Ask HN: Anyone had to repay big tech company their signing bonus?

"I could stick it out another 7 months to claim the bonus but hate to stay at a place where I feel like things are hopeless and I'm making no contributions"

I'm a non-programmer in SV so I'm potentially jealous/out of the loop, but I will say something no one else here is: Quit being a baby.

Unless you have another bonus offer, giving up on 35k because of your feelings is a childish move at best. You have 7 freaking months, which is a blip. In other industries it might take you 7 months just to get another job.

You might think 7 months is a long time if you are just out of school and still think in semesters. But you will have many more periods that feel this way, except without a bonus.

Unless you have a legitimately better offer, sack it up and get your bonus. It won't always be good times.

Edit: I will even go so far as to say that you are lucky the project is overdue and bloated, because that is the entire reason your bonus exists in the first place.

Life is short and precious and you could die tomorrow. 7 months IS a long time if you are hating every day.

I think you're giving bad advice saying "Quit being a baby". That's the kind of advice that gets people stuck in crappy jobs their whole life being unhappy.

The OP needs to get out now before the unhappiness ruins his passion for the work and potentially his entire career.

One really needs to consider the probability of dying tomorrow versus the potential gain of seriously shooting themselves in the foot both financially and resume-wise. Plus those 7 months aren't just gone - the OP can be preparing for his next step in the meantime. PLUS, that 35k represents time you have to spend earning elsewhere.

Resume-wise he can just not put the position on there, it's easily explained away by a break traveling/freelancing etc.

As for financially, I agree with you for the most part. I'd still rather take the hit on the money and get out ASAP, you can always earn more. The best situation would be another sign-on bonus that paid the original one off - as long as the new position was good enough to last the year.

But, if he's getting a $35k sign-on bonus he must have quite a good skillset and be earning a high salary wherever he lands. Paying it off will be unfortunate but is totally doable.

I come from another engineering field, so maybe I'm out of the loop. But I've never had a signing bonus offered, sub-six figure salaries are the norm early in your career, 6 months job searches are expected, and there is always monkey work.

How long have you been in industry? Because I'm sure it wasn't always as good as you and the OP make it sound.

15 years now and no, back when I started I wouldn't have expected a sign-on bonus or such a large salary. If you're in one of the major hubs though you can expect six figures early on, within 2-4 years depending the skillset and your negotiation abilities.

I personally never had to pay one back, but had taken a couple in my career and also was a hiring manager in a couple of firms where we gave these out. I would agree with hwstar that if no other companies are offering signing bonuses and you run into one that is it is a good reason to take a closer look and ask some more questions. That said, back in the dot com boom it wasn't rare to see almost everyone offering relo and signing bonuses, of course if you took both the bonus was less.

As for what they expect, in general companies will collect it, but even when the contract doesn't state it most companies prorate the amount and allow you to pay it back over a period of time. If you last 6 months you only owe them 50% and if you weren't an ass to them and up front they will generally have no problem letting you pay it back over time. There are horror stories about companies that don't do any of that and if you leave 1 day early they want it all back immediately, but I think that is uncommon.

Personally, if you are reasonably fresh out of school (1-2 years), I say stick it out and use it as time to learn. At least stick it out for a few more months, it will lower the amount you owe and also let you get some more experience. I really wish someone would have given me that advice on a couple of projects I bailed on early in my career, I would've learned more early on that way which would've made me better faster. A lot of times it looks like a project will never ship, but in reality you'll find as money keeps flying out the door projects start getting discipline fast and cut things out etc just to ship. Not always, but it is interesting to see nonetheless and you can learn some good stuff from either outcome, even if it is just how better to evaluate your next employer or project.

I was in almost the same situation as you a while ago, though the sign-on bonus was slightly less than yours it was still a large chunk to just pay back.

In the end, I couldn't stand being at the job another 8+ months and so left and negotiated a repayment agreement with them. They weren't so happy about that and wanted to add interest, fees and so on but after I explained that they could accept the monthly repayments OR basically get nothing and go through a long drawn-out legal process to try and reclaim some of it they reconsidered.

The sign-on bonus is a tiny fraction of their profits but if you owe it then it is only fair to pay it back, especially if agreed to in a written contract.

For my situation, I appealed to the fact that I spent a portion of the sign-on bonus in order to relocate and get my life setup for this new job and so it wasn't such an easy thing to pay back in one go. You're not going to win any friends by leaving so soon anyway so my advice would be to arrange a payment plan, explain that the job just isn't what you're looking for and leave as soon as you find another position you like. If the new position has a sign-on bonus too even better but be careful of the same thing happening again.

It might be a good idea to be interviewing / investigating what alternatives are available to you. You may end up with a job offer & signing bonus for another firm with a more plausible project!

