Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwthescene | Hacker News Reader

Throwaway purely so that I can comment. I've had this happen before.

Years ago I left a rather awful company - I left on great terms with my boss, though I hated the company. I was the last person who knew how to release X product. While I documented everything, after I left, the wiki lost its mind, backups apparently weren't a thing, and the director of IT moved to Bermuda.

Fast forward 6 months.. a contractual obligation existed to release the software. They still hadn't successfully built (yup autoconf, make and friends), let alone know where to build it. I got the call you always dream about, 30 days prior to the release being due.

My boss asked me to do him a favour - I reminded him that I quit due to a lack of promotion and raises. He asked what I want, and I asked for 125K, which clearly he scoffed at. Then I reminded him that it was a 10M deal they'd signed, because we had an all hands. The CEO got involved and screamed at me for 'torpedoing the company'. I walked out and calmly informed them both along the way the price was now 250K, non negotiable.

I ignored every single mail (and legal letter) sent me way. With 10 days left, they agreed. I had the company deposit a cheque in escrow with lawyers of my choosing. We signed contracts, and I did my thing. Four days of work. It was well worth it.

Dougie, if you're reading this I hope your cringing.

View on HN

Hell. Yes. That's absolutely beautiful, and ethically completely correct.

I have bosses at previous companies that I'd help for free today because they were good to me and we parted on friendly terms. One boss helped me move my house once, and I'm not about to charge him to fix some random issue.

I have other bosses whom I'd require a cleared wire transfer of money before I'd lift a pinky to help them, because they were not nice people and I don't want to associate with them or assist them with anything. If someone in this camp approached me, I'd have a story just like yours afterward.

This is actually not a very rare situation. Unfortunately many of us don't really have the smarts or courage (overcoming guilt) to negotiate a price like the OP did.

I love this with all my heart. You did exactly the right thing at every step.

Funnily enough it made me sick to my stomach. I manage a small company and the idea of being extorted in such a blasé and psychopathic fashion terrifies me to even think about.

> Funnily enough it made me sick to my stomach.

That an overworked employee who had already left the company would stick up for himself? Or that a company would go to such efforts to try to manipulate a former employee?

I realize my tone doesn't hide my feelings, but even if we disagree I'd still be curious to hear more.

My apologies, I edited my comment as you were typing I think. I added some more.

IMO your edit didn't help and you're not getting a lot of sympathy. The point wasn't that the employee is psychopathic as you say, but that management was incompetent by not ensuring a transfer of knowledge and validating before the employee left. You as the buinsess owner should plan for people to not be available and no one person can derail a $10M contract. This is also called the "bus factor".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor

Also yelling at someone who is the only person who can solve your problem is not a good negotiating strategy, especially when it reminds them of why they left.

Walking away from a toxic situation is not "psychopathic." It's common sense and if we all did it more then the psychopaths who expect us to stick around through it all would finally learn how to treat other people with respect. It's a job, not a marriage.

> yelling at someone who is the only person who can solve your problem is not a good negotiating strategy

Sadly, I've seen this. Not first hand, but it happened to a friend and I have no reason to doubt his version of the story.

It certainly didn’t help at all! But that’s okay, there was a lot of discussion around it. I th

Consider that you are only hearing one side of the story and taking it entirely at face value.

I mean... what could the other side of the story actually be?

"We tried to hire back an employee to build something that we didn't train or try and figure out ourselves and a deadline forced us to pay a large lump sum to that employee".

No matter how you slice it, that's really shitty planning on the businesses side. They should have spent the time and money learning how to maintain their shit. By not doing it, they paid a huge price.

I imagine if it came down to it they could try to pin it on him and say he didn't provide documentation he said he did, and that's why this entire 10M project now can't be delivered.

Luckily for him they decided it's easier to just pay the fee.

Even if he was a shitty employee that doesn't obligate him to work for a price favorable to the company. Hell, they could have fired him for not documenting shit.

Because here's the thing, even with how weak US labor laws are, one thing they don't allow is for a company to come back and sue your for incompetence. So long as they didn't go out of their way to sabotage things, they are free and clear.

Op says he did provide documentation but they lost it (and hadn't been backing up) after he left

Of course, but that wouldn't stop them from saying otherwise, suing and binding him in prelonged and expensive legal battle, would it?

