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Comment by yoav | Hacker News Reader

This is like deciding to leave a company and emailing them a month later to make sure their product roadmap is still the same.

The bonus was an incentive, which you clearly didn't care about because: a) you forgot about it, and b) you referred your friend who you would have referred anyway

Making it "public" now is just vindictive. If you forgetting about your own bonus for months, and then another month after leaving the company still leaves you eligible for said non-contractual bonus, then what _is_ the statute of limitations? Would you email them 10 years later and ask for the bonus?

If Steve Jobs promised you a company trip to Hawaii if you got the Macintosh shipped on time, and EVERYONE forgot and didn't care, or Steve took everyone out for sushi instead, would you email Apple inc. tomorrow and insist they send you to Hawaii??

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> If Steve Jobs promised you a company trip to Hawaii if you got the Macintosh shipped on time, and EVERYONE forgot and didn't care, or Steve took everyone out for sushi instead, would you email Apple inc. tomorrow and insist they send you to Hawaii??

Yes, I would. Why wouldn't I? I just don't get it. Shyness, peer pressure? Please explain. And, why that appeal to the majority? Screw the majority.

> The bonus was an incentive, which you clearly didn't care about because: a) you forgot about it

Yeah, well, would you not ask for one month's unpaid wages? Would you just say "oh, I guess I forgot to check the numbers this time, sucks to be me"? What if that happened to one of your friends or close family? If something I say can be interpreted as though I don't care about my wage, should I work for free? Asking doesn't count as caring?

> b) you referred your friend who you would have referred anyway

Everyone gets paid according to the contract, regardless of what they would've done otherwise. Or, fuck it, let's just not pay ethical surgeons shit. They would've operated on those dying people anyways, the suckers.

The bonus was a legally binding contract. As long as statute of limitations has not passed, then the company is obligated to compensate according to contract. I guess you could wait 10 years, but if the company is no longer around, you probably wouldn't be able to get that 10k anymore.

If a company forgot to pay you your last paycheck after you left the company, would it still be wrong to ask for that paycheck a year later? That "bonus" was part of the compensation package, and would be no different than a paycheck lost in the mail.

The guy made it sound like an off hand comment in an email. From what I read in his post it did not sound at all like a legally binding contract.

My recollection is that the statute of limitations on debt is something like 7 years. Months is definitely not an appropriate amount of time for a debt to expire. If I stop paying my mortgage and the bank neglects to follow up for a few months, do I own my house free and clear? Of course not. If they let it go for years then, and only then, can it work out that way.

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