for you.

Except when the regulatory laws or agencies in charge of cleaning house get gutted. Hooray, modern American politics!

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#224

Post by vikas5678 » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 9:54 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #139

fab13n wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, they will only have one IPO. But the PR backlash can seriously affect it, if it's made clear to everyone that the execs are crooks, and that they'll never be able to hire talents again.

The poster child here is Groupon (GRPN) and while the poor choices of their executives did negatively affect the IPO they are still (11/9) trading above their IPO price of $20 ($24.50 when I glanced).

While GRPN IPOed at $20, it opened for trading to the public at $30 and its dropped daily ever since.

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#225

Post by davidtyleryork » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 9:55 PM UTC

betterlabs wrote: post #82

wavephorm wrote: post #7

With the unvested shares, the executives believed they could attract more top talent with the promise of stock. Not anymore they won't.

I couldn't agree more. Even if we assume there is a justifiable reason or perhaps its happening only to employees who have not performed (which I doubt can be the case considering those employees could not have lasted this long any way), this probably has done irreparable damage to their reputation in the eyes of current and prospective employees. I hope all this bad PR makes them reconsider it, if not anything else.

Honestly at this point I think the damage is long done. I'm just glad that they got to eat their dog food after being so nasty to their employees

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#226

Post by Androsynth » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 9:55 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #209

Androsynth wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you and your sibling threads are all correct, but it's not extortion. It's immoral and will certainly hurt them in the future, but it's not extortion. I am simply trying to explain why this is a moral issue and not a legal issue. This is the equivalent of saying: 'your gonna have to take a pay cut or were gonna have to let you go'. It is morally repugnant and goes against everything we believe in the startup com…

You don't know whether or not it's a legal issue.

I am saying it shouldn't be a legal issue.

It is the equivalent of saying 'you need to take a cut in pay or you will be laid off'.

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#227

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 9:56 PM UTC

MicahWedemeyer wrote: post #10

In order to determine which employees would be asked to give stock back, Pincus and his executives tried to pinpoint workers whose contributions to Zynga--in the execs' eyes--didn't necessarily justify the potential cash windfall they could receive when the company went public I'm going to take a wild stab here and guess that none of their own names were on the list they came up with. Whenever crap like this happens,…

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Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#228

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 10:08 PM UTC

Androsynth wrote: post #165

wavephorm wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't being fired for being overpaid, they're being threatened with termination unless they surrender their equity in a privately owned company. Definiton of extortion (from wikipedia): Extortion (also called shakedown, outwresting, and exaction) is a criminal offence which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person(s), entity, or institution, through coercion. What…

That is an inaccurate view of the situation. Unvested shares are not equity. You are acting as if they are being asked to give away something that they own; they are being asked to give up future compensation. I put this in another comment: "However the problem with your math (and most others in this thread) is this: lets say Zynga values me at 4 shares, and I get 1 vested per year. However after two years, and a few…

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Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#229

Post by joshz » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 10:08 PM UTC

justin_vanw wrote: post #214

What if Pincus he had just fired them, with the reason being that they were not earning their compensation? It seems reasonable to fire someone if they are not pulling their weight? Giving them a choice seems unfair, but how is it worse than just being fired? I think this is just Pincus being a nerd and over rationalizing the situation, instead of just decisively 'pulling the trigger'. On the other hand, these people…

Perhaps because they were earning their compensation and new employees would just be too expensive, since Pincus didn't want bait them with anymore (possibly no longer worthless) stock. Might as well try to squeeze it out of current employees knowing that finding a new job can be a bitch.

Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired

#230

Post by _delirium » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 10:08 PM UTC

Androsynth wrote: post #226

rhizome wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know whether or not it's a legal issue.

I am saying it shouldn't be a legal issue. It is the equivalent of saying 'you need to take a cut in pay or you will be laid off'.

If we're talking about what should be illegal, I find it hard to argue that it shouldn't be. If you hire someone on the promise that they'll get a bonus at 5 years, and purposely fire them at 4 years, 11 months solely to avoid paying them the bonus, that should be illegal. In any reasonable interpretation of the contract, that isn't good-faith upholding of the contract--- you promised them something at certain milestones, and then purposely acted in a manner intended for the sole purpose of sabotaging the milestones, which is acting in bad faith.

In most other kinds of contingent pay that's tortious: if you promise a building contractor contingency bonuses upon meeting certain deadlines, and then you purposely interfere to make them miss the deadlines so you can get the work cheaper (and admit doing so!), you're probably acting illegally. Heck, even basketball players have sued over instances where a team kept them out of a few games solely to cause them to miss performance targets.