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The problem is that it's a bad faith negotiation. Dalton was under the impression that he was going to be making a pitch for some higher level support from FB
by cube13 14y ago
The problem is that it's a bad faith negotiation.
Dalton was under the impression that he was going to be making a pitch for some higher level support from FB for his product. That does not automatically translate to wanting Facebook to hire him(which apparently was FB's intent).
Facebook's execs effectively ambushed Dalton during the pitch with an aquihire offer. That's where this turns into a bad faith negotiation, because he was not prepared for it, and would not have had the meeting in the first place if this was on the agenda.
- grecy 14y ago> The problem is that it's a bad faith negotiation. so "multi-billon dollar company uses hard-line negotiation tactics to increase own profit" is a headline now? Wow.
- ajross 14y agoThat's an awfully liberal use of "bad faith". There wasn't any "negotiation" yet at all, it's just a meeting. Meetings go off-agenda all the time. It seems to me just like you say, the extent of the harm to Dalton is that he "would not have had the meeting in the first place." So basically facebook wasted his afternoon by forcing him to listen to some competition threats and trying to hand him an offer letter. Why should we care? I still don't see any ethics issues here at all. Hard negotiation isn't "bad faith".
- cube13 14y ago>That's an awfully liberal use of "bad faith". There wasn't any "negotiation" yet at all, it's just a meeting. Meetings go off-agenda all the time. >Why should we care? I still don't see any ethics issues here at all. Hard negotiation isn't "bad faith". You're absolutely correct that hard negotiation tactics are not bad faith. However, like you point out, there wasn't supposed to be any negotiation about an offer in the first place. There was no negotiation. In fact, one party(Dalton) did not come to negotiate. The other party clearly did. This was not just a meeting going off agenda. This was a calculated strategy to hire Dalton, and that's why this is a bad faith negotiation. Dalton did not walk into it prepared to negotiate employment, nor was he pitching for his product to be acquired by Facebook. But Facebook was clearly interested in it. To be clear, the bad faith negotiation is really on Dalton's part, because he was forced into the negotiations. The fault lies with Facebook, though.
- ajross 14y agoI guess, though I still don't see the ethical takeaway: "Don't go to meetings with Facebook, you never know when they might try to hire you for cheap!" just doesn't have the dramatic impact I'd expect from the kind of argument I'm reading.
- azakai 14y ago> There was no negotiation. In fact, one party(Dalton) did not come to negotiate. The other party clearly did. Is it that clear? We weren't there. Perhaps the Facebook executives listened to a presentation about his product for an hour, and realized during that time that the presented product was basically identical to their own intended product, so the last part of the meeting ended up revolving around "hey, looks we might compete with you - or, we might hire you if that interests you". Maybe it didn't go like that. Maybe they stopped him after 1 slide and told him "your app competes with us. Let us buy you, or die." Huge range in between those two. You and I (unless you are one of the people that was in that meeting) can't know where things fell.
- petegrif 14y agoI don't think you have been reading the source material closely. It wasn't the case they suddenly realized. They knew about his product. They had encouraged him to build it.
- rhizome 14y agoI retreat to the street when reading stories like this: FB subjected him to a hustle.