Lawsuits come with discovery. Discovery is a terrible thing for a plaintiff that lies in the lawsuit.

We're talking about who's morally in the wrong here, not whether it's a good idea to do this.

The person you're responding to doesn't seem to place moral considerations high on his list, in general.

I don't know why you'd make such an assumption about me, please expand.

I think in general all of my comments on this thread have been horribly misunderstood - I was just trying to say that if the company was scummy, instead of paying him the 250k fee, they probably could have sued him instead. I'm not saying that should have done, I'm not saying it would have been the right thing to do, that he deserved it.....literally nothing of the sort. Just pointing out that the company could have made an argument against him in court. As many other people pointed out to me, it would have almost certainly failed. But I don't understand how you can deduct where moral considerations are on my priority list from this?

sure it does. the company would have to prove malicious intent beyond a reasonable doubt and not leaving adequate documentation absolutely does not meet that requirement.

This seems absolutely unrealistic to me. Can you find a precedent? A single precedent of the company suing an engineer (individual contributor, not a manager) for quality of work after he left? I think if they tried they would have been laughed out of court; and out of all their future contracts, too.

Even if they did "pin it on him," why should he care, exactly? Seems to me like he had no obligations here, contractual, ethical, or otherwise.

Well because if he was taken to court that costs time and money, even if ultimately the lawsuit fails, no?

Maybe this is my naivety showing, but to my knowledge it's not a common occurrence for companies to sue employees for refusing to work for them, especially if (as the OP notes elsewhere in the thread) there's no actual contractual obligation.

> for companies to sue employees for refusing to work for them

Especially ex-employees who've been gone 6 months already.

Shouldn't be hard to find a no win no fee ambulance chaser to happily take them on and get costs awarded and damages as well...

A bit late to the party, but even when threatening with insolvency-via-lawsuit, this would probably not work for them:

- if he can prove the threat, the company will be in an even worse position

- given the rather lacking precedent (as pointed out by the sister comment), there's a good chance the suit would be thrown out pre-court and therefore be rather cheap

- given that the OP seems to be a valued engineer, it is reasonable to assume that he has the f-you-money to fight this out

- even if won, the drawn out battle would take far too long to fix the software in time and, given that they then lost a 10 million contract, they lack the motivation (and maybe money) to continue

- lastly, even if they won after loosing the contract, they'd probably not be able to extract much in damage payments

So it's a rather empty threat.

That won't work in most reasonable countries. A company that is no longer employs someone cannot make that person work. In the situations similar to the ones that are being described, the time is not on the side of the company - they have a dead line, a former employees does not.

The other side of the story is it's fake, fake, fake. But it's a nice story.

Every negotiation is about the best alternative the parties have, and it's generally harder in real life than in fantasy because you underestimate the alternatives to a deal.

Applying maximum leverage has a way of creating "out of the box" alternatives. And vindictiveness.

I have no need to judge it if it were true.

I think enough of us have been on the same side of this story that we feel fairly comfortable taking it at face value, even if we're only applying it to said personal experience in a wishful fashion.

Yeah, HN at it's finest I suppose. He's like you, he says what you want to hear, therefore you believe him. No need to consider the possibility that maybe there might actually be another point-of-view.

The point of view of managers and business owners is well known. Work is not a new concept. You get what you pay for. Nothing is owed to you. Work? Tough luck, you have to pay for it too. On a free market, no less. I don't understand why business owners think the rules are different for them than the rest.

Straw man what I'm saying, sure, very HN of you.

This is not extortion. The company made choices that left significant leverage in the hands of another business. That business correctly perceived the value of the services it could render and priced them accordingly.

This is exactly the free market at work regarding labor. Have a problem with the free market if you like, many of us do but do not accuse this poster of criminal action equivalent to a protection racket.

What's the rationale for doubling the first price ? Why is it a more fair price ?

The market answer to that is, the seller underpriced their services to begin with, regardless of the personal motivation for increasing the price.

To clarify, the market would likely not allow this specific work to be sold at this price normally. But the buyer wasn't just buying specific work they were buying specific work to be completed by a specific date. The work in isolation does not have this value but the work completed by a certain day does. Companies use this rationale all the time charging more for expedited services.

