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Failing the Startup Game at Unbabel – Take 2

TillyBackoff 12y ago
Brilliant! This made my day!
jchonphoenix 12y ago
You signed a contract you didn't read and then blamed someone else for it. Sorry, but all of this falls squarely on you. Especially for major decisions, understand what you're doing. Not reading the contract and understanding it shows naivete and a lack of common sense. This also makes me question how much of your opinion of unbabel should be attributed to your naive worldview.
jimmyfalcon 12y ago
> The contract was presented to me on paper and in Portuguese, 7 pages in total. Given that Unbabel is a translation company, it is ironic that they didn't bother to translate the contract for you, knowing that you don't understand the language
bilalhusain 12y ago
Don't take the criticism and questioning too hard. The comments on this forum is from people you barely know and vice versa. By the way, > The contract was presented to me on paper and in Portuguese ... given what the company does, I might have taken it as a joke.
ahp 12y ago
> The contract was presented to me on paper and in Portuguese, 7 pages in total. The only thing I understood was the caption, 'Contrato de Trabalho'. At the time no one said anything about being able to break the contract without reasonable cause before 3 months had passed. This is pretty appalling. I don't think the burden is on the offerer to explain the contract in full to you. I feel bad for you, but you kind of shot yourself in the foot on that one.
- hepaminondas 12y ago
  Spot on.
- walshemj 12y ago
  Providing an unreadable (to the person signing) contract violates the principals of natural justice for one.
  - CaveTech 12y ago
    It's not unreasonable when it's written in the official language of the country in which your office resides.
    - rcruzeiro 12y ago
      Since they know that the employee didn't speak the language, they could have provided him with an English translation of the contract (specially since the startup is itself a translation service). To be fair, the employee should have asked for a translated contract upon being presented with one in a language that he doesn't understand.
    - walshemj 12y ago
      So it all right to rip of foreigners then or people not versed in employment law. Foolish or badly advised people still have rights you know
      - CaveTech 12y ago
        A foolish person would sign a contract in a language that they can't read. No reasonable employer would be offended if you refused to sign an agreement you couldn't possibly understand. If they were offended, that would be even more of a reason not to work there or sign it.
- rtpg 12y ago
  I don't know if this is common practice, but in Japan when I got an appartment for the first time, I was brought into a room where there was the real estate agent, the contract I was supposed to sign, and another person. This last person went through the entire contract and explained in layman's terms what each section meant. Considering I'm close to illiterate in Japanese (though I could decipher enough to realise the part that says "you can leave so long as you give 1 month's notice"), I pretty much trusted the guy on what he was saying, but I imagine it's a nice service to have. Considering that startups are often talked about like a sort of second family sense, the fact that some sort of deception happened on the employment contract is good cause to not want to ever associate with such a startup. If the founders knowingly presented a contract that he couldn't possibly understand without an explanation, then this seems to be an abuse of trust, plain and simple.
idlewords 12y ago
You need to find out what is in the contract you signed and get legal aid. Continuing to post on it in public is likely to be counterproductive.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
rtpg 12y ago
IANAL, but if you didn't understand the contract, chances are its not valid. If labor law is like in France, this could mean that your employment is assumed to be of the indefinite variety (since no valid contract dictates otherwise), and your firing could be illegal. In France this means they could owe you 6 months of wages. This is Portugal, so some EU directives might cover a similar concept, and you could be entitled to a little settlement on the issue (granted French labor law is pretty intense, so your results may vary). Anyways, a lawyer would be good. If you have any portuguese friends with good google-fu (or knowledge of employment law) they might be able to at least smell test this path.
- walshemj 12y ago
  Unfortunately some of the EU states are happy to take the CAP budget but when it comes to reforming and implementing EU directives only implement the letter and not the sprit of the law. And Some country's blatantly stack the decks against outsiders non Italian university lecturers in Italy have been trying for decades to get parity with their Italian colleagues.
cpinto 12y ago
Employee contracts in Portugal have one of two forms: "fixed term" and "long term". Long term is when there is no deadline for the contract to expire (also, it's the most common type) and it says you're entitled 1mo (perhaps now it's less) of compensation for each year working for the company. Fixed term, however, has a different set of compensation rules, one of them being that if the employer breaks the contract 1 month into it, the employer still needs to pay for the extra 2 months. This appears to be your case/contract. However, from Vasco's previous comment, it does seem like that has been sorted, so your case does not appear to have grounds I'm afraid. Personally, I'd recommend moving on, it may be the top thing on your mind right now, but in a year it won't matter one bit.
csbrooks 12y ago
This screams out "there's two sides to every story". :(
ivraatiems 12y ago
