I find the reactions here fascinating. There's a hugely bimodal distribution here between people who sympathize with the employee (I'm in that set: the guy's out ten thousand dollars, who cares about feelings or "employers being human" at that scale?) and the employer.

I'd guess the latter are mostly founders, or people lurking here in the hope of someday being founders. And that makes me sad that so many of you think it's morally acceptable to promise large bonuses to your employees that you intend to pay only if reminded about it.

Your stance is very black or white - either you're for the employee or you're a founder. I don't think it's quite that clear.

As an employee, I wholeheartedly agree that he should have been paid if he had some written form of agreement (email counts).

As a sensible logical person, I think he should have gotten paid when he was an employee especially since this was an employee perk.

I don't need to be a founder to know that he's not entitled to anything from the company when he's no longer an employee. What's the limit here? Can any past employee in the history of the company suddenly realize he's entitled to some perk, come back and demand it? And if he doesn't get said perk, publicly shame the company?

I assure you I'm not being one sided here; jzhwu and Miso clearly didn't part on good terms. It seems he's at least mildly incompetant. And he's clearly profane and confrontational. It's entirely plausible that the leadership team at Miso hates this guys guts for valid reasons and doesn't want to pay him a cent they don't have to.

And if this was a forgotten poster from his office or a lost book, no one would care. But it's ten thousand dollars. What do their feelings have to do with an obligation of that magnitude? Either they have to pay it or they don't. Who cares about whether he "deserves" it or not?

Also: you realize your intuition makes no legal sense, right? If you "agree that he should have been paid" then you are agreeing that Miso has a debt to jshwu. Debts don't disappear like that because of technicalities (or rather, not unless such technicalities are described in a contract that everyone seems to agree doesn't exist in this case).

Yes, debt can be (and usually is) zeroed out when you leave a company.

As I explained in another comment, most companies (don't know about Miso) make you sign an agreement during your exit interview that the company does not owe you anything except X, Y, Z items that are enumerated clearly (these usually include your last paycheck and check for unpaid vacation days).

Right, you're invoking the "technicalities in a contract" case I talked about. And indeed, that would change things in favor of the company if it existed. Is there any evidence such a contract was signed? Note that neither the employee, CEO or CTO mention such a thing. For reference: across 17 years and five jobs in software I've never signed such an exit contract in my life, nor been asked to. I'm sure it's done, but I seriously doubt it's standard -- especially at startups where contract rigor is hardly a priority.

So basically: I agree. But what does that have to do with the points I was responding to? Earlier you stated clearly that he was "not entitled to anything from the company when he's no longer an employee". Are you walking that back now?

I've also never heard about anyone ever signing something like that at an exit interview. Why on Earth would someone sign something like that anyways? At my last job at BAE:IS they tried to get me to sign an NDA when I left, but I had to refuse for various reasons and eventually they were satisfied with a nice note explaining those reasons paper clipped to the NDA form in my file.

It's more common than you think.

You might not see this in a small startup where the owners/managers don't have much business experience, but the rule of thumb is you NEVER sign this paper unless you're absolutely sure you will never cross paths with your previous employer again, no matter how much $ is dangling in front of you to sign it.

For a lot of departing employees, the stress of the situation leads them to sign it (i.e., sign now or you lose the chance to get this money we're dangling in front of you), which is often a mistake, because you are often signing away your right to sue them.

People who make good CEO's are more likely to be mentally ill than the general population - http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-stack-the-psychopat....

I agree. I'm having a really hard time understanding the people who are defending the company here.

I can understand, if not sympathize with, the guys at the company doing what they did. Emotions get in the way, and it sounds like they were kind of angry. In that situation, it's only human, even if not right, to decide the answer first ("no") and then rationalize it.

But I can't understand why you'd defend them without any skin in the game. Maybe people don't think that an exchange which isn't written out in legalese and signed doesn't constitute an obligation? Maybe they're trying to approach it from some sort of karmic perspective, where somehow fucking up the database makes him no longer deserve the money he was promised for something completely unrelated?

It's bizarre. And troubling. Personally, I would say that this is about as cut and dried as it comes.

