Failing the Startup Game at Unbabel – Take 2

http://esoteric-code.blogspot.com/2014/09/failing-startup-game-at-unbabel-take-2.html

57 38 12 years ago

esoteric-code.blogspot.com

Don't take the criticism and questioning too hard. The comments on this forum is from people you barely know and vice versa.

By the way,

The contract was presented to me on paper and in Portuguese

... given what the company does, I might have taken it as a joke.

ahp• 12 years ago

The contract was presented to me on paper and in Portuguese, 7 pages in total. The only thing I understood was the caption, 'Contrato de Trabalho'. At the time no one said anything about being able to break the contract without reasonable cause before 3 months had passed.

This is pretty appalling. I don't think the burden is on the offerer to explain the contract in full to you. I feel bad for you, but you kind of shot yourself in the foot on that one.

hepaminondas• 12 years ago

Spot on.

walshemj4• 12 years ago

Providing an unreadable (to the person signing) contract violates the principals of natural justice for one.

CaveTech2• 12 years ago

It's not unreasonable when it's written in the official language of the country in which your office resides.

rtpg3• 12 years ago

I don't know if this is common practice, but in Japan when I got an appartment for the first time, I was brought into a room where there was the real estate agent, the contract I was supposed to sign, and another person.

This last person went through the entire contract and explained in layman's terms what each section meant. Considering I'm close to illiterate in Japanese (though I could decipher enough to realise the part that says "you can leave so long as you give 1 month's notice"), I pretty much trusted the guy on what he was saying, but I imagine it's a nice service to have.

Considering that startups are often talked about like a sort of second family sense, the fact that some sort of deception happened on the employment contract is good cause to not want to ever associate with such a startup.

If the founders knowingly presented a contract that he couldn't possibly understand without an explanation, then this seems to be an abuse of trust, plain and simple.

stale20012• 12 years ago

Obviously the employee made some mistakes, he even admits to this. Thats not the point. The point is that Unbabel acted horribly to its employee and acted in bad faith pretty much ever step along the way.

People keep thinking this situation should be about contracts and lawyers and staying silent to help his case in a lawsuit or something. The employee know full well that he is never going to get fully paid for the contract. So he decided to let other people know how bad this company is so others can know about it. This is the best way to punish a company that acts in bad faith.

idlewords• 12 years ago

You need to find out what is in the contract you signed and get legal aid. Continuing to post on it in public is likely to be counterproductive.

rtpg3• 12 years ago

IANAL, but if you didn't understand the contract, chances are its not valid.

If labor law is like in France, this could mean that your employment is assumed to be of the indefinite variety (since no valid contract dictates otherwise), and your firing could be illegal. In France this means they could owe you 6 months of wages.

This is Portugal, so some EU directives might cover a similar concept, and you could be entitled to a little settlement on the issue (granted French labor law is pretty intense, so your results may vary).

Anyways, a lawyer would be good. If you have any portuguese friends with good google-fu (or knowledge of employment law) they might be able to at least smell test this path.

walshemj4• 12 years ago

Unfortunately some of the EU states are happy to take the CAP budget but when it comes to reforming and implementing EU directives only implement the letter and not the sprit of the law.

And Some country's blatantly stack the decks against outsiders non Italian university lecturers in Italy have been trying for decades to get parity with their Italian colleagues.

cpinto• 12 years ago

Employee contracts in Portugal have one of two forms: "fixed term" and "long term". Long term is when there is no deadline for the contract to expire (also, it's the most common type) and it says you're entitled 1mo (perhaps now it's less) of compensation for each year working for the company.

Fixed term, however, has a different set of compensation rules, one of them being that if the employer breaks the contract 1 month into it, the employer still needs to pay for the extra 2 months. This appears to be your case/contract. However, from Vasco's previous comment, it does seem like that has been sorted, so your case does not appear to have grounds I'm afraid.

Personally, I'd recommend moving on, it may be the top thing on your mind right now, but in a year it won't matter one bit.

csbrooks• 12 years ago

This screams out "there's two sides to every story". :(

jchonphoenix• 12 years ago

You signed a contract you didn't read and then blamed someone else for it. Sorry, but all of this falls squarely on you. Especially for major decisions, understand what you're doing.