It seems like a lot of people feel an urge to take sides and say "how could Unbabel do this, it's their fault" or "how could you not read the contract, it's your fault," and I don't see any comments really discussing the underlying issues in this situation. I'm seeing a lot of fault on both sides, and lessons both sides need to learn. Andreas, some people here have called you naive, and I have to say that on the surface I can very much see why. A decent financial incentive was enough to get you to wholly uproot your (relatively unstable) life for a group of people you had never met living in a place where you didn't speak the language and didn't know the laws. It does read, in your posts, as if you never considered the possibility that you could get screwed by these people. I feel like part of the reason you are so upset now might be because you didn't consider possible negative outcomes. Nobody likes to be surprised. It's also reasonable to say that being defensive when people ask about your financial situation and the circumstances of this event (as you have been in comments, and in the tone this post takes), and you tell them it's none of their business, that's not fair: You made it their business when you posted it publicly online and invited comments on HN. However, let's look at Unbabel's conduct as well: They knew who Andreas was. He's indicated they knew his situation (and I believe, from his statements and theirs, that he is telling the truth, if colored by his feelings). They knew he didn't speak Portguese, they obviously had to be aware he was willing to take the (in my opinion, fairly significant) step of moving across the continent to their country anyway, and given how quickly they fired him it seems like they knew pretty quickly after he joined that he wasn't working out. It seems like Unbabel understood that Andreas was taking large risks, and didn't try to point that out to him. Apparently, they didn't consider how it would affect his working with them until after he'd been hired. No, they didn't HAVE to, but if they cared at all about his well-being, I think they should have considered his issues and perspective in both the hiring and the firing. He didn't enter this situation angry, and he didn't have to leave it that way. If they had given him a little more time and consideration, he wouldn't have been kicked out of his apartment and these blog posts wouldn't exist. Now, maybe Andreas didn't express to them that he would have liked that until after it was too late (but it seems like they're also refusing to speak to him at all, which just doesn't make sense to me). But it's not his responsibility to ask: Unbabel played on his naivete (whether they knew it or not) to hire him, and they were the ones who decided the relationship hadn't worked out. Their conduct was legal, but it wasn't right, and it wasn't smart. This has gotten quite long, so I'll try to sum up: Your employers/employees are people. They don't know everything that's going on and you don't fully understand their situation no matter how much you think you know. What they present is not always what they are. If you are an employee (and your financial/skillset situation allows it), you owe it to yourself to get protection from this by understanding and negotiating your contract and by maintaining open lines of communication with your superiors, monitoring for issues (which Andreas may have done, I don't know). If you are an employer, you need to take your employees' situation into account even when you're about to fire them, and you need to be as clear and kind as you can be. Yeah, there might be more costs - they should be considered part of the cost of hiring. A disgruntled fired employee is way worse than a fired employee who cost you a month of his rent. So, TL;DR: Be human even if you're representing a faceless corporation, or at least try to pretend you are. This situation happened because nobody was communicating and nobody was thinking about what the other guy was thinking about. It could easily have been avoided with a little more world-wariness and a little more generosity.
practicalpants 12y ago
Besides driving a lot of talent away, I think it's an insidious expectation that an employee makes a 'culture fit' where you have to regularly enjoy surfing and drinking with everyone. Being friendly with coworkers is great, but when you push it further like it appears Unbabel does, you're in reality just asking employees to invest even more of their life, mind, and personal freedom laboring for your company. Another possibly is it's important for the founders to use their startup to live out a lifestyle, i.e. have fun and party along the way. Those are not the type of founders I want to work for either.
koonsolo 12y ago
Let me get this straight: You have been programming Java for years but you haven't saved any money. Being in a situation without any savings, you take the adventure and go to Portugal to sign a contract that you don't understand. The company you work for figures out you are not the person they are looking for, and fires you during your trial period (in which both parties can end the contract within a week, therefore it's called a trial period). I don't know you, so I can't really judge, but can you answer this question: Before blaming other people, have you looked into the mirror first and questioned how you ended up in this situation?
- walshemj 12y ago
  How do you know what the OP's situation is they may be paying off a huge college bill or had a medical emergency or have had to spend most of there income on just living. I suggest reading and reflecting on Matthew 7:3 updated for the down voters "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"
- stale2001 12y ago
  You completely missed the point of the article. Yes, he acted naively, and assumed that the company that he was working for would act in good faith. Thats not the point. The point is that this is a terrible company that acted in bad faith, and took advantage of an admittedly naive person, and nobody in the developer community should ever trust Unbabel again because fuck them.
  - pbiggar 12y ago
    > The point is that this is a terrible company that acted in bad faith, and took advantage of an admittedly naive person, and nobody in the developer community should ever trust Unbabel again because fuck them. Wow, just wow. Is the world really so black and white to you?
vasco_ 12y ago
Vasco Pedro, CEO and Co-founder of Unbabel. I feel that while it is very important to have honest discussions regarding employee expectations, in this particular case Andreas is being particularly disingenuous and stating facts that are plainly false. As the CEO of Unbabel, I find it hard to let wrong factual information be posted about Unbabel. There is a great deal of subjectivity in these matters and we are sensitive to the fact that being fired is not an easy thing, which is why I will try to stick to the facts. Despite the unwarranted distraction all this caused, we wish to put this matter behind us and wish Andreas well in his future endeavors. The offer letter he received, which was in English, stated clearly the “at will” nature of the contract. The relevant clause is below. - "While we hope that your employment with the Company will be mutually satisfactory, employment with the Company is for no specific period of time. As a result, either you or the Company is free to terminate your employment