It's especially common in construction and manufacturing where costs double or even triple when expedited delivery is required.

Bullshit.

The way the story is told the price doubled after and because of the CEO screaming.

The market has nothing to do with that except the good old "The fair price is the one that god paid, uh.” I suppose.

"Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it." That includes labor. The business was free to try and renegotiate their contract with their customer. They were free to delay the release and offer a discount. They were free to turn down the 125k and the 250k payment on principle and deal with the consequences. They found the most economical solution that met their needs was to pay $250,000 to have the work done on time. Was this poster engaging in rent seeking behavior? Absolutely. But that is a consequence of the market and one companies exploit to their own benefit all the time.

> They found the most economical solution that met their needs was to pay $250,000 to have the work done on time.

I'd be inclined to believe that if there were some other providers but as it is told working with OP was the only solution. And OP's first offer was 125 000. Two screams later it's 250 000 ? It has nothing to do with economical theory or free market interpretation.

I think 250 was likely under market value, and the seller could have raise the price more.

And yelling, made the prise jump closer to market value.

Maybe, maybe not.

I find this explanation (from top comment) more in line with how the world spins:

> If they left under bad terms because the business was a bunch of dicks, expect to pay 10x market rate. If this is truly "fix this or the business is out of business" - then it shouldn't be a tough decision to make.

So, “being a dick” has more to do with price raising than any free market justification (which I am okay with, just don't try to convince me it's the only thing at play. The offer would have been 250k from the beginning then. Or 500K to get 250K, whatever.).

This is such a silly and mundane bit of pedantry you're harping on here. Of course there are emotional factors in price discovery-- it happens all the time, and is a completely natural and rational part of the free market.

Any small or independent contractor in any business will eventually have a blacklist, or a list of troublesome customers who get charged extra. Most of my contractors charge me less because they like me (and I pay on time). My HVAC contractor charges a particular customer double just because the customer is a rich entitled asshole; the contractor has decided that it's only worth dealing with the man's unpleasantness if there's more money to be made. Apparently the man has been blacklisted by other HVAC companies, so he might be in a tight spot, but whatever the reason, he ends up paying a lot more money for the same service.

This is a completely market-based mechanism: the troublesome customer has limited options (in this case, maybe only one option), and is thus obviously disadvantaged in negotiating price. Regardless of the myriad motivations involved in price discovery, it all leads to the same place: if the price wasn't worth the service the customer was to receive, they would not have paid it.

Honestly, this isn't mysterious or profound. It's economics 101.

> Honestly, this isn't mysterious or profound.

Yes.

> It's economics 101.

Not even that. It's payback, that's all it is. There's no need to call for a more elaborate explanation for what was at play here. Not that I disagree with it. It's humane nature.

> My HVAC contractor charges a particular customer double just because the customer is a rich entitled asshole;

Like you say. No need to even know about market dynamics to (wisely) choose that option. Because the other guy is an asshole.

First, he owed no-one anything. He could set the price to 1 billion for all he cared. His former employees could take it or leave it.

Second, you speak as if his claims were irrational. The way I see it, however, you would set for 125k (probably much less judging from what you write) while he, the sentimental fool, scooped up double the money. Therefore, your decisions, which you personally claim are rational, would have left you with half the money the "irrational" player would get. Seems to me, the "irrational" is actually the rational one, as he netted more profits. Economy and market are not math games in a vacuum, and players are not formless ideas.

> Second, you speak as if his claims were irrational. The way I see it, however, you would set for 125k (probably much less judging from what you write) while he, the sentimental fool, scooped up double the money. Therefore, your decisions, which you personally claim are rational,

The way I see it you are putting words in my mouth and I am definitely not interested in having a discussion like that.

I never insinuated OP was a sentimental fool or wrong to raise the price. I am calling bullshit on the free market and econ 101 as an explanation of why the price got doubled and call it like it is: it's payback from OP because they were dicks to him first, everything else is pedantry and useless justifications.

edit: if anything, OP could be considered a fool since he obviously gave an under the market quote as his first proposal. Had he started with 250K from the beginning he would have gotten more since there likely would have been screams anyway and he would have risen the price all the same.

