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It sounds like you have a good point in there somewhere, but it's lost when you cross into personal attack, especially when it takes the form of an aggressive rant. That's probably why your comment was downvoted and flagged.

Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the guidelines, even when you feel somebody did something egregious?

Edit: it looks like you've broken the site guidelines quite a bit and we even had to warn you about this recently. Continuing in that vein is going to get you banned here, so please fix this.

Then the company shouldn't mind not getting the patents. After all, they really aren't worth that much right? Everyone's happy, well everyone but this manager.

I doubt that he is getting above-market pay. 7 years for a decent bonus to kick in is not what the market does; I got a good bonus my first year at Google and the first year at the startup I quit Google to join. That's the norm. Being relocated to a different part of the country to accept a promotion is also not normal. At any organization interested in retaining engineers, you demonstrate that you're working at the "next level" and get the simple pay increase that that is worth.

I would expect someone with the title "senior engineer" to be getting in the ballpark of $300,000 total compensation. Otherwise, their version of "senior" means something different than what the market leaders call it. If this guy is getting $400,000 a year with the patent bonuses... it's probably money well spent. With the right patents, you can extort Samsung for a few billion here, Apple for a few billion there. $110,000 is pocket change. Just pay the guy that and make it unappealing to leave for Google and get an endless stream of patents that you can have in your back pocket for defense, at the very least.

>I would expect someone with the title "senior engineer" to be getting in the ballpark of $300,000 total compensation.

Nonsense. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/senior-software-engineer-...

Google is the 1% of payouts. Look on indeed, or any objective source for average senior engineer salaries and you're talking $150 or so in a city.

All those sites I have looked at severely underestimates pay, or maybe only people who are getting shafted and are unhappy contribute data to them. Just look at Google, Apple, and Microsoft on the page you linked. I guarantee you there is no equivalent of a senior developer at any of those companies making <100k in the US.

Just to put some perspective in this comment. It means that you'd also have to move to SF or Silicon Valley and it might surprise you that many people dont wan't to live there. The average salary of a senior engineer is way less. Also, the average company doesn't offer RSUs which is where your numbers might come from.

Your numbers don't apply. If those patents were really that valuable (they generally aren't) and the company had the money to pay "senior engineers" 300k then they wouldn't be cutting the compensation like that to save costs. As quoted, he patent/code in question is worth a measly 25,000$ to the company. It's a joke. Nobody in this whole story is a big deal. There's no billion dollar patents here, for the likes of Google or Samsung to fight over.

The searches they did to recover it suggest it is worth a lot of money. You don;t do all that for a few thousands savings.

When I worked at GM they gave out bonus checks to ideas that saved they money. I believe it was 10% of what they saved in a year.

An idiot bean-counter probably complain about giving an assembly line worker a check for $100,000 despite the fact it not only saved $1,000,000 GM that year, but every year after year as long as the idea is used.

It says in the link that the company had the discretion to pay between $300 and $5000 per patent, and they paid him $110000 for 30 patents ($3667 average), which means that the patents he was generating were not useless.

And the fact that they describe him as a senior engineer and directly describe the IP they’re after as valuable to the company.

What you are saying sounds plausible, but one thing that leaves a doubt in my mind is the bit where management is worried they have not been able to capture the latest work. If prior work was fully fluff, why would they be anxious to capitalize on the new work?

It's not uncommon to have prolific inventors in companies like IBM or so. Maybe the company realised that this person's patents were not worth enough, however, they might turn valuable in a few years, who knows, through some acquisitions, etc.

The sad thing about these situations is that the inventor is not owning the patent, the company screwed the engineer, and this is now on his/her own trying to fight legal battles.

In my opinion, the best thing to do in such situations is to leave your job and make a startup. If this guy is able to fill 30 patents he has probably some good ideas.

> Have none of you really worked at a company that introduced an overly ambitious rewards program and had to dial it back?

Yes, and universally it resulted in a mass exodus of good talent, I have experienced it 2 times in my career, every time most of the good talent was gone at other employers with in a year

>He was gaming the system to get above market pay.

lol, I always love when people believe that using a program exactly as it was designed is a "loop hole" or "gaming the system"..

No he was not gaming the system

>If you think someone came up with 30 truly novel and useful software patents in 2 years you might not have read enough software patents.

I am opposed to all software patents, however that does not change anything. The fact is to the company and the current legal climate around patents I can assure you each of those patents are worth more than the $$$ they where paying out.

>Has he worked in software before? Clearly he's never been in a management/leadership position where he actually has to balance the concerns of the company with his own ego.

Clearly you one of the bad managers that believe they are putting company concerns above all else and ends up hurting company due to their short sighted policies.

I bet you would be the type of manager that would outsource an entire dept, pat yourself on the back for the cost savings, and then jump ship as the company plummets of the cliff you created

> The fact is to the company and the current legal climate around patents I can assure you each of those patents are worth more than the $$$ they where paying out.

That's utter nonsense. Most patents are absolutely worthless. Even the odd patent that you might find, where you can litigate still requires a risky and costly litigation process.

It's more likely that the company paid too much money to generate too few valuable patents, which is why they scaled back the program. Now that they did find one that is somewhat valuable to them, they want it and they tasked this poor middle manager to get it. But they're also not willing to spend more than 25,000$ on it. So how can this patent be that valuable? It just isn't.

Couple things

1. I assume that processes or advancements related to the patent actually do improve the business function or process, that alone probably makes the pay out worth it. I know a few companies that have process improvement programs where employees can earn more than the person in this story if they successfully submit an idea that does something to improve the companies process, reduce costs, etc. has nothing to do with patents

2. The value of software patents today is NOT to litigate against other companies, companies fill out their software and other IP today to protect themselves FROM litigation, if a company finds themselves on the wrong end of a litigation their own patent portfolio is ammo both offensively (counter-suite) and defensively

Again, if the patent is so worthless, why spend so much effort to get it back?

Sure the company realized that the patents are not really worth as much as they were originally paying. So developer decides not to bother which makes sense.

I don't think it is narcissistic but I do think the developer has to be careful in how she plays her cards.

Why are you referring to the male developer as "she"?

Not everybody's first language is English, mistakes are made. We all understood what the author meant.

Hard to agree with you. I don't think "understanding what the author meant" is remotely relevant, and if this is a mistake, I am actually very curious how such a mistake could be made.

Many people find it extremely insulting to be referred to with the wrong gender, there are famous cases discussed in HN which led to developers losing their position within projects.

Perhaps I missed it, but I didn't notice anything in the article that said they were software patents.

30 accepted patents is impressive regardless of cashflow for them. Perhaps put him on the legal team editing patents? Leverage what he loves.

submitted vs. accepted is a long and twisty path ... if were are talking 2 years here most or all of them will not have been reviewed yet.