Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

You know, if I'm a person laid off from Twitter, I'd be thinking pretty hard about whether my take-home award from an arbitration claim (after legal fees, etc.) is really life-changing money. If not, I'd just move on. Life is pretty short and to spend time and stress over a few months of severance pay in the long run might not be worth it.

I'm not at all saying employees don't deserve to get what they are due, but if you have to get lawyers involved, for any amount less than six figures you aren't really going to be going home with a lot of money. Let's say a Twitter employee was making $300k. Three month's severance at full pay would be $75,000. By the time you pay the lawyers you might have enough left for a modest new car. And that's assuming you get the full award, my experience with arbitration is you agree to meet somewhere in the middle, because a full-on lawsuit after a failed arbitration will cost you even more.

Rather than deal with all of that, just move on. Get a new job, don't look back.

Alternately, you can demand the terms of your contract instead of letting one of the richest people in the world not pay what's owed.

While your advice may be good at an individual level (though even there, money for a new car is not something most people would scoff at), it is horrible from a collective perspective. Allowing bad faith actors to get away with their transgressions of the law sets a precedent.

People sometimes speak of future prospective employers potentially passing on you because they see you had been involved in litigation with a former employer.

But the reverse could very well also happen: future employers could decide there is little risk in ignoring their part of contracts with you because you avoid legal solutions to being short changed.

I think you're overlooking the value of vindictiveness and vindication, compared to donating money to a billionaire who's in the wrong.

In which scenarios am I allowed to fight for the pay that was legally and contractually promised?

Most people would move on. Just like most people would not stand up to a robber at a minimum wage job.

But those who do make it a tiny bit less likely that you or I will face a similar situation.

So it's not appropriate to call them stupid or question why they did it. You don't have to praise them, and you don't have to emulate them, and they may be stupid, but you should be silent - they are providing a tiny bit of deterrence to antisocial behavior everywhere.

What legal fees? Aren’t there lawyers who are going to take this on contingency given that it looks like a slam dunk (assuming Twitter has the money to pay)?

Maybe. But there is always the possibility that the case gets sucked into some bigger legal action (e.g. a reorganization), and when that happens, compensation amounts may drop substantially.

Why not do both? Get another job AND get back some income rightly owed you by a previous employer.

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