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Comment by hardwaresofton | Hacker News Reader

Maybe the empathy is misplaced, but this seems like 90% of airing of the dirty laundry of Soundcloud and 10% of asking if anyone is looking for someone to hire. I think you could have done the latter without throwing Soundcloud under the bus _too much_.

Yes, they screwed you out of what was an accepted job offer, and you should definitely do everything in your power to get anything that was owed to you, after carefully reading the employment contract and researching your rights, however I'm sure that CTO (and the company as a whole) is not having a great time either. There was already cause for some reservations given the bad press that was circling the company... Shit happens.

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Who gives a fudge about "CTO having a bad time"? It was their duty to actually keep head above the water, and maybe... not hire people knowing the shit is going to hit the fan? Unless the CTO didn't know, then it's a completely different level of indolence, and the company is going down, super hard, super fast.

Right -- people sometimes fail, or make mistakes, non-maliciously. Even if it's 100% the CTO's fault that doesn't stop you from being gracious -- It's not like you chewing out the CTO is going to bring back the company's position. If you think it was malicious (or you think the person should be held personally accountable), file charges -- otherwise I think it helps to at least think of the position the company as well as the CTO that's personally delivering the bad news to you.

When "shit happens" and you're responsible (as SoundCloud is here), you sure should try to compensate for the trouble (big trouble in this case as he left a job and moved to another city just for the job). Here they just said 'sorry' and left him hanging. They clearly still have money and should have paid him, IMO, at least some compensation. I'm not sure how do you justify advocating for them. They totally deserve being thrown under the bus and the blog post barely did it. It just stated the facts.

It's not that I'm advocating for them -- I do believe he should be compensated for the position, within the bounds of the contract (as others have mentioned I think the required notice period is a good thing to go by at least, and obviously some more because of the relocation) -- but this kind of blog post should come AFTER you've written your grievances in writing, and what you feel you should be compensated, and they've blown you off, not before. There's so much of the conversation left out -- I'm not ready to grab my pitchfork yet until I know SoundCloud is actively trying hard not to compensate this person (and the CTO is not just a dummy).

Part of me is saying that while the guy was screwed over by SoundCloud, he simply didn't cover his bases in the contract.

There is simply no way I'd sign a contract that requires me to quit my job, let my accomodation go, move to a different country, without some clause about compensation for termination.

It may seem obvious now, but I always require 3 months of pay from the last day of employment - this is in effect from the moment they sign the contract, so they can cancel it all they want, but they still have to pay me 3 months of salery. If they don't want to sign on that, I don't consider it a serious offer anyway. This is only for jobs in a city where the jobs are plenty. For moving to Berlin it'd have to be higher.

I agree, but I think it is incredibly uncommon for people to think critically about employment contracts in Tech. People generally just take whatever "standard" contract they receive at whatever small-mid-large size company, and I would guess that most don't even read them all the way through.

Even as someone who likes to think that they consider contracts carefully, I recently signed a contract with a 12-month (!!!) non complete cause. Clearly I don't think critically enough about employment contracts either. It's so hard to know things like this without experience, and there aren't enough people spreading (this kind) of knowledge.

I heard once from a German boss of mine, that these non-compete clauses are anyway illegal in Germany ;-)

Oh yeah I was going to add that (but didn't think it was relevant) -- they're very un-enforcable (and a lot of the time illegal) in a lot of places (including where I am). I'm going to stick to it, though, for a few reasons:

1) I did sign it, and maybe a little bit of suffering will go a long way to helping me remember this lesson forever (and read contracts more critically).

2) I have almost 0 interest in the space the company was in.

3) I'm confident I can make a living without working in that space for a year.

Uh oh, but the non-compete clause is for an industry, e.g. You can't go from BMW to Audi, or from SoundCloud to Apple Music ;-) It doesn't mean you can't work for anybody for a year, LOL :D That one would be 100% illegal, nobody can force you to be unemployed for a year :-D

s/space/industry/g

yeah I meant the industry, I don't really mind not working in any related company for a year :D

FWIW under German contract law, even in the case you describe the clause is only valid if you receive a compensation for as long as the non-compete is in effect.

It's called ethics. The CTO and the company evidenced little of it.

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