relationship at any time for any reason, with or without cause. This is the full and complete agreement between us on this term. Although your job duties, title, compensation and benefits, as well as the Company’s personnel policies and procedures, may change from time-to-time, the “at-will” nature of your employment may not be changed except by an express writing signed and dated by both you and the President of the Company." This was also explained thoroughly upon signing of the actual contract, which was a standard contract of full time employment within the Portuguese law, which includes 3 months trial period, by default. At the time we did not have our contract translated to English, which is why we took great pains to make sure everything was clear, but shortly after all the contracts were translated to English. Furthermore, as I stated before, when he was let go we gave him more severance than was required, we paid him one extra month of salary and added another $1000 on top of it to compensate for unforeseen expenses. We have tried to the best of our ability to not make sure that Andreas had enough to get back to Sweden, if that was what he wished. As Andreas admits, the company loaned him money to pay rent, helped him find a house, and treated him with respect, courtesy and welcomed him to the team. Andreas worked with 4 different co-workers and got negative feedback from all of them. There was a fundamental problem of communication with Andreas and there appeared to be a systematic misunderstanding of goals, as well as constant exacerbation of minor problems. Communication is two-way channel, so obviously this was not necessarily the fault of the individual, and a high growth startup is certainly an environment that is suitable for misunderstandings, since we rely on a lot of assumptions, which is why over communication is extremely important. In any case it felt to us that there wasn’t a good fit between Andreas and the team. We hired 8 employees around the same period, and 7 of them continue to be productive, happy and valuable members of the team. Of the 8 employees, 5 are not Portuguese, creating a very diverse group. Andreas himself was very happy until the day he was fired, which shows that he was unaware of the consequences of his behaviour, or even of the issues that existed already, which is both potentially a core reason for the problems of communication and why the decision was unexpected. This particular situation will certainly make us improve our hiring and screening processes in order to improve the fit and I thank the HN community for pointing out ideas we can try, like remote working and better defined trial periods. It is also important that we improve employee communication and give more concise feedback to employees. Unbabel is committed to being an international company, with employees from many countries. We pay well above Portuguese average and our goal is to hire the best individuals from anywhere in the world to be part of something meaningful. We are working hard to solve a hard problem in human communication and take very seriously the fact that we need exceptional people in our team in order to to achieve our vision. We are fortunate to have an amazing team and will continue to strive for maintaining high standards and good culture fit. Andreas acquired an unfortunate view of Portugal while he was here. We tried hard to make his experience a wonderful one and Portugal is without a doubt an amazing place to live. We have a great climate, it is very safe, most people speak English, it is a modern place and it is very easy to get 100MB internet speed in your home. It is close to the US and Portugal has always had a hacker mentally, since the days of the discoveries and Vasco da Gama, much due to the need to find solutions to being surrounded by Spain, which at the time was a problem. These and many other things is why Algarve (south of Portugal) was rated the best place in the world to retire by Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-peddicord/best-places-to-retire-overseas_b_5716909.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-peddicord/best-places...). If you are curious about Unbabel’s hiring practices and what is like to work at Unbabel, I would be happy to answer personally.
kirankn 12y ago
Vasco states that "Andreas himself was very happy until the day he was fired, which shows that he was unaware of the consequences of his behavior, or even of the issues that existed already, which is both potentially a core reason for the problems of communication and why the decision was unexpected." Now, how do you just fire a person who has no way to figure out he wasn't meeting the "culture" expectations? No feedback at all? Is this Unbabel's culture?
hartator 12y ago
Lawyer up if you feel mislead. It's always hard to see who is right and who ia wrong, specialy in employment case. Morever, european laws should be a lot more protrective even if you are the one in fault. ps: On a side note, never forget that's every publicity is good publicity. I am working on integrating automated translation in our web app and now I am considering unbabel. :/
dang 12y ago
This post was killed by user flags.
- rhapsodic 12y ago
  Forgive my ignorance, but what are user flags, and how are they used to kill a post? I did notice that this post dropped off the front page quite quickly.
  - dang 12y ago
    After your account has a small amount of karma, a link that says "flag" will appear beside each story. When you see a story that you think is off-topic or otherwise harmful for Hacker News, you can flag it. Flags cause a story's rank to fall and, if there are enough of them, kill the story altogether. When flags kill a story, we sometimes unkill it so the existing discussion can continue. I did that here. I'd guess that the flags on the current post are because the it is just a reprise of a story from earlier this week, so more or less a duplicate. A caveat. Please don't flag stories merely because they are on some unusual topic. If a post is intellectually substantive, and not flamewar prone, but somehow obscure or out-of-the-way, it is welcome here. Here's an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5979384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5979384. We definitely want such diversity on Hacker News. (I mention this in case anyone still has the misconception that HN is for technology and startups only.)
    - rhapsodic 12y ago
      Thanks dang. I don't think the story should have been killed, since it added very relevant information that was not included in the previous post.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