Not reading the contract and understanding it shows naivete and a lack of common sense. This also makes me question how much of your opinion of unbabel should be attributed to your naive worldview.

jimmyfalcon• 12 years ago

The contract was presented to me on paper and in Portuguese, 7 pages in total.

Given that Unbabel is a translation company, it is ironic that they didn't bother to translate the contract for you, knowing that you don't understand the language

ivraatiems3• 12 years ago

It seems like a lot of people feel an urge to take sides and say "how could Unbabel do this, it's their fault" or "how could you not read the contract, it's your fault," and I don't see any comments really discussing the underlying issues in this situation. I'm seeing a lot of fault on both sides, and lessons both sides need to learn.

Andreas, some people here have called you naive, and I have to say that on the surface I can very much see why. A decent financial incentive was enough to get you to wholly uproot your (relatively unstable) life for a group of people you had never met living in a place where you didn't speak the language and didn't know the laws. It does read, in your posts, as if you never considered the possibility that you could get screwed by these people.

I feel like part of the reason you are so upset now might be because you didn't consider possible negative outcomes. Nobody likes to be surprised. It's also reasonable to say that being defensive when people ask about your financial situation and the circumstances of this event (as you have been in comments, and in the tone this post takes), and you tell them it's none of their business, that's not fair: You made it their business when you posted it publicly online and invited comments on HN.

However, let's look at Unbabel's conduct as well: They knew who Andreas was. He's indicated they knew his situation (and I believe, from his statements and theirs, that he is telling the truth, if colored by his feelings). They knew he didn't speak Portguese, they obviously had to be aware he was willing to take the (in my opinion, fairly significant) step of moving across the continent to their country anyway, and given how quickly they fired him it seems like they knew pretty quickly after he joined that he wasn't working out. It seems like Unbabel understood that Andreas was taking large risks, and didn't try to point that out to him. Apparently, they didn't consider how it would affect his working with them until after he'd been hired.

No, they didn't HAVE to, but if they cared at all about his well-being, I think they should have considered his issues and perspective in both the hiring and the firing. He didn't enter this situation angry, and he didn't have to leave it that way. If they had given him a little more time and consideration, he wouldn't have been kicked out of his apartment and these blog posts wouldn't exist. Now, maybe Andreas didn't express to them that he would have liked that until after it was too late (but it seems like they're also refusing to speak to him at all, which just doesn't make sense to me). But it's not his responsibility to ask: Unbabel played on his naivete (whether they knew it or not) to hire him, and they were the ones who decided the relationship hadn't worked out. Their conduct was legal, but it wasn't right, and it wasn't smart.

This has gotten quite long, so I'll try to sum up: Your employers/employees are people. They don't know everything that's going on and you don't fully understand their situation no matter how much you think you know. What they present is not always what they are. If you are an employee (and your financial/skillset situation allows it), you owe it to yourself to get protection from this by understanding and negotiating your contract and by maintaining open lines of communication with your superiors, monitoring for issues (which Andreas may have done, I don't know). If you are an employer, you need to take your employees' situation into account even when you're about to fire them, and you need to be as clear and kind as you can be. Yeah, there might be more costs - they should be considered part of the cost of hiring. A disgruntled fired employee is way worse than a fired employee who cost you a month of his rent.

So, TL;DR: Be human even if you're representing a faceless corporation, or at least try to pretend you are. This situation happened because nobody was communicating and nobody was thinking about what the other guy was thinking about. It could easily have been avoided with a little more world-wariness and a little more generosity.

practicalpants• 12 years ago

Besides driving a lot of talent away, I think it's an insidious expectation that an employee makes a 'culture fit' where you have to regularly enjoy surfing and drinking with everyone.

Being friendly with coworkers is great, but when you push it further like it appears Unbabel does, you're in reality just asking employees to invest even more of their life, mind, and personal freedom laboring for your company.