No one said the free market is "why" the price got doubled. Emo drama ended up being the mechanism of price discovery here. But the market accepted this price. It was not a swindle. It was free trade.

And yes. I completely agree with your edit and said as much elsewhere. Their acceptance of 250K showed that the OP under-priced their services at 125K.

And yes. Free markets produce monopolies. Especially when time is important. As I said above, the critical good here was not the delivery but the delivery within a certain time.

> "The fair price is the one that god paid, uh.”

This is literally the definition of price discovery in a free market. If the price was not worth the service the company was to receive, they would not have paid it.

The fact that they did pay it clearly indicates that the first price was far below what the "market" would bear.

He probably even left money on the table. When you need The Wolf to come clean up your mess, The Wolf gets paid well to do so.[0]

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojTKkfgvwvU

> left money on the table

I think so too, however maybe better play safe I guess, and be content with 250? The negotiation partner seemed a bit irrational to me

"The market" has nothing to do with that because one single trade isn't a market; if you and I exchange 1g of gold for $1000 that doesn't say "gold is fairly priced at $1000/gram". If many people exchange gold for money, each with different information and desires, over time the gold will go to the people who pay more, sellers will generally trend their sale price down because higher prices won't get buyers, buyers will trend their buying price up because lower offers won't get accepted, and a range of "price gold is being traded at" values emerge, the spread of those values highest to lowest narrows and hones in on, and tracks a dynamic "price of gold" where it's "fairly traded" - not fair in some Deity decreed way, but fair in that if you trade at close to that price, you aren't buying unusually high or selling unusually low, you're getting no better or worse deal than anyone else, so it's not unfair in your favour or unfair against you, so if it's not unfair then it must be fair - you couldn't get a significantly better trade with anyone else.

Anything distorting those conditions - e.g. there's only one seller, only one buyer, a time constraint, a skill constraint, an information disadvantage, will distort the pricing as well. One trade isn't enough information for a market to exist or to settle on a fair price. I agree there that the market has nothing to do with it.

But I disagree with your implication of "the fair price is the one paid" is somehow unfair in an ethical sense. (I also think OP is in no way obliged to be "fair" in any ethical sense to the company, but that's another matter). The company got a $10M contract for $250k, versus losing the contract, is that unfair? If that really was the pivotal factor between losing the contract and not, the company ought to benefit by spending right up to the point where the contract becomes a money loser, to not lose it. Would it be unfair for the company to get an $8M contract by paying $2M? Or a $2M contract by paying $8M? Is OP obliged to help the company make as much profit on the contract as they can, by charging them less for his services?

> Anything distorting those conditions - e.g. there's only one seller, only one buyer, a time constraint, a skill constraint, an information disadvantage, will distort the pricing as well. One trade isn't enough information for a market to exist or to settle on a fair price. I agree there that the market has nothing to do with it.

This is non-sense. Those conditions specifically define a market and make it distinct from any other. To say a market with any of these constraints is "distorted" is to say all markets are distorted and render the term meaningless.

Also, I never said this one trade signified a market. My point was that this is a consequence of free markets. You can make any single trade "irrelevant" by choosing arbitrary criteria by which to separate it from its market. The company could have certainly hired another engineer in hopes they could complete the work in time while running the risk of blowing the deadline. But it was freely and fairly worth at least 250k to them to guarantee the job could be done correctly and on time.

This kind of thing is such a common part of the free market, that there is a whole aspect of contract law that pertains to ensuring companies don't get into this position. It's why contracting completed work is so important. Leaving things partly done leaves you vulnerable to others eating right up to the tiniest margin of your profit.

Time was a factor. Negotiations in such a situation waste time. Doubling the price associated the cost of wasted time with additional negotiation in a tangible way. In clarifying the situation, thread parent was really helping that former employer. Had that clarification not occurred, the contract might might have been signed too late.

How is it extortion? If you need 1 resource in the whole world, the supply is 1. If your demand is great then you get to pay the price.

This person left the company, and documented everything. What should they do, come in and save the day for $15/hr?

It's a fair fee for such valuable work done for an apparently abusive, and possibly litigious, company.

"Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my par--wait did you say $250,000?"

