[SunRescue] Rant on industry employment practices, was RE: 16 MB memory module for Voyager

[Christopher Byrne]

In november, my employer of exactly one pay period less than six months said
that they "loved my work, thought I was great, but that I was simply not the
right person for the job going forward, sorry." This was done without
notice, and without prior disciplinary action of any kind to warrant it. I
was given almost $20,000 in a "value added separation package", and asked
very politely not to sue them. In California you cannot sign away your right
to sue without the approval of a court. They set it up this way so that
employers can't hold an employee's severance pay hostage to signing a
no-fault no-sue agreement.

Not coincidentally had I been employed for that one more pay period I would
have recieved my first 12.5% vestment of stock at a ridiculously low strike
price. At 50,000 shares and $.05 a share I had negotiated four times as much
stock, and at a lower strike price than any other engineer in our
department. Under the most recent VC valuation of the company, an expected
post IPO value of a stable $80 a share, with an inital shot of well over
$100 per share was discussed as a realistic figure.

This was literally the worst possible time to lose me as I was juggling some
sixteen absolutely critical projects all at once, and I was literally the
only person able to bring them together. I was on time, on budget, and on
schedule to bring them all to success before my dec 21st deadline.

It is now two months later, and the six consultants they hired (I'm not
kidding here) to do my jobs have not quite gotten up to speed at the point I
was at when I was fired, never mind going forward with the projects.

My former boss has actually gone to the board of directors of the company
several times to ask to hire me back, or at least to try and get me to act
as a consultant for them, however apparently they are afraid of being sued
for wrongful dismissal, and believe that if they did so, I would have an
even stronger case than I already do.

I still have many friends in the company who were shocked and very upset at
my termination, and they update me with regular, often humorous progress
reports.

All of this begs the question, why was I terminated?

Anyway it doesnt matter to me moneywise. I live in Bay Area, and am in a
very competitive field so I literally have to turn away work, but the lack
of loyalty, and lack of integrity in the process just really pisses me off.
I'm sure many of us have been there before, and will be again.


Chris Byrne

-----Original Message-----
From: rescue-admin at sunhelp.org [mailto:rescue-admin at sunhelp.org]On
Behalf Of Peter L. Wargo
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 00:44
To: rescue at sunhelp.org
Subject: Re: [SunRescue] FS: 16 MB memory module for Voyager


on 1/6/01 18:55, Mike Hebel at drone8of9 at crosswinds.net wrote:

>>> Well my employer gave me and over 100 other of my co-workers the boot
>>> Thursday.
>
> Sorry to hear that dude.  It sucks being laid off unless you've got
> something in the works.

Hear, hear!  Having been there meself, I know what it's like.  (Worse thing
was having to lay off ppl. working for me first.  VERY depressing.)

Hopefully, you have something in the works, and if you don't, let me know
off-list and I'll push your resume if I can.

-Pete W.

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