Brilliant! This made my day!

You signed a contract you didn't read and then blamed someone else for it. Sorry, but all of this falls squarely on you. Especially for major decisions, understand what you're doing. Not reading the contract and understanding it shows naivete and a lack of common sense. This also makes me question how much of your opinion of unbabel should be attributed to your naive worldview.

jimmyfalcon 12y ago

> The contract was presented to me on paper and in Portuguese, 7 pages in total. Given that Unbabel is a translation company, it is ironic that they didn't bother to translate the contract for you, knowing that you don't understand the language

bilalhusain 12y ago

Don't take the criticism and questioning too hard. The comments on this forum is from people you barely know and vice versa. By the way, > The contract was presented to me on paper and in Portuguese ... given what the company does, I might have taken it as a joke.

ahp 12y ago

> The contract was presented to me on paper and in Portuguese, 7 pages in total. The only thing I understood was the caption, 'Contrato de Trabalho'. At the time no one said anything about being able to break the contract without reasonable cause before 3 months had passed. This is pretty appalling. I don't think the burden is on the offerer to explain the contract in full to you. I feel bad for you, but you kind of shot yourself in the foot on that one.

hepaminondas 12y ago
Spot on.
walshemj 12y ago
Providing an unreadable (to the person signing) contract violates the principals of natural justice for one.
- CaveTech 12y ago
  It's not unreasonable when it's written in the official language of the country in which your office resides.
  - rcruzeiro 12y ago
    Since they know that the employee didn't speak the language, they could have provided him with an English translation of the contract (specially since the startup is itself a translation service). To be fair, the employee should have asked for a translated contract upon being presented with one in a language that he doesn't understand.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    So it all right to rip of foreigners then or people not versed in employment law. Foolish or badly advised people still have rights you know
    - CaveTech 12y ago
      A foolish person would sign a contract in a language that they can't read. No reasonable employer would be offended if you refused to sign an agreement you couldn't possibly understand. If they were offended, that would be even more of a reason not to work there or sign it.
rtpg 12y ago
I don't know if this is common practice, but in Japan when I got an appartment for the first time, I was brought into a room where there was the real estate agent, the contract I was supposed to sign, and another person. This last person went through the entire contract and explained in layman's terms what each section meant. Considering I'm close to illiterate in Japanese (though I could decipher enough to realise the part that says "you can leave so long as you give 1 month's notice"), I pretty much trusted the guy on what he was saying, but I imagine it's a nice service to have. Considering that startups are often talked about like a sort of second family sense, the fact that some sort of deception happened on the employment contract is good cause to not want to ever associate with such a startup. If the founders knowingly presented a contract that he couldn't possibly understand without an explanation, then this seems to be an abuse of trust, plain and simple.

