IBM to face trial for lowering sales commissions after deals are closed | Hacker News Reader

IBM to face trial for lowering sales commissions after deals are closed

theregister.co.uk

142 pointsbased231 comments

they did the same thing with patents now too.

guaranteed first filer bonus if you follow the patent through. emails and asks for reviews after you quit, update your address to for automated payment..

once it passes they screw you over saying they wont pay since the patent was filed after you left. ibm wont even tell you the patent was filed even though your names on it and they have all your info and came asking for help before

still trying to figure out how to get paid for my patent, will probably just open it up

You need to play hard-ball with them. They really want your signature on the form assigning them the patent once it's filed. Refuse to sign it until you get paid. They don't need your signature, but they're trying to avoid a legal fight in the future, so you have some leverage. I left there 13 years ago and I've gotten paid for 6 patents since I left, one that was even filed 2 years ago, 11 years after I left.

> still trying to figure out how to get paid for my patent, will probably just open it up

I don't fully understand the situation you are in, but from what you describe that would be impossible. just because you are the inventor on a patent doesn't mean that you are the owner of the patent. Only the owner, not the inventor, can authorize other people to use the patented invention.

When I was there, the big money was in submitting the patent, and the filing bonus got revised way down, from like $500 to $100 or something. What is it now? Probably not worth getting worked up over.

Sorry, it’s not your patent. It’s IBM’s.

This happened to me at a startup. It was too hard to fight so I left and they were gone within a year.

I'd like to think they died because they couldn't survive without me, but the reason is more prosaic: the kinds of people who think that way can't build team that can succeed.

They even screwed me on my final expense report.

A few months after they ceased operation I got a letter from the CEO saying he needed my signature on some paperwork so they could secure some funding or assign some IP or something like that. I tossed it.

I thought their conversion to self-funded pension over their previous 100-year company-funded generous pension, was some kind of singular lapse in morals. I guess not.

(They pocketed billions in the process, as they carved down the benefit inch by inch to almost nothing, once accounting figured out "every dollar screwed out of the employees, I get a 1% bonus").

That must be the richest accountant in the world.

Well, the money folks have taken over corporations. They're more likely to be run by an accountant than a business person today. That happened in the 80's. After that, big business has been all about squeezing cash for executives and stockholders at any cost.

Really? There are still people who don't know this? How can this topic be controversial?

The executive suite in most large companies is a brutal sociopathic rush to quarterly bonus, which they give themselves for meeting arbitrary 'goals' that don't relate to real company performance. The employees be damned; the customer be damned; the company future be damned.

Yeah typical ibm behaviour. They always play dirty. Best thing I did was leave IBM years ago.

I actually left IBM to become an IBM subcontractor. I was treated better, paid better, and had better benefits.

Outsource yourself and get better treatment -- that's too hysterical to laugh!

Likewise at Oracle. Over 250k taken from me over the years. On the screen one day and off it the next.

It's oddly satisfying (and entirely characteristic) that Oracle apparently screws over both sides of the sales deal.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246

I was in Sun's Hardware division if that makes it any more or less satisfying for you ^.^

I ain't neva sold a database license in my life!

It sometimes feels like Alsup is the only federal judge that is actually doing his job rather than rubber stamping whatever the bigger company wants to do.

I know a guy who got hired to lead a major startup's enterprise sales team that had been floundering. They had a couple guys running it for a year and they hadn't had any success, and they agreed to give him uncapped commissions.

My friend is an animal and came right in with a plan and process, making 80 calls a day, working all of his contacts, grew the pipeline, and over a year made nearly $1 million in commissions.

Then they CFO backed out on the agreement! "You can't make this much money, you would be the highest paid employee." Even though he made them far, far more than he took in. He stayed and got a decent chunk of cash but had to settle mostly for stock options (recent update: massive covid layoffs!). If you are paying a sales commission it's because they made you more money. It's called incentive alignment.

That doesn't sound like a true story. If they had a legal agreement to pay him unbound commissions the CFO can't just change it after the fact whether or not the salesperson would be the highest paid employee. (Fun fact: at most B2B companies, the sales teams are the highest paid employees outside of the C-suite executives.)

Yes, the CFO can. Even more outrageous, if the CFO did then then the person seibelj knows would be forced to litigate the matter in civil court and ask to have the legal agreement enforced. There is a chance his state employment office would help, but likely the law is more complex than they are equipped to deal with.

No, the CFO can't. This is not just a civil matter, it's a Dept of Labor matter.

The law is relatively simple on this matter: if the company entered into a contract to pay commissions, and the agent satisfied the terms of those commissions, then the company is required to pay the commissions absent a bankruptcy that eliminates or reorganizes the debt.

On top of that, based on the facts provided, the CFO has committed an intentional tort--interference with contract, meaning that punitive damages are available, i.e., up to 3x actual damages.

Yes, it would require the individual to go to court. The likely outcome is that he would receive a very large sum of money, and the CFO would likely get blacklisted from CFO and finance positions at any reputable company.

It's all upper management stuff, he got paid but took it in equity more than cash. He still works there, didn't want to burn bridges. Dispute resolution like this is not uncommon.

The I.T. department for the U.S. government that wins every no-bid contract it applies for

I'm on the sales side of my org and I have to say if I hear of this stuff going on at a company, I immediately start looking elsewhere. Why do people still work for IBM? There's no reason except "it's a steady paycheck", which honestly at this stage probably isn't good enough for quality sales people or quality engineers.

Not a surprise given what’s written elsewhere about them.

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