Another possibly is it's important for the founders to use their startup to live out a lifestyle, i.e. have fun and party along the way. Those are not the type of founders I want to work for either.

koonsolo• 12 years ago

Let me get this straight: You have been programming Java for years but you haven't saved any money. Being in a situation without any savings, you take the adventure and go to Portugal to sign a contract that you don't understand. The company you work for figures out you are not the person they are looking for, and fires you during your trial period (in which both parties can end the contract within a week, therefore it's called a trial period).

I don't know you, so I can't really judge, but can you answer this question: Before blaming other people, have you looked into the mirror first and questioned how you ended up in this situation?

walshemj4• 12 years ago

How do you know what the OP's situation is they may be paying off a huge college bill or had a medical emergency or have had to spend most of there income on just living.

I suggest reading and reflecting on Matthew 7:3 updated for the down voters

"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

stale20012• 12 years ago

You completely missed the point of the article. Yes, he acted naively, and assumed that the company that he was working for would act in good faith. Thats not the point.

The point is that this is a terrible company that acted in bad faith, and took advantage of an admittedly naive person, and nobody in the developer community should ever trust Unbabel again because fuck them.

pbiggar• 12 years ago

The point is that this is a terrible company that acted in bad faith, and took advantage of an admittedly naive person, and nobody in the developer community should ever trust Unbabel again because fuck them.

Wow, just wow. Is the world really so black and white to you?

vasco_• 12 years ago

Vasco Pedro, CEO and Co-founder of Unbabel.

I feel that while it is very important to have honest discussions regarding employee expectations, in this particular case Andreas is being particularly disingenuous and stating facts that are plainly false. As the CEO of Unbabel, I find it hard to let wrong factual information be posted about Unbabel. There is a great deal of subjectivity in these matters and we are sensitive to the fact that being fired is not an easy thing, which is why I will try to stick to the facts. Despite the unwarranted distraction all this caused, we wish to put this matter behind us and wish Andreas well in his future endeavors.

The offer letter he received, which was in English, stated clearly the “at will” nature of the contract. The relevant clause is below.

- "While we hope that your employment with the Company will be mutually satisfactory, employment with the Company is for no specific period of time. As a result, either you or the Company is free to terminate your employment relationship at any time for any reason, with or without cause. This is the full and complete agreement between us on this term. Although your job duties, title, compensation and benefits, as well as the Company’s personnel policies and procedures, may change from time-to-time, the “at-will” nature of your employment may not be changed except by an express writing signed and dated by both you and the President of the Company."

This was also explained thoroughly upon signing of the actual contract, which was a standard contract of full time employment within the Portuguese law, which includes 3 months trial period, by default. At the time we did not have our contract translated to English, which is why we took great pains to make sure everything was clear, but shortly after all the contracts were translated to English.

Furthermore, as I stated before, when he was let go we gave him more severance than was required, we paid him one extra month of salary and added another $1000 on top of it to compensate for unforeseen expenses. We have tried to the best of our ability to not make sure that Andreas had enough to get back to Sweden, if that was what he wished.

As Andreas admits, the company loaned him money to pay rent, helped him find a house, and treated him with respect, courtesy and welcomed him to the team. Andreas worked with 4 different co-workers and got negative feedback from all of them. There was a fundamental problem of communication with Andreas and there appeared to be a systematic misunderstanding of goals, as well as constant exacerbation of minor problems.

Communication is two-way channel, so obviously this was not necessarily the fault of the individual, and a high growth startup is certainly an environment that is suitable for misunderstandings, since we rely on a lot of assumptions, which is why over communication is extremely important. In any case it felt to us that there wasn’t a good fit between Andreas and the team. We hired 8 employees around the same period, and 7 of them continue to be productive, happy and valuable members of the team. Of the 8 employees, 5 are not Portuguese, creating a very diverse group.

Andreas himself was very happy until the day he was fired, which shows that he was unaware of the consequences of his behaviour, or even of the issues that existed already, which is both potentially a core reason for the problems of communication and why the decision was unexpected.