As a founder, I definitely sympathize more with the employee. I want my engineers thinking about engineering, not bullshit paperwork, or how to prevent me from screwing them.

Miso gained $10k in cash, but they lost a ton more than that in employee trust. A foolish bargain, I'd say.

There are quite a few things in life that are based on you remembering something. Remembering to pay your taxes on time. Remembering to register for the Selective Service upon attaining the age of majority. And remembering to cash in your bonuses and vacation days BEFORE quitting and burning bridges, not after.

This guy isn't a current employee. There wasn't a contract signed. That is a gaping hole wide enough to drive a truck through when someone has burned through goodwill like jzhwu has.

> I'm in that set: the guy's out ten thousand dollars, who cares about feelings or "employers being human" at that scale?) and the employer.

Wonderful. And how much do you think his database mishap cost them? Probably a lot more than $10k! And now he's attacking them on the internet. This is someone who is willing to cause hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage for what he's convinced himself he's entitled to, even thought it's a bonus for current employees.

Taxes and draft registration are legal requirements. So is paying your employees what you owe them. I don't see the asymmetry here. Bonus compensation is still wages (i.e. what line does it go on in your W-2?). You don't have the option to not pay wages to former employees, even ones you don't like.

And your last bit is IMHO horrifying. You clearly think it's OK to dock wages for mistakes on the job. That's both illegal (Wildly so! Don't try this on real employees or you can wreck your company.) and immoral.

Asking for money you're owed never makes you a "douche". It doesn't take stones to ask for what you're owed just because you caused some problems. There is no link between the two! I'm astonished that anyone thinks there is. There's absolutely no leeway to say, "I don't like what you did recently, therefore I'm not going to pay you the money you're owed for something completely unrelated."

There sure is leeway: no signed contract. If he had left on good terms they would have paid the bonus, no question. He didn't and his fuckup cost them a lot more than $10k. At this point, dig in their heels.

He says an email is a contract? OK, well, two can play that game. I'd bet that on the bottom of several of those emails there was something about "this email is only addressed to the sender, it may not be reposted anywhere".

Looks like Joshua Z.H. Wu is now in material breach of "contract" too. I'm sure a clever lawyer could come up with some sort of nondisclosure or material defamation claim. He wants to go to the mattresses, let's go to the mattresses.

Again, no need if he's a good guy. He's a good guy, they're good guys. If he's a douche, they have no obligation to be good guys.

Contracts need an offer, acceptance, and consideration. "Consideration" just means that both sides should stand to gain something from the agreement.

Non-disclosure text at the bottom of an email seems like a real stretch for that. Of course it depends on the jurisdiction and the case law.

> He says an email is a contract? OK, well, two can play that game. I'd bet that on the bottom of several of those emails there was something about "this email is only addressed to the sender, it may not be reposted anywhere".

Doesn't work that way. The e-mail in question was a back-and-forth conversation in which both parties clearly agreed. Your hypothetical bottom-of-the-e-mail notice is not. It may well not be enforceable.

I don't understand why you say "He says" here, as if this is some sort of fruity off-the-wall legal theory. Contract law is pretty clear that any agreement that meets certain conditions is a contract, and this e-mail almost certainly meets them. In theory, a simple conversation where the guy said "We'll pay you $X for a referral" and the other guy responded "OK" is legally binding. In practice, it would be hard to prove that it happened. It's really easy to prove that the e-mail happened, though. Did they promise him a referral bonus? Bam, done, legally binding contract.

But let's say it is enforceable. What of it? The company would have to show damages if they wanted to sue over it. What damages are they going to show, exactly? That their illegal refusal to pay their former employee got exposed? Good luck getting a judge to go along with that.

> Did they promise him a referral bonus? Bam, done, legally binding contract.

Nope, not if they actually have a pre-existing contract signed with other employees that states that the bonus is for current employees only. Then the email conversation is a reference to this pre-existing contract, which excludes Joshua Z.H. Wu in his current state.

And if you were the DBA at the company who was just caused no end of trouble by old jzwhu, you might remember that you signed a contract like that back in October or something.

He was a current employee when the payment was due, thus the money was owed then. That he later quit does not somehow erase the debt.