idlewords 12y ago

You need to find out what is in the contract you signed and get legal aid. Continuing to post on it in public is likely to be counterproductive.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

rtpg 12y ago

IANAL, but if you didn't understand the contract, chances are its not valid. If labor law is like in France, this could mean that your employment is assumed to be of the indefinite variety (since no valid contract dictates otherwise), and your firing could be illegal. In France this means they could owe you 6 months of wages. This is Portugal, so some EU directives might cover a similar concept, and you could be entitled to a little settlement on the issue (granted French labor law is pretty intense, so your results may vary). Anyways, a lawyer would be good. If you have any portuguese friends with good google-fu (or knowledge of employment law) they might be able to at least smell test this path.

walshemj 12y ago
Unfortunately some of the EU states are happy to take the CAP budget but when it comes to reforming and implementing EU directives only implement the letter and not the sprit of the law. And Some country's blatantly stack the decks against outsiders non Italian university lecturers in Italy have been trying for decades to get parity with their Italian colleagues.

cpinto 12y ago

Employee contracts in Portugal have one of two forms: "fixed term" and "long term". Long term is when there is no deadline for the contract to expire (also, it's the most common type) and it says you're entitled 1mo (perhaps now it's less) of compensation for each year working for the company. Fixed term, however, has a different set of compensation rules, one of them being that if the employer breaks the contract 1 month into it, the employer still needs to pay for the extra 2 months. This appears to be your case/contract. However, from Vasco's previous comment, it does seem like that has been sorted, so your case does not appear to have grounds I'm afraid. Personally, I'd recommend moving on, it may be the top thing on your mind right now, but in a year it won't matter one bit.

csbrooks 12y ago

This screams out "there's two sides to every story". :(

ivraatiems 12y ago

It seems like a lot of people feel an urge to take sides and say "how could Unbabel do this, it's their fault" or "how could you not read the contract, it's your fault," and I don't see any comments really discussing the underlying issues in this situation. I'm seeing a lot of fault on both sides, and lessons both sides need to learn. Andreas, some people here have called you naive, and I have to say that on the surface I can very much see why. A decent financial incentive was enough to get you to wholly uproot your (relatively unstable) life for a group of people you had never met living in a place where you didn't speak the language and didn't know the laws. It does read, in your posts, as if you never considered the possibility that you could get screwed by these people. I feel like part of the reason you are so upset now might be because you didn't consider possible negative outcomes. Nobody likes to be surprised. It's also reasonable to say that being defensive when people ask about your financial situation and the circumstances of this event (as you have been in comments, and in the tone this post takes), and you tell them it's none of their business, that's not fair: You made it their business when you posted it publicly online and invited comments on HN. However, let's look at Unbabel's conduct as well: They knew who Andreas was. He's indicated they knew his situation (and I believe, from his statements and theirs, that he is telling the truth, if colored by his feelings). They knew he didn't speak Portguese, they obviously had to be aware he was willing to take the (in my opinion, fairly significant) step of moving across the continent to their country anyway, and given how quickly they fired him it seems like they knew pretty quickly after he joined that he wasn't working out. It seems like Unbabel understood that Andreas was taking large risks, and didn't try to point that out to him. Apparently, they didn't consider how it would affect his working with them until after he'd been hired. No, they didn't HAVE to, but if they cared at all about his well-being, I think they should have considered his issues and perspective in both the hiring and the firing. He didn't enter this situation angry, and he didn't have to leave it that way. If they had given him a little more time and consideration, he wouldn't have been kicked out of his apartment and these blog posts wouldn't exist. Now, maybe Andreas didn't express to them that he would have liked that until after it was too late (but it seems like they're also refusing to speak to him at all, which just doesn't make sense to me). But it's not his responsibility to ask: Unbabel played on his naivete (whether they knew it or not) to hire him, and they were the ones who decided the relationship hadn't worked out. Their conduct was legal, but it wasn't right, and it wasn't smart. This has gotten quite long, so I'll try to sum up: Your employers/employees are people. They don't know everything that's going on and you don't fully understand their situation no matter how much you think you know. What they present is not always what they are. If you are an employee (and your financial/skillset situation allows it), you owe it to yourself to get protection from this by understanding and negotiating your contract and by maintaining open lines of communication with your superiors, monitoring for issues (which Andreas may have done, I don't know). If you are an employer, you need to take your employees' situation into account even when you're about to fire them, and you need to be as clear and kind as you can be. Yeah, there might be more costs - they should be considered part of the cost of hiring. A disgruntled fired employee is way worse than a fired employee who cost you a month of his rent. So, TL;DR: Be human even if you're representing a faceless corporation, or at least try to pretend you are. This situation happened because nobody was communicating and nobody was thinking about what the other guy was thinking about. It could easily have been avoided with a little more world-wariness and a little more generosity.

