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Comment by akudha | Hacker News Reader

Do these people just sit around and spend time coming up with ways to screw others over? How the fuck is this thing even legal, let alone ethical? Makes me so mad

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> Do these people just sit around and spend time coming up with ways to screw others over?

Yes, they literally do (or hire consultants to do it).

I went to school with lots of people who ended up in management consulting. One in particular worked at Deloitte and specialized in "human capital".

Most of their projects were to figure out how an organization could drastically reduce pension/retirement benefits for existing workers legally, while also offering much worse plans for new hires that looked good on paper.

They were paid around $1,800/day/consultant for all of these cost-cutting projects.

(This is not at all an uncommon story in the enterprise consulting world, by the way.)

Nah, I don't think so. Most rules come about because one person, at some point, abused the policy, and so the company tries to make a more explicit rule to prevent the abuse in the future.

I don't know the specifics of this case, but maternity leave is absolutely something that has been abused. My spouse worked with a woman who got hired while she was pregnant, had the baby and took advantage of the company's extremely generous paid maternity leave, and then came back in and quit on her first day back. From the company's standpoint, this hire was simply a cash giveaway and a huge loss.

denying them commissions they have already earned

The key word is here "already earned". Denying that doesn't make any sense, any which way we look at it.

Still, punish the 95% (or whatever very high number) for the shitty behavior of other 5% of people? I understand it is business and companies need to protect their profits, but this is ridiculous.

> Still, punish the 95% (or whatever very high number) for the shitty behavior of other 5% of people? I understand it is business and companies need to protect their profits, but this is ridiculous.

Yeah, I agree. Just pointing out that this stuff rarely comes from mustache-twirling villains and more often is just a misguided attempt to solve some other related problem. Cutting off commission that has already been earned sounds pretty bad.

I'd bet money that the policies don't literally say "we will claw back commissions you've already earned if you go on leave". The scenario is almost certainly that there's a specific point where commissions are earned as a matter of policy, and that policy doesn't align with the informal understanding of when you earn a commission or the timeframe of the work that earned you the commission.

From the company's standpoint, any employee that quits is simply a cash giveaway and a huge loss.

Some more than others.

so true >> https://www.businessinsider.com/andy-rubin-90-million-exit-p...

Especially when they had been giving cash in return for nothing. The cash giveaway is in the paid leave part, not in the quitting part.

Paid leave is a benefit of being employed at the company, it's not a cash giveaway.

Yeah, what next, keep paying people even though they are in the hospital sick, and call it "sick leave"? That's just giving people cash in return for nothing. Why are they trying to give us a communist dictatorship?

In many countries it is the state that pays for maternity leave (or sick leave after the first few N days).

Yes. Otherwise they would have nothing to say in meetings.

How is it not a thing ? Yes and if I can get away with it, I would gladly do the same. A company goal is to make money.

I think the article is referring to commissions that her position is earning. Hard to tell though.

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