This bonus you're talking about, it isn't free money like you frame it, you're framing it simultaneously as "free money" and a loan so as to avoid addressing what is actually going on here. It's a way to get people with money problems stuck in servitude and willing to eat any shit you want them to just to avoid the debt they'll incur if they don't. And that's predatory, but that's not the end of it. They then get laid off and still owe the money back. I'm not surprised you're avoiding mentioning these facts about the case we are discussing.
>people with money problems
yes yes, a bunch of you "not salesmen by trade" engineers here, who came over from the teenage antiwork subreddit, are on this thread making up fake facts about this case, and calling a guy with a $3mil house "people with money problems." As someone who spent half of my career as a presales engineer designing and rolling out data storage networks, I fully understand your point, and your reasoning. You want to be angry at someone instead of yourself, so you'll make up victims and double-down on your stance till it kills you.
They owe money back, because they were given an interest free loan. They got laid off, because when the market shrinks, it's not the responsibility of a company to keep paying you for doing nothing. I have mentioned "these facts" fifty times already in this thread. But I would not expect you to change the way you look at them no matter what anyone says. It's similar to a guy I saw while working at a hospital a while ago, the summer when everyone I know got a vaccine. He was cough-screaming that covid was a big pharma hoax as they put him on the ventilator. He never woke up, but he did die thinking he was right. Reality didn't care what he thought, reality just is.
They call it a loan, because it is a loan. Just like PPP was called a loan, and forgiven on a predefined condition.
I hear myself fine. I hear myself observing some people who I believe have not had a professional job in sales or presales, never had a sign-on bonus, never received stock options, and are calling a great thing bad, and being outraged on behalf of some rich asshole playing victim. I hear myself laughing at some people who have no clue about the subject matter, but like to create fake anger and outrage online, so they could feel superior by painting "evil" all around them to avoid dealing with the actual reason for their own failings - themselves.
Does that answer your question?