This particular situation will certainly make us improve our hiring and screening processes in order to improve the fit and I thank the HN community for pointing out ideas we can try, like remote working and better defined trial periods. It is also important that we improve employee communication and give more concise feedback to employees.

Unbabel is committed to being an international company, with employees from many countries. We pay well above Portuguese average and our goal is to hire the best individuals from anywhere in the world to be part of something meaningful.

We are working hard to solve a hard problem in human communication and take very seriously the fact that we need exceptional people in our team in order to to achieve our vision. We are fortunate to have an amazing team and will continue to strive for maintaining high standards and good culture fit.

Andreas acquired an unfortunate view of Portugal while he was here. We tried hard to make his experience a wonderful one and Portugal is without a doubt an amazing place to live. We have a great climate, it is very safe, most people speak English, it is a modern place and it is very easy to get 100MB internet speed in your home. It is close to the US and Portugal has always had a hacker mentally, since the days of the discoveries and Vasco da Gama, much due to the need to find solutions to being surrounded by Spain, which at the time was a problem. These and many other things is why Algarve (south of Portugal) was rated the best place in the world to retire by Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-peddicord/best-places...).

If you are curious about Unbabel’s hiring practices and what is like to work at Unbabel, I would be happy to answer personally.

fown10• 12 years ago

Let's look at the facts:

1.) Unbabel is a YC company that recently raised 1.5M

2.) Andreas is a contractor that was given a 3-month at-will contract, for a job that required him to move to Portugal from Sweden.

3.) He worked for 1 month and then was let go and given pay for 1.5 months.

4.) He managed to lose all his money that he made while working for Unbabel, due to a 4 month rental agreement that Unbabel helped him secure a week before Unbabel fired him.

I am not sure if the founders are psychopaths, but there are clearly psychopathic behaviors here. Here's an employee that put his trust into the company to move and sign a contract he couldn't understand, and the company did the following things:

1.) Could not even pay out 1.5 month of contract left (after raising 1.5M)

2.) Could not handle the rental situation

3.) Could not help this guy land on his feet

4.) Could not apologize to Andreas after the article has posted, or manage to help compensate

5.) Continues to answer with posts that try to emphasize how great it is to work for the company or work in Portugal

If this wasn't a YC company we would be alot harder on the company.

ivraatiems3• 12 years ago

I agree with all of your analysis here, save one nitpick: I don't think the founders are psychopaths. I think they're in a bubble. I think they genuinely believe they did the right thing, because (like I said elsewhere in this thread), they're simply not thinking about Andreas and they're resolutely refusing to see things from his perspective.

I'd challenge vasco_ to take a look at what this situation is like from Andreas' perspective, and then explain why an apology or greater assistance to him was unnecessary or impossible.

wolfgke2• 12 years ago

'The offer letter he received, which was in English, stated clearly the “at will” nature of the contract. The relevant clause is below. - "While we hope that your employment with the Company will be mutually satisfactory, employment with the Company is for no specific period of time. As a result, either you or the Company is free to terminate your employment relationship at any time for any reason, with or without cause. This is the full and complete agreement between us on this term. Although your job duties, title, compensation and benefits, as well as the Company’s personnel policies and procedures, may change from time-to-time, the “at-will” nature of your employment may not be changed except by an express writing signed and dated by both you and the President of the Company."

While there are similar terms in the German law (6 months in most cases) at least in Germany it makes a really bad impression if people get fired while in the trial period. This is about one step above "hellbanning" the employee, since you can rely on the fact that the next employer where you apply, will ask lots of question if you were fired in the trial period. Thus if a company fires people unfairly while the employee was in trial, the employee has reasons to react really harshly.

I really don't know how this is in Portugal, but if there is a similar culture, I can understand Andreas Wild completely.

rtpg3• 12 years ago

The offer letter he received, which was in English, stated clearly the “at will” nature of the contract

Just because you write something in a contract does not make it so. Labor laws exist for a reason, and chances are that the "at will" nature of the contract would have not been cause if you had fired him after the three-month trial period.

