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

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

#261

Post by qx »

samstave wrote: post #107
cheald wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly? I think this is the execs trying to grab as much stock as possible for themselves pre-IPO, so they can dump it and run. There's no way that this actually turns out to be a net positive for the Company. It's going to make it significantly harder to hire actual talent, it's going to cause morale decay and revolt from within the company, and it erodes Zynga's brand. Literally the only benefit here is that the…

>I think this is the execs trying to grab as much stock as possible for themselves pre-IPO, so they can dump it and run. This is EXACTLY what is happening - anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded or plain stupid. When Lockheed bought Savi technology, the RFID company, there were massive stock bonuses given out to the the Savi execs just prior to the sale. Then they told all the employees who had been there less than…

"Pincus is a very very VERY shady character"

Any examples of this? Not that I don't believe you, but just curious

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

#262

Post by ohyes »

sbov wrote: post #178
ohyes wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It is a bullshit situation, and you should be mad about it. Employers have a responsibility to maximize the profits of their shareholders/investors. They are not there to be your friend, take care of you, or compensate you beyond the minimum that they have to. Companies that offer bonuses/'benefits' are doing so as an incentive to retain you. The minute the market indicates that they can pull any of those be…

> Employers have a responsibility to maximize the profits of their shareholders/investors. Somewhat shortsighted statement for this topic, considering the people they're harming here are employees who are... shareholders. > If it were human, it would be a sociopath. It may not be human, but they're ran by humans, and legally in many ways Corporations are people. In fact its a meme running in US politics lately. Peopl…

> Somewhat shortsighted statement for this topic, considering the people they're harming here are employees who are... shareholders.

I think it is pretty clear I was referring to the general case, rather than this particular situation. Anyway, until they vest, they technically aren't shareholders. (And after they've lost their rights to vest, they certainly aren't going to be shareholders).

> It may not be human, but they're ran by humans, and legally in many ways Corporations are people. In fact its a meme running in US politics lately. People with a lot of money, and a lot more power than 99.99% of humans. I'm getting sick of reading humans say Corporations, considered people and ran by humans, can do anything in the name of shareholder value, but for some reason, people with less money, power, and connections, have moral values applied to their actions. It's complete bullshit, and if people weren't so brainwashed they couldn't get away with this shit.

I agree completely. It is a crock of shit that corporations aren't held to the same basic moral and ethical standards that people are. (In my opinion, they should be held to greater standards, being that they are in practice immortal, and can wield greater sums of wealth than any single human being).

As an employee in the current environment, however, you have to keep the reality of how corporations are expected and allowed to behave in mind.

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

#264

Post by frossie »

alastairpat wrote: post #259
thezilch wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL. Considering the employees are going to be challenging California's "at will" employment laws and the fact that the charges against the employees is performance based, how likely is #2 to have a fighting chance?

"At-will"?! I had no idea that in California you could just terminate employment for no reason. Coming from Australia where you can't fire anybody without good reason (even demoting people can be considered unfair dismissal) this just sounds insane.

In fact the majority of states in the US are at-will employment states.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

Pretty much the only significant reason you can't get terminated in the US is as a direct result of being in a protected class (so you can't fire someone for being black but you can fire a black person for any other reason including no reason at all)

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

#265

Post by larrys »

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…

"Giving them a choice seems unfair, but how is it worse than just being fired?"

Sure but the point is the reason and the circumstance matters because of either the way laws are written or how the reason is perceived in the court of public opinion. For example you can fire someone for any reason as long as the reason that you state isn't prohibited (woman, minority you get the point) or objectionable in the eyes of the public.

In other words there is a difference in "fired because business has gone down" and "fired because your kid is sick and we need someone who isn't distracted" (by public opinion not law).

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

#267

Post by timdellinger »

I know that no one ever gets credit for "I told you so", but last year I pegged the 4-year vesting schedule as risky, and wondered why we didn't see a lot more people being fired just to recapture their stock options: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1733107

To me the riskiest part is that you never know how a business is going to pivot, who might end up owning it, etc., so the idea that you'll still be working there in four years is in many ways kind of silly. It always seemed worthwhile to me to negotiate other incentive. Hopefully stories like this will help change the culture a bit so that other forms of incentive become the norm.

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

#268

Post by jacquesm »

tatsuke95 wrote: post #215
jacquesm wrote: post #74

Regret has never been a good enough reason in the eyes of a judge to annul a contract. If Zynga agreed to the terms as described they haven't got a leg to stand on. The time to negotiate a contract is before it is signed, not retroactively. If they use the threat of termination then they will lose even more, not only will they not get their stock back, they will also have to pay excessive severance pay due to wrongfu…

IANAL... ...but I'm sure Zynga has some good ones. I don't think they're trying to annul the contract. Essentially, they're saying that these employees are underperforming, and thus they have the right to fire them "with cause". If they straight up fired the employees, those employees would lose out on their unvested shares. They would have nothing. Instead, Zynga is saying, "Give some back and you can stay." Low and…

I am not a lawyer either, but saying 'give some stock back and you can stay' would make a wrongful termination suit a slam-dunk.

Announcing it (especially to multiple employees) is about as dumb as it gets.

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

#269

Post by dylangs1030 »

Androsynth wrote: post #149
wavephorm wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The employees that get their shares stolen can sue for extortion, which is exactly how I and most people would describe this situation. Unfortunately the law generally favors those with more money and resources.

Bullshit, this is a free market economy. If I feel you are overpaid for what you contribute, I can fire you. This is not extortion, they are readjusting their compensation to the market-going rates. Whether it is moral or whether it will hurt them in the future are different questions.

The "different questions" are relevant. If this were merely a question of what the company can and can't do as a capitalist enterprise, the article would not have been written. Ethics are important. Would you be as dispassionate about this if you were a Zynga employee?

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

#270

Post by api »

DilipJ wrote: post #220
api wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would fault the Startup School organizers for this. They are creating a community that is catering largely to people who are young, talented, but not experienced. They need to be educating people about how to avoid the pitfalls and scams of the startup world as well as about how to succeed. Instead, they bring scummy fast talkers and put these people up on the stage as ideals. Not only is that teaching the next gen…

pg has also gotten into bed with Yuri Milner and his DST firm. You will notice that both Zynga and Groupon are recipients of DST funds, so it's no surprise that pg is promoting Pincus and Mason. In fact, I have no doubt that if any of the new batch of YC startups were to become successful and IPO, this sort of behaviour that Pincus is trying to pull may be emulated. When you lie with dogs you get fleas, etc.

When PG wrote about how the latest batch of YC startups were run by "operators" rather than your typical "shy tech guys," I knew he'd started to fall into the orbit of the boiler room crowd.
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