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by addaon14 hours ago |
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upvoteby Aurornis13 hours ago|
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No, you can’t force people to continue working at your company by contract.

These agreements work like signing bonuses. The compensation is given up front, but if you leave before N months then you need to return the compensation or some times a pro-rated version of it.

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upvoteby to11mtm13 hours ago|
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There's actually a mortgage company that does worse; They call it the 'People Promise', and it sounds like a bonus, but;

1. It's actually a loan.

2. If you leave or are terminated at any point for the period, you have to pay back the ENTIRE loan amount.

3. Because it's a loan, if you -do- survive employment through the term, guess what, you now have to pay tax on the 'forgiven loan'.

4. If you don't take it, you don't get hired.

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upvoteby cebert2 hours ago|
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There’s a whole “pillar7” subreddit about United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM) if you’re interested in reading about their employment practices. They were forcing people into the office five days a week during peak COVID. It sounds like it’s a mess over there.

I personally know some lower income people who have been negatively impacted by the people promise.

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upvoteby beering12 hours ago|
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Number 3 sounds like nothing out of the ordinary? Any bonus you get from an employer, granted or otherwise, has to be taxed at some point. This just sounds like a weird signing bonus.
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upvoteby FireBeyond3 hours ago|
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Yeah, at one point, an ex-employer gave me a relatively substantial loan (low-mid 5 digits). They were willing to give it to me interest-free, but the accountant said they had to charge me at least prime rate, otherwise that interest would have been taxable. Which was all fine by me, I was going through a divorce that tanked my credit (now ex let a car get repossessed that was in both our names), so no-one was giving me that kind of loan unsecured, let alone at prime rate.
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upvoteby Aurornis13 hours ago|
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Why not name the company?
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upvoteby nilamo12 hours ago|
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UWM, United Wholesale Mortgage. Their location near me (Detroit suburbs) has closed, but not after getting an awful reputation that's somehow worse than Quicken or Rocket Mortgage.
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upvoteby to11mtm11 hours ago|
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Well, they still have their Pontiac HQ.

I've never worked there, I've only had the pleasure of knowing some former employees that were way happier at RKT, and the observation that the most toxic manager I have ever worked under [0] apparently had a pretty good run there after he got booted from our org [1]. What was more striking was, I had a very short stint at an org that tried to 'Emulate' their management style and it was the fastest I ever left a job.

[0] - The kind of guy who's previous wives both left him so hard they didn't even try for custody, so he was having a 'thing' with a different department's manager while her husband was dying of cancer. The creepiest moment was when she brought her kid to the office and the <10 year old kid was dressed up in the same outfit as this 40-50 something dude.

[1] - He eventually got too bold and turned on his 'lieutenant' (who also for a time would dress just like him). Once that dev lead finished the HR 'Training' that they were subjected to, he stopped the behavior of preventing the dev groups from communicating with each other. That cross communication led to a bit of a quiet internal revolt across the whole Dev org.

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upvoteby JoBrad13 hours ago|
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Each of your points escalated over the last one, somehow.
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upvoteby rcxdude9 hours ago|
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Sounds like a typical retention/signing bonus, except structured so that you get the bonus up front and pay the tax later. The main question I would have is whether people who took it understood what they signed up for (i.e. were they misled somehow?). It's a bit weird for it to be mandatory but if you don't want to be on the hook for it, you could just keep the money in a savings account until the term expires.
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upvoteby thaumasiotes8 hours ago|
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> They call it the 'People Promise', and it sounds like a bonus, but

> Because it's a loan, if you -do- survive employment through the term, guess what, you now have to pay tax on the 'forgiven loan'.

Did you have a point to make here? Do you think you don't have to pay income taxes on bonuses?

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upvoteby bonsai_spool3 hours ago|
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The point is that this bonus is effectively a condition of hiring that has strings attached
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upvoteby majormajor14 hours ago|
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Usually signing bonuses are "pay back all or a pro-rated percentage if you leave before [date]"
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upvoteby addaon14 hours ago|
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Sure, but that's just lending you a computer at that point, unless they expect you to cover the depreciation cost or something when returning it.
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upvoteby rcxdude9 hours ago|
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I would guess you would owe some agreed value of the PC at the time you received it.
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upvoteby SoftTalker7 hours ago|
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From what I've seen where I work the majority of "work" computers and laptops don't get returned if the employee separates for whatever reason. So I can see some companies wanting to make it a formal loan or have some means to recover the lost value if it isn't returned. My employer doesn't, because the residual value of a 2-3 year old laptop is not even worth anyone's time beyond making a few perfunctory requests to return it.
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upvoteby rcxdude4 hours ago|
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Eh, the requirement to return your work-provided laptop is about as strong, legally speaking, as a requirement to pay back the value of it when you leave. Perhaps even stronger (because a work laptop is never really even a loan to you). I would suggest your workplace is a bit of an outlier: most places I'm aware of make pretty sure the laptop is returned, even if only because of the risk of company information leaking out otherwise (some places I know might let an employee keep an old laptop that's being replaced after they have wiped it, perhaps with all storage removed entirely).
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upvoteby FireBeyond2 hours ago|
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Yeah, I've generally had to return laptops, unless the company itself is closing down (startups) or such (which I've been "fortunate" on, I once got to keep a nice iMac 27" and 27" Apple display, and then an M3 Max 96GB MBP). But usually monitors, other accessories are "you can keep those".
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upvoteby esseph9 hours ago|
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That's exactly how those things normally work.

"Education incentives" at companies can be similar.

For instance, maybe they pay for your trip to AWS Re:Invent and a couple of cert fees ($X,000.00) with the agreement you stay for a year or two. As long as you stay for the year or two, you don't own them any money. If you leave before then, they send you a prorated bill or take it out of your last paycheck.

The idea is that companies don't want to train you on their dime for you to use that training to immediately take a new job somewhere else (or worse, a competitor).

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upvoteby sgarland7 hours ago|
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No, as others explained, it was “you owe us $X if you quit before $DATE.” IIRC, they had a few models to choose from, with different amounts of time required. The Pentium III was, I think, a 3 year commitment; a Celeron was I think 2 years.
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