As someone who has flown halfway across the world for a job, I feel for Andreas (luckily for me things have turned out better than for him). The thing I'm trying to figure out is not only whether what happened was legal, but also whether what you did was, for lack of a better phrase, a dick move.

I can understand that hiring people can be difficult to get right. But if you ask someone to move to a different for you, if you decide it's not right in the end, not giving them some sort of severance (even if it's just 2 weeks pay) doesn't seem like the "startup" thing to do.

I've only been on the employee side of the relationship, so there might be things I'm not seeing. But if you hired 8 people in the same period (and you weren't planning on firing the guy from the outset), I can't see it being a cash flow problem. That money could be considered part of hiring costs, and the professional relationship could terminate as amicably as possible.

I don't think you really get credit for 'treating him with respect', if (according to your description) you seem to have caught him by surprise by letting him go immediately. Most people can't find jobs on a 24 hour notice. Loaning him money to help pay for rent is cool, but should also have been a sign to you that maybe he didn't have much money to deal with becoming jobless.

I can understand letting him go if he didn't fit the team. I can't understand letting him go after uprooting him without helping him transition back.

hluska• 12 years ago

I don't think the OP has handled this well and I'd like to believe everything that you wrote, however, I keep getting stuck at this paragraph:

About a week before they fired me they helped me land a 4 month contract for a new apartment and even lent me the money for the deposit and two months rent to be deducted from future pay checks. When they fired me they deducted everything from my final pay, and since I couldn't afford to fulfill my rental contract I never got the deposit back.

Is that statement true? If it is, the most charitable thing I can say is that you are either deeply dishonest or else borderline incompetent. Surely you knew that Andreas was not a good fit by that time. Why would you go out of your way to screw him over? If it is not true, what actually happened?

gamblor956• 12 years ago

As I mentioned in the HN comments to a previous post in this series, Portugese law does not allow for employees to be terminated before the end of the probationary period, even (or especially) in the case of indefinite term employment. Where the length of the employment contract is fixed in term, the law sets a fixed probationary period.

Andreas' complaint is that Unbabel violated Portugese labor law with regards to his employment, by terminating him prematurely, and nothing you've said indicates that his complaint is without merit.

Your comments here and elsewhere on HN reflect a consistently poor understanding or disregard of the legal and regulatory environment you have chosen to locate your business in. You're a startup, but that doesn't excuse you from following the law.

kirankn• 12 years ago

Vasco states that "Andreas himself was very happy until the day he was fired, which shows that he was unaware of the consequences of his behavior, or even of the issues that existed already, which is both potentially a core reason for the problems of communication and why the decision was unexpected." Now, how do you just fire a person who has no way to figure out he wasn't meeting the "culture" expectations? No feedback at all? Is this Unbabel's culture?

hartator• 12 years ago

Lawyer up if you feel mislead.

It's always hard to see who is right and who ia wrong, specialy in employment case. Morever, european laws should be a lot more protrective even if you are the one in fault.

ps: On a side note, never forget that's every publicity is good publicity. I am working on integrating automated translation in our web app and now I am considering unbabel. :/

dang2• 12 years ago

This post was killed by user flags.

rhapsodic2• 12 years ago

Forgive my ignorance, but what are user flags, and how are they used to kill a post? I did notice that this post dropped off the front page quite quickly.

dang2• 12 years ago

After your account has a small amount of karma, a link that says "flag" will appear beside each story. When you see a story that you think is off-topic or otherwise harmful for Hacker News, you can flag it.

Flags cause a story's rank to fall and, if there are enough of them, kill the story altogether. When flags kill a story, we sometimes unkill it so the existing discussion can continue. I did that here.

I'd guess that the flags on the current post are because the it is just a reprise of a story from earlier this week, so more or less a duplicate.

A caveat. Please don't flag stories merely because they are on some unusual topic. If a post is intellectually substantive, and not flamewar prone, but somehow obscure or out-of-the-way, it is welcome here. Here's an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5979384. We definitely want such diversity on Hacker News. (I mention this in case anyone still has the misconception that HN is for technology and startups only.)

Failing the Startup Game at Unbabel – Take 2

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