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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

#341

Post by electromagnetic »

johnyzee wrote: post #317
grellas wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very hard for a company to prove willful failure to perform duties when an engineer is actually executing on assigned projects, or at least attempting in good faith to execute. Engineers who have contractual protection against termination without cause are usually well-protected against arbitrary terminations on "non-performance" grounds and the company has to do a lot more than loosely assert (in "he said / sh…

What about the 'bad faith' argument presented in the sibling comment? > [...] Kmart’s discharge was in 'bad faith' and that, even without a contract, such a termination gave rise to tort liability. The court agreed [...]

If you had clear reasoning that you was dismissed for a reason other than failure to perform duties, then you would have cause to sue.

FTA two people already retained council, settled and still got to keep a portion of their stock.

What Zynga is worried about is that if they're going to be publicly valued at $1 billion, the guy who owns 5% of stock because he was there from day one is going to land $50 million and walk.

I imagine that the biggest problem with IPO's for companies like Zynga (especially if they're acting douche to their employees) is that they risk losing a lot of employees. Either selling up stock to get the cash, or simply retiring to live off dividends and slow-stock sale tactics.

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

#342

Post by tripzilch »

epo wrote: post #333
samstave wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>not everybody in the game is for building something or for changing the world or for passion. You fucking suck. I am not clear if youare advocating these actions or not - but let me make it very clear to you; if you are a proponent of such behavior - lets make sure we never cross paths. This is NOT OK. People like this are CANCER. Sure - many instances of CEOs end up in the position of a Pincus - but it DOES NOT mak…

The guy is telling it how it is, you are behaving like an 11 year-old. The world is not a nice place, it gets less nice when money is involved, grow up.

You're both right. Just because "it is how it is" doesn't make something OK, as you say the world is not a nice place, but it also doesn't mean you have to sit down and take it like a cabbage either.

And it's perfectly fine to tell people with questionable moral values to go and fuck themselves. Even though it's not always the most strategically sound way to make sure they get what they got coming in a world that is indeed not a very nice place at all.

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

#343

Post by danssig »

rbanffy wrote: post #334
danssig wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much longer this sort of thing will need to keep going until others start following their lead.

Hopefully we can rely on courts of law to do their job.

How good of a job have they been doing so far?

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

#344

Post by joezydeco »

kamaal wrote: post #303
joezydeco wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine your company gave you a $40,000 bonus. You get 4 checks for $10k each, dated 11-Nov-2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. If the company is still in business on those dates you can cash the checks. If you leave or quit, you hand back the uncashed checks. Now the company says "give us back 2014 and 2015 or you're fired". What would you say?

Also more importantly they gave a $40,000 bonus as payable in the future because they wanted you to do $40,000 work now but didn't have money to pay you.

Yeah, I realized after the fact that the analogy was a little shaky there. It's not just a bonus but deferred compensation. But let's keep it simple for now. Androsynth had a problem trying to understand the idea that these options were granted in lieu of earned pay.

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

#345

Post by mseebach »

tripzilch wrote: post #342
epo wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy is telling it how it is, you are behaving like an 11 year-old. The world is not a nice place, it gets less nice when money is involved, grow up.

You're both right. Just because "it is how it is" doesn't make something OK, as you say the world is not a nice place, but it also doesn't mean you have to sit down and take it like a cabbage either. And it's perfectly fine to tell people with questionable moral values to go and fuck themselves. Even though it's not always the most strategically sound way to make sure they get what they got coming in a world that is…

There's a bloody big leap from "screwing employees over stock options" over "excessive 'inspiration' from competition" to "not in it to change the world with a passion".

Replying "you fucking suck" to someone taking the position that it's actually OK to go and do a job without having passion and unicorns and rainbows flow out of your ass all day is not the opposite of "taking it like a cabbage", it's the opposite of civilized discourse.

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

#346

Post by Angostura »

From the article: "the firm's executives reportedly justified their strategy by saying it was best for the company. With the unvested shares, the executives believed they could attract more top talent with the promise of stock."

The answer is simple then - the executive who originally miscalculated how much stock to give away should be the person who is penalised by having their options reduced to make up the shortfall.

You know ... for the good of the company.

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

#347

Post by netcan »

Zynga executives were especially concerned with not creating a "Google chef" scenario.

That reference relates to Google's 2004 IPO when one of the company's chefs, who was hired in the firm's early days, walked away with $20 million worth of stock after the shares went public.

This is something to take note of. You might be able to see the reality of a chance to make $X being worth a small fraction of X, but don't expect everyone else to see it after the fact. If you are relying on executives, judges or anyone else to see that you were compensated with a lottery ticket worth $1000 and lucked into $20m rather then that you were just somehow compensated $20m especially if they have an interest in seeing it the latter way, you need to take into account that they might not.

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

#350

Post by netcan »

The outcome here may become a clarification of what vested shares means. If I'm not mistaken, vested shares evolved out of the practice of just giving shares to employees at the start in order to guarantee that they wouldn't just take the shares and run.

If this is deemed legal it will probably eventually become standard and vested shares will become negotiable. If this happens, what are vested shares anyway? What would be the difference between vested shares and just issuing shares (or options) periodically?

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