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Comment by backspace | Hacker News Reader

Your stance is very black or white - either you're for the employee or you're a founder. I don't think it's quite that clear.

As an employee, I wholeheartedly agree that he should have been paid if he had some written form of agreement (email counts).

As a sensible logical person, I think he should have gotten paid when he was an employee especially since this was an employee perk.

I don't need to be a founder to know that he's not entitled to anything from the company when he's no longer an employee. What's the limit here? Can any past employee in the history of the company suddenly realize he's entitled to some perk, come back and demand it? And if he doesn't get said perk, publicly shame the company?

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I assure you I'm not being one sided here; jzhwu and Miso clearly didn't part on good terms. It seems he's at least mildly incompetant. And he's clearly profane and confrontational. It's entirely plausible that the leadership team at Miso hates this guys guts for valid reasons and doesn't want to pay him a cent they don't have to.

And if this was a forgotten poster from his office or a lost book, no one would care. But it's ten thousand dollars. What do their feelings have to do with an obligation of that magnitude? Either they have to pay it or they don't. Who cares about whether he "deserves" it or not?

Also: you realize your intuition makes no legal sense, right? If you "agree that he should have been paid" then you are agreeing that Miso has a debt to jshwu. Debts don't disappear like that because of technicalities (or rather, not unless such technicalities are described in a contract that everyone seems to agree doesn't exist in this case).

Yes, debt can be (and usually is) zeroed out when you leave a company.

As I explained in another comment, most companies (don't know about Miso) make you sign an agreement during your exit interview that the company does not owe you anything except X, Y, Z items that are enumerated clearly (these usually include your last paycheck and check for unpaid vacation days).

Right, you're invoking the "technicalities in a contract" case I talked about. And indeed, that would change things in favor of the company if it existed. Is there any evidence such a contract was signed? Note that neither the employee, CEO or CTO mention such a thing. For reference: across 17 years and five jobs in software I've never signed such an exit contract in my life, nor been asked to. I'm sure it's done, but I seriously doubt it's standard -- especially at startups where contract rigor is hardly a priority.

So basically: I agree. But what does that have to do with the points I was responding to? Earlier you stated clearly that he was "not entitled to anything from the company when he's no longer an employee". Are you walking that back now?

I've also never heard about anyone ever signing something like that at an exit interview. Why on Earth would someone sign something like that anyways? At my last job at BAE:IS they tried to get me to sign an NDA when I left, but I had to refuse for various reasons and eventually they were satisfied with a nice note explaining those reasons paper clipped to the NDA form in my file.

It's more common than you think.

You might not see this in a small startup where the owners/managers don't have much business experience, but the rule of thumb is you NEVER sign this paper unless you're absolutely sure you will never cross paths with your previous employer again, no matter how much $ is dangling in front of you to sign it.

For a lot of departing employees, the stress of the situation leads them to sign it (i.e., sign now or you lose the chance to get this money we're dangling in front of you), which is often a mistake, because you are often signing away your right to sue them.

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