Is such an agreement enforceable? Or is this some meaningless pledge?
If you want people to stay, give them a decent financial incentive.
Nah. That doesn't work (assuming you're already paying well). Best people will consider this a sign of desperation and leave, and bottom of the barrel will stick around for stuff to vest. Fail/fail.
If you want people to stay, give them a decent financial incentive.
I keep seeing this sentiment, but I think it's important to distinguish between "don't give your people worthless equity instead of a good salary" and "I'm just here for the money." Starting to see a lot of the latter around here and it's disheartening. Sure, broken dreams and failed visions and all of that happens, but it's part of the process when you try to do "big" things. Widespread cynicism will kill high-tech.
I however am restricting my evaluation to the domain [high-tech] : [startup], which after all is the core demographic for HN and YC more broadly.
In that context I don't think it's an optimal outlook - and in fact I think it is detrimental to the zeitgeist and pushes further away from the PARC roots of paradigm setting technology development.
I grant that in the current environment it's "idealistic" but I think at the core, the real innovators still have the vision of changing the future through technology - at least I do, and I know I'm not alone in that.
Yaa, how awful...because my landlord accepts a share of my company CEO's "vision", as does my grocer
> Widespread cynicism will kill high-tech
What a laugh that the heirs, the LP's, the VC's and seeds and angels aren't the cynics, your unhappiness is the twenty-something wage slaves slaving away at all hours building products are now disheartening, because they're buying the BS less and want to keep more of the wealth they're creating.
The heirs and LP's are not "here" for the money. They're in their yachts at Key West, and they have their bets spread.
Woe is us, how disheartening that the people creating the wealth want to keep more of the wealth they create, as opposed to believing the fairy tales the idle class and their myrmidions are telling them.
It's toxic to demand written agreement to stay. The request itself says "Things are so bad that nobody wants to be here. Maybe if we all sign this paper, then at least we're all in the same boat".
(Side note: money is among the least effective incentive. Waiting for a large incentive payout just makes the time more miserable.)
They're called retention bonuses. Similar to signing bonuses, you can be contractually obligated to pay them back if you don't stay for the term of the contract.
Most companies will keep retention bonuses very hush-hush.
(Note: cash paid if you're still there after a period is very much legal)
Marissa must be truly desperate.
Basically, for a contract to be valid both sides have to give something, this is referred to as "consideration".
Now, normally, with work-related contracts the consideration is "continuing to employ you", but with senior mgmt (golden parachutes, stock options, etc) I bet the waters are murky.
IANAL.
But it is enforceable in that Yahoo could sue for damages. The damages probably wouldn't be all that high though. It is more of an issue when the employment is something unique. Like a start athlete or movie star. You can't just find another person to play Tony Stark in Iron Man 4. But there are plenty of people who can be a Yahoo executive, relatively speaking.
Well kind of. Technically you can't force them to work, but you can force them to pay someone else to work in their place. Most teachers have this kind of contract. They are not at will employees. They can't be fired during the school year and they can't leave either. If they don't show up to work, they have to pay the school back for the part of their contract they did not fulfill to pay for the substitute teacher. (This has nothing to do with tenure, BTW, it's true for tenured and untenured teachers alike).
All I'm saying is that a court can't make you work for any company, even if you sign a super-official-sounding document saying "I'll work for this company for ___ years".