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

This sounds exactly right. He was hired, in part, to make it more attractive for employees to work longer hours. He succeeded so it hardly seems unfair that he was well rewarded.

"He signed up, however, and started easing the computer engineers into the long hours culture with innovations including free beer and fortnightly "big ass" barbecues, and breakfast specials. He converted the "googlers" to a diet that ensured they kept working after lunch and weaned them off pizzas."

(source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1582494/Chef-lifts...)

I'll do a quick summary.

Episode 1: (this is the one that most directly affected me)

I was working on a very interesting but somewhat far-off technology. I did some tech talks about it, and put them on Google Video. Was approached by a guy who said he was a wealthy early-stage technology investor. He showed me a lot of stuff that indicated that this was the case, had a lot of real people vouching for him, etc.

He made me an offer of a cash investment over a period of two years in exchange for a percentage ownership in a company I would create. I got a lawyer, did a contract, and was very excited. We'd work with early stage customers, iterate, and he'd support the hiring of two additional people to do R&D work. (The technology was a machine learning application.) He even had some existing customers lined up and interested in bio-medical, oil and gas, and other industries.

Came to find out that: a) this guy has almost no money at all and is a complete fraud, b) everyone he associated with literally has a different picture of reality. It was pretty amazing. Some people thought he was associated with a company that he only acted as a salesman for, for example.

I walk. In doing so I have to walk away from approximately three years of work because the ownership of said work is now tied to an entity that this guy could have a potential claim on.

Guy turns out to also be a f'ing lunatic. He threatens my life verbally. I contemplate buying a handgun.

Episode 2:

I meet a promising entrepreneur who is interested in bio-med stuff. He's working on a protein classification company. He asks me if I'd be interested in joining as a software engineer. I say sure.

He sends my resume out to his investors, only he's listing me as having degrees I don't have. I e-mail him about this. He asks me to personally write up a CV and coaches me on how to pad my resume.

I walk.

Episode 3:

I join a consulting firm that does early stage tech R&D and business consulting for startups. This one involves me only indirectly, but while there I get to witness several pieces of rather astounding sleazery.

One episode involved a company that was formed to build a video delivery device. We did a bunch of R&D for them. They were basically a sales pit: founder was a salesman, and he hired a bunch of salesmen to go sell ahead into the market and hired us to build a prototype. (Nothing wrong so far.) But the market didn't seem to be too interested, so he pulled the plug. Walked. Left our firm with almost $100k in uncollected bills. We do some investigation and find out that this guy's name is on over a dozen defunct LLCs.

Another episode involved a guy who was "known" as a "genius," a "business God" as one person called him. In this case we did actually get paid, but... the guy was a complete f'ing lunatic. He would berate and insult his employees, sexually harass women, and we come to find out that he'd been sued multiple times by previous partners. We were lucky to get paid... mostly because someone other than this guy was footing the bill. (That someone later pulled the plug.)

Consulting firm shutters its doors. I can't blame the guy. I mean... I didn't have to actually negotiate with these pricks. I just worked for the place. He did.

Episode 4:

Join a startup doing mobile devices. We get funded to develop something, and we're on the verge of making a sale, when the parent company decides to pull the plug. We were inches away. Millimeters away. Then the parent company decides to screw over our development partner.

That's it. I'm out. No more startups for me, unless it's my own.

Now here is my question:

Do they actually teach this s--t in business school? What the hell? I had a friend when I was much younger who got into some shady stuff including drug trafficking, and he told me a lot of stories. None of them approached what I experienced in the "legitimate" business world.

Working for a startup (or hell, founding one) seems like an enterprise in which a person can get screwed 8 million different ways, and I only understand about four of them.

I would agree with the analogy if the stock compensation was payed out along the way.

I think it is more akin to "we are not satisfied with your work on the contract we are taking what you have produce so far and are only going to pay you a portion of the original agreed upon amount."

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?