practicalpants 12y ago

Besides driving a lot of talent away, I think it's an insidious expectation that an employee makes a 'culture fit' where you have to regularly enjoy surfing and drinking with everyone. Being friendly with coworkers is great, but when you push it further like it appears Unbabel does, you're in reality just asking employees to invest even more of their life, mind, and personal freedom laboring for your company. Another possibly is it's important for the founders to use their startup to live out a lifestyle, i.e. have fun and party along the way. Those are not the type of founders I want to work for either.

koonsolo 12y ago

Let me get this straight: You have been programming Java for years but you haven't saved any money. Being in a situation without any savings, you take the adventure and go to Portugal to sign a contract that you don't understand. The company you work for figures out you are not the person they are looking for, and fires you during your trial period (in which both parties can end the contract within a week, therefore it's called a trial period). I don't know you, so I can't really judge, but can you answer this question: Before blaming other people, have you looked into the mirror first and questioned how you ended up in this situation?

walshemj 12y ago
How do you know what the OP's situation is they may be paying off a huge college bill or had a medical emergency or have had to spend most of there income on just living. I suggest reading and reflecting on Matthew 7:3 updated for the down voters "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"
stale2001 12y ago
You completely missed the point of the article. Yes, he acted naively, and assumed that the company that he was working for would act in good faith. Thats not the point. The point is that this is a terrible company that acted in bad faith, and took advantage of an admittedly naive person, and nobody in the developer community should ever trust Unbabel again because fuck them.
- pbiggar 12y ago
  > The point is that this is a terrible company that acted in bad faith, and took advantage of an admittedly naive person, and nobody in the developer community should ever trust Unbabel again because fuck them. Wow, just wow. Is the world really so black and white to you?

