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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

I don't see any ethics in the subject at all. If that's how much they were being paid then they're likely terrible negotiators but that doesn't make any part of the contract unethical.

If they were promised equity, a bonus, or some other extra compensation that was not subsequently delivered then not paying that out would be unethical. But agreeing to a lowball amount and then complaining about it being a lowball amount isn't ethics related. It's just sour grapes.

It's the same in the opposite direction. If a contractor charges a company 10x his normal rate and a company accepts those terms, there's no ethics involved either.

Nobody has a proverbial gun to their head to accept a deal either way. If they do then sure there's ethical issues but I haven't seen that in this situation. Just very poor negotiations on the part of the original dev team.

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You’re assuming the owners did everything according to contract and above-board. Maybe they didn’t. Ever considered that? Even if they did, perhaps they just got lucky and were able to convince smart developers to work against their interest. Regardless, defending them does you no favors, as evidenced by the comments on here, nor was it the best long term move for them, because I won’t be buying anything pushed out by that leadership team and will encourage others to do the same. Given the comments here, I suspect others will, too.

Violence isn't the only way to coerce people into doing things against their interest. If there was an implication that bonuses would be available, or something to the effect, it's unethical to say, "haha, you didn't have an iron-clad contract". Using fine-print in contracts to get one over on people who aren't lawyers is pretty much the textbook definition of unethical.

The point people are trying to make is that the people who quit said they were treated unethically. By disputing that it was unethical behavior, you're calling those people liars. Being "more right leaning" doesn't make you an asshole, but calling people liars without evidence does.

> Violence isn't the only way to coerce people into doing things against their interest. If there was an implication that bonuses would be available, or something to the effect, it's unethical to say, "haha, you didn't have an iron-clad contract". Using fine-print in contracts to get one over on people who aren't lawyers is pretty much the textbook definition of unethical.

None of the comments I've replied to describe anything like that. They simply refer to the (paltry) amount. I'm not disputing there's more to the story, I was simply commenting on the bit that's actually in front of me.

> The point people are trying to make is that the people who quit said they were treated unethically. By disputing that it was unethical behavior, you're calling those people liars. Being "more right leaning" doesn't make you an asshole, but calling people liars without evidence does.

I never said they were liars. I said that the $200/month doesn't on its own make the agreement unethical.

Apparently that distinction is beyond the grasp of today's commenters.

This isn't a theoretical, "if all cows were spherical, then friction would be disregarded" sort of scenario. It's a real thing that happened for which details are available online.

If you haven't informed yourself on those details outside of this thread, then I guess to your perspective, that's on you.

Not sure why the downvotes..

Why do I get downvoted for saying I didn't understand why someone downvoted a post?

Is it the way I phrased my comment that is downvoted? Or my lack of understanding?

Because HN crowd seems to be more left-leaning

No. They just aren't assholes.

Well I see some correlation between being left-leaning and not being asshole to employees ;)

Well, my anecdata is the exact opposite. ;)

I never said that the owners aren't assholes, but still, it was the developers' free choice to sign that (asshole-ish) agreement. Being more to the right than the HN crowd doesn't mean being an asshole.

No, but throwing around political accusations as epithets in a non-political discussion might.

I'm not accusing anyone, being left leaning is nothing wrong; it's just a different viewpoint on the issue of allowing people to freely sign contracts even though it might not be a good deal. This is a political discussion, we're talking about regulating something. I replied to a comment that asked why is a seemingly OK comment being downvoted and because there are no other obvious signs, the logical conclusion is that it's because of political disagreement.

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