6 ms·
Consider that you are only hearing one side of the story and taking it entirely at face value.
by AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Consider that you are only hearing one side of the story and taking it entirely at face value.
- cogman10 6y agoI mean... what could the other side of the story actually be? "We tried to hire back an employee to build something that we didn't train or try and figure out ourselves and a deadline forced us to pay a large lump sum to that employee". No matter how you slice it, that's really shitty planning on the businesses side. They should have spent the time and money learning how to maintain their shit. By not doing it, they paid a huge price.
- gambiting 6y agoI imagine if it came down to it they could try to pin it on him and say he didn't provide documentation he said he did, and that's why this entire 10M project now can't be delivered. Luckily for him they decided it's easier to just pay the fee.
- cogman10 6y agoEven if he was a shitty employee that doesn't obligate him to work for a price favorable to the company. Hell, they could have fired him for not documenting shit. Because here's the thing, even with how weak US labor laws are, one thing they don't allow is for a company to come back and sue your for incompetence. So long as they didn't go out of their way to sabotage things, they are free and clear.
- sideshowb 6y agoOp says he did provide documentation but they lost it (and hadn't been backing up) after he left
- gambiting 6y agoOf course, but that wouldn't stop them from saying otherwise, suing and binding him in prelonged and expensive legal battle, would it?
- notyourday 6y agoLawsuits come with discovery. Discovery is a terrible thing for a plaintiff that lies in the lawsuit.
- derefr 6y agoWe're talking about who's morally in the wrong here, not whether it's a good idea to do this.
- mercer 6y agoThe person you're responding to doesn't seem to place moral considerations high on his list, in general.
- gambiting 6y agoI don't know why you'd make such an assumption about me, please expand. I think in general all of my comments on this thread have been horribly misunderstood - I was just trying to say that if the company was scummy, instead of paying him the 250k fee, they probably could have sued him instead. I'm not saying that should have done, I'm not saying it would have been the right thing to do, that he deserved it.....literally nothing of the sort. Just pointing out that the company could have made an argument against him in court. As many other people pointed out to me, it would have almost certainly failed. But I don't understand how you can deduct where moral considerations are on my priority list from this?
- bananabreakfast 6y agosure it does. the company would have to prove malicious intent beyond a reasonable doubt and not leaving adequate documentation absolutely does not meet that requirement.
- 6y ago
- nimih 6y agoEven if they did "pin it on him," why should he care, exactly? Seems to me like he had no obligations here, contractual, ethical, or otherwise.
- gambiting 6y agoWell because if he was taken to court that costs time and money, even if ultimately the lawsuit fails, no?
- nimih 6y agoMaybe this is my naivety showing, but to my knowledge it's not a common occurrence for companies to sue employees for refusing to work for them, especially if (as the OP notes elsewhere in the thread) there's no actual contractual obligation.
- bigiain 6y ago> for companies to sue employees for refusing to work for them Especially ex-employees who've been gone 6 months already. Shouldn't be hard to find a no win no fee ambulance chaser to happily take them on and get costs awarded and damages as well...
- Sebb767 6y agoA bit late to the party, but even when threatening with insolvency-via-lawsuit, this would probably not work for them: - if he can prove the threat, the company will be in an even worse position - given the rather lacking precedent (as pointed out by the sister comment), there's a good chance the suit would be thrown out pre-court and therefore be rather cheap - given that the OP seems to be a valued engineer, it is reasonable to assume that he has the f-you-money to fight this out - even if won, the drawn out battle would take far too long to fix the software in time and, given that they then lost a 10 million contract, they lack the motivation (and maybe money) to continue - lastly, even if they won after loosing the contract, they'd probably not be able to extract much in damage payments So it's a rather empty threat.
- notyourday 6y agoThat won't work in most reasonable countries. A company that is no longer employs someone cannot make that person work. In the situations similar to the ones that are being described, the time is not on the side of the company - they have a dead line, a former employees does not.
- perl4ever 6y agoThe other side of the story is it's fake, fake, fake. But it's a nice story. Every negotiation is about the best alternative the parties have, and it's generally harder in real life than in fantasy because you underestimate the alternatives to a deal. Applying maximum leverage has a way of creating "out of the box" alternatives. And vindictiveness. I have no need to judge it if it were true.
- hharlequin 6y agoI think enough of us have been on the same side of this story that we feel fairly comfortable taking it at face value, even if we're only applying it to said personal experience in a wishful fashion.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoYeah, HN at it's finest I suppose. He's like you, he says what you want to hear, therefore you believe him. No need to consider the possibility that maybe there might actually be another point-of-view.
- orestarod 6y agoThe point of view of managers and business owners is well known. Work is not a new concept. You get what you pay for. Nothing is owed to you. Work? Tough luck, you have to pay for it too. On a free market, no less. I don't understand why business owners think the rules are different for them than the rest.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoStraw man what I'm saying, sure, very HN of you.