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

#291

Post by forensic » Fri, Nov 11, 2011, 3:39 AM UTC

alexwolfe wrote: post #90

api wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you'd instantly be sued for libel, slander, and tortious interference with business relations.

Last time I checked, Unions were legal. For that matter not liking a company is legal too. Not wanting to work for someone, also legal. My friend not wanting to work for someone I don't like, also legal. Not liking a companies policies, ummm also legal.

His point is that you would get sued anyway to intimidate you.

The people suing you have more money than you and lots to lose. They would just try to drag you into an expensive and endless legal battle hoping you could not afford it.

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

#292

Post by wglb » Fri, Nov 11, 2011, 3:48 AM UTC

grellas wrote: post #277

mmaunder wrote: post #33

Sometimes you just have to sue to enforce a contract and your rights. Many employees either don't realize this or they don't have the stomach for it. If you find yourself in this position, my advice is to play the game and see it through. 1. Don't resign, don't capitulate and hire a good lawyer immediately. If you don't have the cashflow, but are defending a huge pile of stock about to IPO you'll probably find a lawy…

What Zynga is doing is pretty repulsive, as I previously commented in a related thread ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3219437 ), but it is not accurate to say that "[t]hey have to fire you for cause for you to lose your options." The overwhelming majority of employees at startups sign documentation acknowledging that their employment is at will and can be terminated at any time by either party for any reason,…

Thanks for the great detail and analysis.

(First time I have heard the phrase "slap them upside the head" used in an informed legal opinion.)

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

#293

Post by mprovo1 » Fri, Nov 11, 2011, 3:52 AM UTC

grellas wrote: post #277

mmaunder wrote: post #33

Sometimes you just have to sue to enforce a contract and your rights. Many employees either don't realize this or they don't have the stomach for it. If you find yourself in this position, my advice is to play the game and see it through. 1. Don't resign, don't capitulate and hire a good lawyer immediately. If you don't have the cashflow, but are defending a huge pile of stock about to IPO you'll probably find a lawy…

What Zynga is doing is pretty repulsive, as I previously commented in a related thread ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3219437 ), but it is not accurate to say that "[t]hey have to fire you for cause for you to lose your options." The overwhelming majority of employees at startups sign documentation acknowledging that their employment is at will and can be terminated at any time by either party for any reason,…

Thank you for taking the time to write this up. Greatly appreciate it!

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

#294

Post by acheron » Fri, Nov 11, 2011, 4:01 AM UTC

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.

Can you quit your job for no reason in Australia?

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

#295

Post by Klinky » Fri, Nov 11, 2011, 4:19 AM UTC

grellas wrote: post #277

mmaunder wrote: post #33

Sometimes you just have to sue to enforce a contract and your rights. Many employees either don't realize this or they don't have the stomach for it. If you find yourself in this position, my advice is to play the game and see it through. 1. Don't resign, don't capitulate and hire a good lawyer immediately. If you don't have the cashflow, but are defending a huge pile of stock about to IPO you'll probably find a lawy…

What Zynga is doing is pretty repulsive, as I previously commented in a related thread ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3219437 ), but it is not accurate to say that "[t]hey have to fire you for cause for you to lose your options." The overwhelming majority of employees at startups sign documentation acknowledging that their employment is at will and can be terminated at any time by either party for any reason,…

Here's a document discussing the exceptions of "at-will" employment.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2001/01/art1full.pdf

Specifically of interest is the "Covenant-of-good-faith exception"(only in 11 states, CA being one of them) which I first saw referred to also by someone else here on HN.

At trial, the jury found that Kmart terminated Ponsock to avoid having to pay him retirement benefits. As part of his case, he claimed that Kmart’s discharge was in “bad faith” and that, even without a contract, such a termination gave rise to tort liability. The court agreed, citing the employer-employee relationship as one of the “rare and exceptional cases that the duty [of law] is of such a nature as to give rise to tort liability.”

If I was a Zynga employee I'd definitely be talking to a Labor/Employment lawyer. "Give us back your unvested stock or be fired" sounds pretty "bad faith" to me. Zynga should have just fired the people, but I think they don't want to lose the talent, they'd rather negotiate lower compensation instead of having to find new talent which will most certainly know of Zynga's upcoming IPO & demand proper compensation.

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

#296

Post by tjcrowley » Fri, Nov 11, 2011, 4:37 AM UTC

I worked for Pincus at tribe.net when he was letting it circle the drain, The users petitioned me to create a subscription system to save the site and the first month it raised $30,000. Of course, that all disappeared and a short while later Zynga put out their first game. What do you think happened there? It's continually flabbergasted me that anyone would invest in his company when he has a long long history of ripping people off. Nowadays he's got multiple mansions, multiple private aircraft, and multiple high priced lawyers. Our only hope is that some of these Russian investors are actually mobsters that will kneecap him when the IPO flops.

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

#297

Post by apu » Fri, Nov 11, 2011, 4:43 AM UTC

How much power/influence do a company's VCs have to prevent this sort of behavior? It seems like this reflects badly on all of Zynga's investors as well, most prominently Union Square Ventures, and I can't imagine that they would condone this kind of behavior.

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

#298

Post by kamaal » Fri, Nov 11, 2011, 4:45 AM UTC

This is probably one the hidden chess moves any start up can make once they've used you up like tissues(to use and throw). Of course once they have sufficient money and sales oriented CEO and senior executive staff, in the name of that's better for the company they can do anything they want.

This is one of the things that scares me about working at a start up. Remember the early employee is spending his time and compromising on his salary for that stock. And pretty obviously he works his heart out to make the company successful. Dumping them just like that, once you've squeezed the juice out of them seems a very unethical thing to me. And this is one of the things that actually prevents some good folks from working at a start up.

The worry that you will used like a work horse during the tough days of the company and then later dumped when the CEO sees a he can add another million to his account by dumping you is a major worry for any good person to work at a start up.

One thing that needs to be realized that not every body in the start up area is in for passion for software or changing the world thing. You have to be careful before deciding to work at some place. Doing a little back ground check on the founders will help.

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

#299

Post by postfuturist » Fri, Nov 11, 2011, 4:47 AM UTC

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.

"At-will" means that either both the employer and employee can break it off at any time. It's the maximum freedom for everyone involved. No company is compelled to hire anyone, why should they be compelled to continue employing someone indefinitely?

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

#300

Post by kamaal » Fri, Nov 11, 2011, 4:56 AM UTC

joshAg wrote: post #54

mmaunder wrote: post #33

Sometimes you just have to sue to enforce a contract and your rights. Many employees either don't realize this or they don't have the stomach for it. If you find yourself in this position, my advice is to play the game and see it through. 1. Don't resign, don't capitulate and hire a good lawyer immediately. If you don't have the cashflow, but are defending a huge pile of stock about to IPO you'll probably find a lawy…

as an executive, do you think that zynga's executive team gave any thought to the bad press this might generate and the talent that this might scare away? From my perspective, this sort of thing scares me away from companies, because they might do it again in the future.

They don't bother much. For most these people, who are basically sales and operation guys. They are made believe in their MBA classes that if they have a brand name and atleast one successful product they will never need any technical talent to run the company. And they can sell anything every after with operations tuning they teach them during their MBA classes. And that they can virtually sell anything by marketing, advertising and brand positioning. And that engineers and technical staff is merely a commodity which just needs to be used like raw material to convert it money later.

They are basically in for cashing on pre-IPO gold rush.

For me this is more than sufficient to be cautious before working at any start up again.