If your company were in the hands of incompetents, but still kept going in spite of the incompetents because it had gotten its foot wedged in the door or whatever, and then fell apart in ways you could only scorn, how would you view that sort of situation?

"extorted"

This is pure slander

The company can avoid this if they only care to maintain the documentation / wiki left behind by said person

When they failed to do even just basic proper operations, it's their own fault.

I'm a business owner and a consultant, and I too charge more for these kind of asshole clients, because of the extra stress.

But nowadays I just try to avoid them, it's just too damaging for your own sanity. Their kind of stupidity, self-entitlement, and ignorance is on a completely different level.

> This is pure slander

<pedantry>It's libel (written) not slander (oral); "defamation" is the generic noun. </pedantry>

Does libel magically turn into slander if a blind person uses a screen reader? Asking for a friend. ;-)

Your comment made me curious and I checked - it is not the physical channel that matters, it is whether the media is _transient_ or not.

It seems that paying to skywrite (you know, small plane making artificial clouds) could be slander but not libel

> whether the media is _transient_ or not

Citation? By that light, a DVD containing defamatory speech would be libelous, but that's generally not how courts see it.

From the (highly-influential) U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, summarizing New York law (which is quite typical): "Defamation, consisting of the twin torts of libel and slander, is the invasion of the interest in a reputation and good name. Generally, spoken defamatory words are slander; written defamatory words are libel. Libel is a method of defamation expressed in writing or print." [0]

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=601727562995661...

There is also "calumny", which is the action of slandering someone (and I assume also making writing libellous statements. After writing that parenthetical, I just googled, and libel is also a verb. So I guess I can say libelling someone)

What about the other way, subtitles.

Business is business. The right to fire people, deny them raises and form binding contracts in regards to their work comes at a price. GP did not act malicious, rather, they acted in the same self-interest most bosses, CEOs and companies act while trying to stand on the moral high ground.

Coding standards, documentation requirements, meetings and code reviews exist for a reason, too. It's not like companies are defenseless.

The employee documented everything, but said documentation was not backed up by the company. Furthermore, the company did not train or hire an adequate replacement for said employee for _six months_.

This is a gross failure of leadership at the company, and the former employee has every right to negotiate compensation for the inconvenience of having to work for them again.

That's not extortion, simply hard-nosed commercial negotiation.

The fact that you'd refer to this as extortion makes me sick. The management/capital class loves the free market except for when it applies to labor, then suddenly it's extortion when supply and demand don't work in your favor.

Extortion? Wow, you have no idea what you're talking about. Good luck with that attitude.

Have you tried learning to code?

> ...I manage a small company...

And you identify with this band of miscreants? That's embarrassing.

Thinking about business continuity is literally your job. Not your engineers’ job.

Then treat your employees better and adhere to best practices and you won't be subject to such "extortion". Once we have elft yoru company, especailly if it was because we were treated poorly, we are under NO compulsion to help you for free. If the idea of paying 1.25% of the value of a deal to make sure the deal happens seems excessive, you're greedy, and that's why his price went to 2.5%.

The idea of /you/ mismanaging your company in such a "blasé and psychopathic fashion" is more what should terrify you. Remember, /you/ manage a small company, not the person you hire. If you end up in such a mismanaged position, the manager who let it get there is you, not the employee.

You seem very confused about what "extortion" means, and also about what "psychopathic" means. So I'd suggest starting there.

I owned a small company. After selling it, and giving 2+ more years of my life for the new owners to figure out how to replace me, they didn’t. On my last day I told them that if they ever needed anything my rate is $5,000/day, non negotiable. It’s kept them at bay for now. I have no ethical qualms with my decision. It’s business.

Sounds like your best next step is to become an exemple of software/infrastructure best practices - get everything in the best backup/recovery solution you can, document every detail any time an issue comes up, and above all treat your people like the vaaluable assets they can be.

You may be doing any of that already, since I don't know anything about you except your one comment.

But the answer to your fear of exploitation is avoid making people hate you/your environment enough to want to protect themselves from it.

I think this is just flamebait. Uses emotionally charged words without any other substance. Both the comment and responses to it (including this one) add nothing to the discussion.

You're terrified that you might treat your employees so badly that you would need to pay a lot to resolve a situation? Seems like that's entirely within your control.