On the other hand, let's assume that the project is indeed doomed and that you decide to stay for the next seven months. You are clearly not responsible for the success or failure of the project [1]. Perhaps you might be able to get something positive out of the experience (apart from the pile of money, obviously) if you look at things in another way. Some ideas:

* are there useful things you can still learn from this workplace / project / your fellow co-workers? (if so, getting paid good money to learn is a pretty good deal!)

* is there an opportunity to push for some kind of development process improvement / large-scale refactoring on such a large, troubled codebase, to make things incrementally better? (this experience could be quite valuable)

* do you have ownership of / responsibility for some smaller thing that could potentially make a good item on your resume?

* can you move sideways within the firm to another project?

* are there other ways that you can contribute, aside from toward the project? e.g. instead of focusing on helping the project, can you instead focus on helping your coworkers?

* work your hours, do it for the money, instead focus on improving and enjoying the non-work aspects of your life [2].

[1][2] i am projecting: i suggest it is healthy not to tie your self-worth to the project you are working on. you probably don't do this anyhow!

Thanks! These are all great ideas for better ways to look at my situation. This is why I love HN!

Sounds like the company you went to work for knew exactly what they were doing. This sort of reminds me of the scene in Betelgeuse where the candy bar was dangled and drew the fly in.

At this point it may be time to have a lawyer go over the contract to see if there is any way out. If not, you'll have to stick it out and make the best of a bad situation.

Signing bonuses can be a big red flag, especially in a situation where everyone is not offering them.

Signing bonus? What's that?

You have an actual contract?

Be glad you have this problem. Plenty of people would love to get a $35k check just for showing up on the first day, and have an actual employment contract, with terms and clauses and everything.

Just chalk it up to the price of your education, and spend the next 7 months finding a better job.

If worse comes to worst, it seems like you could roll your judgment-attachable assets onto the student loan and declare bankruptcy. But that might land you on some form of employment blacklist.

Yes I have - had some number of months to give them a check. It sounds like you didn't cross a tax year - this is good, as it will be on one w2, and generally simplifies the tax situation. They might only ask for the post tax amount. I used it in negotiating - in order to accept the new job i needed cash to cover the repayment.

However, I'd try to think a lot about shoo's response.

Stick it out. Make a contribution. And if not, what industry in tech are you in.. I want that signing bonus.

Really want to be helpful but you're coming off as such an entitled, whiny little bitch.

35 grand up front for doing nothing but signing a contract? You could have been sewing soccer balls since the age of nine. Suck it up buttercup.

Does the contract say anything regarding how the money would have to be paid back?

No. It's very clear that it has to be paid back but there's nothing about how that would work. In another place it says the company will subtract any monies owed from my final paycheck but clearly that wouldn't cover close to $35k.

As a rule of thumb, you should assume that any contract you sign is legally enforceable, and the other party will enforce it to their maximum benefit. If you can't accept that, then don't sign the contract.

IANAL, but I would surmise that in the absence of explicit repayment terms (timeframe, pro rata, etc.) you would owe them the full bonus amount on the day you ceased to be their employee.

You're apparently fresh out of school, nobody's going to listen to you when you tell them what they're doing wrong.

I for one think companies need to be taught a lesson for giving paycheck advances and calling it a bonus. You have been given an interest free, unsecured loan with no minimum payment and unspecified term. So, just pay it back at your leisure. One dollar per year.

No bonus should ever have to be paid back. If you have to pay it back it is a loan or prepaid work. Signing bonuses should be a reward for agreeing to start work, not work for a year. If $35k is too much for that, then don't pay $35k, pay $5k or zero. If you want someone to stay a year, pay a one year $35k bonus. The only reason these repayment agreements exist is because the company expects employees to go underwater and be trapped at their company. How does that make good employment policy to have people forced to work at your company?

I think life is a bit more complex than this. There is good reasons for having a signing bonus be repaid if the recipient leaves within the stated time period, but it should be set at a level that make the person think twice about leaving, but not not so high that the person is handcuffed to the job. It sounds like $35K was too high and maybe a number around $10K would have been a better fit.

I am surprised anyone would spend a signing bonus until they are sure they wanted to work at the company that had given it to them. Keep the money safe until you are sure you want to stay.

Well, people starting a job often have a large number of expenses and have probably gone a few months without income and have a few catastrophes they pushed back a few weeks. Yeah it's nice not to live paycheck to paycheck but even a large number of businesses could not go a significant amount of time with no cash flow.

Well if you have no choice then you don’t have a choice :)

It is still a very good idea to save as absolutely as much as you can until you know you want to stay.

I wonder if a court would see it that way, rather than a simple exchange of considerations, in which the employee failed to hold up his end of the deal?

Maybe this employer didn't have an employment lawyer draft or review the contract for them, and the law holds that the employee can treat it as an "interest free, unsecured loan with no minimum payment and no unspecified term." Or maybe they don't really care about $35K or whether the employees they give signing bonuses uphold their end of the agreement.

It's possible, but I have my doubts.