vasco_ 12y ago

Vasco Pedro, CEO and Co-founder of Unbabel. I feel that while it is very important to have honest discussions regarding employee expectations, in this particular case Andreas is being particularly disingenuous and stating facts that are plainly false. As the CEO of Unbabel, I find it hard to let wrong factual information be posted about Unbabel. There is a great deal of subjectivity in these matters and we are sensitive to the fact that being fired is not an easy thing, which is why I will try to stick to the facts. Despite the unwarranted distraction all this caused, we wish to put this matter behind us and wish Andreas well in his future endeavors. The offer letter he received, which was in English, stated clearly the “at will” nature of the contract. The relevant clause is below. - "While we hope that your employment with the Company will be mutually satisfactory, employment with the Company is for no specific period of time. As a result, either you or the Company is free to terminate your employment relationship at any time for any reason, with or without cause. This is the full and complete agreement between us on this term. Although your job duties, title, compensation and benefits, as well as the Company’s personnel policies and procedures, may change from time-to-time, the “at-will” nature of your employment may not be changed except by an express writing signed and dated by both you and the President of the Company." This was also explained thoroughly upon signing of the actual contract, which was a standard contract of full time employment within the Portuguese law, which includes 3 months trial period, by default. At the time we did not have our contract translated to English, which is why we took great pains to make sure everything was clear, but shortly after all the contracts were translated to English. Furthermore, as I stated before, when he was let go we gave him more severance than was required, we paid him one extra month of salary and added another $1000 on top of it to compensate for unforeseen expenses. We have tried to the best of our ability to not make sure that Andreas had enough to get back to Sweden, if that was what he wished. As Andreas admits, the company loaned him money to pay rent, helped him find a house, and treated him with respect, courtesy and welcomed him to the team. Andreas worked with 4 different co-workers and got negative feedback from all of them. There was a fundamental problem of communication with Andreas and there appeared to be a systematic misunderstanding of goals, as well as constant exacerbation of minor problems. Communication is two-way channel, so obviously this was not necessarily the fault of the individual, and a high growth startup is certainly an environment that is suitable for misunderstandings, since we rely on a lot of assumptions, which is why over communication is extremely important. In any case it felt to us that there wasn’t a good fit between Andreas and the team. We hired 8 employees around the same period, and 7 of them continue to be productive, happy and valuable members of the team. Of the 8 employees, 5 are not Portuguese, creating a very diverse group. Andreas himself was very happy until the day he was fired, which shows that he was unaware of the consequences of his behaviour, or even of the issues that existed already, which is both potentially a core reason for the problems of communication and why the decision was unexpected. This particular situation will certainly make us improve our hiring and screening processes in order to improve the fit and I thank the HN community for pointing out ideas we can try, like remote working and better defined trial periods. It is also important that we improve employee communication and give more concise feedback to employees. Unbabel is committed to being an international company, with employees from many countries. We pay well above Portuguese average and our goal is to hire the best individuals from anywhere in the world to be part of something meaningful. We are working hard to solve a hard problem in human communication and take very seriously the fact that we need exceptional people in our team in order to to achieve our vision. We are fortunate to have an amazing team and will continue to strive for maintaining high standards and good culture fit. Andreas acquired an unfortunate view of Portugal while he was here. We tried hard to make his experience a wonderful one and Portugal is without a doubt an amazing place to live. We have a great climate, it is very safe, most people speak English, it is a modern place and it is very easy to get 100MB internet speed in your home. It is close to the US and Portugal has always had a hacker mentally, since the days of the discoveries and Vasco da Gama, much due to the need to find solutions to being surrounded by Spain, which at the time was a problem. These and many other things is why Algarve (south of Portugal) was rated the best place in the world to retire by Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-peddicord/best-places-to-retire-overseas_b_5716909.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-peddicord/best-places...). If you are curious about Unbabel’s hiring practices and what is like to work at Unbabel, I would be happy to answer personally.

kirankn 12y ago

Vasco states that "Andreas himself was very happy until the day he was fired, which shows that he was unaware of the consequences of his behavior, or even of the issues that existed already, which is both potentially a core reason for the problems of communication and why the decision was unexpected." Now, how do you just fire a person who has no way to figure out he wasn't meeting the "culture" expectations? No feedback at all? Is this Unbabel's culture?

hartator 12y ago

Lawyer up if you feel mislead. It's always hard to see who is right and who ia wrong, specialy in employment case. Morever, european laws should be a lot more protrective even if you are the one in fault. ps: On a side note, never forget that's every publicity is good publicity. I am working on integrating automated translation in our web app and now I am considering unbabel. :/

dang 12y ago

This post was killed by user flags.

rhapsodic 12y ago
Forgive my ignorance, but what are user flags, and how are they used to kill a post? I did notice that this post dropped off the front page quite quickly.
- dang 12y ago
  After your account has a small amount of karma, a link that says "flag" will appear beside each story. When you see a story that you think is off-topic or otherwise harmful for Hacker News, you can flag it. Flags cause a story's rank to fall and, if there are enough of them, kill the story altogether. When flags kill a story, we sometimes unkill it so the existing discussion can continue. I did that here. I'd guess that the flags on the current post are because the it is just a reprise of a story from earlier this week, so more or less a duplicate. A caveat. Please don't flag stories merely because they are on some unusual topic. If a post is intellectually substantive, and not flamewar prone, but somehow obscure or out-of-the-way, it is welcome here. Here's an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5979384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5979384. We definitely want such diversity on Hacker News. (I mention this in case anyone still has the misconception that HN is for technology and startups only.)
  - rhapsodic 12y ago
    Thanks dang. I don't think the story should have been killed, since it added very relevant information that was not included in the previous post.
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