In this situation, you could always just tell the former employer to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut, and not respond to them.

That's probably what they deserve, if they come asking for a favor and then start getting abusive.

Hopefully you wouldn't mismanage your own company and treat your employees like shit. Probably you are a better person than that, and can avoid this ever happening to you.

I see and understand your sentiment but, in my rather insignificant few years in the workforce - carrots, dipped in vanilla chocolate and honey, generally tend to work better than the stick.

The company could have apologised, and do a lot more ego stroking before asking a favour which they can pay for and maybe throw in an all expenses paid weekend with the SO as a thank you. Not only will you get goodwill but future problems are going to be significantly cheaper to solve. Even if you have a bad break up - as a business owner you should understand the value of mending bridges. It's cheaper than losing sleep at night and losing your steak dinner to a bad stomach.

It's not extorsion.

He left detailed instructions how to release the software. The company managed to screw up so bad they lost the manual he made sure to write on their internal wiki.

I hear what you are saying, but it's a bad place to be in when one person can be so critical they can charge that much for four days work.

I feel for them but they failed to protect themselves.

Extorted? If you didn't like his rate, just hire someone else. Or do the coding yourself.

You forget it's all part of business. If you hired an external contractor you would not say a word for demanding their money. And the price of the contractor grows by a lot relative to how much and how soon you need their work. Remember, you need their help, not the other way around. A contractor on bad terms with you would not help at all. How is a former employee any different? Do you think you become family after paying for their work?

If you do not have the money to pa for someone's services you cannot complain. You say you have a company? Have you ever let a client get your products by paying less than their value or nothing at all? Work itself is a product too.

Yea, this is one of those "I want to believe" stories! It's practically engineer-porn. Everyone who has quit a shitty employer whose technology was a house of cards resting on the point of a needle is cheering OP on. We all have that fantasy that the house will finally fall over, the company will have its comeuppance, and we're the one person in the world with the knowledge to fix it.

I know this sounds like an empowering story, and it may even be true, but don't actually follow this example. If you're at the point where they'd rather send you legal threats than pay you, even escrow is not going to help you much. The escrow process may force them to pay, but there is no guarantee you'll be able to keep that money if they really decide to go after you.

People like that would much rather spend $2.5M on courts and lawyers than let a worker walk home with 250k, or even 25k. Agreeing to a deal like this is an incredible minefield that may blow up on you even years later.

What did their legal letters try to pin on you? Did they try to say you were somehow legally required to help them?

The letters stated that I had a contractual obligation to assist. But I noticed at the top they were stamped 'without prejudice'. I asked my friend what that meant, and he said that technically it's not a legal letter - so I ignored them.

For a while, I made it game to light the various communications on fire in interesting ways, but it got boring.

> I had a contractual obligation to assist

Did they have a legal reason to think so?

Why a check with your lawyers? Why not just deposit into your personal account?

The idea is that you want a trusted third party because either of the two adversarial parties could screw the other over.

The company could say: we’re going to pay you 125 and you could sue us and spend 60k and two years or just settle for that, after he’s already done the work.

The guy could demand the payment directly to his account and then not deliver, and the firm would be in the same situation.

By depositing the funds in escrow, they’re making sure that the money is there and in the hands of people whose only incentive is to give it to the correct party upon fulfillment of the contract.

It went into an escrow account, presumably until he completed the work

Look up what "escrow" is. When 1/4 million dollars is on the line, you don't take the company's word that they'll pay you afterward, and they don't take your word for it that you'll actually deliver the service.

1/8th of a million.

Last time I checked, $250,000 was 1/4 of one million dollars.

Oops, I missed the last part of the paragraph where he raised the price.

With the check held in escrow, it makes cheating harder.

The contractor knows that the money has been paid by the company and won't be withheld after the job is done.

The company knows that the contractor doesn't have the money until the job is done.

This is the most beautiful thing I've read today. Thank you.

Damn, I'd pay a good part of my mortgage in 4 days with that. You played your cards well.

“A good part”? Lol, I’d pay it all and have enough spare to buy a midrange car...

This is my dream. Is that bad?

Absolute chad badassery

Reply on news.ycombinator.com